Skilled immigrants: learn to start or buy a business in America.
You came here to own something. Start a company or buy one, and build something that’s finally yours. This is the plain-English briefing, and the cohort that walks it with you.
Start or buy. Either way, own yourself.
Pick your path ↓First cohort begins August 2 · see the four weeks ↓
You already know the math.
Your right to stay runs through someone else’s company. One reorg or one hard quarter, and the clock starts.
Lose the job and you have weeks to find another sponsor, or leave.
The mortgage you keep not signing. The plans you keep postponing.
Even the desk job it rests on is a market AI is quietly reshaping.
Most people think there’s one way onto this path. There are two.
Pick the one you’re leaning toward. You’re not committing to anything. You’re just telling us where to begin.
Start to Own
Most start here- Lowest cost to begin. No business to buy, just the one you create.
- You create the jobs, from your first hire onward.
- Sponsor yourself through the company you build.
Buy to Own
The bigger swing- Day-one revenue. Customers, team, and cash flow already there.
- Capital required up front to acquire.
- Hands-on at first, until it can run without you.
Three facts about the 2025 rule worth knowing before anyone sells you anything.
This is the DHS H-1B Modernization Final Rule, effective January 17, 2025. Read the official summary at USCIS, or the full rule on the Federal Register.
Before 2025, owning your company worked against you. Now it doesn’t. A founder with controlling interest can be sponsored through the company they own. And if you already hold an H-1B, there is no new lottery to win.
More than half the ownership, or majority voting rights. Cross that line and a clearer, separate set of rules applies to you.
Not the usual three years. For founder-owners, the first approval and first extension are capped at 18 months each. Plan around it from day one.
A company is its own legal person. Pull the picture apart and there are four roles. You hold two of them; the company holds the other two.
The company itself. In law, its own person, separate from you.
You, holding a controlling interest in that company. Before 2025 this counted against you; now the rule allows it.
The same company, now hiring, paying, and petitioning. This is the sponsor.
Also you, doing the specialty-occupation work the company employs you to do.
One company, four roles. You are the owner and the employee. The company is the entity and the employer that sponsors you. That is the whole mechanism, and since 2025 it is legal.
A note on income: the salary you earn as the employee is the wage the H-1B requires the company to pay. As the owner, a business can pay you in other legitimate ways too. The full breakdown is part of the course.
Two reasons the timing favors you.
The first is the 2025 rule above: for immigrant founders, owning your sponsor is finally legal. The second is the market itself. If you’re leaning Buy, there has rarely been a better moment:
Roughly a million owner-operated businesses are expected to change hands by 2035 as their founders retire, up to five trillion dollars of enterprise value looking for a next owner. Many are solid, profitable, and have no successor.
Over a million trade jobs sit unfilled while the AI build-out demands electricians, HVAC, and plumbing at unprecedented scale. These businesses are not disrupted by AI. They are demanded by it.
AI is overcalled where it replaces, and undercalled where it builds. The wave hands you the business; the build-out hands it customers. The rule opens the door, and this is what’s waiting on the other side of it.
Sources: McKinsey ownership-transition estimates (2026) · U.S. skilled-trades labor data (2025)
Four weeks. Three you share with everyone, one that forks.
Two tracks braid through these three weeks: building a real, running business, and meeting what the H-1B asks of it under the 2025 rule. Each week ends on a gate, a real milestone, and both converge on one act: your first payroll, at the prevailing wage.
Weeks 1 to 3 are the same whether you build or buy; week 4 forks. It’s education, not legal advice, and every week hands the legal part to the professional who does it.
Foundation & entity
Set up the company: entity (a C-corp or LLC, not a sole proprietorship), EIN, business bank account, clean books.
- A real, operating U.S. business with its own EIN
- A genuine ability to pay the wage
- You own it, so it hires you, the relationship the 2025 rule recognizes
Formation attorney · CPA
Your role, revenue & sponsorship
Your role in the company, and how it earns. The wage comes from real revenue.
- A specialty occupation, one that normally needs a specialized degree
- Most of your time on that specialized work, not general management
- SOC code and prevailing wage set in the LCA
- Register for the wage-weighted lottery, then file the I-129 if selected
Immigration attorney
Activate, and run your first payroll
Run it day to day: an operating rhythm, lean systems with AI, clean books, and your first real payroll.
- Take up the visa: change of status if you’re in the U.S., consular processing if you’re abroad
- The paths differ in timing and cost. Decide with your attorney
- Pay the prevailing wage through proper W-2 payroll; keep records
- Plan for the 18-month validity and its extension
Immigration attorney · CPA
Grow the company
Growing a business you built: winning customers, making your first hires, improving margins, and building the systems to run without you.
The acquisition
Buying a business: searching, evaluating and valuing, structuring, negotiating, closing, and taking over. The full version is the separate Acquisition course.
Go deeper in the Acquisition course ↓The Acquisition course
Search, evaluation, valuation, deal structuring, negotiation, and the first 100 days, taught in full. Week 4 is the trailer. This is the film.
You’ll also leave with a vetted bench of professionals who do this specific work. These are people in our referral network, disclosed as such. We connect you. You choose and hire your own.
Own your immigration. Own your destiny.
For years, your right to stay has lived in someone else’s hands: an employer, a lottery, one manager’s decision. Own the business that sponsors you, and that flips.
Your status becomes yours to hold, not theirs to grant. And once you are no longer spending your life just trying to stay, you are free to build the one you actually came here for. That is the oldest American story there is: immigrants who build.
You create jobs
A company that did not exist before is a payroll that did not exist before. Every hire you make is a job added to the economy, starting with your very first one.
You save jobs, then add more
A wave of solid businesses is run by owners near retirement with no one to take over. Buy one and you keep the doors open, keep its people working, and grow it from there. You save what took decades to build, then build on top of it.
I came here on an F-1. Then the years everyone knows: CPT, OPT, the STEM extension, the lottery, an H-1B, a stretch on an H-4.
For over a decade, my right to stay sat in someone else’s hands. When the rules changed, I started a company of my own, the bridge that made owning possible, then did what I came to do, and bought.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. F-1 to founder.
Whatever visa you hold and whichever way you’re leaning, I have already been down it.
The questions everyone in your position asks first.
Is this legal advice?
No. It’s education from a founder who has done it. It doesn’t replace your lawyer. You still hire your own, as needed:
Many founders need just an immigration attorney and light help from a CPA.
Could this put my status at risk?
No. Nothing here touches your status. Understanding the rule before you act is the opposite of risky. Any real move is yours to make with your attorney.
Is this a scam?
No. This is not an influencer gimmick, a sales-training or get-rich-quick program, or a make-money-online course. No visa is sold here, and no outcome is promised. It is plain education about a real change in the 2025 rules, so you decide from facts, not fear.
Can I do this while still employed on my H-1B or O-1?
Yes. You can keep your current job while you build. And since you already hold the visa, there is no new lottery to win. Starting does not mean quitting or taking a leap of faith. The cohort covers how that works.
One path. Many reasons.
The first cohort centers the immigrant founder. The house is built for anyone who came to own.
The immigrant
Skilled, on a visa, done renting your right to stay. Own the business that sponsors your status, no new lottery required.
The operator
You have run someone else’s shop for years. Time to run your own.
The professional
A career behind you, and the itch to own something instead of climb.
The searcher
Reviewing deals alone. You want judgment in the room, not just listings.
Stand at the fork with us.
- You have, or can earn, a role that needs a specialized degree
- You will own more than half of the business
- You are ready to run a real, operating business, not a shell
- You want your right to stay in your own hands
If that sounds like you, get on the list.
The first cohort begins August 2. Seats are few by design, and demand is filling them fast.
Pick where you’re starting and hold your place. It only takes a moment, and it commits you to nothing. Cohort sign-up details go out starting July 20, and the newsletter begins August 2. Get on the list, and you’ll have everything you need to claim your spot.
This is education, not legal advice. Own Yourself Now teaches you how this path works and how to prepare for it. It does not file anything for you, and it does not replace a lawyer. The real decisions and every filing are made with your own licensed immigration attorney, tax attorney, and CPA. We are not a law firm, and we are not affiliated with USCIS or any government agency.