Codie Sanchez: How to Make Money if You Don’t Have Money (4 Step Process to Make Money Today)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seventy percent of millionaires are self made. If you want
to make money, you got to follow the math. People
that have money have one thing.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Entrepreneur, Investor. She's got over twenty six businesses. Cody Sanchez.
I have no money. I don't really know too much
about money. Where do I start? What do I do?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Most often we're told things like follow our passion. I
think that's pretty bad advice. If you don't have ownership,
you're probably never going to be free financially.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
You're literally opening up a whole new doorway for people.
The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Jay Seti Jay Sheety only Set.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
come to become a happier, healthier and more healed. I'm
fascinated by our relationships with things that we grew up with,
how they've changed, how they've evolved, or how they've stayed
the same. I believe that our relationship with money is
probably one of the most underestimated relationships that we have,
and it's probably one of the relationships that we paid

(01:02):
the least attention to. We don't treat it like a relationship,
we don't think of it like a relationship. And therefore
it falls into the binary category of I'm either good
at it or I'm bad at it. Today's guest has
some incredible insights for each and every one of us.
Wherever you are in your financial journey, this episode is
for you. Today's guest is Cody Sanchez.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Thank you. I'm blushing. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I want to start with a question that I know
you probably get a million times and I get all
the time. Jay, I have no money. I don't really
know too much about money. Where do I start? What
do I do?

Speaker 1 (01:36):
There's two things in life that I wish we were
told earlier, and one is if you want to make money,
you got to follow the math. And I think most
often we're told things like follow our passion, you know,
do what I did to make money. I made real
estate money. You should make real estate money. And I
think that's pretty bad advice. I think instead we should
look to where are most people rich? What makes most

(01:58):
people rich? Kind of go to the data. I came
from really middle class kind of we didn't have money
all the time. I remember what it was like to
not have money. I remember what it was like when
my debit card. You know, I was a little worried
stuff wouldn't go through at the grocery store, and I
didn't like that feeling, and so I kind of started
looking around and I was like, wait a second, where

(02:19):
do people have money? And after being in finance for
whatever it is, fifteen years, I'm going to give away
my age. I realized people that have money have one
thing ownership. So the data is really clear on this.
Seventy percent of millionaires are self made, which is interesting.
I used to think maybe you just inherit it did
they just get lucky? And then sixty eight percent of

(02:41):
millionaires have some form of ownership. They have actually bought
a business, or have equity in a business, or built
a business. And so when I realized that, I was like,
the problem is I don't have a brilliant idea, Like
I don't know how to make money. I don't have
any money to make money. But at least you have
step one, which is if you don't have ownership, you're
probably never going to be free financially. You got to

(03:02):
get some skin in the game. That doesn't mean that
you have to become an entrepreneur. It's really hard to
do that. It sucks many days. You know this very well.
There's fridays when you're never going to make payroll, and
that is like a deep, terrible dark hurt. Actually, But
if you realize ownership is the name of the game,
then you should probably obsess on one thing more than
anything else, which is learn the language of money. And
back when I was young, I was a journalist, originally

(03:24):
made zero dollars, and I realized that I had no
idea why I had opportunities and ability to make some money.
And let's say the women I was covering at the
time in Warres, who are they call it Laciel de Mote, right,
the city of death, which is where women are mutilated
and raped and brutalized and found murdered all over the

(03:48):
city every single day, thousands of women a year. There
were many that had the last name Sanches. My last
name happens to be Sanchez. I was like, what's the
difference between us? Is it that I'm American? Now, that's
not it alone. I think it's also that I had
some financial tools, and like, money is a pushback against
other people's architecture of your life, and it makes people

(04:10):
care about you one way or the other, which is sad,
But the truth of the matter is if you are poor,
you have no power, and anybody who's been poor before
knows that is true. You got to go where the
game is played. So the first thing I tell you is,
if you don't have any cash, you need to find
a way to figure out how to speak the language
of money. And that probably means you maybe go work
in finance like I did. You get with a company

(04:31):
that has smart leaders like Jay where you can actually
go and learn from them, and you obsess on can
I become fluent in the thing that nobody talks about
in the US because money is supposed to be the
root of all evil.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, you shared a statistic with me that I thought
it was mind blowing that sixty two percent of Americans
don't want to talk about money. Yeah, that is so scary,
but it's also not surprising because, like you just said,
we've created this narrative that money is the roof all evil.
And it was so fascinating because someone actually said this
to me where if you look up the actual reference,

(05:06):
it says love of money is the root of all evil.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
I never knew that.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, how did we?

Speaker 1 (05:12):
I mean, I do wonder sometimes how do we get
programmed these ways? Because if you think about it's like,
what are the three things you're not supposed to talk about? Politics, religion?

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Money?

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Now, politics and religion. Maybe I could understand you could
offend somebody. I believe this religion, you believe this political slant,
and if we could go aide, that could be bad.
But when it comes to money, who's like, nah, I
wish everybody was poor, Like why wouldn't we be able
to talk about it? Then the only thing that I
can determine from that is that every time we get

(05:42):
a little bit more ownership, a little bit more money,
we become harder to control. And when you're harder to control,
big institutions and largely are governments, they don't like that.
You know, you want a controllable populace by and large,
And I think that is a big reason why people
don't talk about money, Actually, that we have been programmed
to be more malleable sheep in many ways, not because

(06:05):
people are evil at the top, but because once we
get power, we humans are a little funny. We don't
like to give it up no matter who we are.
I would probably be the same, And so that centralization
of power, we start to think I know better you
poor person, let me give you some charity. You can't
figure it out, And instead we should be saying you
are just as capable as I am, and I would

(06:25):
probably be you if I lived your life. And so instead,
why don't I transfer some knowledge because that's where money starts.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, what about people right now who look at the
situation and just like the economy is in a bad place,
we're super worried. Paint us a picture of where America
is right now.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Well, I mean, well, let's talk. First, We'll talk about
how it's tough, and I'll be honest, and then we
can talk about solutions. So I promise I won't leave
you in a doom scroll. But here's the truth of
what's happening in the world right now. If you're young.
Young people today are upset about what's happening in the
world around them, and I understand why you have wage stagnation.
So we basically have not made any more money. And

(07:00):
in fact, this generation Gen Z is the first generation
where at their same age as their parents, they're making
less money, not more. Problem is their university degrees or
three to four x more expensive. Oh, by the way,
so is housing. Wait a second, inflation is at a
degree in which my dollar today is worth even substantially
less than even five years ago. On top of that, yeah,
we have all these jobs open. You know, seven million

(07:23):
working age men supposedly are unemployed at this moment right now,
even though the jobs report says that there's so many jobs.
Are the jobs real, well, largely not. They're private sector.
They're not private sector, their public sector, their government jobs.
And so young people are like, wait a second, I
can't live, I can't eat. You know, grocery is more expensive,
and that's real actually, And so the people that are

(07:45):
making fun of young people in Tiktoks, you know, when
they cry about their job being difficult, I don't. I
don't really vibe with that because the math says it's
hard right now and not just for young people. But
I think it's important to talk about them. And the
truth of the matter is though that in any market,
we can make money. And so although it's really difficult
out there, there's like one silver lining that I've kind

(08:07):
of been screaming from the rooftops for the past three years,
and people, I think are starting to see it, which
is that we are, thankfully, I think going to have
a marriage between baby boomers and young people that would
be very unexpected. So right now and historically young people
have said, Okay, Boomer, you messed up our economy. Boomer,

(08:28):
you're not employing me. Boomer, you don't understand my life.
You listen to the music that young people like. They
don't like that generation in a lot of ways. Then
the baby boomers are like, you guys are quiet, quitting,
you're not working very hard. Get out of my basement.
And so these two generations have been at war in
some ways, like a quiet war. And now I think
with the transfer of ownership that we're seeing and we

(08:50):
can talk about the great wealth transfer, I think we
have an opportunity where the baby boomer generation, the richest
generation that we have ever seen in the US, which
has mimicked in all other countries around the world by
the way that are developed countries. This generation is about
to sunset, they're getting ready to retire, they're ready to
move on, but they own sixty eight trillion dollars in

(09:13):
wealth in just the US. The interesting part is the
young people think, well, that money must get transferred somehow, right,
does that mean I get a house. Does that mean
I get a car? Does that mean I get inheritance?
The problem is that money is not tied up in
just assets. It's not tied up in houses and bank accounts.
It by and large is tied up in small businesses

(09:35):
because baby boomers owned sixty percent of all small businesses,
and so I think we got to find a way
for the young people to take over these baby boomer
businesses because otherwise then we're in a really bad spot.
Then we're Japan.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, what are some of the mistakes that you think
we think about what makes money? What are we thinking
makes money right now? Where we're being distracted, we're actually
small businesses is where you're pointing to spotlight? Yeah, but
what are we distracted by?

Speaker 1 (10:03):
I think a lot of young people today chase the
shiny object, right and think about this for a second.
I remember, like many years ago, I had an opportunity
to invest in robin Hood, and I could kick myself
financially because I didn't. But at the time why I
didn't is I was like day trading stocks as amateurs
and then gamifying it. So we get like a drenal

(10:23):
response every time a balloon pops because we placed a
trade might be a bad idea, like I don't think
we should probably gamify our finances that way. And I
think that's what's happened to young people. They're being told,
I mean put in the stock market day trade, They're
being told NFTs and playing with crypto monkeys. They're being
told price speculation on crypto or even bitcoin. They're taking

(10:46):
margin calls out on their stock portfolios. Then with a
little amount of money that they have, they're trying for
this get rich scheme speculation. And the shitty part is
that just never works. You know, the one sure thing
I know about money is that you're never going to
make it if your solution is, hey, I'm going to
win at money, because that guy's going to lose. If

(11:07):
you think that there is a lose win scenario and
you are the one that's going to win, I hate
to tell you you're the one hold in the bag. Yeah,
And I wish people told us that more, that actually
making money doesn't have to be lose win, it could
be win win. And that is when you know you've
actually found a good opportunity is when you go, Okay,
why would I make money on this deal, Oh, because

(11:27):
I am solving a pain point that adds value to
another human's life, and I've properly valued what my own
skill set is. The problem is most of us don't
even know what we're good at or how you'd value
that skill. And we could play around with some exercises
so that any human could figure out, Okay, I cody
know how to market something, how do I figure out
how much is that is worth? And how could I

(11:48):
transfer some of that to get a percentage of equity
in somebody's company just for the skill that I have.
The last thing I want to say there is like
more than anything. I think one, we think money's bad,
and then two money's scary, Like I don't really know why,
but I think we're scared of it, and we're scared
that we might not be able to make it, and
we're scared what if we lose it? And what if

(12:10):
our self worth is tied.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Up in it?

Speaker 1 (12:11):
And should we actually ask for it? So we have
all these fears surrounding money, which is probably why we
don't talk about it too. And we got to kind
of work through that because money is just a tool.
So it's just like if you want to build a house.
Do you want to use a bunch of tiny little
nails and your own hammer, or do you want to
have a screw gun? And like in this instance, I
want to have the bigger gun.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah. I want to look at three scenarios of our
audience and where they sit, and look at what your
advice would be for them at that point. So let's
say we have a listener who just graduated from college.
What should they be doing first? What should they be
thinking about right now?

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, Well, here's how I think about making money. We
have a four step process that I think if you
don't have money, now, here's how you make it consistently
over time, and you have your money, go out and
bring back friends with it. The first is you've got
to learn. We've got to obsess in the beginning about
one thing. Only it's not what your salary is. It's
how can I cram as much information as humanly possible
in my brain in order for me to then do

(13:08):
the next thing, which is increase my skill stack. After
I learn, can I increase my skills so that my
skills are more valuable today than they were yesterday? And
the third is how can I increase my income, So
before you go thinking about investing in things overall, how
can I just make more money currently with what I'm doing?
And then finally we can get to invest. So after

(13:29):
we do these three steps, the final one is how
do I take my money and make my money work
for me? But in the beginning, you don't have money.
You know, you don't really have skills, you probably don't
have a ton of connections, and so what you actually
want to do is use your sweat, equity and your
experience and time as a really maybe hungry individual to
get money to eventually be able to invest the money.

(13:50):
And I think that's the other thing young people are
told that's a lie, is that you can go out
as a young person and you know, you know Fendi, Gucci, Prada, Lamborghini,
on the internet, make a bunch of fast cash and Airbnb,
arbitrage or whatever. Man, I wish somebody had told me
earlier on that's a terrible thing to do.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, And I think what's really interesting though, is when
you're talking about improving of skills. I think when we
graduate college, you think that that was the skill, like
that your degree was the investment in the skill. But
really what you're talking about our high value skills, talents,
abilities that actually make an impact in a workplace, and

(14:27):
those are really different. And so I'd meet a lot
of young people who sadly have spent so much money
on their degree, are really smart academically, but then that
skill doesn't translate into knowing how to make their company
more money, knowing how to lead people really well, knowing
how to build function systems, processes. And therefore it's like, well,
wait a minute, I just studied all these years, but

(14:48):
it doesn't translate.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I mean, for a
long time, we employed people from the top universities and
financial firms. We would go out and we would hand
select them because that would be an indicator of their grit,
perseverance and potentially their their intellect, their IQ. Now, by
and large, you're starting to see a lot of the
top institutions bypass that. You know, Google doesn't mandate that

(15:10):
you have a college degree if you're going into an
engineering degree, actually, and I think that should be really
liberating for us. It's basically breaking down this barrier, that's
a six figure barrier that allowed for the few, the
elites to stare step over everybody else, And now it's
actually saying how bad you want it, and don't tell
me what you learned, show me what you can do,

(15:30):
or even better, show me what you did. And so
I think the resume of the future is actually if
somebody came to you, Jay and they were like, I
just graduated from Wharton. I am very smart. You know,
I also did my undergraduate degree at Harvard. I now
want to come work for you. You'd be like, what do
you know how to do? Do you know how to market?
Do you know how to grow a beverage company? Do

(15:52):
you know how to increase our investment return?

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (15:56):
You kind of like theoretically have looked about how to
do that in a case study. That's probably less interesting
to you than somebody that goes you know what. I
was part of the beverage team at Arowon and Whole Foods,
and I figured out sort of across the country how
they buy different pieces of inventory. Yeah, attend right exactly.
And maybe because I want to help you grow this

(16:17):
individual business, which I know you care about because I
see it on your socials, I put together this little
spreadsheet for you. Here's the things they care about. Could
I come work for you for free for three or
six months, and if that works out, could we do
something better and bigger. The problem that people usually have
on the Internet when I throw out the word work
for free is young people are like, remember that part
where you told us that we were broke and we

(16:38):
don't have any money. So I'm not trying to dismiss
that at all, but I do think we have to
be honest about the fact that when we're young, you're
gonna have to work harder than you think, longer than
you think, doing stuff you don't like with people you
probably don't like, until eventually you get the right to
do something really interesting. But like, you don't die in
your first job from it being really hard and challenging.

(16:59):
You die from the apps, monotony and the low level
tasks you have to do for basically pennies on the dollar.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, definitely, definitely, absolutely, I fully agree. Let's say someone's
thirty years old. Yeah, they've or thirty to thirty five,
they worked ten fifteen years after graduating, They've been at
the same company, maybe they've moved once.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I was actually talking to someone like this yesterday. She's
been at this one company for six years. It's a
great company, great on her resume, but she's like, I
don't really want to be here. I don't think this
is where I see my future. But I'm so scared
of quitting. I don't know how to invest. I probably
didn't save that much anywhere. Now I feel bad about it.
I'm probably feeling a bit of shame and guilt that

(17:37):
I didn't save that much over the last ten years.
What would I do, Cody?

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Well, one, I would say, these days, you do not
have to have money to make money, which is incredibly powerful.
So when I think about it, if I'm thirty and
I am at a company like that, what would I
do today? Well, I would actually probably sit down and
figure out what am I actually skilled at that somebody
else would pay me for? Once you know what somebody
else would pay for, which is really just like do

(18:01):
people ask for your opinion on this? Could you actually
get jobs in this space if it was me, because
I'm kind of unemployable, like you don't want me to
work for you, Like I got my own ideas. I
want to do things this way. If she's like that,
then what you want to do is you want to
try to partner with somebody where you can be the
solution to their problem. And because you understand what I
call deal making, which is really the language of money,

(18:23):
you can negotiate an ability for you to own part
of a thing in order for you to have one
of three outcomes. If she can figure out if she
can help a business grow its revenue, make more money,
if she can help a business cut its costs, or
if she can help decrease the pain of a business owner.
You can negotiate your way into a business and have

(18:43):
equity in it and upside. And I wish somebody had
taught me that earlier, because this is what consultants do,
this is what private equity firms do, this is what
some of the largest institutions in the world do. I
call it expertise to equity. But if I was her,
I'd say, don't go find another job. And if you
don't have a brilliant idea that you're like, I would
die for the want of creating this thing in the world.

(19:04):
If you have that, please go do it. But if
you're like I don't have that. I just want to
make money and I want to feel respected, and I
want to feel like my skills fit somewhere and I'm
able to have an outsized income. If that's you, then
I think you should try to value your skill set.
Then you should try to negotiate for an upside deal
with somebody, and you should try your hand at this

(19:24):
game called ownership, which is where you say, hey, small business,
I know how to market. Can I help you market
at the side while I'm working on this company? And
because I help you grow your revenue by fifty percent?
Could I keep ten percent of the fifty percent I grow?
Do you think a small business owner would say yes
to that? Of course they would, because there's no downside.

(19:45):
And I think more often than not, we think that
the only risk you can take and making money in
business is putting your own cash down. That's a risk,
or starting a business aka dedicating your life to something.
The last part I'll get a little statistic on us
is ninety percent of startups fail inside any rolling ten
year period. We know that statistic. Most startups make zero
dollars for the first three years. After that, the average

(20:07):
entrepreneur makes about forty six thousand dollars a year, which
is great, but not when you've been making zero for
three years. And then on top of that, we've got
this nation of people who have all these bills to pay,
and they're betting on hopes and dreams as opposed to realities.
And so my commentary is, can you figure out how
to value your skills so you can negotiate a little

(20:28):
bit more upside for that day where you can't work anymore.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
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(20:54):
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Head to Jayshetty dot me and get yours today. Yeah. Definitely, E.
I'm so happy to hear such like smart, honest advice
because I do think you're so right. For so long

(21:14):
we keep telling everyone like follow your passion, like just
quit your job, like jump over, and you know it's
it's hard because like you said that business may not work,
your skills may be better off here. You might not
be an entrepreneur, you might be someone who's gonna work
with an entrepreneur and build. I wanted to address something though.
I do find a lot of leaders and a lot
of founders of small businesses or up and coming businesses

(21:38):
to also be quite resistant to recognizing the value of sharing.
So I'll give an example of what I mean by this. Like,
when I was starting out, I remember speaking to people
who are much more established than I was, and I said, Hey,
I've got a person i'm going to work with. I'm
gonna split things seventy five twenty five, and they're going

(21:59):
to get twenty five percent of profits. I'm going to
keep seventy five because they have a skill set I
don't have, and it will be complementary. And I remember
everyone telling me it was a really bad idea, because
I'm like, Jay, like, no, you you're building a platform.
You should earn one hundred percent of it. And I
was like, but no, they're going to manage stress for me.
They're going to manage teams. I want to see them grow.
I want them to feel like they've got skin in
the game. And now you know, eight years later since

(22:23):
that decision, I'm so much happier and I have a
great relationship with my one of my business partners. We
have a great relationship. He's as invested as he is
as he was then. Things have grown really well, and
I'm like the people that were trying to hold on
to that last five to ten percent, yeah, actually haven't grown.
And so it was really interesting to me though that

(22:44):
I see that again and again and again, where even
founders and new leaders are actually scared of parting with something.
How would you encourage them to think about that differently?

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Well, I actually would say, be scared of partnerships, Oh great,
because fifty percent of marriage is and divorced, but one
hundred of business marriages typically, and because no business lasts forever, right,
and so at some point you're going to have a
rift with your business partner by and large, and probably
you'll have a few rifts with them.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
So I would actually say it's cool to be scared
about that, you should be. The thing that I want
people to think about is like, I want to make
risk a non four letter word, because I think the
key to wealth is actually risk taking some of it
the question is if you're like me, I'm kind of
a wuss, Like I stayed in a corporate job for
twelve years because I was too scared to do things
by myself. Even though I was like pretty highly skilled,

(23:31):
I had a decent amount of cash, I was like,
definitely not going to make it. I don't think I'm
I don't think I'm capable, like it took me a
long time to get there. And so what I did is,
I'm all about risk mitigation, which is like a fancy,
you know, financy word to say, how can I just
make the outcome so in my favor that even if
I'm not as smart as I think I am, it's

(23:52):
almost like a win win no matter what. And so
in that instance, I would probably say tell the make
the founder a deal so good that they would feel
dumb saying no to it. And so if if I
was coming to you Jay and Jay was just starting out,
I wouldn't do this to somebody who has a big platform.
They have way too much, too many resources. You need
to go with somebody that's more accessible to you, that

(24:13):
doesn't have a lot of resources. It's more on your level.
But when you find that person, you go hey, win
win deal. Don't give me a cent unless I provide
X value, like literally nothing. Don't give me a percentage
of the company right away. I never give a percentage
of my companies right away anymore. I did once cost
me a million bucks. I was pissed. I didn't do
it again. So you can do. It's called an urn

(24:35):
in or milestone based deliverables, which I know sounds like
a little maybe boring. If people are listening the.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Right way to do it, I'm so glad you're giving
this advice. It's great.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, I mean what you want to do is say, hey,
I love you, you love me, We're going to be
together forever. In the off chance that you see a
hot little side piece and you run off with them.
I want an ability to get the business back right,
and so in that way, I am going to instead say, hey,
I'm taking all the risk in business for the most part,
I'm putting in the capitol. Unless you're going to put

(25:03):
in money that is equal to me. You only get
the equity in the business or the upside in the
business if you it's either duration or it's execution. So
either you're here for one, two, three years, which is
called cliff based investing. Or you're here for the first
million that you helped me get in, and then the second,
second million, and then the third million, and if you

(25:25):
help me hit those milestones, you get the equity. If
you don't, I wish you well, you wish me well.
But we've already signed a prenup and this is how
it works. And so I think we need to start
thinking like that. And it's very non American. We're not
so used to negotiating. Probably non British too. Actually, Indians
incredible at negotiation, same with a lot of people in
the Middle East, but British and American people not so

(25:47):
good at negotiating. We think that it's like a low
level signal on average. So like when I was young,
my mom, we call her the pipule. She's amazing and
she would always negotiate everything. My dad's an incredible businessman,
like totally pull himself up by his own bootstraps, but
my mom would go negotiate. And I don't know if
you ever felt like this, but I remember sometimes, you know,

(26:08):
my mom would be like negotiating for a different price.
I mom, oh all the time, like please stop, you
just pay it. And she would look at me and
she would say, like, once it's your money, you pay it,
but it's my money, so like, get out of here
if you don't want to deal with this. And I
used to think it was so embarrassing, and now I realize, oh,
that's very smart, and it's actually the thing the wealthy
do more than anything else that the poor do not,

(26:31):
which is the wealthy negotiate everything and the poor take
price while the rich set price.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Wow, I've never thought about it like that. Set price
best is taking a price. And I love your mindful
habits on mitigating risk in a business relationship both sides.
I think it's I'm glad that you laid it out
that way because I completely agree with you the amount
of business relationships that have challenges and issues and everything.
I want to go back a few moments to when

(26:58):
you were saying you were stuck for twelve years. And
the reason I want to talk about that is because
now when I see you, and whether someone sees you
online or writing your book or you know, you're on
all these awesome podcasts and you're talking so confidently and
you're so clear that to hear that you had doubt
and it took your long time to get over it.
Walk me through what was going on in your mind

(27:20):
during that twenty four month period, twelve month period before
you actually managed to quit. What was going inside Cody's head?

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oh yeah, I think I would have stayed an employee forever.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Check me too. That's why I'm asking.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
I like, And I also think, if you're listening right
now and you ever feel less, then for being an employee,
you tell that person a pound sand because I guarantee
you Cheryl Sandberg is worth a lot more than many entrepreneurs.
And she was an entrepreneur. She worked inside of a
business and amassed massive wealth, prestige, status, and impact from it.
And so I don't like when people make employees feel less.

(27:54):
Then you and I couldn't do what we do if
we didn't have people who also wanted to build a
vision with a team as opposed to an end of it.
So one you can make a ton of money, whether
you're an employee or whether you are the founder of
the business. You just got to get a little skin
in the game and upside. And you get skin in
the game and upside when you have more value. You
don't just ask for it. You've got to be able
to earn it. And so when I was thinking those

(28:17):
last two years in the business, I was running a
business in Latin America. I had taken the business from
zero to a billion dollars in assets under management. I
had done it for in a place that I had
never lived, in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru. I didn't have
contacts there. I'd like built something from nothing, and I
was really proud of that. But I wasn't very good

(28:38):
at doing deals back then, and maybe that's why I'm
obsessed with it now, because I did a shitty deal
with a guy that I respect a lot, but he
was just better than me, and he ran the company
and I built up this huge thing. But basically I
had no way to take the assets of the business
with me. The only thing that I could do is
stay at that business and continue to get partnership until
they eventually sold. I was like, gosh, I don't want

(29:00):
to be here for thirty years. And at the time,
again I respected the CEO a lot, but we didn't
believe in the same world. Like I believe in a
world in which we can all get rich together. He
believed in a world in which he told me, we
get rich quietly, and he believed that if you told
people that you were rich, they came after you, which
sometimes they do. And because of that, he wanted to

(29:22):
protect himself and be quiet. And I said, I don't
want to live in that world. And so we thought
about that. I thought we should run the business this way.
He thought we should run the business that way. And
so for those last two years, if he hadn't finally
taken me on a beach for a walk, him and
I went he runs a multi hundreds, hundreds and hundreds
billions of dollar company. We're still friends this day. But
he essentially gave me an ultimatum. He said, listen, I

(29:44):
want to row left. You want to row right. The
problem is you need to get your own chips. You
got to get your own boat. You're on my boat
and you're trying to row this way and we're going
this way. So you got to make a decision. And
at the time I was so mad. I was like,
I built this from nothing. You guys can't even speak space.
I'm down here, do it. Like I was mad, I
was super entitled that I realized, Cody, did you put

(30:05):
any of the money on the table to build this business. No,
you know, did you take the risk?

Speaker 2 (30:10):
No?

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Besides coming here like that was his and so he
was right, and I couldn't take anything with me. I
did put my old number two in charge of that business,
which is cool, she still runs it to this day.
But I was really like mad at myself and sad.
And so before I left there, I had done a
lot of little investments. I called him throwing out my chips. So,

(30:32):
you know, once you start to make a little money,
I think it's really helpful to start investing in the
things that you want to eventually earn from. So I
knew I wanted to get into some venture capital like things.
So I started investing in some venture capital firms. And
so when he finally gave me that ultimatum, I jumped
ship went to another company, and I didn't even have
the balls to do it by myself. Then I was

(30:53):
partnered up with a few other people, and man, like
a lot of terrible things can happen to you when
you don't believe in yourself. And I think the universe
like it will tell you kind of what you need
to do. And then if you don't listen, I'll annoy
you for a while and then at some point I'll
just kick you in the face. I'd like, that's my experience.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
You probably have a nicer experience with the universe.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
But he's kind of like, come on, we should do this,
we should do this, and it just pushes you off
the cliff. And so with me, I raised a ton
of money for this company. I had these couple of partners,
and at the end, like it didn't work out between us,
and again unemployable. I wanted to go left, they wanted
to go right, and I didn't really do that good
of a deal. And so twice this happened, but that
last time I did a better deal. And so I said,

(31:35):
you guys have to pay me out for what I did,
and I'm going to go do this new business and
I want to take some of our investors. And so
if somebody hadn't pushed me out of a company, and
if somebody else hadn't also said no, we don't want
to do this with you, I never would have done
it by myself. And so I think it's it's okay
if somebody is listening and you're stuck in a corporate
job quote unquote stuck for a long time, that's okay,

(31:57):
and it's also okay if it takes you a few tries.
And I don't think that the only way to make
money is to go be an entrepreneur and founder and
do it all by yourself and never work in corporate America.
I'm very grateful for the money that they spent on
me for decades.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think there's plenty of good examples,
as you said, of entrepreneurs. And I think it's more
a mindset thing. What I'm hearing from you is it's
getting skin in the game, it's negotiating well, it's being
an owner, right like that. That's really what I'm hearing.
And I think if people take those three things away
from what we've talked about so far, that's what you

(32:30):
want to put your attention to, rather than this idea
of oh, I've got to start a business, I've got
to become an entrepreneur. I've got to learn how to invest.
It's like, no, no, no, this is it. This is
what it is.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
You're right, Yeah, lots of people focus on the tactics.
They don't focus on the foundation. The foundation is do
you believe that you have ownership and responsibility for the
things you spend more time doing than anything besides sleeping,
which is working. And if you have what we call
an owner's mindset, so the type of human that's like
I'm putting like respect and dignity into what I do

(33:00):
every day to the point that I start to value
my own worth and I understand why I'm valued, then
you will finally be able to negotiate for the only
thing that nobody can take from you. Somebody can take
a job, somebody can take a salary, nobody can take
contractual ownership in a business. And I think that's really
important in today's world because it really allows you. Then
when somebody that you work for does something you don't like,

(33:21):
you just go, yeah, I'm not doing that, you know,
and you become it's what I call my que fund
and my lady like fashion, which is like, hey, I
have a certain amount of money, and because I have it,
I will never compromise on a few things. But the
owner's mindset is kind of rare, you know. And so
I think for young people today so often, and I

(33:41):
was one, it's like my boss's bed, my job sucks,
you know, I don't have upward mobility, And if I
could tell young Cody one thing differently, it would be like,
what would the opposite side of that story say, and
which one do you think would make you more money?
And I'd be like, probably the one in which you're like, hey,
this is all kind of in my and if I
make some serious changes in my life, I bet I

(34:03):
could be richer than I am today. And I wish
more people thought that way.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, how do you have that conversation with your boss?

Speaker 1 (34:10):
I remember once I was at an event and I
was just listening in the crowd and it was actually
a finance event for women. So it's a bunch of
like kind of well off ladies and we're in the
audience and that the person in front asked everybody to
close their eyes. So we all close their eyes and
then they said, nobody is looking. I want you to
have your body have a physical representation of what you

(34:31):
feel when you think of money. So I was like,
this is weird, hippiece, Like what are we doing? So
I was like I don't know, you know, and you
can't see me, but like I was like throwing out
my hands, I'm like, okay, money, I like it, Like
give it to me, keep it going, you know. Those
are like my internal monologue, right, yeah, like I'll take some.
And so I'm chilling. I'm like this, like nobody's looking.
And then they're like, now, don't move, but open your eyes.

(34:53):
And when I looked out, I was like, whoa. Because
the rest of the audience, not the rest, but let's
call it eighty percent were like this. They're like they
were tight to the chest, they were like kind of
like maybe small arms to the side. In some instances,
I was like, it looked like they had been hit,
they had been harmed, and I thought that was so fascinating.
And then they let us shake it off, and I

(35:14):
was like, oh, man, if your representation of money that
you feel in your body is closed off, you know,
kind of scared whatever, I don't know, might be hard
for you to earn it. So I think for some reason,
being in finance helped me realize. You guys, if you
met some of the guys who were worth a hundred
million dollars that I did in finance, you go, I

(35:35):
could do that too, Like that guy did it really,
And so I think once you meet a bunch of
those people, you go, oh, like this isn't this isn't
as impossible as people say it is. And so I
learn a lot from not seeing people achieve it and
going how could they? How could they? It's instead going wow,
that guy didn't want to think if you could do it,

(35:55):
I could do it too, And that taught me to
keep going Okay, he did it.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
He did it.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
And it's like arms, arms would raise, arms would raise.
And so maybe that's what I would try to tell people.
It's like every time you see somebody that has a
lot of money and you see the humanity in them,
just remember like we're all kind of the same. Yeah,
And you can, now, don't get me wrong, intelligence levels, network,
how you're born, where you're born, real things. But if

(36:20):
you're living in a first world country in today's day
and age, with the Internet and what we have at
our fingertips, I think you're in a better position than
you've ever been in order to make a lot of
money today. And I promise you only one thing, which
is you'll make less money if you think you will.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah. I wanted you to talk about the difference between
what you just said and how we cultivate that mindset
because you're so right I know a lot of people,
a lot of friends as well. They'll look at someone
who's doing well for themselves and they'll be like, that
guy's so dumb le I could do that. I could
do that with my clothes, but it's actually in a
condescending way to that person, rather than oh that guy
can do it, Oh great, okay, well I've got this

(36:58):
sko I went, I can do it, you know. And
so what is that mindset shift? Because I think we're
good at looking at other people, but often we eat
the full prey to being envious instead of studious of them,
Like instead of envy, instead of studying them, we envy them,
or we end up being condescending of them of like, oh, well,
you know, he's not even that small. Well they're not
even it's not even that great, right, we kind of

(37:21):
justify that. So how do you shift that? Because I
think that's at the core of what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I fall pray to
all of these things too. I still to this day
play the game of comparison like they're doing that. Come on, team,
where are we going?

Speaker 2 (37:33):
You know?

Speaker 1 (37:33):
I do it me too, sure, And I wish I didn't,
but I still do. But I do think cash loves curiosity.
If you remember anything else, it's that money is really
attracted to the type of human that keeps asking questions.
You don't actually have to know the answers. Often to
make money, you need to ask the right questions. So
I kind of trained myself every time I saw somebody

(37:53):
with money, or I got to know somebody with money,
I didn't need to know anything else besides, like, can
I just ask them a lot of questions continuously? And
it was funny because I was talking to I think
another mutual friend of ours, Jesse Eisler, the other day,
and Jesse talks about how he used to go to
a hotel here and he would just ask questions in
the lobby or at the lunch table. He was like
living not in a nice place, he had no cash whatsoever,

(38:14):
but when he saw people that he thought looked rich
or interesting, he would just ask them questions. And I
think with the Internet, sometimes we think that questions don't
matter anymore, and we go to the internet to get answers,
and if instead you can make a human connection and
get curious about them, they'll give things to you. And
so one of my I played a game when I
was really young, which is I kind of started collecting

(38:36):
mentors who never knew they were my mentor. And I
think this is a really clever thing to do. And
I remember one in particular, Bob Kendall, and BKA is
what we call him. He was super high up at
I don't know if it was gold Men or Credits
Suite at the time, one of the companies, and he
was so like out of my range, like you know
when somebody else is in a company, and I was
basically the intern and he was the big dog. But

(38:58):
I got a couple of chances to interact with him,
and I would just ask him questions, like very simple
ones like oh, you just took over this area of
the business, like why what did you see there as
opposed to this other area where a lot of people
are going. I would just kind of beque curious. And
then I would do a thing that I think probably
helped me make more mentors than anything else, which is
I would get their contact information. I would never ask

(39:20):
them for anything. I would largely just say, Hey, that
piece of advice that you gave me the other day
that was really useful and I applied it this way,
thank you for doing that. Or i'd see if his
name was written somewhere he had done a research paper
or something. I might send it to him, like with
a couple highlighted things like these lines were incredible, Thank
you for doing that. Then after I had done that
a few times, I might give them one question like, hey,

(39:42):
you know, I'm thinking about going into marketing or sales,
and I'm trying to figure out how do you decide
which career path is more interesting to you? Do you
have just like a one sentence about it, or do
you have one book that you'd like to read, like
really short? And I remember I sat down with BK
years and he was like, you know the funny thing
about you? And I was like, oh, what you know?

(40:03):
And he was like, you like somehow made me your
mentor but you never asked. And then I started caring
about what happened to your career but I kind of
never meant to, which is like a very aspergerzy finance
thing to do. And he's like, did you do that
on purpose? And I was like, I get, you know,
I don't know. I was young then, so I don't know,
but maybe that tiny transfer of Hey, I have advice

(40:26):
and somebody actually takes it, uses it, continuously wants nothing
from me for it, and then gives me a positive
feedback loop that I'm making change on their life is
so rare, so right.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
That's genius. That's actually the best mentorship advice I think
I've ever heard, because I think so many of us
when we want someone to be a mentor, the fast
mistake is we asked them to be honest.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
I don't do that. That also makes me die on
the inside. If somebody asked me that, I'm like, that's
such a huge responsibility.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
What if I you up exactly? What if I don't
have time? If I can't respond, like that's that's the
natural reaction. And same with me. I've always had ment
was that don't know their my mentors. It's the only way.
But what I love about your advice, which I've never
ever heard before, is also how you ask for advice.
I think this is second mistake. So the first mistake
we say is can you be my mentor?

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (41:10):
The second mistake we make is we send a whole
life story with one like really big profound question. So
it's like I went from this then I did this,
then I dropped out, then I did this, then I
did this. How do I discover my purpose? And it's
like and it's like the person on the other side
has no idea how to compute all of that algorithmically

(41:32):
and give you a really profound answer back that they
genuinely be will help you, which means they probably won't respond,
or if they don't respond, it will be extremely short,
and then you feel disgruntled and upset that they didn't
value your whole life story, and then now you probably
lose touch. Whereas your advice was just so perfect because
the idea that you were sending them their own work
with a couple of highlights, one sentence question, one piece

(41:55):
of insight, and then that person, like you said, becomes
invested in your life. Such great advice, Cody, I've really,
really mean that. I've never had mentorship advice better than that.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah, I think it worked for me. And I also
think the other piece of advice that was useful. I
never went for like the top dog. Yeah, you know,
I would never go to the president of Goldman Lloyd
blank Figon back in the day and be like LLRD,
the thing is, talk to me, can I have your email,
of course, not I would go to like one or
two levels past what was comfortable for me. Right, So
it was like I could still get to the person,

(42:25):
and then you can use it as like a leap frog.
And the last thing I'll say is I totally disagree
with the advice today that a lot of like kind
of well known people give, which is, once you outgrow people,
leave them behind you, you know, and a lot of
people say like, well they were my mentor, but I've
superseded on my mentors. Oh no, yeah, And I hear
that often from like the business community. You know. It's

(42:47):
like you're the average of the five people you surround
yourself with, so make sure there are awesome and it's
like yeah, but also don't forget how you got there
because you never know. Mentorship has like multi layers to it.
You can get mentored from above but also below, I
mean your team teaching us beforehand. How do not sound
like boomers? Right? So, like there's that, you know, you
can also have somebody that's a higher that like, for instance,

(43:08):
I think a lot about the idea that like Peter Teal,
whether you like him or not, really rich guy gives
money to Mark Zuckerberg, right, whether you like him or not,
Mark Zuckerberg then goes to become richer than Peter Teel.
Now is Peter mad because Mark made more money than him?
I highly doubt it, because Mark made Peter a ton
of money. And at one point, you know, the imbalance

(43:30):
was Peter was way up here and Mark was down here,
and now it's probably flipped. And how cool is that that?
Like somebody who used to be sort of below you,
you've helped in some way get above you, and then
you get to like value transitfer the other way. So
I will say, like, maybe if I gave one other
piece of advice on mentorship, it would be collect and

(43:50):
keep with you the people even after you've superseded them,
you know, yeah, and try to be their best mentortely
like I mean mentee, I always try to like them.
I want them to be able to brag about me. Yeah, Like,
no matter what you teach me, I want to be
the best mentee to the point that they're like, hey,
look how smart I am because of that, And I

(44:10):
want to give them all the credit on it.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
And when you do that, then they introduce you to
their really successful friends too, So it's a two for.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yeah, definitely. And I want to add what you were
saying earlier as well, this idea of you have to
act on the advice. And I think there's a lot
of requesting of advice, there's a lot of looking for answers,
but being a great mentee is taking the advice, putting
it into action, and then reporting the result and saying, hey,
I took your advice. This is as you were saying,

(44:37):
And I think that's so core to what was different
about mentorship, where like you're saying, now, in this TikTok
Instagram world, I think there's just so much advice everywhere
that we're not really getting the opportunity to digest it,
put it into practice, and then report on it as well.
And I love your idea of gratitude. I mean, I
remember when I joined the company as an intern years ago,

(45:00):
and I was only there for like a summer internship,
but they put up the pictures of the founders of
the company and then they were like, yeah, but we
don't care about them, the old guys anyway, And I
remember realized, like I was just like, wow, that's really
ungrateful because none of us would be here right now
if it wasn't for them. And yes, they're not alive anymore,
and yes that was a long time ago, but I

(45:21):
fully agree with you that. And also, you just don't
know when you're on the way up when you're on
the way down. Your mentors, generally, if they're older than
you in the beginning, even if you become more successful
than them materially, I believe they have so much more
spiritual wisdom to give you over time. Like I've got
mentors same way who helped me out when I was
in my late twenties, and today there's so much more

(45:42):
helpful when they talk to me about what it feels
like being a dad, Like I'm not a dad right now,
but he's been a dad and his kids are in
their mid twenties and he has a great relationship with them.
I'm like, I'm not there at that level. So mentorship
also takes across not just financial, but relationships, you know, emotionally, mentally,
there's so many other areas. Oh yeah, so leaving someone
behind his terrible advice.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yeah, I agree, And you know it's one thing if
somebody's negative or they're unhelpful, which I still believe very much.
So like Arthur Brooks, who I just think so highly of.
And I remember back before I knew him as a
friend and I was just a fan. Last time I
was in New York with him, he I was having like,
you know, what somebody's mean to you online? Does that
ever happened to you? Probably sometimes, of course. Well there

(46:26):
was one person that was like really mean and I
don't know why it got to me. Somehow it bothered me.
And you know, this was a while ago, and I
remember telling him for some reason. And often it only
bothers me if I feel like there's a kernel of
truth to it. So if they like really nail my
imposter syndrome, or they really nail like, you know, is
she as smart as she thinks? She like something that
I'm like that I worry about too. If they get that,

(46:47):
I'm like, dang it, I'm paying attention now. That's not good.
But I remember I said to him, like, you know,
I'm just bothered and I want to do something about it.
And he was like, are you going to listen to me?
And I was like, maybe, what what are you going
to tell me to do? And he's like, I want
you too, picture this guy having all the success in
the world. I want you to wish him so much. Well,
it becomes like a bit bizarre, and I want you

(47:08):
to actually feel it. And again I'm not that touchy feeling.
I'm pretty spreadsheety. So when he told me that, I'm like, fine,
but like, I don't think there's going to be an
outcome here like that. And he's a wonky, very smart guy,
so it's not anyway. So I did it, and I
like really thought about it. I was like walking in
New York, and I was like, you know what, I
do wish this guy well, because I bet it is

(47:30):
sad if you are, like, if you're in a place
where all you're doing is hating on somebody online all
the time, I bet you are kind of sad. So
I started like empathizing with him and thinking about it. Anyway.
Not two weeks later, the guy does a public apology
for like and does this long dm to me. You know,
my husband has like a long memory, so it's like, not,
you know, let's get that guy. But I was like,
I just learned such a lesson and maybe it doesn't

(47:52):
always work like that, and maybe there's still me in you.
Later but I really think sometimes you learn just as
much from your haters as you do from your mentors,
and so don't underestimate not only the same where we
kind of get all hot and bothered, like, you know,
if you don't got hate, you're not doing anything maybe,
but also, wow, you can learn a lot from the

(48:12):
type of feelings you get when people doubt you. And
I think that's just as important. And I wouldn't be
where I was today if I didn't have some big
haters that I felt like I needed to prove wrong.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, well said, I want to dive into the heart
of this book because what made it so unique for
me is I don't think I've ever heard anyone really
talk about buying ordinary businesses. And that's the crux of
so much of your work and why it's different and
how you're getting people to think differently about ownership. You
had this video that I remember watching that got like

(48:43):
eleven million views talking about this vending machine business, like,
what are some of the most unusual businesses you've seen
people make money from? Because I think it goes back
to what we were speaking about earlier. We're all after this sexy,
shiny money and most people are making loads of money
through really un sexy random things, vending machines being a

(49:04):
case in point. Walk us through some of us unusual businesses.
You've discovered people making money.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Yes, let's do it. And also realized first like most
of the people who are really shiny on the internet
don't actually make much money. In fact, a lot of
celebrities make no money. And you know this all too
well being here. There's a lot of show and it's
actually quite hard to make money in the shiny things.
The richest guy you know probably started a landscaping or
sprinkler head company. In fact, that was the case for
my family when I was growing up. I meant I

(49:30):
interned for a woman who is my brother's friend's mom,
and they were worth what I thought was a bajillion
dollars back then, and it was from an equipment rental company,
so this guy was worth somewhere near fifty million dollars.
From one idea, I buy some landscaping equipment, some tractors,
et cetera, and I don't sell them, I don't flip them.

(49:53):
But I realized that construction companies only want to use
them part time, so I actually rent them out and
so this guy would make the cost of a piece
of equipment back inside of ninety days, and so instead
of getting whatever difference is between him buying the equipment
and selling it for a little bit more, he would
make the entire purchase price over every ninety day cycle.

(50:15):
And I remember, like thinking back the day when I
saw that you can make money doing anything, and in fact,
you probably make it more often in the things that
nobody thinks about because you have less competition, because it
also sounds really boring, and you know, the Mark zucker
brote Bergs and brilliant minds of the world, they don't
want to mess around with equipment rental. But people like
me who are maybe like kind of smart but not

(50:35):
that smart, could make a lot of money doing it.
And so there are three types of businesses that I
obsess about. I call them overarchingly mainStreet businesses. So the ideas, basically,
what if all the money is actually made in community
businesses that we use every single day. Your roofing company,
your podcast production company, you send outsourced editing clips too.
You know the cobbler that actually cleans up shoes on

(50:59):
the corner store. All of these businesses. When you see
that they've been in business for thirty years. It's not
because they were making money or because they were losing money.
And it's not because they got venture capital, because they didn't.
So these things actually are profitable, which is kind of rare,
so main street businesses. And then underneath it, I call
them three different types. The first one is the gateway
drug business, which basically I use that as a little

(51:20):
bit of a joke, but it's like a vending machine. Well,
everybody understands how a venue machine works, right, You get
the machine, you take the cash out, you input the things.
It's a straightforward business. It doesn't need a lot of people,
and I think it's a great place for like young
people to start because you learn the game of business.
A similar one might be what I call a people
light business, which might be like a laundromat. So a

(51:42):
laundromat is like, in some ways a slightly bigger venue machine. Right,
you put clothes in, the clothes get washed, you take
the clothes out, you put coins in and return, right.
And that doesn't have a lot of employees, and they're
not super super expensive on the scale of it, and
so you go, okay, we got gateway drug businesses. We
got asked, we've got people light businesses, and then finally
we get into what I call the trades businesses overall

(52:04):
or boring businesses. And these are things like we own
a company called Resi Brands that has a window cleaning
company called Pinks, a roofing company, a painting company called
that One Painter. And what's wild is with these businesses.
If you were to look right now jay At, like
the Forbes one hundred list of the richest people in

(52:25):
the world, and you were to see what they made
their money from. They're not celebrities, they're not singing songs,
they're not doing YouTube like, we're not even touching the
amount of wealth they have. What do most of them
have in common more than anything else, finance and business ownership,
and the businesses they own are largely boring businesses. Richest

(52:46):
woman in the World Kim Kardashian no roofing magnet, literally
the richest woman in the world. This was as of
twenty twenty two, so we should see if the numbers
are updated. But is a woman who started a very
large roofing company. And so, you know, I wish somebody
told us this when we were younger because instead, you
know who knows this, the private equity guys. And I

(53:09):
don't mean to villainize anybody I was in private equity.
I know plenty of good people in that industry, but again,
centralization of power. Private equity companies in two thousand owned
four percent of the companies in the US. Now they
own twenty percent. It's almost one out of every four
companies in the US is owned by private equity. You
know what they're buying, like crazy, the trades, the service businesses,

(53:30):
the boring businesses, the print money that service our community.
And I think this is our chance to take those
things back.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
You're literally opening up a whole new doorway for people,
like I don't think I've ever even thought about it,
Like it's so far off from what I think we
were all trained to believe would make a successful, safe, stable, wealthy.
You're not thinking about these areas, and therefore, like you said,
they're not very competitive. There's not a lot of new

(54:00):
entrants in there. When I hear you say that, the
thing that comes to my mind is what skills and
talents to people need to be able to run those businesses.
How much industry knowledge do they need? What business skills
are core and important, because I think the mistake is
again with the kind of world we live in right now,
someone goes, I love what Cody saying. I get it.

(54:21):
I'm going to go buy vending machines, and then all
of a sudden you've got a garage full of like
twenty vending machines and you don't what to do with
them because you don't understand business. So what core business
skills are needed and what should we be developing in
order to run any of these businesses? How much industry
knowledge do we need?

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Yeah, it's a great question. Well, first of all, what
I would think about is there's two different things we
need to know in buying businesses or growing businesses. And
the first thing is you've got to learn how to
do deal making and how to actually speak the language
of money, which is what we talk about in the
book before you buy a business. So please don't just
hear me and go buy a business. Read the book
or go to a free newsletter online, spend a decent

(55:00):
amount of up front time learning. I promise you'll make
more money that way, you know. I kind of think
about sometimes people go, well, why don't I use x
amount of dollars I have instead of learning, just buying
the business and I go, Does that ever work out well?
Where we don't know what we're doing, but we plow
a bunch of money into it because we want to
just go do the thing, it doesn't work out, So
spend your time learning how to execute first. Now that said,

(55:23):
I really think there's just three key skills that we
need to learn to grow a business. The first one
is deal making. We got to understand how to do
a deal. The second one is really a mixture of
grit and endurance. So it's actually not tactics, it's how
hard am I willing to work? What am I willing
to sacrifice for the things that I want? And for

(55:44):
how long am I willing to do that? And so
Angela Duckworth famously University of Pennsylvania popularized grit is the
most important thing to measure success. So it's basically like
how much pain can you tolerate? And if you can
tolerate a lot of pain, turns out you have a
higher likelihood of making money. Business is really just like
elongated periods of low level pain. Sometimes you have like

(56:05):
what's called an acute or like a big jump in pain.
But for the most part you know this. It's like
what is what is running a business or starting a business.
It's like, well, you're looking at your statements pretty much.
Often you're like messing around with marketing. It's kind of
like low level pain. And so that's the second point.
And the third point is actually maybe a little rare too,
which is just a lot of people obsess on how

(56:28):
so what skills do I have to have? Exactly? How
do I start a business? How do I tax? Structure,
structure at the business? How do I get my first customers?
All important and good questions, But the real pros know
you don't ask how you ask who? Who can I
go to who already has ten thousand hours where I
can steal their homework. So now in business, if I go, hey,

(56:51):
I don't know how to do our taxes, I go
find somebody else who has done taxes for us. And
it doesn't mean you have to pay for them. It
just means you have to talk to them, and often
people will help you. And so I am I who second,
and then the third tier is buy So the really
really rich when they have a problem, they don't think,
how do I fix it. They don't think who can
fix it? They think, how do I buy the solution
to my problem? Because if I can buy the business,

(57:14):
if I can buy the solution, then it's almost it's
a higher guarantee of winning. And so that last one
is really about your connections. And so I think if
you understand deal making, you are honest with yourself about
how much work you're willing to do one where the other,
and you are willing to ask people for help. I
think just about anybody can run a business. Now. Can

(57:37):
anybody run Amazon? No, of course not. Could anybody run
your businesses which are quite big, No.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Of course not.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
It's really like the level of skill to the level
you're at. But we don't say to people, you know, well,
not anybody could buy an individual apartment apartment and live
in them. We ask like, what do you want and
how are you willing to in order to get it?
So I think the same thing with businesses. It's like, okay,
we have what's called the deal box, which is a

(58:04):
little slightly technical, but basically the idea is oracle of
DELFI says, know thyself, right, most important thing we can do?
And in business you basically want to have your little
deal box of what you want. So do you want
income of x amount? Do you want it to be
located in la? Do you want it to scratch an
artistic itch and make you money? And you sort of

(58:25):
fill out this box you know what you want, and
then again you know the universe. I think a lot
of times wants to help us out, but we don't
know what we want. So how is it going to
help us? Because we can't tell it one way or
the other. And I think it's the same with business,
you know, because we could go fifteen ways from sideways on,
Like we have something called the nine p's, which are
like the nine ways you scale a business to nine figures.

(58:47):
But I don't want to stop people. I want them
to start small and reasonable and know that the biggest
thing in between you and the thing that you want
is the knowledge on learning and the language of money,
on getting after it kind of intensely, and then on
asking for help. Like if you have those three things,
you can at least start. And I don't want people
to stop because they don't have XYZ leadership skill, Like

(59:11):
I believe in your ability to figure it out.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Yeah, yeah, and you might make some mistakes along the way.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
You will, yeah, sure, yeah, just don't make mistakes. Like,
the only rule that I really have is don't do
a deal so big that it can wipe you out. Ye,
make sure your first deal is reasonable, or you help
other people bring on risk to level it out. So like,
if I'm young and I have no cash, should I
go buy a million dollar business? Of course not? What
would I do? I might go and I might partner

(59:36):
with a couple friends, and I might say, hey, do
you want to pool our capital together, Let's buy this
little business together. If it doesn't work out, it's not
going to murder us. It's gonna hurt, but we're going
to learn a lot, and we're gonna diversify our risk
amongst us, and we're going to do it together. Or
maybe you partner with your dad, or maybe you partner
with your dad's friends or your mom's friends or whatever.
And so don't think that you have to do this
game of entrepreneurship and acquisition by yourself. You don't. The

(59:59):
big boys in private equity don't. You don't have to either.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
How do you find someone who wants to sell a business,
because yeah, I feel like that would be My next
question of like, how do I even know someone? How
do I find someone? Because it must be going great
for them, Why would they sell it to me, especially
when I maybe know nothing about owning a hair salon
or vending machines or whatever it may be.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Right, well, you probably already know this. How many people
offer you businesses or stakes and businesses?

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Now? Yeah, I bet a lot a lot?

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Why Because you have a very high value skill stack.
That's very evident. People can directly attribute. If I partnered
with Jay Shetty, then he's probably going to market my stuff.
He's going to give me brand recognition. There's a high
level of trust. So there's what's called the trust transference.
So the higher level of skill you have, the easier
it is for you to find businesses. In fact, they'll

(01:00:47):
often come to you. The thing is, though, when even
when we have a higher level of skill, we often
don't really know what to do when it comes to us.
We don't know how to do zero risk deals to us.
And so I like learning deal making even if you
have a ton of skills and a ton of money,
because you can do a deal that seems unfair, but
because you recognize your value, the deal is incredibly fair.

(01:01:09):
In fact, the richer you are and the more audience
you have, money you have which I call capital, the
more coding ability you have aka like tech Jeff Bezos,
engineering capability or labor you have access to, so employees
or people that will work with you, the better deals
you can do. And that's like the two two three

(01:01:30):
oh three level. And anybody who's listening who actually has
access to money and capital, you are crazy if you're
not thinking about doing deals and learning it because it
is the ultimate positive form of leverage. So I wish
that we learned this earlier. This is how so many
celebrities get screwed by the way, and you know, they
get screwed because they do a deal, they don't understand

(01:01:51):
the terms they signed. Their agent understands the terms they signed,
Their agent isn't actually insteentive aligned with them long term,
and so they end up getting screwed. It broke my
heart when I watch that documentary with Val Kilmer, like,
oh God, first of all, you would love it. It's beautiful.
The documentary is beautiful. He wrote it, produced it and
directed it and started it and it's just a beautiful

(01:02:13):
piece of art. But also he lost everything. I mean
he has basically no money now, no way, uh huh.
And the reason why is because of a series of
deals that he did where other people made it and
he didn't. And so even if you have a ton
of money, you got to be really careful about how
you structure things in order to keep it. And the
bigger that you get, the bigger target you have. And
so it's important to think about that. And like the

(01:02:34):
Russian proverb trust but verify, which is like trust nobody.
I'm sorry, trust everybody, but verify that they are actually
on your best terms, which is why I always doesn't
count unless you've signed on the line that has dotted
in the words of Alec Baldwin. So if you don't
have deals coming at you because you don't have massive
you know, fame or money or whatever like a normal person,

(01:02:57):
and then the easiest way is to find deals. It's
called a nation and private equity. So in private equity,
if you think about what they do, they go around
and they cold call small businesses. So they literally will
cold call a plumbing company up all over the Midwest
and ask like, hey, you guys want to sell or
I get them all the time because I own these
so our small businesses, Hey can we buy your landscaping company?
So one one way you find deals is called on

(01:03:20):
off market deal searching. So you basically turn on what
I call your reticular activating system, which is basically just
a system inside of your brain that is trained from
the African Savannah to say, if I keep repeating this
thing brain, it means it's important and I might die
if I don't pay attention to it. And so in
real life, what happens to you is once you play

(01:03:41):
the game of business enough, then once you like deals,
Like have you ever gone into somebody else's podcast studio?
And because you probably are obsessed with podcasting, you walk
in and you're like, hmm, that's an interesting way to
do that set up. I don't think I would do that.
Oh I like that they did that. Let's steal that, right.
Your reticular activating system is so turned onto podcasts that
you cant help. But notice all around you things you
would do differently or that you like the same thing

(01:04:04):
happens with business and deals. So now when I go
into like a corner store, or when I go into
a restaurant, I go or Jim Jim's get me for
some reason. It's like you have me, you have my
credit card, you have recurring revenue. I come in here
every single day, sell me more shit? Why don't you
sell me more things? You definitely should. And so one
I will say, as you learn deal making, I can
promise you only really one thing. When it comes to

(01:04:26):
you becoming a better deal maker, your reticular activitying system
comes on. So what's going to happen in deal finding? Yes,
you could cold call, just like private equity, but instead
kind of steep yourself in the type of deal you
are looking for, steep yourself in what skills you actually have,
and then you're going to see them all around. You
won't be able to turn it off. It'll be like

(01:04:47):
when you buy a car. All of a sudden, the
car's all over the place. After you bought it, You're like,
did everybody was it a sale? No? Your brain starts
making you notice it. And so the best way to
find deals is you start just having conversations with guys,
because again cash Love's curiosity. Every time you go into
a small business, you just go like, ah, amazing, you go,
I mean, LA is full of them. You walk into

(01:05:08):
a cool retail shop. Oh that's cool, man, this's your store.
It is I mean probably fifty percent of the time
it's theirs. And then you say to the guy like,
how long you been doing this? A while? Do you
want to keep you want to keep doing this?

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
How's business going? You guys make a lot of money.
How long you've been around? Is a kid going to
take over? Are you going to keep going?

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
This is so cool. I love this. Maybe I buy
a little something, and then maybe I decide I want
to own one of these businesses with them. All of
a sudden, I get to know the owner and I
start getting into the curiosity where I get them to
maybe consider that a young hustler who is really aggressive
might be good for their business.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Absolutely, yeah, No. I had a really interesting experience of
this last maybe a couple of years ago. I was
in a store that curates beautiful sets of books, and
that's not what they do professionally. They sell clothes, but
they also have books in the store. And I walked
in there and I was I love, really enjoy books,
and I enjoy collecting, and so I was looking around

(01:06:02):
and these were all like new books. They're all newly
published the Beautiful and I bought a ton and they
were just like And then one person at that store
just said to me, oh, by the way, like, do
you love books. I was like yeah, And I was like,
I'm really looking for vintage books though, be cool to
own some like antique books and things like that. And
she said, well, oh, there's this random store around the
corner and it's like a printing press, like an old
school binding book. But I've seen books in there before

(01:06:24):
when you go check it out. So I literally go
walk into this books and basically, actually, first of all,
I walk outside. It looks like no one operates it.
It looks completely run down. You wouldn't walk past it
and think oh cool shop. You'd walk past it and
not even you'd think no one, no one's inside it.
So I'm kind of looking around. I'm like knocking on
the door just to see I do see some books.

(01:06:46):
And this lady opens the door and she's got like
an old school binding press in there, and old school
you know, all the old school tools that how books
were bound in the past. And then she's got this
bookshelf and I said, oh, I heard you might sell books,
Like could I take a look, and she was like,
oh no, I just have these books because I got
divorced a few years back. My husband owned a bookstore.

(01:07:08):
He left me with like fifty thousand books or something crazy,
and she goes most of them at home, but there's
probably like I don't know, a thousand yere or whatever
it is. You can take whatever you want. And I
was like, I'm happy to pay you, but sure. So
I spent like two three hours and I was like
getting really you know, I loved it. It was like it
was literally like being inside of a secret cave of
books and I was like finding all this stuff. So

(01:07:29):
I got a stack of maybe like twenty books and
I was like, hey, look, i'd love to pay you
for them, Like you know, I'm good for it, and
I'm grateful that you've even allowed me in. And I
forced her a little bit. She finally took some money,
and then there was one book while she was going
through and she's like, I've been looking for this book
for like five years, and she goes, I can't sell
this one to you, and I was like sure, like

(01:07:50):
I'm never gonna, you know, have it. Whatever. Anyway, I
come home and I started checking all these books out online.
They were all worth like at least one hundred dollars each.
I probably paid like five to ten dollars each for them.
And it was just a really good example to me
of like this random place that and I wanted the book,
so I kept them. But it was just this random
place that was like this treasure trove of all of

(01:08:13):
this great material and had someone wanted to go in
and buy fifty thousand books and sell them online or
sell them anywhere, there was a real business there and
it was a smaller It was a very simple example
of just how easy it was to come across something
that that I wouldn't even I wasn't even looking for it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Well, yeah, and you know, it's a funny thing I
do sometimes. One it's so lovely. And also how happy
was she probably at the value you found in it? Yeah,
Like did you feel like you were taking advantage of her?
Or did she feel like, Wow, are you sure? Like
I'm glad you're spending time with me?

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Absolutely? Absolutely, she was so happy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
And I think this is something we don't realize because
our generation is highly transactional. We're a highly transactional generation
with immediate feedback loops aka social media with a high
UH status game that we play with a lot of
attention on us because you get a lot of attention
when you're young and hungry and moving, but as we
get older, I mean, women will tell you this all

(01:09:07):
the time. They'll warn you that as you get older,
you become a visible Like a middle aged woman will say, often,
nobody sees me. And like one of our copywriters, she
was so lovely, she said a thing to me. I
was like, oh, she died or her blue And I
was like, Marcella, looks great. Like she's an older woman,
probably like mid fifties. And I was like, looks great,
Like you know, what was the impetus? And she's like,
you know, as you get older, I realized that, like

(01:09:27):
nobody would talk to me, and I feel like they
were looking through me. And she's like, so she's like,
so I was with my one of my little nieces
and I we dyed our hair little strips of it
pink together, and she was like, And I was walking
across the street and this young man kind of yelled
over to me and he's like, hey, mama, like the hair.
And she's like, I can't remember the last time a
young man talk to me. She's like, so I anytime

(01:09:49):
I now feel a little out of it, I die
my hair blue. And to be fair, like in the past,
sometimes when I saw people do that, I was like, really,
what's going on here, Like, what's what's the move? And
then I realized, oh, like, just because we value something
one way doesn't mean that everybody else values it the
other way. And so in order to break your frame
and to see businesses all around, you don't assume that

(01:10:11):
the same things you value other people do. It's like,
I've never really believed in the Golden rule, which is
treat others how you want to be treated. It's like
buy and large, treat them how they want to be
treated unless that breaks how you want to be treated.
And I think that's the same with business owners. I
mean my uncle Eb, which is one of the main
reasons I started publicly about business talking about businesses online.
He had a business did a couple million dollars a

(01:10:34):
year in revenue and you can it's called eb Holmes Plumbing.
It was in Phoenix, Arizona, and he got sick with
cancer and decided he wanted to shut the business down.
You know, he's in his seventies and was like, you know,
I'm ready to be done. And what he didn't know
at the time is that a business that is doing
a couple of millions of dollars in revenue and a
couple of millions of dollars in profit is worth millions

(01:10:56):
of dollars. And so this man who spent his life
building up a plumbing company that probably would have thought, honestly,
like if he was here, he would say, Cody, I
couldn't have sold that thing like that. That wasn't really
you know, it was sort of And this is what
most baby boomer business owners think. They're like, who's going
to buy this? Because how many times have you had

(01:11:17):
a business where you didn't want to be in it before?
Have you ever had that before?

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Of course, like if you're in a room. Sometimes I
go out to speaking stages and just for shits and giggles,
cause people will always go if a business was profitable
and it was going to continue to be profitable, nobody
would sell it. And I go, okay, let's play a game.
Business owners. Raise your hand. Everybody raises her hand, that's
a business owner. I go, cool, keep them up. If
you would sell your business at the right price and

(01:11:41):
the right terms. If it came along, keep your hand up.
What happens, everybody's up, not one. If you go down
and I go liars, I laugh because the truth of
the matter is, you haven't been in the game long
enough if you put your hand down. But if you've
been in the game long enough, you go absolutely. Now,
I wouldn't sell every one of my businesses, but there
is at some point one business, and if you cove

(01:12:02):
he here the right day, maybe I would. So I
think we have to like change our programming to realize
all around us, every business has a value. That book
selling business that shut down. I bet there was a
value in the lease that they had. It might have
been in California. Sometimes they have leases that are locked in.
There could have been value in just the lease contract

(01:12:22):
to transfer it. There could have been value in the assets,
the books. There could have been value in the employees
because you can do an aqua hire. There could have
been value in the website listing. What about the Yelp
and Google reviews? There could have been value in the IP.
What about the logos and the brand and the name.
What if they had one of those old school original
you know, Cody dot com websites before, like we now

(01:12:43):
have to have websites that are like four hundred and
fifty two words, right, And so every single business has
some value. And if you can find the business where
the value to the owner is not as much as
the value is to you, and then you got a
really good deal.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
So I said, Cody, I'm just like, you know, I'm
so happy that breaking this down for everyone, because I
think it's such a It's just not what I'm hearing.
It's not what people are talking about. It's not the
it's not the and I'm glad because it's not the
get rich quick solution either. It's not the Hey you
can be really rich in twelve months and not worry

(01:13:17):
about anything, and that kind of thing. I wish, Yeah, yeah,
you wish. And I think I really appreciate you nailing
it by just saying it's grit, right, that's what's required,
that's deeply required. What's a skill that you think you
wish you'd known you had to develop at the beginning
of the journey, that you learned too late.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
I wish that I didn't have stories to myself about
me being bad at math and money I think most
people have a story when they're younger about how bad
they are at math. I have one that I think
really messed me up. I was in middle no, no, it
was high school, was at Arkadia High and I had
a math teacher, and I wasn't very good at math,

(01:13:56):
Like I struggled. I think I might have a little
bit of dyslexia. I'm not sure, but I just couldn't
get the numbers to stay in my head correctly, and
so I was sort of struggling. And I remember one
day the teacher was getting really frustrated with me, And
teaching is a hard job, so I get it. But
he looked at me in front of the class and
he said, man, I think Helen Keller would have a
better shot at winning an archery contest than you would

(01:14:17):
at winning in finance. And at the time, I was
like heartbroken about this and like embarrassed, you know, and
did it in the way teenagers do, just like I
don't care whatever. But I was like very sad about it.
And then I love my parents deeply. But my parents
always used to say to my brother, you're so smart,
You're so smart. You're so smart, You're so smart. And

(01:14:37):
to me, they would always say, you work so hard,
you work so hard, you work so hard, and at
the time it was kind of mad, like I'm also smart,
what about me? And they would always be like, well,
Cody's not very good at math, in the same way
that they would say I'm not very good at singing.
The singing is true, I'm not good at that one.
But that math thing stuck with me for a long time,
and so I always thought that it was big and

(01:14:58):
hard and scary to be quote unquote good at math.
And when it comes to making money, the math is
really simple, guys. And I'm bad at making math, so
bad that Helen Keller would be better at archerie than
I am. And so if any part of this skill
is scaring you, I think it often starts with like,
oh my god, I look at a spreadsheet and I panic.
You know, I have to calculate something, and I panic.

(01:15:19):
I look at a calculator and I panic. And I
would say, just like, lean into that slightly, because I
think in finance we do a very sneaky thing, which is,
I think we try to make it seem really scary
and hard for the average person to become rich. Why
Because if it's scary and hard for you to do it,
guess what I get to do. I get to charge
a lot of money for it. And so that's why

(01:15:41):
most of us take our money, and like, think about
it for a second. We take our money and we
give it to other people to take care of. Now,
when you give your kids to other people to take
care of, one hundred percent like their opinions about that,
people say, no, you got to take care of your kids,
you got to grow your kids. But with wealth, we
can just say no, no, I don't understand anything. I just
give it to this guy or year he figures it out.

(01:16:01):
That's really not how we should treat money. And so
the main skill that I think you should think about
is one of my mentors said to me, money is
a cruel mistress. She'll leave you if you don't pay
attention to her. And I think about that a lot, Like,
just give the money a little attention, give the math
a little attention. You're more capable than you think you are.
And it's really not possible to be bad at this

(01:16:22):
type of math. So if your head you think I'm
bad at math, I'm bad at spreadsheets. It's really not possible.
I'm bad at calculus, but you can figure this stuff out.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Cody, you are awesome and I love that advice. And
I think everyone who's listened in what's this episode now
has a game plan of how to negotiate something at
their workplace, figure out how to invest in a company
or a small business, recognize if you're at that place.
If I just want to get over the fear that
I'm bad at math, well that money is bad and

(01:16:54):
a calm way for everyone to dive into main street Millionaire.
This is the book that Cody's got out right now.
I want you to go grab a copy if you've
enjoyed today's discussion. This is one of those books that
I hope you read with your friends, share insights. Maybe
you'll invest in something together, build something together. It's a
great book to pass on to a family member or
a friend who's been struggling with money thinking about it.

(01:17:15):
Please do not hesitate with this because it's so easy
to keep pushing money off and keep having it be
a source of anxiety in your life. And I think
Cody's broken it down and make it really simple based
on how to overcome your fears and go create something brilliant.
So Cody, thank you for putting your heart and soul
into this work. And we end every episode of On

(01:17:35):
Purpose with a final five. These are a fast five
where you have to answer each question in one word
to one sentence maximum. So, Cody Sanchez, these are your
final five. The first question is what is the best
financial advice you've ever heard or received.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
That other people's money is actually feasible. People think that
passive income is a lie, that getting other people's money
is a lie, but they tell you that because they
are usually the ones on the other side of the coin.
So if you want to see about other people's money,
look to private equity and mimic it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Let's go off piece for a second on that, because
I think we didn't touch on that. If you want
to raise investment for people who want to gain investment,
maybe you've got a cool new idea, Maybe you've been
tinkering something, got a deck. What should you have if
you're going to go and ask for someone's money.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Oh that's yeah, that's a really good point. It's really simple.
A couple tactical things. One something called a tear sheet
or a one sheet. So this is basically like think
about it like a baseball card with all the stats
on the baseball card, but for the deal that you're
going to put So it's like, here's why I think
it's good. Here's why I think we'll make money. Here's
what that's based off of. Here's what a summary it is.
Here's why I'm good at it too, and you should

(01:18:46):
invest in me. And here's why I think you should
be the one to invest. That's called a one sheet
or a tear sheet. The second one is a pitch deck.
From Golden I learned something called a three piece, which
is people process performance, So I do that in all
my pitch deck, which basically is like why us, Why
should you bet on us? Because at the end of
the day, if you're asking for somebody's money, it's about

(01:19:06):
the opportunity for sure, but it's really like, do I
want to invest in Jay? Do I believe in Jay?
And then second is process, so like what is the opportunity,
what is the way we're structuring this, what are we
investing in? What is the process by which you're going
to take our money and go bring it back with friends?
And then lastly is performance. So if I give you this,
why do you think that I'm going to make money?

(01:19:28):
How much money am I going to make? And why
should I invest in you instead of all these other things.
So if you have those two things, that is the
like typical one on one for raising money.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Great answer. Now, I think it's really important for people
to know because I think so many times we just
kind of turn up and hope.

Speaker 1 (01:19:44):
One hundred percent. And I wish people would have told
me that. It's like sometimes when you have those little
easy tactics, you're like, Okay, now I feel good. You
know there's more to it than that, but at least
you know, like, hey, if I want to drive a car,
I need the car and I need some gas. So
now you guys got that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
Yeah. And I think sometimes were so focused on convincing
someone that we have the best idea and not focused
on convincing someone we understand how to execute it. And
I think anyone who's looking to give you money is
looking to whether they think you can execute it. Because
I hear good ideas all the time. The best investors
in the world hear amazing ideas all the time, and

(01:20:19):
ideas are just not the thing that works. Like you know,
you were talking about like Google was like the twenty
first search engine, Like they weren't the first search engine.
It wasn't a unique idea. It was just that they
had a great way of executing and why they've evolved
into this mega, mega megabusiness now.

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
Yeah, exactly. Best predictor of future behavior's past behavior. So
if you can show them you have a history of winning, yeah,
and even show them some instances where you didn't win,
why and how, you're never going to replicate that again.
People are going to bet on the hustler who is
on a winning streak, you know oftentimes right, You know this,
if you go to gamble on a game in sports,
you don't gamble on the person that's have a losing streak.

(01:20:56):
Why Because it's actually quite hard to break. And so
I think also if you can show a history of winning,
and that's a narrative you can frame, you're more likely
to get cash to that's great.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
Second question, what is the worst financial advice you've ever
heard or received?

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
That money is scarce and hard to get. If you
think money is hard and scarce, then you're probably not
going to get it. And I think people want you
to think that, and that does not serve you at all.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
Question number three, the best five hundred dollars investment you
ever made or two.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
Mm. I think this is a little cliche, but health
and wealth are super tired. And the best money I've
ever spent are probably two things, a saana and a
cold plunge. And I know that sounds like super tech
bro Twitter, but the truth of the matter is is

(01:21:53):
that if I can get a little bit more energy
in the beginning of the day, it seems to carry
through the rest of my day and make me more money.
So what your sauna and cold plunges? And I think
I bought mine on Amazon for literally like a thousand
bucks each, Then that's money well spent.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
Great question before the biggest waste of money you've ever spent?
Not the amount, but like something that was all complete waste.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
The biggest mistakes I've ever made are always not things
I did or bought, but people I chose. It was.
It's always about the people, the good things, and the
best things. So be careful those you partner with, spend
time with, and invest in, and know that those will
often be the things that give you the most heartache
or make you the most money.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Let's side note on that too. How does We talked
a bit about it before too, But for someone who's
like thinking about finding the right business partner, knowing whether
you can trust someone, obviously you never know anything. We
talked about it, like, how do you set yourself up
for success? Bey on the negotiation that we discussed.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
I have a couple different rules. One rule is you
don't get married on the first date. Don't do a
deal or start a business on the first date, which
means I have a one year rule. I do not
get into a long term partnership with anybody that I
haven't known for at least a year. In business, a
lot of times there's this, you know, that rosy phase
you have on your first dating with somebody. You're like,
the thing is, we're in love and we're meant to be,

(01:23:17):
and that about six months later you're like, also, no,
and so same thing with business partners. Give yourself a
nice twelve month window. It's hard to hide who you
are for a year. The second thing when doing business
deals is when you partner with somebody, you don't actually
want to partner with somebody that's just like you. It's
the same with marriage. It's why dating apps are so tough.

(01:23:38):
I mean I was talking to Sean rad about that,
the founder to Tender of the other day. I was like,
the thing is, you don't realize what you did, but
you allowed people to self select for people that are
just like them. And it turns out the statistics all
show that we do not last in marriages as long
or relationships as long when our person is just like us.
They actually we actually have to have this like creative
difference between the two of us. There's a ying to

(01:23:59):
the yang in everything in the universe, and so the
studies tell us you need two different types in order
to succeed long term. You can some overlap is necessary, obviously,
but you don't actually want to date yourself. It's the
same with a partner. Make sure that if you're a
great salesperson and a parent with another salesperson, you've got
a great operational person and a great salesperson. Maybe that works.

(01:24:19):
And the last thing about great partnerships is everything else
is figure outable if there is enough drive. And so,
but my father says, you can lead a horse to water,
but you can't make them drink, And so I always
overoptimize on this idea of desire, like why do you
want to partner with me? And do I believe that
that why is so big that we can overcome anyhow?

(01:24:41):
And if your why is like I kind of want
to make a couple dollars on the side, but I
might do this, but I might do this, but I
might do this, I call you a tow tepper. You're
actually not all the way in. You're not fully in
with me. And so at our company, we just had
one of these people the other day, a young kid's
a stud but he came to us and he was like, yeah,
I want to do this job with you, but I
also have these other things. And you know, once you've
interviewed I've interviewed thousands and thousands of people by now,

(01:25:03):
so you know I can kind of get to the
heart of it. And I remember Tanner was sitting in
the interview with me, and Tanner's face was just falling
as he was listening to it because I was kind
of faireading out a few things, and the young guy
was like, well, I have this channel and I want
to grow this and I want to do that. And
I was like, why do you want to be here? Then? Like,
if you want to do all those other things like no, no,
I want to do this too, and we can do
it all together. And I said, the thing in life
that I wish somebody had told me earlier is when

(01:25:25):
you're starting out, you can never be excellent at multiple
things at once. Eventually you can have excellence in multiple
things because you can attract top talent. But in the beginning,
you're either all in or you are a barely concealed
series of distractions. And so a partnership make sure they
are all in and their why is super super big.
Otherwise they should go find their why and it's not you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Yeah, well, said fifth and final question. If you could
create one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
what would it be.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Oh, God, that's a hard one. Just one one law
in the world everybody in the world had to follow up.
How would we We'd have to think legally about some
of the caveats to this. We want to make sure
we crafted the language correctly in order to not have
perverse incentives or second and third order effects. But it
would be something to the tune of like probably something

(01:26:16):
about taxes. It'd be like, don't allow centralization of tax
power above a certain amount, and the reason why is
kind of technical, but basically, we want to give as
much money as possible back to you, the builders. The
only way that money and thus freedom is created is
from individual humans who build things. Governments cannot build things.

(01:26:41):
Governments can take capital from somewhere else and they can
allocate it to other things and equalize. And that is
great and wonderful and necessary. But I would be really
careful about what I see as core to our society today,
which is, are we allowing too few of people to
control two money much of us? And it starts with

(01:27:01):
our money. And I know there are lots of other
things we could care about when it comes to politics,
and that's very important too. But I was in Argentina
when they closed my business and made it illegal overnight
because they nationalized it. And I have seen countries fall
apart at the floor of tax station and nationalization, and
so I guess it would be a government is never
allowed to nationalize, and a government is never allowed to

(01:27:24):
overly tax, and every chance we get, let's believe in
the builder and the individual and not the big huge
entity like you guys can figure out you don't need
them all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):
I love it. Cody Sanjez the books called Main Street Millionaire.
Everyone make sure you follow Cody on social media if
you don't already, subscribe on YouTube, follow on Instagram, TikTok,
get the book, Cody. I hope you'll come on many,
many more times. It was amazing talking to you. Honestly,
You've opened my mind. I'm sure you've blown everyone else's mind.
And I want to thank you for doing the work

(01:27:56):
you do and really appreciate how practical, tactical and access
that you're making this world of money that's been so
hidden and kept aside. So thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:28:05):
Well, thank you, And maybe the only thing can I
add one thing, audience, of course, the only thing I
would add is, like anybody who is out there building
right now, I hope you know how important you are.
You know it is. It is so critical to have
builders in this world, and it is so hard, and
you're never alone, and you are so necessary and without you,
the world literally stops. And so three percent of Americans

(01:28:29):
own a business, three percent. We need more of you
builders out there in the world, and so everything we
do is to try to create more humans who have
skin in the game, who are creating things with your
beautiful brains and your hands, and like, I'm an awe
of you. So every time I meet like the laundromat owner,
the car wash owner, the entrepreneur that's building something inside

(01:28:50):
of a business, like I just hope you know there's
so much dignity in the world and it's because of
the work you do, and without you, you know, it's
actually not good to go back to the stone. Like
we have all the things we have today because of
each of you, and that includes you and building this business.
So thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
I just want to say that I've appreciated you so
deeply offline, and your work online of course speaks for itself.
It's been so successful in congratulations, and so to be
able to dive into this theme with you that I
think is so important for the world right now is
a real blessing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
So thank you, well, thank you. I think you know,
you meet a lot of people in real life that
you kind of know online and so at a certain point,
I think you can kind of tell when the human
is going to match the human and that's what I
felt with you. So it's cool for the people listening too.
You got a question everything, and sometimes you meet people
that you look up to, and you're like, dang it,
you know, not quite what I thought it was going
to be, and so like real respect to you for that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
I love it. Thanks Cody. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you
so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it,
you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort
is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking
your hidden potential. If you know you want to be
more and achieve more this year, go check it out

(01:30:04):
right now.

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
You set a goal today, you achieve it in six months,
and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief.

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
There's no sense of meaning and purpose.

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
You sort of expected it, and you would have been
disappointed if it didn't happen.

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