My Buddy Isn't Peter Thiel: Who Owners Actually Talk To

Peter Thiel had the PayPal mafia.

A dozen people who built one company together, then went off and built Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Palantir, and never stopped picking up each other's calls.

I don't have that. Neither do you.

My buddy isn't Peter Thiel. My buddy owns an HVAC company in Ohio and he's got the exact same three problems I do.

The three questions every owner is asking alone

Here's what I hear from every operator I talk to, from $5M to $50M, in every industry. Same three questions. Different accents.

How do I deal with this? The thing on your desk that nobody else in the building can carry. The lawsuit, the partner, the bank, the decision that's yours alone.

How do I learn AI? Not the headlines. The actual answer to what you should be doing in your company this quarter without getting fleeced by a vendor.

How do I deal with employees? The one who's coasting. The one you can't afford to lose. The one you have to let go on Friday.

Nobody teaches this. Your spouse is tired of hearing it. Your team can't hear it. Your competitors would love to hear it.

So you carry it.

Why there's nobody to talk to

It's not that owners are bad at friendship. It's that the job filters out the people who could understand it.

Your employees report to you. Your investors are owed something by you. Your friends from before the company have no idea what a payroll Thursday feels like.

I once wrote about raising capital from 30,000 people and still feeling alone in the room. More capital didn't fix it. More followers won't either.

What fixes it is a small group of people who've been where you are, who owe you nothing, and who will tell you the truth.

The Monopoly lesson

Thiel's big idea is that competition is for losers. You win by building something nobody else can offer, a monopoly on your corner of the world.

I'd add one thing. The most valuable monopoly an owner can build isn't in the market. It's the room.

A room of eight or nine operators who get what you're building, who've already made the mistake you're about to make, and who'll pick up the phone. Nobody can copy that room. Nobody can buy their way into it.

That's the asset most owners never build, because they're too busy building everything else.

What I'm building instead of waiting for a mafia

I'm not waiting for the PayPal mafia to adopt me.

Every month I'm putting about nine operators in a room with me. No pitch. No vendors. Owners running real companies, bringing the one thing they can't say anywhere else, and getting a straight answer from people who've lived it.

That's the whole idea. I spent 30 years in rooms full of people who wanted something from me. I'm building one where nobody does.

How to build your own room

If you're not in mine, build yours. Here's the standard.

• Peers, not mentors. People at your stage or one stage ahead, not gurus.
• No customers, no vendors, no employees. Nobody who needs something from you.
• Small. Under ten. Big enough to disagree, small enough to be honest.
• Same time every month. A room that meets "when we can" is not a room.
• One rule: what's said there stays there.