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That line is classic Buffett.
Absurd mental image. Top 10 business truth bomb.
It applies to almost every part of investing and building. Still, most people ignore it.
They want Year 7 abs after 1 month at the gym.
Don’t get us wrong, speed is essential. But so is time. You need a long enough runway for the really interesting stuff to happen.
This played out in my own career.
On paper, it reads like a resume written by ChatGPT during a power outage:
Zoom in? That resume looks deranged. Zoom out? There’s a common thread of ownership, finance, distribution, truth-telling, and a DEEP hatred of waiting for others’ permission. I always kept pulling the thread. And eventually, the thread became a moat.
But it took time for the pattern to reveal itself. “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield,” as Buffett put it.
I didn’t know I was building leverage. Yet by the time I launched Contrarian Thinking, I had all the raw material I needed plus a delusional level of conviction.
…Which brings us to Year 1.
If you think the early days of a company look like clean strategy decks and quiet focus time… you’ve never built one.
I didn’t have a 5-year plan. Barely had a 5-month plan. We didn’t have a growth team. We had Google Docs, a shared Canva login, caffeine, some stickers, a mouth, and a chip on my shoulder. So we got scrappy and did what every rational person would do:
1. We printed 5,000 stickers and snuck into a newsletter conference we weren’t invited to. Covered the walls, bathrooms, and hallway mirrors. People thought we were a sponsor. We were not.
2. We spent $10k on hats with a stolen logo a Fiverr designer gave us. Didn’t know it was stolen until after. Didn’t exactly have a legal team to run it by at the time…
3. I agreed to a bikini shoot, but only if they put my brand name in every photo. Strategic cleavage.
4. We taped Contrarian Thinking logos to every wall in my house so every Zoom call was worthy of a TV segment. In reality, it was me, a ring light, and my dog farting under the desk.
5. We ran “Buy Laundromats” billboards like some sort of financial Banksy.
6. I joined what felt like every Facebook group for small, boring businesses. Sent hundreds of personal DMs. Converted strangers into newsletter subscribers, then into buyers.
Was all of this scalable? Hell no. Some of it was probably barely legal. But it let us build an audience before we had a product. Test ideas without raising a dollar. And become inevitable before we were even viable.
That’s the magic of a long time horizon. You can be unhinged now… and brilliant later. How do you make money fast? Slowly.
Most people want to look smart immediately.
But if you’re focused on looking smart in 10 years, you can afford to look a little crazy right now.
Bezos and Gates said it best:
“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue.”
- Jeff Bezos
“Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in ten years”
- Bill Gates
Life is short, but it’s also way longer than you think.
Twenty years ago, I was a Walmart model. A media and education company, a venture fund, and a couple dozen portfolio businesses later… I’m still just pulling the thread.
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The information contained here is educational, may not be typical, and does not guarantee returns. Background, education, effort, and application will affect your experience and the profitability of any business. Individual results may vary.
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