"Scared money don't make money" cost me $1M

In 2023 I bought a shower glass business in Hendersonville, Tennessee. It was supposed to be my retirement plan.

It cost me close to $1 million instead.

Today the book about it comes out. It's called Still in the Game: Losing a Business, a Marriage, and a Million, and Why I Kept Playing, and the Kindle edition is $1 during launch weeks 1 and 2.

Get it here: Still in the Game on Amazon

The rest of this email is the lesson from the book I think matters most for you as an investor.

Part of that is right. Big swings build wealth. Buying an established business is one of the strongest moves an investor can make, and I still believe that. I spend time every month with people in investor groups such as Action Academy who are looking at acquisitions, and I tell them to keep looking.

My problem with the line is what it leaves out. I took the swing with nothing under it. When the business went bad, I had no cushion and no income from anything I owned, and a bad year quickly turned into a default.

I spent 15 years in corporates managing risk before I bought that business. I still missed it.

The money that makes money is money you can afford to lose. You only get there by building a floor first, and the floor is also what lets you swing bigger the next time.

Here are the three pieces I should have had in place.

I kept my W2 the whole time I owned the business.

When the business failed, the paycheck kept arriving on the 15th and the 30th. It paid the minimums, it kept the lights on at home, and it's the main reason the loss cost me a few very bad years and not everything.

A steady paycheck also does something people forget. It's what a lender looks at when you ask for credit. The income that protects you is the same income that lets you borrow for the deal.

Now keeping my W2 also had the negative impact of splitting my attention. Quitting should be part of the plan. What if you had a different source of income, that depends less on your attention before you take the swing?

The business had no reserves when I bought it, and I never got to build any.

The seller had over $500,000 in reserves, which I deemed to be inefficient. Reserves don't make you money. So I focused on optimizing use of cash.

But when the business slowed down, and invoices took longer to settle, a bad month turned into an emergency.

Reserves make sure a bad month stays a bad month, so you never have to sell something good, or take out additional loans, to cover it.

Before your next swing, know three numbers:

Make sure you have these answered before the swing.

After the loss I needed a way to rebuild that didn't depend on one big bet.

It's the system my business partner Jackie and I teach here. We call it the CYCLE:

As of October 2026, and over three years I've put $144K into this system. It has paid off $98K of debt, and the money I've deployed now sends payments back $6,300 every month.

That monthly cash flow is what raises your capacity. Every payment that arrives on schedule is a payment you didn't have to find from your paycheck. Over time the line gets paid down faster, the credit is open again, and you can carry a bigger deal without betting the house on it.

With this foundation, I’ll be ready when the right deal crosses my desk.

Still in the Game is the full story of the deal, from the part that looked safe to the collapse that followed, and how I rebuilt. You'll learn:

It comes with a Field Guide: every pro tip and lesson from the book, sorted by the stage of a deal you're in, with a walk-away checklist at the end.

$1 on Kindle this week

One ask. If you read it, leave an honest review on Amazon, even two sentences. Reviews in the first weeks decide whether Amazon shows the book to anyone else.

— Miguel