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That's how the rich think about business.
Follow me @codiesanchez.bsky.social for more on business & leveling up your wealth.
The beauty of the Satellite Model is you don't need to be Adobe or Disney to do it.
The type of business doesn't matter.
Gym, dog grooming, accounting, interior design, real estate, consulting, whatever.
What matters is your ability to add satellites to the main thing you're good at.
Adobe can engineer one software user into a lifetime customer:
- Designers start with Photoshop, and naturally flow into Illustrator.
- Video editors need Premiere, which leads them to After Effects.
- Everything connects through Creative Cloud, pulling in enterprise clients.
7. Adobe
Adobe had 1 product at the start:
PostScript, which created the standard for computer printing in the 80s.
But by accumulating satellites around their core, they've locked down the entire creative industry:
I visited Atlas Coffee Club awhile back, and I loved how the founder Michael thinks about this.
Coffee subscription > Tea subscription > Chocolate subscription
Cross sell to current customers AND tap a new market at the same time.
How do you make people spend more on a low-priced product?
Give them more stuff to buy.
- Add a bakery/kitchen or partner with an existing local business
- Don't buy beans, buy the whole roastery
- Buy the laundromat down the street, so they grab a drink while they wait
6. Coffee Shop
The AOV of a coffee shop is extremely low. $5 for a latte = 200 customers just to crack $1,000 in sales for the day.
Satellites can help with that.
The Disney magic turns 1 story into 6 ways to profit:
- It starts with a film that captures hearts
- Which leads to a park attraction
- Families need hotels near the parks
- Which sell vacation packages
- Those lead to cruises
- While merch follows you home
5. Disney
In 1923, it was just Walt and Roy making short cartoons in their uncle's garage.
But they realized every piece of content was an opportunity for multiple revenue streams.
And every acquisition was too...
His satellite business of choice?
A screen printing & merch company.
He sells swag at all his shows. After joining our group, he thought..
Why not buy the vendor?
Neat trick.
4. Magician
*Hear me out*
Alex is a Contrarian Thinking Community member who has a robust business as an entertainer.
He does tours, consults celebrities, MC'd at our event, etc, etc...
The Swifty Satellites:
- Tours promote albums ($13M per show)
- Albums drive merch sales
- Movies boost streaming numbers
- Streaming fuels tour demand
- Merch creates walking billboards
Most think it’s basic pop music, but it’s an empire in disguise.
3. Taylor Swift
The teen country singer with a guitar and a dream...
Turns out the dream was to build a billion $ fireproof business ecosystem.
The core business = music. But Taylor didn't stop there..
Here’s a basic blueprint for laundromat satellites:
- Acquire vending, soap + snacks
- Launch a wash & fold service
- Acquire a fleet, offer pickup & delivery
- Buy property & rent spaces
- Sell private-label products (acquire a vendor?)
2. Laundromat
Most people see a laundromat as a simple business: washers, dryers, and quarters.
But the smartest owners see it differently.
They see a foundation for multiple revenue streams, all working together to build serious wealth.
Amazon has acquired more companies than you even realize:
- Ring
- IMDb
- Zappos
- Goodreads
- Whole Foods
- and over 100 others
Seemingly unrelated brands that create a giant flywheel.
How Amazon's satellites feed each other:
- AWS to power their site + make $80B/yr
- Marketplace = 3rd party revenue
- Audible & Prime, more media to sell
- Prime membership for repeat purchases
- Logistics for fast delivery
- Alexa to collect all the data
From one "bookstore."
1. Amazon
It wasn't always a trillion-dollar giant.
In 1994, it was just Jeff Bezos selling books online from his garage.
But only 4 years later, Amazon acquired its first satellites. The empire was born...
Ex. A real estate company could acquire:
- A property management co
- A social media agency
- A video agency
- A landscaping company
- Cleaning company
- Mortgage broker
Suddenly, your liabilities are profits.
Let's do a mini-dive on how 7 other types of companies do this...
It's called the Satellite Acquisition Model.
When 1 core business surrounds itself with profitable businesses that feed into it.
Like tributaries flowing into a river.
Or like planets orbiting a sun. Each satellite creates its own gravity of income.
This is Amazon’s income statement from Q4 of last year.
You notice something?
They're an online retailer. But less than 1/2 of their revenue is online store sales.
Amazon doesn’t just SELL to grow. They BUY.
This is the ONE strategy that’s made:
• Amazon a trillion-dollar company
• Taylor Swift a billionaire
• Your local laundromat worth a million
Any business owner who doesn’t know this model is leaving money on the table.
Here’s how it works:
Nobody cares about your life...They think about you for one second and then think about themselves again.
So you might as well do what you want.
Working smarter not harder is a beautiful lie.
You will not know how to work smart until you've worked very hard for an irrationally long time.
Being around really really rich people will teach you two things...
1) They work harder than you imagine.
2) They're not as smart as you thought.
You must learn to be disliked or you’ll find yourself stuck in a prison of other people's desires.
How to stay poor:
- watch the stock market
- drink in order to find your friends fun
- bet on other men doing physical activity
- hate on those actually creating things
- group text and bs all day
Underrated hack... work with colleagues even better, smarter, more hard-working than you.
