Wander Off the Beaten Path for Deal Flow
Go to ordinary places, ask what that building is, and stay long enough to watch the money move.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- 75%
Girdley's method for finding businesses is deliberately unstructured, and he is disarming about it: the way he builds and finds ventures is 'stumbling around like an idiot' until he ends up somewhere interesting. What makes it a framework rather than an anecdote is the repeatable pattern underneath. He goes to a place for an ordinary reason, refuses to stay on the prescribed track, asks about the thing nobody has offered to show him, and then stays long enough to observe rather than glance. On a fireworks buying trip to China — where the same six-day loop of fancy dinner, factory tour and sales pitch repeats every year — he broke the routine by pointing at a building and asking what it was. The box factory tour taught him why Chinese goods are cheap: the operators could no longer put waste water directly into the river. The coffee chain came from riding his bike past Walmart's headquarters out of business curiosity, noticing a drive-thru coffee shop, and then sitting and watching it for a full hour. That hour is the load-bearing part — a glance would have shown a coffee shop; an hour showed him people printing money, and he called a friend that day with photographs. He runs the same pattern in Medellín, going around with a guide asking people what they think of Americans and what life is like there. Shaan frames it as how Girdley accumulated a body of disparate business knowledge that shows up in his writing.
Origin
Bored on the fourth year of an identical Chinese fireworks-buying trip, Girdley asked the driver to pull over at a random box factory — and found the habit produced more insight than the itinerary did.
Core principles
- 01Break the prescribed itinerary — that's where the information isn't.
- 02Ask about the building nobody offered to show you.
- 03Observation needs duration; a glance shows you nothing.
- 04Ask locals plain questions rather than researching from outside.
- 05Go for the wrong reason and stay for the right one.
- 06Serendipity is a habit you can run, not luck you wait for.
How to run it
- 1
Get somewhere for an ordinary reason
Girdley's openings are mundane: a buying trip, a visit to overseas employees, a bike ride. The trip doesn't need an investment thesis.
- 2
Break the prescribed route
In China the itinerary was identical every day for six days. He pointed at an unremarked building and asked to go there instead.
- 3
Ask the naive question
'What is that over there?' The box factory answer explained the cost structure of an entire economy better than any fireworks factory could.
- 4
Stay long enough to observe
Outside Walmart's headquarters he sat and watched a drive-thru coffee shop for an hour. The duration is what converted a passing sight into a business.
- 5
Quantify what you're seeing
An hour of watching told him 'these guys were just printing money' — a volume read he could act on rather than an impression.
- 6
Capture evidence and pitch it immediately
He went home, called a friend he'd wanted to work with for years, said they should start a coffee business, and when asked why, sent the photographs.
- 7
Repeat it with people, not just places
In Medellín he walked around with a guide asking employees and locals what they thought of Americans and what life there was actually like.
In the wild
On his fourth annual fireworks-buying trip — a two-hour flight from Hong Kong, six identical days of dinners and factory tours — Girdley asked about a building by the roadside. The seller gave them a tour, and explained that making boxes had become harder because waste water could no longer go straight into the river.
→ Girdley's takeaway: 'oh, this is why things are so cheap in China' — a structural insight the scheduled itinerary would never have produced.
Riding his bike around Arkansas during COVID and stopping to stare at Walmart's headquarters out of business curiosity, Girdley noticed a drive-thru coffee shop and sat watching it for an hour.
→ He went home, called a friend, and pitched a coffee business on the strength of the photographs. It became the drive-thru coffee chain in his holdco.
Visiting employees in Colombia to assess whether to outsource more there, he and his team walked around with a guide asking people what they thought of Americans and what living there was like.
→ The same pattern applied to people rather than buildings — 'you just start to see random stuff.'
Common mistakes
Staying on the itinerary
The prescribed tour is designed to sell you something. Four years of identical fireworks factories taught Girdley nothing the first year hadn't.
Glancing instead of watching
A passing look at the coffee shop would have registered a coffee shop. The hour is what revealed the throughput and turned it into a business.
Waiting for a reason to explore
Every one of Girdley's examples began as a trip taken for an unrelated purpose. Treating serendipity as something that needs justification eliminates it.
Is it for you?
Best for
Investors and operators whose deal flow has narrowed to whatever their existing network already knows about.
Not ideal for
Anyone needing a specific opportunity on a deadline — this is a serendipity engine, not a search process.
From the transcript
“the way i build ventures and the way i find them is just kind of like stumbling around like an idiot and then like you…”
“i was like what is that over there and they're like oh that's the box factory and i was like a box factory let's go…”
“you just kind of start wandering and then magic happens”
From the episode
Michael Girdley: Why Fireworks Are A Cash Cow and How to Operate a Holdco Worth $100 Million
Michael Girdley