Buying Or Starting A Business- Innovators Win
January 24, 2026
There is a lot of content out there about buying a business, starting a business, and for those who already have a business, making it bigger and better. The big question for a lot of people is- Which do I choose? Do I need a new idea- a new product or service no one has ever offered before? Do I start a new business in a proven industry? These are all valid questions and if you’re asking these questions you are on the right track.
Build On The Past
But here’s a thought. Think of all the businesses that have been built on the back of someone else’s work. Cars have been around for well over 120 years. Some have been electric. So electric cars are nothing new. But until Elon Musk came along electric vehicles had always been butt ugly and inefficient and nobody really wanted them. He made nice sporty cars and through some brilliant manufacturing innovation made his company eventually profitable and even outperformed the major car manufacturers in making electric vehicles. Jeff Bezos came up with a better way to sell books and eventually everything else. Today you can buy almost anything on Amazon. David Heacock turned his family business into Filterbuy, a $250 million business that totally changed the way we buy air conditioning filters. You probably haven’t heard of that last one but you will eventually.
Some Are Slow
Many years ago I built houses. There have been many innovations in construction and home improvement products. And yet, houses are still built basically the same way. Innovations in the construction process have been made in commercial buildings but they have been slow to make their way into home construction. Mostly because home buyers are resistant to buy into those new processes and products. They have bought into the myth that houses built 75 years ago were built better than they are today. As someone who has built new houses and renovated old houses I can tell you that is far from the truth. But eventually that will pass and we will see homes that are built faster, built better and are more affordable.
My Thoughts
So here’s my take on starting or buying a business. You don’t have to be an inventor or a re-inventor. Being an innovator will take you much farther. Buying a profitable existing business and introducing your innovations, in my opinion, can be better than starting from scratch. However it comes with its own set of challenges. I’ve seen many successful businesses that were bought and steered directly into bankruptcy by making too many changes way too fast.
So if you are an innovator and you want to go down that path(that would be my choice), take the time to do it right. Don’t rush the innovation. You have an ongoing, profitable business. That means you have the luxury of making money while you experiment with innovations. Introduce them slowly. If you try to make your business drink from a firehose it might not hold up.
Either way, starting new or buying, you have a great opportunity ahead of you. It could be the financial momentum opportunity of a lifetime.
I’ll leave you with one more example. In the area where I live there is a window cleaning business. Of course window cleaners have been around for a long time but they have mostly been used for commercial buildings. In this area there are A LOT(thousands) of two story houses. In fact they are really tall two story houses. Most people can't clean the outside of their second floor windows. This local window cleaning business uses extendable polls (also used by painters) that can reach the second floor windows. They innovated window cleaning. I don’t know if they’re the first to do it but as far as I know they are the only ones doing it here. It was a simple cheap innovation that worked and now a business is built around it. They didn’t invent or create anything. They just came up with a new way to use existing tools in an existing industry, to solve a very specific problem for a specific type of customer. And they did it at an extremely low startup cost. Well done!