The book that changed how I think about wealth and work

Happy Tuesday!

If someone asked me to recommend one book to anyone exploring business acquisition for the first time, my answer is always the same:

Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel.

Here’s why it hit so hard for me personally, and what it can offer you 👇

Community Spotlight

Prashant and Arvind bought a $2.7M math tutoring business in Seattle with 1,000+ recurring students and 8 employees who run the day-to-day.

They beat 17+ other bidders by reading the room: the seller wanted simplicity, so they offered 100% cash with no seller note.

👉 Want templates, tools, and a network to help you win competitive deals? Book a call with our team here.

When I was working at JP Morgan, everything about my life looked right from the outside.

• Good title

• Good salary

• Prestigious firm

• The kind of job people congratulate you for having

But the reality of that job was grinding me down in ways that didn’t show up on LinkedIn.

The hours were brutal, the work felt disconnected from anything I actually cared about…

And the thing that bothered me most was the slow realization that I was trading the most important years of my family’s life for a paycheck that mostly just funded the lifestyle required to maintain the job.

I kept watching that trade happen and wondering if this was just how it was supposed to go.

Around that time, I started paying closer attention to the clients we worked with, people who had built real, lasting wealth.

What I noticed was that almost none of them got there by climbing a corporate structure.

They got there by owning things. Businesses, specifically.

That observation sent me down a rabbit hole, and eventually I landed on Buy Then Build.

What the Book Actually Taught Me

Instead of spending years trying to build a business from scratch - with all the risk and uncertainty that comes with it - you can buy a business that’s already working.

It sounds obvious in hindsight, but for someone who’d been conditioned to think the only paths forward were “start a company” or “keep climbing,” it genuinely opened up a different way of seeing things.

The book walks through how to find these businesses, how to evaluate them, how to finance them, and how to think about growth after the acquisition.

It’s highly practical, not theoretical, which is exactly what I needed at the time.

(If you want to go deeper than a book and actually learn how to execute on finding deals, financing them, and closing, that’s exactly what we do inside Acquisition Ace. Book a call with our team here to see if it's a good fit.)

What Changed After I Read It

I left JP Morgan, bought my first business, and now own eight.

More importantly, I’ve been able to show up fully for my family in a way that wasn’t possible when I was locked into a demanding corporate role.

None of that happens without that book putting a different idea in my head at the right moment.

If you haven’t read it yet, go get a copy.

It’s the best starting point I know of for anyone serious about this path.

And if you’re already past the reading phase and ready to start looking at deals, I’d love to help with that too.

Join the Acquisition Ace community, where we help thousands of members go through the process of finding, negotiating, and closing their first business acquisition.

To see if it's a good fit…

👉 Book a call with my team here.