If you’re running an independent business in an industry crawling with private equity firms and massive conglomerates, you’ve probably felt like David facing Goliath. Except David doesn’t always win anymore, right?
Wrong.
The problem isn’t that independent entrepreneurs can’t compete. It’s that they’re trying to play by rules written by businesses designed to crush them. After two decades of building companies, executing exits, and racking up over $700 million in transactions without selling out to investors, I’ve learned something critical: you don’t beat the big guys by becoming them.
Throw Out the Rulebook
Most independent businesses get slower as they grow. They accumulate layers of “we’ve always done it this way” thinking that becomes cement around their ankles. The irony is brutal. You start nimble, then success makes you sluggish.
I flipped this on its head. Every business I run operates like a tech startup, even if it’s retail or service-based. Real-time metrics tracking customer acquisition and operational efficiency replaces gut feelings and quarterly reports that arrive too late to matter. Speed beats size every single time.
The big players rely on committee decisions and approval chains. You can make a call before lunch that takes them three weeks. That’s your advantage, but only if you build the systems to support it.
Build Before You Scale
Here’s where most entrepreneurs screw up. They chase growth before fixing their foundation. More locations, more products, more chaos. Growth without systems isn’t growth, it’s just expensive confusion.
Before expanding anywhere, I built digital technology frameworks from scratch. These weren’t off-the-shelf solutions that sort of fit. They were custom tools connecting marketing to operations to customer service, creating visibility that most multi-location businesses dream about.
Digital clarity creates financial clarity. When you can see everything happening in real-time across your entire operation, you stop guessing and start knowing. Those proprietary tools we built years ago still power decision-making today because they were designed for our specific needs, not a generic business model.
Own Your Timeline
The self-funded family office model gives me something venture capital and private equity can never provide: the freedom to think in decades instead of quarters. This isn’t about being anti-investor. It’s about recognizing that outside money comes with outside timelines and outside priorities.
When you control your capital, you control your decisions. You can acquire underperforming assets and spend months improving them without someone breathing down your neck about returns. You can invest heavily in systems that won’t pay off for years but will compound forever.
Big competitors are stuck explaining every move to boards and investors. You’re not. Use it.
Focus Is Your Superpower
Entrepreneurs love new ideas. New markets, new products, new strategies. It’s exhausting and it dilutes everything that actually works. The businesses I’ve built succeeded because we got obsessive about two things: customer experience and operational efficiency.
Everything else is noise.
When you focus on your strengths instead of chasing every opportunity, you build expertise that becomes a moat. Competitors who scale without strategy end up mediocre at everything. You become exceptional at the things that actually drive results in your industry.
People Compound Faster Than Money
Capital matters, sure. But people compound faster. The difference between a good business and a great one usually comes down to whether you treat talent as an expense or an investment.
We hire high-performance operators, data analysts, culture-builders, and customer experience leaders early. Not when we can afford them, but before we think we can. Independent businesses compete with corporate giants when they build teams that execute faster and innovate smarter.
Your people won’t just work for paychecks if you give them something bigger to build. Empowered teams create experiences that leave well-funded competitors scrambling to understand what happened.
Build Like You’ll Never Sell
This sounds backward, but building as if you’ll own the business for 30 years makes it easier to exit when you want to. Strong infrastructure, disciplined operations, and repeatable processes don’t just make life easier, they make your business attractive.
Every tech startup I exited received unsolicited acquisition offers because they were well-run machines, not chaotic passion projects held together with duct tape. Long-term thinking doesn’t delay exits. It makes them inevitable and profitable.
Stay Rigid and Flexible Simultaneously
Markets shift. Consumer behavior changes overnight. Technology evolves faster than business plans. The entrepreneurs who win are the ones who can pivot without losing their discipline.
We maintain strict operating rhythms and standards while staying ready to change direction when conditions demand it. Structure and flexibility aren’t opposites. They’re partners. Precision without adaptability gets you disrupted. Flexibility without standards gets you chaos.
The big players have entire departments dedicated to managing change, which means they move like cargo ships. You’re a speedboat. Act like it.
The Real Enemy Isn’t Competition
Conglomerates aren’t your enemy. Private equity isn’t your enemy. The only real enemy is stagnation, the slow acceptance that you can’t compete, that the game is rigged, that you should just sell out or give up.
Independent entrepreneurs who combine startup execution with digital-first operations, strong talent, long-term thinking, and disciplined capital allocation don’t just survive against bigger competitors. They win. Not by playing the same game with fewer resources, but by changing the rules entirely and making the big guys chase them for once.
