The brownstone business scores poorly as a business: it's painful, not that profitable, not scalable without the founder, and has a weak moat.
Sam Parr rates the business an 8 out of 30: income is $500K–$1M in good years but can go negative in bad ones (Money: 3/10), the business can't run without Mark (Machine: 3/10), and anyone with enough capital could compete (Moat: 2/10). ✦ AI generated
Sam Parr · My First Million · 2026-07-21 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 17:12
In terms of money, this business was a pain in the butt and I don't think it made that much money. I'm going to give it a three. Basically, I think 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 like 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 of 30.
verbatim transcript · starts at 17:12
16:57million4,500 ft², right? >> Yeah. home in Fork Ring. This place is awesome. >> Around the corner from Spike Spike Lee. >> I mean, what a good time for him. >> Deal of the century. >> All right. Thank you. Veryospitable. We're going to get our subway. All right. God bless. See you soon. >> All right. Thank you for everything. I'll talk to you a little bit. >> All right. We just got back to the
17:17office. Let's give this thing a score. >> Okay. So, I've divided this thing up by business and lifestyle because they're both important. We're going to do money, machine, and mo. And first of all, I love Mark. I'm going to hang out with Mark again. But in terms of money, this business was a pain in the butt and I don't think it made that much money. I'm going to give it a three. Basically, I
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