08-17-26 MEDM AM

August 17, 2026

If you had to do it all over again, knowing what you know now:

Would you buy your own business today?

Everything stays the same. Customers, offers, your team, etc. Including the same shit that keeps you awake at night.

Be honest.

Some of you said “hell no” before I even finished the question ;)

And that should tell you something important.

You've gotten used to carrying stuff a smart buyer would never touch.

All because you built it, paid for it, hired it or spent years trying to make it work.

That's what's called the sunk-cost fallacy. When an old decision keeps eating up your time and money simply because you can't admit it was the wrong decision.

Blockbuster knew that feeling very well. It had more than 9,000 stores at its peak. But it also had so much tied to the 'old' way of renting movies that changing fast enough became impossible.

By 2010, it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Doesn't matter how big and bad you once were or how well things used to work. You'll get smoked if you don't know when to change or pivot in a new direction.

Inside a private network like the Deal Maker Alliance, you put the real issues in front of people who aren't attached to its history. They don't care how hard you worked to land that client or how much you spent getting that project off the ground.

They care whether it’s still worth your next dollar.

That kind of perspective can keep you from wasting another year trying to make an old decision look smart.


Mark Evans DM