In this episode of Worth Owning, Krystyn Harrison talks with Brett Chang, co-founder and CEO of The Peak, who built one of Canada's most read business newsletters from three unemployed founders at home during COVID to $2.3 million in annual revenue with 30% net margins and 165,000 subscribers before selling to Zoomr Media for a reported $5 million in 2023. The remarkable part: he intentionally designed it to run without him, sold it, then bought it back.

Brett shares the hard lessons of his first exit—why catching "lightning in a bottle" during a rising tide gave him false confidence in his abilities, why the power of compounding matters more than he understood at 28, and how reading The E-Myth on a plane completely changed his approach to building systematized, sellable businesses. He reveals why he now believes there aren't many buyers for media companies anymore, and how that's actually freeing—because when you build a great business focused on fundamentals, you create optionality to either sell or hold forever.

If you're a founder who's built something working but wondering whether to optimize for exit or optimize for ownership, or if you're building in a category where valuations have crashed but fundamentals still matter, this conversation will reframe how you think about what's actually worth building—and worth keeping.