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 ↓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.
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.
You take charge of your own American dream, the way immigrants always have: by building.
Ownership is the difference between renting your place here and holding the deed to it. It is also the oldest American story there is: immigrants who build businesses, and businesses that put people to work.
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 came the years everyone knows: CPT, OPT, the STEM extension, the lottery, an H-1B, a stretch on an H-4. For more than a decade, my right to stay sat in someone else’s hands. Then the rules changed, and I set out to buy. I wanted revenue that already existed, not the long climb from zero. So first I started a company of my own, the bridge that made owning possible. Then I did what I came to do, and bought.
Two roads. I walked both, from F-1 all the way to founder. That is why I can stand at this fork with you and point the way. Whatever visa you hold, and whichever way you are leaning, someone here has already been down it.
Four weeks. Three you share with everyone, one that forks.
It comes down to three things: how to set up a legitimate, running business, what the H-1B actually requires, and how the two fit together under the 2025 rule. Weeks 1 to 3 cover that ground, the same whether you build or buy. Week 4 is where your path forks. It is education, not legal advice, and every week hands the legal part to the professional who does it.
Foundation & entity
Setting up the company itself: choosing the entity (C-corp or LLC), getting an EIN, opening a business bank account, keeping books, and how founders fund it.
What the H-1B asks of an employer: a real U.S. business, an EIN, and a genuine ability to pay the wage.
Formation attorney · CPA
Your role, revenue & sponsorship
Your actual role in the business, and how the business earns.
What the H-1B asks of the job: a specialty occupation (one that normally needs a specialized degree), its SOC code, and the prevailing wage, all set out in the LCA. The company you own is the employer; you are the employee it sponsors.
Immigration attorney
Petition, approval & running it
Running the business day to day: an operating rhythm, lean systems with AI, and clean books.
The petition itself: the I-129, the timing paths (cap and lottery, change of status, or cap-exempt), the 18-month validity, maintaining status, and the 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.
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:
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. Starting does not mean quitting or taking a leap of faith. The cohort covers how that works.
Stand at the fork with us.
Pick where you’re starting and get on the list. It’s free and commits you to nothing. You’ll get the newsletter now, and when a cohort opens, we’ll send you a link to sign up.
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.