Stop renting your time. Own something.
Own Your Life: The Second-Act Guide to Owning a Business and Building Real Wealth. How professionals in their 40s and 50s decide whether to buy, start or back a business, from someone who has done all three for 40 years.
Kindle · Paperback · Hardcover · Audiobook
YOUR
LIFE.
Three doors. One is yours.
Most advice assumes you should buy a business. The book starts with whether you should, and how.
Buy it
Customers, staff and cash flow from day one. Bought at 3x earnings, a business pays you back 33% a year with zero growth.
Build it
Only when product-market fit, market knowledge, the right operator and a cheap build all line up. Otherwise, start small and keep your job.
Back it
Keep your career and own pieces of other people's deals. You can be an owner without taking the 2 a.m. call.
What you'll take from the book
Your number, reverse-engineered
From the liquid net worth you need, back to the deal size and capital it takes today.
The S.E.A.R.C.H. process
The step-by-step method behind 29 acquisitions, from self-assessment to your Buy Box.
The You, Inc. scorecard
Twenty factors to score your own readiness before you risk a dollar.
7 signs, 7 red flags
What separates a great business to own from a profitable one you should walk away from.
Read it. Then take the next step.
Owner's Equity
Weekly newsletter on what to own next. Five minutes, one real case study.
Subscribe →Owners Room
Community for people seriously considering ownership. Cancel anytime.
Join →Owner's Table
Small-group cohort with Michael. Leave with a written, dated decision.
Apply →
"When I tell you what I'd own, it's what I own."
Michael Crow is a Harvard Business School OPM graduate and the author of Own Your Life: The Second-Act Guide to Owning a Business and Building Real Wealth. Over a 40-year career he has acquired 29 businesses across plumbing, HVAC, aerospace manufacturing and pension administration. He built National Investment Managers from 4 employees to more than 800 through 25 tuck-in acquisitions, growing assets under administration from $200 million to $13 billion before a private-equity exit. He founded Sureste Property Group, which assembled over $500 million in assets, about 5,000 apartment units across 24 Southeast properties, before a full exit.
Earlier, he was Deputy to the Vice Chairman of Security Pacific National Bank and began his career as a consultant and CPA at Price Waterhouse. Today he is CEO of Dunross Capital Partners and MC Enterprises and writes the weekly newsletter Owner's Equity.
YPO member · Harvard Club of New York · Business and real estate broker · Jet-rated pilot
Be first on December 10
Get the launch-day email plus Owner's Equity, free each week. Unsubscribe anytime.