Mike Andes argues that entrepreneurs should treat businesses as long-term assets that must be able to run without the owner (10–15 year horizon). He prefers building businesses that take much longer to set up but have systems and people so they operate independently, and he favors recurring work because it justifies investing in infrastructure rather than one-off jobs.
I just look at business a little differently. I think it much more from an asset perspective. I think much more about like can I build this to run without me in next 10 to 15 years? And if I can't, I have no interest in building it because if you're just going to show up to the next project to do the work and earn that money, why not just get a good paying job, right? Like, and that that's why a lot of people will quit this industry in any home service industry is because eventually if you're just doing one time jobs, basically it's like I must work in order to make money. That's what you should do as an employee. And so it's much more stable, you get better benefits. I want to build a business that takes me twice as long to build, if not three times longer to build. But there are systems and people in place that run make it run without me. And it's easier to do that for the recurring work because I don't have to build an infrastructure around something that I don't know is there tomorrow.
