19.9107° N, 99.8407° E

A few months ago I spoke with a few of you back in NY saying that I had a dream/fantasy of running my own successful business by applying some lessons I learned from my close and dear friend Warren Buffet. Such lesson, when understood fully, is damn near priceless.

You see, while discussing investing one afternoon, Warren told me "Adam, buy a good business at a fair price, not a fair business at a good price. You need to invest your money as if you were buying the entire company. Would you be willing to? Anything but yes means it's a bad buy, a bad poor investment. Adam, a good business has good management, people with character that care about the business itself not just the bottom line. A good business has plans. A good business doesn't sell a commodity and has some way of protecting itself from competition; like a secret recipe or a strong brand identity."

What Warren taught me about investing apply all the same to running my own business - a good business. To be successful I couldn't be cheap. To be successful I would have to be patient, to wait for a good opportunity and not settle for anything less than ideal. To be successful I would need to be surrounded by people on the same page as me, people that care about the health of the business. To be successful I would need to do ample planning. To be successful I would need to create something difficult to copy and/or with a strong brand identity. Also, consider the following; something might be easy to copy on paper, but if you put in an intense amount of work to get to that point you can filter out any real competition by persevering longer than the other guy.

When I really started to understand this fully, my head split open as it burst with ideas.

During a lazy afternoon one day in October I was cuddling up with Richard Branson and he shared some wisdom I took off and ran with.

Richard said, "Adam, Virgin is a multibillion dollar enterprise that doesn't really make it's money selling a product. What Virgin sells is a service, an idea. We are customer service. We do the same things as the other guys but we're one hundred times friendlier, understanding, and willing to go out of our way to make your day even if it hurts us just a touch. We also pay great attention to detail, to the experience that is flying on our plane. How are the seats? How is the lighting? What do the floors look and feel like? Look at the inside of our planes compared to a competitors. Who's do you want to be on? Our planes aren't physically much different, but we focus on the experience of flying with us."

What Richard was saying was that Virgin sells an idea, a feeling, an experience to customers. To run my own business I too would need to nail this down -an experience.

I flew on Virgin a few years ago and remember how stellar it was to this day. Take a look at the side by side comparison of a Virgin Cabin compared to your standard cabin. Which do you think is AWESOME to fly on?

Finally, after reading through a simple book titled The $100 Startup a lot of things coalesced into one burning desire to do something. The fantasy I had so many months ago was to create food operations around the world that capitalize on high tourist seasons and to start here in Chiang Rai. As a total novice I started selling Oreos at Sunday walking street, got to start somewhere right?

Fast forward a bit and cut a detailed, developing story short, Ash and I are making very real plans to open our own restaurant here in the city. Our focus is reality-altering-level-of-flavor pizzas and burgers that'll blow your jaw off with flavor -nothing like this within 3 hours of the city.. Ash found a primo, 4 story location in a good spot at a fair price with a reasonable landlord in tow. We've got great ideas, a solid vision, and the know how for more than I could have imagined.

Opportunity has fallen into my lap.

Everything I've learned is being applied.

My body is ready.