Turn one painful tax chore into a step-by-step product, then charge a subscription

Pat Walls… watching up to this point because my next question for you is if you were to start over today, a lot of people watching this are going, "Hmm, maybe I could build something in this space. Maybe I know a little bit about some tax or immigration thing." What would be your playbook if you had to start over today? You had $0, you wanted to build a million-dollar business, what would be your playbook in 2026 to build an unsexy or niche business?

BoStep one, start with a painful problems where people are already overpaying. Look for categories where people are stressed, confused, losing money. The ones that I have in my mind: taxes, compliance, legal workflows, residencies, banking, documentation. The less people want to deal with the problem themselves, the more valuable it is to solve it for them. If the customer already has to do the thing, the demand is already there. Then, look how they currently solving it. Usually, it's one of two extremes. Either they DIY it with scour blog posts, Reddit threads, or they hire a professional for thousands of dollars. If you see that gap, that's your product. Step number two, evaluate competition relative to opportunity. A lot of founders only think about market size. Also ask, how many smart, capable founders are actually choosing to build here? In sexy categories: AI apps, social platforms, creator tools, the market might be huge, but you're competing against hundreds of well-funded teams. In unsexy markets, you get the opposite: real demand, high willingness to pay, and very few people who want to touch the category. That asymmetry is your edge. Step number three, pick one workflow, productize it, and, if you can, build the recurring layer on top. Don't try to build a platform. Pick the most common, most painful workflow and turn it into repeatable step-by-step product. For us, it was a state domicile change. We didn't try to solve all of the international taxation, we solved one thing really well.

Pat WallsI love that playbook. I want to dive a little deeper into step three, which is what you mentioned, which is pick one workflow and then productize it. With AI apps, you could do this really easily now. You don't need a developer team to build some crazy app. You kind of turn process, some boring process like something related to tax or immigration into software that people can use. And this software can make a bunch of money like your business …