Two episodes went out in the last two weeks. Both landed on the same theme from very different directions. What does it actually look like to build something real and then design your life around it, not the other way around.
Here are the parts worth your time.
ARMAN TAHERI
Arman is the co-founder and CEO of TalentPop, a talent solutions company serving e-commerce brands. He and his brother started the business during COVID out of a problem they had to solve in their own company first.
The pivot nobody planned for
Arman and his brother were launching a medical scrubs company right before COVID hit. Production shut down. Instead of waiting it out, they pivoted to selling face masks using the same cut-and-sew contacts in downtown LA. They bought up almost every yard of fabric in the city. That business did eight figures in under a year.
But they never treated it as the real play. It was short-term cash. They took what they learned about scaling a customer service team under pressure and turned it into TalentPop. One solution, one market, for years before adding anything else.
That discipline is what got them to scale. His take is that most people fall into the trap of chasing the next thing the moment they get a little traction. If you are building something with real enterprise value, you need to stay in one lane long enough for it to compound.
The income levels nobody maps out
Arman broke down how he thinks about personal income in stages. The first target is getting to a point where you cover your expenses and still have something left to invest every month. For him that was $10,000 a month as a baseline.
Once you get past that, the question shifts. What does the life you actually want cost? Most people never sit down and answer that. They just keep earning more and spending more. His point is that if you map it out, the number is usually lower than you think. And once you know the number, you can reverse-engineer what the business needs to produce to get there.
The third level is when you are earning enough that the focus shifts from funding your own lifestyle to building generational wealth. Different team, different advisors, different allocation approach entirely.
Why he chose a strategic partner over PE
TalentPop brought in a strategic investor after an 18-month process of evaluating both PE firms and strategic partners. Arman's view was that PE would have meant playing by someone else's rules full time. The strategic partner gave them operational guidance, particularly around budgeting, account management, and growing within their existing client base, while still letting them run the day-to-day.
His logic was straightforward. He wanted to take some risk off the table, protect his family in case of a downturn, and bring in a partner who could teach them things they had not learned yet. Not just capital. Perspective.
The part that applies to most people listening
Arman is not a fan of grind culture. He thinks the heads-down, no-social-life, sacrifice-everything narrative is mostly for show. His version is simpler. Know what season you are in. If you are building, build. But map out what you are building toward, understand what it costs, and do not blow every dollar during the peak years of your earning potential just to end up on the hamster wheel permanently.
He and his brother are planning to buy a home for their parents. That is the kind of goal that sits at the end of being intentional about every stage before it.
SARAH MISKELLY
Sarah was a real estate broker in Toronto. She grew up in the business with her dad managing multifamily properties, went into sales, and built a multi-six-figure brokerage working seven days a week. Then she shut it down, moved to Costa Rica with three kids, and started over in fund management.
Golden handcuffs and the exit nobody plans
Sarah saw the trajectory. She was building a million-dollar brokerage. But she also saw the ceiling. There is no equity in a sales business. You trade time for commissions, and no matter how good your systems are, the business does not sell for a meaningful multiple when you leave.
So she did two things while she was earning. She invested her commission checks into real estate as an LP and into private lending. And she always had a plan to exit. Not an exit from a company. An exit from the model itself. That cash flow from her investments is what gave her the optionality to walk away and rebuild on her own terms.
The deal she passed on that blew up
This one is worth the listen on its own. A large multifamily sponsor reached out to Sarah directly. Class A property, impressive pitch deck, strong reputation, and they were offering attractive terms to get her capital in.
She dug into the underwriting. The debt service coverage ratio was tight, barely above one. And there was a large preferred equity position sitting above the common equity her investors would be coming in at. The capital stack told a story the pitch deck did not.
She passed. Six months later, multiple deals from that sponsor were losing investor capital. Part of the reason they were pushing so hard to bring in new capital was that the GPs themselves wanted out of their own positions.
Her takeaway is simple. Look beyond what you are being offered. Look beyond the deck. Dig into what could go wrong and ask why this deal needs your money right now.
What it actually takes to run a business abroad
Sarah is clear that living in Costa Rica is not cheaper. Her town has quality schools, good amenities, and a strong expat community, but you pay for it. She still pays into the Canadian tax system. Her family had to set up private medical care. Her son got airlifted to a hospital a few weeks ago because they are in a small town.
The part most people miss is that it is possible if your business runs from a laptop and you can sustain income remotely. Her entire investor base is US-based and SEC-regulated. The Costa Rica part does not show up in the business operations. It shows up in the fact that she surfs before work and her kids speak Spanish.
Her read is that most people do not see it as a possibility for themselves. That is the real barrier. Not logistics.
Both episodes are worth going deeper on. Give them a listen.
— Sam Silverman
Silverman Capital
