Young Christian men: start building businesses now. Start the exact ones these firms are buying (they already did your market research for you). They only buy what a town can't live without: - HVAC - Plumbing - Electrical - Welding and fab - Small engine repair - Excavation - Meat processing - Honest bookkeeping And everything they buy gets worse before it dies completely. Slower service, junk parts, higher prices. A solid, independent man with his name on the truck and a solid church behind him will eat their lunch. Three rules to keep your town from being next. 1. Build it to keep it. If you're building to cash out someday, it's already theirs. Put your plans in writing, with papers that keep the business in the family and out of their hands. 2. Raise up your replacement. Sons in the shop at twelve. Real work, real wages, taught that the business is an inheritance and not just dad's job. JOANN didn't die at the bank. It died at the dinner table a generation earlier. 3. Stick together. One shop is a business. Twelve shops that hire each other, bank together, and train each other's sons are an economy. PE firms can buy a company. They can't buy a town that won't sell. Over the next 10-15 years we'll all get to watch as these firms tear down the old world. This is your window to build. Start a shop at 25, and you will own your town's infrastructure at 40 - just when the husk of the competition finally falls over. Build the businesses that will power your local community for the next hundred years.