The biggest moat in this business is that most people aren't crazy enough to do it — but anyone with enough money probably could.
Sam argues that the main barrier to entry is psychological — the chaos and risk scare people off — rather than any technical or capital advantage. ✦ AI generated
Sam · My First Million · 2026-07-21 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 17:54
For moat, the biggest moat here is I don't think people are crazy enough to do this, but anyone with enough money could probably do it, and there's a lot of people in the city who can.
verbatim transcript · starts at 17:54
17:36think that he probably does something like $500,000 to a million dollar a year in income, but that's on a good year. On a bad year, he probably can like lose money and it and it was just a lot of work for that amount of money. Second machine, can it run without him? And he has a team of people that he uses in most of his projects, but he's really
17:54like the catalyst for this whole thing working. I'm going to give it another three. And for moat, the biggest moat here is I don't think people are crazy enough to do this, but anyone with enough money could probably do it, and there's a lot of people in the city who can. I'm going to give it a two. So, what does that sum up to? An eight. So, the business score, an 8 out
18:15of 30. All right. Now, let's do lifestyle. So, can you have pride in the product that you're making? Do you like the people who you work with and your customers? And does [music] it provide any freedom? So, for pride, he was very proud of what he was doing. I was actually proud for him. I thought it was amazing. I'm going to give that one a nine. He said that sometimes he'll make
18:35stuff and like the buyer will just come in and like destroy it, which would really suck, but he still gets a nine. Now, people, I met some of his co-workers, some of the guys doing work. It was awesome. They were really cool and lovely. I'm going to give it a seven just because some of the people who he sells his properties to, I probably don't want to [music] hang out with some
18:51of those folks. And now, freedom. I'm going to give this one a five. The reason I'm going to do a five is because each project has [music] an end date. So, he could take some time off if he wanted to, but when he's there, like in the thick of it, it seems like Saturday and Sunday is included. He's always on the phone like dealing with regulations and things like that. So, the lifestyle
19:09score gets a 21 out of 30. All right. So, here's what that adds up to. For business, he gets an eight. For lifestyle, a 21. 21. 21. >> [music] >> You wrote a 31 >> for Biz. He is going to get an eight. Lifestyle 21. Add all that up. What's that up to? That's 29. So Mark O'Brien buying, restoring, selling brownstones. SAM score 29.