Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYu_PDPqKFc
can I get rich if I just have a salary yeah if you want to make a couple million dollars 100% And can everybody do that yes it's only not accessible to you if you're a lazy piece of that wants to do nothing none of this is rocket science what you do so start with Cody Sanchez has taken her experience from Wall Street to become a multi-millionaire investor and business owner and now teaches millions of people how to make money and be financially free Cody if I set you the challenge of building your wealth from scratch what' you do okay step one you get with the biggest baddest guy or gal you can find who's already successful and you do everything possible to provide value to them and by the way it sucks but the best advice for 20-year-old is to realize that your 20s do suck but everybody focuses on how much money you make and start doing entrepreneurship too early oh you can be a 20-year-old to drive a Bugatti and play around with crypto huge mistake focus on learning and you're going to have no time for anything except what your boss asks of you but if you want to win and be successful in life upfront pain always leads to long-term gain how could I manipulate or motivate you into giving me a shock if you want to get in front of a rich powerful person start with where' you go from there make as much money as humanly possible from your salary and invest in other side deals such as what I call gateway drug businesses the business so simple that you can run it even if you've never run a business before but how can I buy a business I'm going to have to wait till I'm rich well there's actually way more opportunity than anybody realizes because there's three ways to buy a business one is this is a sentence I never thought I'd say in my life um we've just hit 7 million subscribers on YouTube and I want to say a huge thank you to all of you that show up here every Monday and Thursday to watch our conversations um from the bottom of my heart but also on behalf of my team who you don't always get to meet there's almost 50 people now behind the dire of a CEO that work to put this together so from all of us thank you so much um we did a raffle last month and we gave away prizes for people that subscribed to the show up
until 7 million subscribers and you guys love that raffle so much that we're going to continue it so every single month we're giving away money can't buy prizes including meetings with me invites to our events and £1,000 gift vouchers to anyone that subscribes to the DI CE there's now more than 7 million of you so if you make the decision to subscribe today you can be one of those lucky people thank you from the bottom of my heart let's get to the [Music] conversation Cody if you could encapsulate your message into a sentence what would that sentence be but also though who exactly would that sentence be for it would be the only way to have freedom is through ownership and the world doesn't want to give it to you and that message is for every human who's felt disenfranchised and is a little bit of tired of other people directing their lives and wishes that they had their hand on the helm instead and I think in today's day and age ownership is something that people on high say is bad you know [ __ ] the big guys the rich people the owners and in reality that's just them saying they want to be in charge instead of you who isn't your message for who will it just not resonate with and work for Black Rock black stone most billionaires who already know this I mean I think that is the answer though the the message will not resonate with people who think that they should own everything and other people should ask for permission it won't res with people who um don't want to work kind of hard it sucks to be an owner anybody who's ever run a business has felt inside that horrible feeling on Friday when you don't have enough cash and payrolls coming and you've got to figure out what to sell or what to give up in order to pay your employees that's an awful feeling um so it's not for people that aren't willing to do the hard thing but you know it kind of goes back to what what we know to be true it sucks being broke just as much as it sucks working hard and so choose your heart your message has resonated really profoundly with millions and millions and millions
and millions of people you've built an audience of millions of people across all of your social media channels it it appears that you've hit culture and the Zeitgeist with a particular message at a particular time do you spend much time reflecting on why your message is so resonant um right now that's interesting it's hard right now to not think about politics in some way shape or form and so I think when I think about politics today what I really think about is who's in charge right and so I do think about why does one politician hit a cord why does one not and and I think when I think about my message what hits me closest to home is that for some reason um a message right now is is feeling true for many people in the world that there's a lack of trust like trust in institutions trust in governments and big corporations in in the media you know I saw yesterday an article about CNN this is fascinating how many views do you think CNN got in prime time for one week three hour segments every day prime time for one week in May what do you think one show one show three hours for a week the cumulative of three three hour show correct five million maybe I don't know 83,000 that's crazy lowest level of all time Fox the highest was 186,000 think about what is happening right in front of us the media is no longer actually reaching the masses because they've lost complete trust with them in fact 30-year-olds right now for the first time ever 30-year-olds have more trust in you social media influencers than they do the mainstream media it's not the same for all age groups but that is what I am seeing right in front of us is we're like show me what's real because I do not trust puppets who parrot things from teleprompters they know that you and I are having a real conversation there's no teleprompter in site when you look at your notes look at your notes it's real and I think that is what I'm realizing with our message we have to be honest because nobody trusts anybody right now so if someone's just clicked onto this conversation for whatever reason maybe they don't know who you are maybe they they you know they're just clicking because they it's the routine that they have by the end of this conversation
what do you hope they come away with what do you hope they're going to be able to um Implement into their lives following this conversation how to make more money and why it matters that you make more money that's really it because I think money is just a tool it's a tool in your toolbox for you to be able to have more freedom to do more things and to say no more often to say actually I don't want to do that at all and because I don't want to do that I need money to push back and so by the end of this conversation I think you should have a few ideas to be a little bit richer and a little bit more free and can everybody do that do you genuinely believe that every think about everybody you've ever you know and everybody you've ever met does the advice that you offer yeah um fit all of them is it accessible and actionable for all of them my gut says yes it's only not accessible to you if you're a lazy piece of [ __ ] that wants to do nothing you know if you really want only to be given things you want to ask permission all the time and you aren't willing to work a little bit earlier in the morning and work a little bit later in the evening then you should turn this off just like I don't know what they're probably not watching you anyway if that's this type of human that's not you guys but for that type of human this isn't going to work because nothing that I offer is get rich quick or go go buy this stock that's not going to work um but it is things that I think we knew early on somehow we got maybe lucky with a few mentors but none of this is rocket science which should be really freeing for people to listen to and who you existential question um you know I'm a former Finance investor for 15 plus years Investment Banking Asset Management who finally because covid happened took a little breather realized that I didn't want to be like the managing directors that I saw all around me and started writing stuff online because I wasn't doing Road shows selling Investments and investing people's money for for a year or whatever that was and because of that started writing about the things that I do and I kind of thought nobody liked the idea of owning laundromats and car washes and all of that and it turns out a lot of people thought that was
interesting and I do think we kind of hit this zeitgeist of you know you saw it during Co people left big cities right there they bought houses in Cape Town or somewhere out in rural areas right they got away from the corporate job in office in suits and realized God I don't want a 75 minute commute I uh maybe want a little bit of fresh air um into chicken coops a lot of chicken coops these days and um and so because of that they got interested in these small businesses these Community businesses and so I think I got a little bit Lucky in the fact that that was interesting to me I've done it for years I've invested in those things forever I started writing about on the internet and then we got a lot of views and now all of a sudden there are millions of people that talk about buying these small businesses or what we call boring businesses I want to get into that but I um I want to start with something that I saw the other day on your Instagram you wrote a post about your 20s and your earlier life you said you think that your 20s suck and that no one tells you that when you hit 30 you become happier and you offered sort of 32 pieces of advice for people that are um in that phase of Life focusing on in on your 20s with the benefit of hindsight now when you think about how you played your 20s and how you'd suggest that maybe a child you have someday or a friend that is 20 years old should play their 20s what is the best advice for a 20-year-old the best advice for a 20-year-old is to realize that your 20s do suck that you are probably drinking too much you're hanging out with people that aren't the best versions of themselves neither are you you've got crazy hormones going on you're going to Bar and hanging out with people having a few to or many drinks and then going to a job you kind of hate because you're brand new into the workforce and so of course you're doing the worst thing humanly possible and that's going to continue for like 5 to 10 years like you are going to do a $65,000 a year job for two or three years that sucks and you're going to have no time for anything except what your boss asks of you and I wish people had told me that because if you see the light of the end of the tunnel you're like oh okay like I can do this for 2 or three years I can learn I can grow and I
can suck it up for 2 to three years and then after that I get a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better um and so the advice would be when you have a foot in your nail which is what it's like when you start your first job being 20 don't you know try to ignore the fact that it's painful it's there like it's there it's real it sucks and I wish somebody had told me that because these days everybody's like no you can be a 20-year-old and drive a Bugatti and you know I don't know play around with crypto not real not real and then once I learned like okay this sucks and I can deal with it then the next thing would be everybody focuses on how much money you make when you're in your 20s huge mistake the only thing you should focus on is learning how can I think about my salary like putting pieces of cash into my brain how can I learn as much as possible how can I come and work an apprentice for somebody that I think I might want their life one day and I'll take the minimum amount of cash that I need in order to fill my brain so that my next step can be to make more money but in the beginning too many people obsess on money and I wish I hadn't thought that way i' would rather learn than earn when I'm young do you think there's a different amount of work and work ethic required in different seasons of life so in your 20s should you be working harder than when you're say 30 40 50 100% you can't have the same Stam stamina I mean I you know I was weightlifting the other day and I was showing my less strong friend next to me like this is how you do a deadlift and here's I put another plate on there and then you know blew out my hip you know and I'm like now I'm I'm in like back pain and you know I'm 37 I can't I do not have the same stamina I had when I was 25 physically you decline mentally you decline and I think your work ethic declines too and so you know you it's really hard to keep going for 20 years at 12-h hour long days you can do it but it's much easier when you're 20 and so if you know that then know let's frontload the pain so that in my 30s we can have a lot of fun you know my husband who you you met is former na and we always talk about how I think the only reason we're kind of successful is we just said what are the worst jobs we
can take when we're young where we can learn the most we can hopefully I think have something that's a Resume Builder and then once we're in our mid 20s to late 20s we can start reaping the fruits of our labor but you know being an nav seal sucks you do it when you're young you do all the worst things when you're young but then for the rest of your life you're a [ __ ] former Navy SEAL you're set because he front loaded the pain when you look back over your career do you um can you identify any sort of light bulb moments where you were exposed to information that caused a bit of a paradigm shift as as it relates to how you think about wealth because I I had I've had a couple of moments and you know to varying degrees but some real standout moments where I saw someone operate I was exposed to how they made their money and how they built their wealth and I thought [ __ ] nobody told me this and I had the game wrong yeah has there been those moments in your life for sure um I think the well there's there's actually uh studies showing something called economic interconnectedness which basically shows that say you have a poor neighborhood to the left and a poor neighborhood to the right same uh socioeconomic status so they both make them around the same amount of money if this neighborhood just has a few rich people in it even though on average the neighborhoods are the same and people in the poor neighborhood interact with rich people a little bit more on the left than they do on the right if you go 30 years down the line the kids that just had a few more interactions with rich people are going to be richer on average by 35% than the people in the same neighborhood to the right except with less economic interconnectedness and so what that tells me is as often as possible you want to be around people who are richer than you sounds obvious kind of but I don't think it's that obvious you don't have to live next to them you don't have to have their money you just want to be around them because it is contagious in some ways ideas are contagious and this ability to see into the future I think is contagious you know if you think about it like you're driving in a car the faster the car is going the further the headlights have to be able to peer into the future
otherwise you're going to to blow off a cliff and so I think when people are moving really fast they have a lot of money and they have big risk to the things they do their headlights are just a little bit farther than the rest of us and so I got really lucky because I chose Finance Finance is full of people who are obsessed with money I think there's a lot of you know ethical issu isues in that industry but all around me were rich people so I remember one instance uh really really well and that was um I was in I was in Chicago at the time I was working at Goldman Sachs and um the head of the Chicago office was a guy by the named Bruce and um Bruce was a good guy he ran the fixed income Division and after I left Goldman Sachs I kind of stay in touch with a few people there including Bruce well one day I find out Bruce becomes the ambassador to Canada I was like Canada I don't even know if Bruce been to Canada like he's not a how did that happen and so I started talking to a few other people and I realized oh you buy Ambassador ships in the US and so you could Google right now and see what the average ambassadorship in the US costs the answer it's about a million dollars directly donated to a president plus a couple million dollars donated in a pack so Bruce bought the ambassadorship which I thought was fascinating and I was like [ __ ] I didn't realize that was for sale like that's you just buy those things that's so bizarre and that flipped my perspective entirely to realize oh man money really just is power and can you imagine how wide open your ability must be for abundance if you're like oh yeah I'm going to buy a position of authority in the world never even would enter my equation when a lot of people think about money and they hear conversations about wealth I think some people kind of cringe because they think of money as being quite an ugly thing and and some people think it's quite an evil thing the the desire to accumulate more of it they see as being I don't know selfish or some maybe even manipulative or I don't know you know so how how do you square that for those people I I mean first of all I would just say you're never going to attract it if you don't like it if you think it's evil you're certainly not going to make much of it and that sounds touchy
feeling I'm from Austin and I kind of like crystals so maybe that is a little touchy feely but it's the truth of the matter it's just like women these days who say all men are bad I can't find a man I don't like men anywhere do you think you're going to find one that way you know if you say things like that are you going to be in Partnership of course not you're going to repel them because you don't even like them it's the same thing with money it's very common sense when you think about it and so I always like to think about money as it's just that it's that tool in your toolbox it's like so do I want somebody else to have the chainsaw or do I want it well i' I'd rather have it because I think I'm a good person and I think that I could help more people with it and so people really need to lose the emotional attachment to money especially if it's negative um I think there's a lot bigger issue with too many people thinking is bad than too many people thinking money is good and that's weird if you think about it because the opposite is usually what we're told right and in that analogy of it being like a woman looking for a man but saying that men are bad Etc does the woman in that analogy but also in the analogy of money also need to feel like she's deserving of a good man I do you need to feel like you're deserving of money in order to attract it I mean this may be Strays into things like manifestation and whatever else but you know do you have to feel like you deserve to be rich do you think in order to attract more money into your life does it change how you make your decisions how you show up negotiate certainly I mean I think um I think the truth of the matter is that if you want to attract things the best way to get them is to be great yourself so if you want a great partner be a great partner you know if you want to be rich you need to start doing things where you're acting rich and I don't mean by spending but like what would a rich person do if they wanted to achieve X Y and Z well they probably work harder they surround themselves with different types of people and uh but then I realized there's so many people that do not believe in themselves and do have negative stories they have to break before they can take one tactic and do anything yeah so I think you're right
first you got to believe it it is it does feel like it's really the Crux of all of this stuff because um the evidence you have or don't have I guess forms what we call self-belief and some people who you know with all the will in the world they just can't believe in themselves because they deeper systemic sort of self-esteem issues and I guess this ties into the conversation around like feeling like an imposter um and the reason I I referenced this is because I I remember many years ago as you were talking a friend of mine saying that when he finally got some money he just had a huge sense of guilt because his father had worked really really really really hard and been paid a fraction of what he had the money he had made so he always had the sense of sort of guilt with his money like he didn't deserve it um like he was an imposter potentially and a lot of people struggle with that you know yeah they think it's for other people yeah I mean I do think like where your body goes your belief follows and so I was at this event for women and uh it was like pretty high up people in finance and only females in the crowd and it was the first time that I realized that a lot of people have a negative relationship with women because the the facilitator asked everybody to close their eyes with money with money okay so the facilitator said I want you to picture money put your eyes closed picture money and then have a visual representation with your body of how you feel when you hear the word money right so in my mind I hear the word money I go money like yeah give me more of that like it big V right and yet when I looked into that she said freeze open your eyes and so then we open our eyes and we looked around could you imagine what most of these high-powered women looked like it was like fetal position or like like money we're like money we're like money just very small and that's when I realized oh of course they're not going to get a ton of it because that's their feeling with money and so what she recommended that I have since done with a lot of the women that I've engaged with is say when when you think about money all I want you to do just make a big expressive movement with your body like am i g to get that salary yes I am you know do I want more of it
give it to me and I do think your body ends up really determining how your brain functions and Tony's talked about this and a lot of other people that have so maybe if you don't think you deserve money I don't know how to fix your brain right away but I do do know how to fix your body which is just make a big movement that tells your body that money is good for you don't make a protective small movement that makes you in fear make a big movement that gives you into abundance and so I that stuck with me for a long time I find it interesting as well thinking about who talks about money because men talk about money a lot and I don't know I don't know if women talk about money in private but I know my my male friends are all talking about their money they're investing their investment Etc and I wondered if there's any sort of gender difference you've observed because you speak to so many people about gender differences as relates to money well perfect example is our audience across socialist is about 60 to 65% men and I'm a woman and yet it's actually quite hard to get women interested and engaged on these issues interesting and so um you know I think a lot of women first of all they think it's a little a little cringe um you know there's not normally Iz ation of it so you know there's never a group where women are getting together on the 19th hole at a golf course and talking about the deals that they did that week that's very normal for men right where would women all get together to talk about their business aspects like I don't think there exists a a container for that and so um I'm big on this belief that everybody should learn how to get money especially if you're a woman you don't have to go be a girl boss and if you want to stay home and take care of the the kids and be a Trad wife that's amazing but understand where your money is located understand how it's made in your family understand how much things cost what you spend um and it is there's nothing more fun than making your first dollar on your own it's very liberating do you think money's seen as a masculine thing investing wealth creation do you think those are all seen as masculine I mean Investment Banking is 87.6% uh male oh really yeah um the finance industry in general is 65% plus male so that would tell me yes feels
like a real inequality in society that the people that are working in finance are heavily male but also finance and money is power right well I mean time in career right I mean they just have had longer to have access to that industry and so I don't think there's some big conspiracy theory happening I think what happened is women haven't had the right to to work for as long long um Finance is the highest paid industry of all industries that you could go into it's also one of the most competitive it also has one of the highest barriers to entry a number of Licensing graduate degrees Etc it's also one of the most competitive to get into those positions and so of course it's going to be dominated by those who have you know an unfair Advantage from more time attempting to do this I think if you history shows us anything recently there's going to be more women in it going forward so if I took you back then if I took you back to your first dollar and I took away everything that you have but also I take away all of your contacts yeah you can keep your brain but you can't keep your contacts and I set you the challenge in 2024 of building your wealth from scratch what's what are the first things that come to mind to get you going so you're in a studio apartment you are broke you have all the information you have you have no contacts what do you do am I allowed to be 20 again or do I have to be you can be 20 okay if I'm if I'm young why did you ask that well I think um it's easier when you're young If we're honest when you're young people who have money they see themselves in you at an earlier date if you got that hunger I mean one of our rules in hiring is hire people so hungry you're scared they might bite you and uh and so when you're young you know you you've had this happen you meet a young man who's just got that fire right he doesn't know anything but you can just see in him that he will do whatever it takes he's here before you he's here after you he's coming up with ideas he's doing jobs to the point where you're like chill bro like that's not even your job right couple of them in here right and what do you do with those guys you're like I'm GNA help you why because actually you see yourself in them it's like a weird selfish father
mother thing we have we're like I see you I remember being you I'm going to help you and so if you're young what I think you do is you get with the biggest baddest guy you can find or gal you can find and who's already successful who you think has the life that you want and you do everything possible to provide value to them and that's probably a bunch of Sweat Equity stuff that's probably a bunch of [ __ ] in the beginning but it's so rare like intense competence is so rare and when you're young I think you throw it away with these ideas of like quiet quitting and not engaging like that is your moment to show that fire and then what happens is you're only going to need to do that for like a year or two with a few players and you're going to move quickly because if you are with people who have a ton of resources what is your biggest constraint in your business right now is it money do you not have enough money could you raise more if you needed it of course do you need more attention no you get hundreds of millions of views do you need more ideas probably not you got a lot of them what do you need people you need people you need hungry little ankle biters that are willing to do whatever it takes and so people don't like this answer but it's not like I would do real estate I would do po podcasting it's go find a person who is so rich but willing to give you a shot for as long as you can okay so let's zoom in on that then because someone's going to hear that now they're gonna go cool got it Cody and they're going to go on LinkedIn they're just going to start peppering Bill Gates and Elon Musk Etc you know what I mean so let's make this a little bit they're like this didn't work Cody El want didn't text me back yeah so so when I'm thinking about reaching out to these individuals that are powerful and I guess we could frame it in the context of you you're a very powerful woman you've got lots of opportunities and probably less time um than opportunities so how would I get to Cody yeah how could I manipulate you or motivate you into giving me a shot yeah let's talk about two things one if you want to get in front of a rich powerful person start with concentric circles so start with what's closest to you so for instance who's the richest
guy on your block who's the richest guy in your community who's the richest guy that you can get to or G you can get to start there there's no one there there's no way first of all you're like seven degrees of Kevin Bacon right so what I would say is it's just a number GI game there's somebody maybe they're only making a couple hundred k a year but that's like way more than you could ever imagine start there MH so that would be my first point and I think about that like you know for instance you go to school so everybody goes to school in some way shape or form who do you know who also goes to your school who is the richest kid at your school can you get to their dad or their mom right so try to get to who's closest you that you can physically touch and you can actually engage with that human I would start there because it's lower Stakes so one if the richest guy on your block or in your college uh that's a friend of your you know that's a dad of one of your friends owns a big sprinkler company that makes a couple million dollars a year start working with that and while you're there give yourself a deadline six months or a year learning at this level and then level up who's now the richest person times 2x you can get to I think the biggest problem is people confuse Fame with with being rich they go after you and I we're not the richest people I mean we do pretty good but like we're not the richest and by the way who has more competition everybody's in your and my email inboxes just because we have a lot of of followers I would never go to an influencer and try to play this game I would go to the guy who runs a sprinkler company that nobody is talking to at all but he makes a ton of money and then you you cozy up to this guy and you go this is incredible what are you do you did this with sprinklers how much does your company make wo I want to be like you one day can I intern for you or Apprentice for you I'll do whatever you want do you know what that is going to feel like to a guy like that as opposed to me or you or we're going to be like I don't have time I have too many interns so go where the water is the shallowest is what I would start with it's so true because I I'm sure both of us get just hundreds and thousands of um messages a year of people lit and literally will
stop me outside my office and say remember this kid the other day about a week ago stopped me outside of our new office and said um he was stood outside there and he had his like CV and a little binder and he was like I will come in and I will just clean the floor and I'm that's not a great pitch because I obviously I can't do that I can't have someone come into my company unpaid which is going to cause a whole PR disaster when that leaks out into the Press Etc but I wouldn't anyway um and you I don't know what it was about that but that doesn't necessarily make me think that you are tremendously valuable if you're coming in and offering to the tea and clean the floor so I'm so compelled by what it is in that initial message that sometimes in your case will just get you to pause a second and maybe reply to the person in a sea of DMS and messages is there something in particular that spikes you the only thing that spikes is some sort of expertise you and I are only interested really in one thing we are interested in somebody who has a understanding of the world that we don't that can take us one step further right you don't need another floor cleaner you don't need another driver but if a young kid reached out to you and they said hey I've analyzed 542 YouTube videos of yours here are the thumbnails that actually work the best uh here's a bunch that you have lately that I don't actually think work here's the data driven behind this I actually put together a few mockups of it for you and um and I reached out to these three people that I think would be great to have on your podcast here's why and they've already agreed to it if this is interesting I just wanted to forward along this packet to you you might be like hm that's interesting okay what about that last line you used there I just wanted to forward this onto you why is oh yeah you never want to expect something for a gift given I call it the 10x rule so I try to never ask for something unless I have given 10s 10x to a person and we have that across our business too I think you should do that with with young people so when I was younger I have a lot of people that I thought of as mentors they would never know that they were a mentor of mine and all I would do
is I would ask them one question so I wouldn't go to famous people but I might go to a normal you know kind of high-powered exec in finance or something and say like hey I was wondering I saw you did this deal over here um I was wondering why you chose to invest in that company versus this company you know if you had time for a one- sentence reply that'd be amazing and they might reply me one sentence maybe one out of 10 people would and then I would say thank you no need to respond further this is really helpful I'm going to go implement this in some way and then I would reach out to them in a couple weeks and I'd be like hey that piece of information you gave me I just did X Y and Z with it really helpful thank you no need to reply just letting you know that you made an impact and that no need to reply and me following up is so rare I wish people realize that today that if you want something follow through is worth its weight in gold I mean one of the other things that we do is when people reach out to us and say stuff like we'd like to do XYZ for you I say read this book and I'll give them a random book and I say Come Back to Me with a few XYZ questions or things how many people do you think actually come back I I think I've had five maybe and so follow through is so rare and what would happen with these people and I still do it to this day I had one guy who was um what was his role H he was quite high up at a company called State Street and I can't remember what his role was but he said to me one day I was in New York I had played that game with him for probably years like hey tiny little thing one sentence of advice great thank you here's how I implemented it again and again and again maybe 20 times over the course of two years and finally I was in New York and he was in New York and I pinged him and said I'd love to take you to dinner I want to talk to you about a few things and it was so funny because as we sat down he goes this is the weirdest thing and I thought oh no what and he said uh I don't really know you but I feel invested in your success I was like I know you do because I'm dripping on you for two years showing you that a tiny little action which felt like nothing to you actually made a material impact on my life m and most
people don't get to feel that way so I'm a I'm a young person I'm I'm Cody Sanchez without anything you've managed to get yourself nice and cozy with someone rich and Powerful you're now in there in a circle you're learning from them where did you go from there yeah um well the first thing that I would do is you if you look back at my resume I think I stayed at most jobs for like a year and a half two years Max until I was at one called First Trust where I was there for five years because I had ownership uh in the business and uh I felt like I had skin in the game I had control of my outcome but before that and I really only stayed in jobs about a year and a half the second that they told me I couldn't progress anymore or I couldn't have an option to make more money I left and so in my opinion the Young Generation does have it right that you should not stay at a job for 20 years unless that job continues to allow you to earn more and to learn more so the second I wasn't earning more and the second I didn't feel like I could learn more exponentially I left so that's what I think they should do and you basically are you're kind of monkey barring both how much you earn and what you can learn to your next position and I think that people too many people start doing entrepreneurship too early uh in my opinion because you can learn on somebody else's dime as opposed to going out and doing the brutal awful thing that could put you 10 years behind because you lose all your money and you don't actually have enough knowledge to do the job right go and work for a bunch of entrepreneurs for five or seven years and then once you've been sure that you really want to be in the game and be an entrepreneur then go do it but that's what I would do I would Leap Frog to positions of higher power and then eventually I might become an entrepreneur and in finance they have a really cool thing that I think more companies should do and that if you leave your company you should try and we should play it with you so when I left First Trust the first person who wanted to give me a check was my CEO so I was like I'm going to go do something else I'm going to build something else and he he wanted me out of the firm he was like I don't want you running the business how you're running it now you need do it
my way not your way but we left ambly and he said I want to be your first investment like when you go looking for investors I want to be it and I think that is what employees should strive for try to get your boss to give you your first capital and if you're a great employee they're going to be happy too in order to Leap Frog you're gonna have to do a lot of interviews so I just wanted to pause there and and ask you know when you're interviewing people what are the red flags um and if I was interviewing to join Cody Sanchez's business this Empire what's the best things that I could say and do and what's the best behavior that I could exhibit in that moment yeah um people will give you things when they think you know them more than they know you and so what do I mean by that I mean nobody I mean our favorite word is our our name right for every single one of us and we all like to talk about ourselves more than we like to ask questions it's just kind of true for most humans so if we know that to be true what do you want to do in an interview you want to go in and say Here's all the things I think I know about your company I'm not sure because I'm I'm not you I'm on the outside but this is what I think I know about it really impressed by this I think this is great over here I'm curious about this can you tell me why you guys made this decision the interview should be showing the interviewer that you know almost everything that there is to know about their company and it should be done with a lot of humility like I think that even if you're certain that I think is important and the second that happens are ego gets to us and I go H this this guy's pretty smart you're right that was a good move that we did over there and so that's what I think a lot of people don't do too many people do shotgun rounds which is really wide going after a ton of different jobs as opposed to sniper shots go after the three positions you want aggressively knowing everything about that company and that boss you're much more likely to get it than just to imply on indeed is there anything else that is an immediate turnoff you in an interview like an immediate red flag if someone says something or does something oh yeah
there's so many immediate not going to hire you if you talk badly about your last boss because the way you treated your last person is probably going to be the way you treat me immediately not going to hire you second immediate not going to hire you is if you talk about all the reasons why something didn't work and it's not your fault so if you're victim mentality at all well this didn't work because of this this didn't work because of this third in the interview is if you at all start talking about um this one's a little inappropriate but if you come into my companies and you say uh talk to me about work life balance I'm not the place for you our companies are hardcore there's not a lot of work life balance we work hard so I'm not going to hire you if you talk about how much time off are you you know texting on the weekends the answer is yes the second uh point to that is I always make the job seem worse than it is and so and a lot of people who hire try to sell the person this is why it's so great you should come here my interview usually go goes like this hey I want to ask you a bunch of questions about your background then I going to tell you all the things that are really tough about this job so you get the honest truth about it one way or the other and then I'll wrap up with you with you asking any questions you want does that sound good they go yep I kind of pepper them with questions about them they go here's all the things that suck about this job here's all the things that are hard here's all the reasons why it hasn't worked to date any questions on that and the reason why is because I don't want anybody coming into my company and going God I thought it was going to be better than this I want them coming in and going oh okay this actually is a miserable and at some point from you know you leap frog from one place to another and eventually you have enough I guess intelligence to to start thinking about becoming an owner at some point how do I make that transition from being a team member or an employee to becoming an owner if I only have a couple of thousand dollars let's say I mean can I at that point or do I need to become rich to become an owner that's a good question first I think becoming an inside of a business is totally possible
and so you should ask your boss this question which is in this business if I am one of your top performers consistently and make myself materially important to the business can I get some ownership in either this business or anything else that we do and I am willing to earn it or invest in it to do that and so for instance at my companies if you're one of the top performers you can invest alongside me in some of our other companies that's a finance model that I stole so in private Equity the reason why people in private Equity are so rich is because all the the managers of the company have an opportunity to invest in the best deals so they can put some money in and there's allowances for people who aren't accredited investors but are employees to actually invest even though they're not accredited in the US which is a really unfair advantage and so I would ask your your employer that question then the second thing that I would do is I would would try to see if you can earn still so you can W to earn you can make as much money as humanly possible from your salary and then take the money from your salary and invest in other side deals and I would do that before I ever jumped into my own business overall the problem I think that came straight to mind when I think about that is how when you start investing in side deals you're you're going to make a lot of mistakes and you're going to lose a lot of money because seed investing is tough anyway but especially if you have poor deal flow are you're not getting a lot of deals it's just your mate Kevin who has this idea for an app Kevin and he asked for 25k yeah so you know I say this because I had a a fairly famous actor come up to me the other day who's very young in his career made a lot of money and he said Steve I don't know what to do with my money Etc I don't know where to invest it and he goes my mate has this app idea and I oh God you know but he that's that's the only deal he has on his plate so he's giving his friend 25 or 50k for an app idea so um is that smart to do or yeah that's a great question no I think until you're rich and let's define rich as until you're a millionaire I would do zero startup investing I mean zero because it's a 90% failure rate you only invest in startups when you want to get pretty rich because
you can burn some capital in order to have a few home runs so instead I might go to something like we're an investor in this company so full disclosure but there's a company called percent where they allow you to invest in bond deals that cash flow for small businesses you could also do Equity deals in businesses that cash cash flow um so I would stay away from anything that isn't already profitable that doesn't already make money and I think once you have your first million you can play that game but until then you only want to do deals where you're cash flowing and so that's where I would start you could start with something like percent you could also start by talking to you know your employer like I was talking about and say hey in this business that we have now how could I earn some equity and the answer might be you can't like I don't give equity and contrarian thinking my media company because I want to own my name forever I don't ever think I'm going to sell this thing but if we have cash flowing and laundromats and car washes yeah you guys can invest in that if you're seen as a marquee member of the team so maybe find companies where that's allowed too just on that point just curious this is kind of a bit of a tangent but if I'm a team member of yours and because you said if you're a marquee member of the team so so what if I come to you and I say Cody can I get a piece of that laundry mat yeah you turn to me and go no you're not a marquee member of this team mhm oh yeah for sure what what you'd say to me yeah I I would yeah I would say at this point people who are allowed to have equity in the company are people that I think we are going to travel through time together that means years or DEC you didn't think I'm going to travel in time with you I'm not sure yet I don't know you well enough yet you've been here for a year you know you run our social media accounts you've hit goals but you haven't absolutely blown them out of the park yet you know do you think that if you left the company right now we would be unable to function without you and the answer is usually like no probably not okay so at this point Point you're not a partner in the business yet you're still at employee status but if you keep taking on more responsibility and you keep beating goals overall and you show
me that the business is better and would lose steam without you then absolutely you can invest but I learned this from Jim Bowen at First Trust he did this beautifully you had to pay into the partnership to become a partner you and that kind of sucked because you also have to pay taxes on partnership and um so not only do you not get money right away but you have to spend money every year because your partnership value goes up and you have to pay taxes on it but Jim made this big this big feeling at the company about the chance when he offers somebody partnership it was like a celebration and that is I think what we want to do in our companies same thing Warren Buffett does you know he allows his employees to have equity in his companies but only those that he thinks he's going to travel through time with and Warren Buffett has had the same 7 employees I think for like 20 years it's you can go look at their Christmas cards and nobody changes year after year after year can I get rich if I just have a salary do you think yeah you can you can't get on the Forbes 100 list if you just have a salary but if you want to make a couple million dollars 100% I mean Bruce Brucey Bruce back at Goldman Sachs bought an ambassadorship and he was only ever a salaried employee got bonus too of course climbed the corporate ladder and is probably worth 100 million plus now so why do I need to buy a boring business you don't you don't need to the problem is what if Bruce gets fired what if your job doesn't exist what if you're an attorney now and you make great wages or hours but AI does take your jobs what's your backup plan so my backup plan might just be I don't know I own some airbnbs and I rent them out or something could do that too Airbnb is pretty volatile market we've seen that now and I think I like I don't like Risk and so I think if you want to get rich how do you get rich you try to not lose money over time and you try to have enough bets where you can have an outsized return at some point so you could just own airbnbs you could just do real estate I don't really care how people do it I don't think everybody should own a laundromat or a car wash but I do think you should have a backup plan so one day when you want to retire too you got some extra income coming in
so if I've got tens of thousands of dollars or pounds yeah um do you think what what do you think what would you do with it I was playing this game yesterday there's three business I really like right now I really like uh Senior Care Centers Senior Care Centers okay which is interesting because you'd go Cody I said tens of thousands not hundreds of thousands but senior care centers are interesting because there's all these government grants and allowances for the fact that we do not have enough of them in the US and you can turn a house with the right licensing and Zoning into a senior care center and so I won't get too technical on it but demographics show we have a huge aging population we need more areas to take care of them and you can start small by having an independent living house that has a rotating nurse you make 3 to 5x the rent on that as you do a regular midterm or long-term rental so I like the demographics of that one plus it's not super Capital intensive because you could rent the house out from somebody else and then just layer this Assisted Living Center on top of it um we had we had to put my grandparents in in one of these uh at one point because they needed 247 care did you buy no but I should have should have um I think my my f their families are already like crazy I could only imagine if I said the thing is I'd like to cash flow on this be like Cody get out of here I also really like um I like businesses today that are service-based uh but don't require a ton of upfront Capital so for instance window cleaning businesses I just bought one of these it's called pinks with this company called resi Brands but I love it because I did it we have a YouTube video that's going to come out and I was like am I full of [ __ ] let's try this see if I could actually do it so you need to make $384 a day in order to have a business that does $100,000 a year if you only work five days a week so I was like can we make $384 pre-selling window cleaning services to somebody uh in order to start this business and we tried it and we did it and so um so I might start like a window cleaning business a pressure washing business uh a painting business uh you could also buy one of
those those are Trade Services businesses and then the third type of business that I always talk about are what I call gateway drug businesses or semi um semi-autonomous businesses like laundromats or car washes the problem with those are they're slightly more expensive I just want to take a PO here and just sort of get perspective on what you're talking about for someone that has no understanding of business so my name is Nigel and I am 37 I've never ran a business before I don't know anything about businesses or investing or anything like that what are what is it you're telling me to do and so and Nigel wants to make more money Nigel wants to make more money he wants to be an owner he wants to be a millionaire in in 10 years time and Nigel's willing to work hard he's willing to work the hardest he just doesn't really know what to do because there's so many options and so many conflicting things he gets he's hearing all these words resi Brands he's hearing like window cleaning power he's like what what's she doing with a power washer so if I was Nigel here's the question I would be asking myself I would be saying one do I want to keep my job that I have currently or do I want to not keep my job that's really important because it's like am I going to go work on something 24/7 or not I'm not making enough money to completely walk away from my job yet okay perfect so that me little bit of savings yeah you want a little side hustle that you think could be your full-time hustle right so in that case what I would start doing is asking myself we have something called your unfair Advantage Vin diagram and what your unfair Advantage vent diagram is is your skill set so what is an Angel Good at and that that's as simple as like maybe Nigel's in marketing so he's actually pretty good at Mar marketing maybe Nigel drives a a you know an Uber or a car service so he's really good at working super long hours he's just got the Workhorse in him then uh I add my network who does Nigel know that could help him so that might be like Nigel's brother is actually a plumber he works inside of a plumbing business so if Nigel figured out how to buy a business he could partner with his plumber brother-in-law or whatever and
they could do it together and then finally it's like what gets you excited and by what gets you excited I don't mean an industry I mean Nigel loves sales Nigel loves it he wants to sell people stuff okay and the reason I talk about this vend diagram like this is it's a little bit more complex than saying you should go buy a franchise you should go buy a window cleaning business or start those is because I think the biggest reason why people struggle with what to do next is they don't actually know themselves and so if I was Nigel I would say to you find what your vend diagram is of the things that you think you're good at your network is good at that you could actually go either start or buy a business on because the fastest path to wealth is having some type of ownership so I would start there before I knew what I know now about business if ID heard you say when I was 18 years old just go buy a business I'd go Cody listen I've got $700 left for my call center job a month yeah like how can I buy a business that's making millions or hundreds of thousands I'm going to have to wait till I'm rich Yeah well yeah you can't buy it with your 700 extra bucks but you could buy it with your sweat and your time so there's three ways to buy a business you can either use cash you can use expertise or you can use time or what I call Sweat Equity so think about it right now I buy a bunch of businesses I have a ton of cash you know what I don't have a lot of operators I don't have a lot of people who can go actually run the business that I want them to run but if had a young guy who was super hungry and I could give him $100,000 to go operate the business that I was going to go run I would probably do that and people do that every day in our community and so for this young gun you're not going to go buy the business outright yourself with your own Capital you're going to say I'm working 12 hours in a call center right now I am Relentless if you pair me with somebody that knows how to run a plumbing company and I just have to learn and do a bunch of the [ __ ] to start the company and grow the company or continue the company would you partner with me and they're not going to be able to partner with a Steven or a Cody probably at FR at first but they might be able to partner with you know somebody uh somebody's dad that
they know and so like for instance we had a young guy in our group I'll change his names to Adam since I don't know if if I'm allowed to talk about it or not but let's say so Adam was 19 years old Adam worked inside of a marketing company and he had never run a business before didn't have a lot of cash Adam went to the senior partner of his marketing company that he worked for and said like we have this vendor over here that we do some stuff with they do all of our graphic design work uh they're really good the guy's kind of done with running this business like I don't think he wants to keep doing it I was talking to him about the other day what if we bought this business and I ran it like all integrate it for us all bring it into this company and I think we can buy it with just a percentage of future profits we bring in which is called seller financing and the marketing head was like if you think you can get that deal done yeah yeah sure and the guy was like okay Adam says well if I do that can I have part of the company for bringing it over and he said well yeah yeah I mean I you I don't have to put in capital to the deal I have to put in a very small amount of capital you're going to run it and we basically have like a risk-free trade because we just have to pay them a percentage of future revenue or future profit sure and so now Adam owns a business that he's about to sell because he basically partnered with his his owner and so I mean you could even think about that with your business today if you're if you're a young person working with step and you're like Hey Stephen we're in this studio right now I saw like a sign out front that says that they're actually they want to sell this studio space I bet we could rent out this whole thing and uh we could probably cash flow and make this a profit Center instead of a loss center for us if I could like a negotiate a deal that was basically a seller financed real estate deal for us would we would you want to do something like that I could help us run the the you know rental of it now you might say no to that first deal but you're probably going to look different at that employee 100% And also I just want to explain what seller financing is for someone that doesn't know seller financing is how 60% of all businesses get sold when
they're small businesses so it's very normal seller financing just means this that the seller uses a a percentage of future profits to let somebody else buy the business and um instead of you having a loan or a mortgage for a house they're basically saying hey my business right now makes $100,000 a year profit I want to sell it to you for $300,000 um you go sounds good I don't have $300,000 and they go okay well why don't I sell it to you for $300,000 over five years and you pay me each year from that $100,000 profit that we have could we do a deal that way you might be like yeah we could do that they've just got to believe that you're going to be able to grow the business yeah or not royally [ __ ] it up yeah 100% which is you know selling anything is a trust trade right so these days we have to do less trust when we sell something because we have immediate trust in like a credit card or money this is almost going back to bartering days where it's like I'm going to sell you this with the idea that you're going to give me that it's a harder trade but it's totally doable it's funny because at the heart of all of your messages Cody is this sort of deep op optimism and belief that one can just kind of bend the world and I say this because you know whenever we're talking about this hypothetical young person everything is kind of just yeah just go ask this person to do this and but and I was just as you saying that I was thinking I resonate with that because I was that 18 year-old kid that was just sending off the emails and asking people to help me and whatever else but I don't think the vast majority of people have a deep internal belief that they can kind of just mold the world yeah it's so true you know what I mean just like bend it in this direction they think it is how it is and you you a role within it not that you can just like yeah just go to a guy and knock on his door and offer him this and you're actually so right what I mean yeah it's true it's a it's a bias that I think you and me have because we've been exposed to the fact that you can't actually just bend the world around yeah you just got to watch one person do it and then you go oh I'm a wizard too you know we're all wizards um is this your banister effect idea that I heard you talk about
oh yeah that's right so well there's two things I want to talk about one is you've heard of of Steve Jobs um reality Distortion field leely yeah so Steve Jobs was known for having this energy that basically made other people around him believe that um they could change the world that they were Unstoppable and so he would talk people would talk afterwards after he died about how he'd come into their office and he'd be like we're going to ship this Pro product in 24 hours I know we were going to do it in 3 weeks but we're going to do it in 24 hours he would get them all riled up and then they would ship it in 24 hours and after the 24 hours were done they would kind of be like you know coming out from a blackout like what just happened how did he talk me into that that's his reality Distortion field which I think is fascinating because we all actually have that ability his was really strong but for nerds Star Wars nerds like I am out there it's it's like the force you know it's if you actually believe that you are capable of something it's weird what you can accomplish amen I think so amen yeah you know um so I like to you know if if you want to get a reality Distortion field reading the biographies of billionaires is really powerful I'd rather read 10 uh billionaires biographies than 200 self-help books because they've actually done it and so uh I think it's who's the guy that wrote Steve Jobs book is it abramof Walter Ison Walter Isaacson yeah Incredible Book to even listen to to see that reality Distortion field Elon Musk is the same I mean I I spoke to Walter and he he told me that Elon has this just in obsessive AB to just assume that everything he's being told is basically not true I.E if someone says something takes eight 8 months or something he he seems to just reject that idea on site and he immediately asks about the core components of the challenge so he'll immediately go right down to the roots of the problem Y and from there he'll figure out that in fact it can get done in eight days and I and I just don't think people understand the advantage of saving that amount of time on on big on any challenge you have in your life on figuring out a way to make it happen faster because one of the great
currencies of all of our Lives is just the time that we have and some people are like some people will take three to four years to start a business that with your information and that your understanding and your bias would probably take you 90 days yeah that's a three like a three year emth saving on life just because you have this sort of urgent bias you have this bias towards believing that all these deadlines are actually just um I don't know a [ __ ] yeah I mean one of my favorite mentors told me a line that changed my life which was um it was Bill Perkins I asked him why he's so successful in so many aspects of his life damn near a billionaire and uh and he said the only reason that I am successful is I'm faster than everybody else by the time they have thought about an idea taken it to a meeting and started to move I have already made three mistakes and found a faster way and so his bias on speed is fascinating if you ever hang out with guy it's wild you know I'll be like can we schedule a meeting he's like I'm calling you right now um and so he just moves quicker so in our companies we implemented something called the 24-hour rule which was this idea that if we want to win we have to have a bias towards action we have to decrease our time between thinking about a thing and doing the thing and so most people say well I'll get back to you on that next week right get back to you on that next week hate that line that is where dreams and money goes to die instead I say can you get it to me tomorrow if all we do different than our competitors is they take a week to do things and we get it done in a day I don't have to be richer smarter or better I'm just faster and it drives my team crazy many times but I'm not smarter I'm really not I'm just very fast at a few things and I ignore a [ __ ] ton of stuff that I don't think is going to move us forward you're you're the same I've seen it with your team you know we've gone back and forth with your team and then you'll be like let's just do this one thing right now instead I'm like oh yeah okay I sense MH I think speed is the consistency it's Chris and I were just talking about this I got annoyed the other day because I was um you know what happens is people overthink things and in this day and age
it happens more and more they they think about the thing and they confuse thinking with work and more often than not thinking is not working and this is where people will yell at me on the internet and go well if I just don't think about anything and I move really fast I could move fast in the wrong direction yeah you could but just iterate move fast and iterate MH and that's what most people don't do and so I'll tell my team all the time you're thinking about this way too much make a decision in 30 seconds what's the decision I'll tell you if I like it yes or no I like the decision move forward and so ask yourself that in life it's like Mel Robins 1 2 3 4 5 get out of bed yeah mine is 30 seconds to decision I was it reminds me of a I think it was an sas former SAS soldier that I was speaking to and he said his friend was going through a lot of problems in his life going through a divorce etc etc and he asked he called him and asked him for advice he said you're an sas you know Soldier what should I do and he said when you're in the middle of the woods and you're feeling lost start walking yeah and it's a nice metaphor for life which is you you could you you'll die of starvation just stood there overthinking about your problems lost in the middle of the woods but if you start walking you'll gain some information you'll gain you'll gain your bearings and I think especially in my earlier career I was certainly a victim of like procrastinating myself into a hole with with a with a big business problem but even this morning I had something this morning my team in the UK was speaking to me about a quite quite a critical business decision that I had to make and it's now in my old age that I realized uh I realized I almost said like a flash I like an older version of me was would would spend three months trying to get this decision right but a more mature version of me knows that there is no perfect outcome there's pain on all sides of this decision so I have to write this long ass like essay memo this morning and sent it into a person in my one of my offices in in in Europe and it's so crazy that they responded this person responded within because I was so like I
was so concerned about what they might say and how it might and they responded within 4 and a half minutes and they're like yeah cool got it I actually agree and no need to call me because I I completely understand and I thought [ __ ] hell that could have taken 3 months of us all in a boardroom deliberating how to break this news 100% it's interesting it's funny because the people that are most experienced in business seem to be the most intense and I think this kind of gives the clue as to why yeah you know one thing I've also realized if you want to if you want to get higher level positions one of the other things you can do to get their faster I think is your speed of communication it's not even your speed of action so if you're in an interview don't Bumble [ __ ] your way through the interview think about exactly what you want to say with as few words as possible and be as direct as possible in it and I've realized there's a huge correlation in our Executives we hire between those who are good they speak fast they are clear and they don't waste other people's times you know there are a couple Executives I still have at some of my companies and there are two that I know I have to move on because they're not fast enough and they're not fast enough in their communication I should have seen that UPF front and I think the way that you communicate is often the way you work and it doesn't mean that you have for instance I don't respond to all text messages you know I don't think that every single thing that comes in front of me needs to be handled I probably let 40% of things go unanswered and 20% of things I am on top of it like sauron's eye and Lord of the Rings I'm just watching if if I was to look at your business do you think that your highest performers is there sort of a correlation between how much how much they talk and how much they don't there is a correlation between having no patience for wasted time interesting tell me so for instance one of my guys here Tanner he's like oh man I can't engage with this human because they're always talking to me and I don't really have time to do that and that is what I have found with high performers they do not like when you waste their time and so you know if you think about the
typical office life why do we not like typical office life because people come in it's like water cooler [ __ ] talk nobody really says anything you ask about the kids you don't know the kids' names what happened this weekend you don't really care High performers are not interested in that why because you want to perform you want to talk about interesting things that move you forward and then you want to go live your life you want out of the office I found low-level performers they actually want to waste time during the day because they're not trying to execute they're trying to just show that they are there and there's a big difference between the two and every time I hire a low performer it's because I ignore that point you know which point the urgency the lack of urgency in time yes yes I forget about it in the interview you know and it's really important to pay attention to those types of people in your life who are the people that just are okay wasting your time because what does that mean if they're okay wasting your time they're definitely wasting their time there was a phrase that I read in your work where you use the phrase obsessed not interested oh yeah and I really love that I actually screenshotted it on the way over here today and I sent it to some some of my team members that I talk about this a lot too about this idea of obsession and specifically the team members that are on the Forefront of really hiring people because there is a big correlation between the outcome of someone who is obsessed versus someone who isn't yeah and the obsessed people are just always the best they win you know I was with Carl Rove again who's like not a popular figure but he was chief of the chief of staff Deputy Chief of Staff to George W bush and is like one of they call him the architect because he Architects most of the Republican races in this country and so whether you like it or not I'm I don't really care I don't need to like somebody to learn from them doesn't matter to me and so I I had him on the podcast to hear like what does it mean to like architect the centers of power that's fascinating and um when I was talking to him what stood out to me I'd been in meetings with him multiple times and at his house a few times for for
fundraising events and I would watch him and somebody would ask a question that was like hey why did Bob Sanders and Pennsylvania lose this Senatorial race and his response would be like well we lost it by you know 1,200 votes on the third Friday on like December 4th 2012 and the reason is because we didn't have this segment of the population come out and then he would do that for like five locations across the country and I remember I asked him I was like do you have a photographic memory and he's like absolutely not I only have one about the things I'm obsessed with and I think we all actually have that like you've met friends where like they know every scho score of a football game for Manchester United ever do they have a photographic memory no they're obsessed and so if you can find people who are obsessed with the thing that you're doing it just means they don't work hard they're just like they they think of it as hardly working because they're so intense on it and they can't help themselves well I was thinking of that as well as career advice as you're saying it because if I'm trying to figure out where to place myself to end up in the best place in 10 years from now I should be placing myself against my my my true obsessions and you can't have fake obsessions yeah true you can't have a fake Obsession you can't be obsessed about something you're not because it's like what are you doing at what video are you watching on YouTube at 3:00 a.m. that's keeping you from sleeping is my like sense check of what I'm actually obsessed about that's a great point and presumably that's what's going to take me the furthest in my career or is that would you I think that's right and how do you teach yourself to become obsessed with the aspects of your business or whatever that you need to like for instance I think a lot of people think of obsession like passion and hob you know I'm obsessed with Manchester United and you know that's my that's where my obsession goes well are you obsessed with it you know or could you figure out that you're obsessed with you're obsessed with the way that you feel when you're in an environment that is kinetic like you know you love that feeling of the crazy songs you guys sing at the match so like where else could you be where there's a kinetic
energy like that all the time well maybe actually you like Live Events maybe you like live events in conferences you know maybe you actually just want to have a crazy team almost cult-like environment can you become obsessed with that and then I do think that you can you can catch being obsessed with winning you can catch that because if you get a few little tastes of winning in something it's really easy to go o I want I want a little bit more of that and that's definitely my addiction speaking of addictions gateway drug businesses oh yeah you mentioned the term earlier what what does that mean gateway drug business is a business that is so simple that you can explain it to your grandmother mhm and also you can probably run it even if you've never run a business before and those are things like laundromats car washes I talk about those two in particular because if you can't understand cleaning clothes and if you can't understand cleaning cars probably don't do any business there there's the 1% that just like you know go work for somebody else don't worry about it but most people can understand how those businesses work and why I like simple businesses like that not a lot of employees not a lot of moving Parts not a lot of change is because then you can get a little taste of winning you can get addicted to the game of business and then your next business can be something better than a laundr map better than a car wash but you can learn on a smaller playing field but you're presumably not going to make much money if everybody can do it no you're not going to make much money but I don't think your first deal is never going to be your last deal which is I think important for people to realize in buying businesses in life just like your first job isn't either but but man if you are working on a in a W2 right now let's say and on the side you go buy an Airbnb business or you buy a laundromat or a car wash that are not very intense on the number of people that you have to have run them not that expensive for you to do you're going to learn how to run a p&l you're going to learn how to Market you're going to learn how to make money every single business has these same characteristics and so you learn in this small one and then you sell the business because
that's the beautiful part about a business is you can sell it to somebody else and then you're like oh I may you know I always think about it as in private Equity we say level one to 10 games level one to 10 operators so 10 being the best game you could play 10 being the best operator you could have the best operator in the world Elon Musk with you know probably some SAS companies like he has a rocket ship company a Marketplace he's playing he's a level 10 operator playing a level 10 game but in the beginning you know he he didn't do that he was like trying to figure it out just like the rest of us so you'll start with your one business and then you'll scale up to better and better and better games is there a is there any age group that I should be thinking about buying these boring businesses off oh yeah baby boomers right now are retiring across this country in levels that we have never seen this is a generational wealth creation event really across the world post uh Baby Boom generation which happened after World War II and um and so one thing that's fascinating about the baby boomer generation is they own most of the businesses so more than 50% of uh small businesses are owned by baby MERS they are reaching retirement or already there and they 65% of them do not have a um transition plan so their plan is I'm going to live forever no you're not they need to do something with that business most of them will just shut down the business there's something like 11 million small businesses right now for sale in the US most of those small businesses something like 70% of them will never sell whether because they aren't good enough businesses quote unquote to traditionally sell or because they never find a buyer and this phenomenon is going to happen all over the US here's the problem if we don't buy these businesses they say that there are trillions of dollars in the baby boomer generation that are going to be transferred to the Next Generation we've all heard those numbers the problem is people are thinking bank accounts money being handed down all the money's in business when you are a small business owner 90% of your net worth is wrapped up in your business that's the average so that means 90% of the trillions is in
small businesses and if we don't buy those businesses and take them over that wealth evaporates and what happens then Black Rock and Blackstone go in they buy all those businesses they get richer they own our communities and we don't so you should be targeting people who are 65 plus looking for the next move probably open to seller financing probably have a business that's a little hairy might even be more like a job than a business but you have an opportunity to buy that business or be an apprentice in into the business and take it over and when I'm thinking about which business to buy do I have to reflect on what I'm good at or where where my sort of Leverage is in terms of being able to take that laundry mat and make it 5x in Revenue over the next couple of years is you know are there certain businesses that are right for certain people based on their experience for sure I think um so one yes if you want to play a bigger game if you want to be a top performer if you want to be one of those level 10 operators you should find a business that is uniquely suited for you the problem is I think a lot of people don't know how to do that we have something called a deal Clarity worksheet where we basically take people through where do you want the business to be located what are you good at uniquely you know what uh how much money does the business need to make for you how much money can you put into the business um what type of businesses do you absolutely not want to do you know what seem interesting to you but I think the bigger issue for people is trying to take the first move as opposed to obsess on what industry or sector and think about it in 3 to five year increments it's just like you would a job you get a job you think I'm going to do this thing for two to three years think the same thing with the business and the Only Rule in buying businesses in my opinion is that you never want to do a bad first deal because then you won't do another one so you want to do one where you can decrease your risk to bankruptcy what you mean by that how do I stop myself doing a bad Fest deal yeah the lots of one you should spend more time learning how to do a deal than actually doing the deal this is where I always get nervous talking about this publicly because people like sweet I'm going to go buy laundr matat and talk to
Cody you know she seems like she tells me that everybody should own laundromats I'm like no take a minute you know we we teach at contrarian thinking we teach basically a 90day period where for somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes a day you're learning about how to buy businesses it's like your little 90-day m&a MBA right and I want you to learn how to do a deal first one because you'll be able to negotiate anything you want for the rest of your life you'll speak the language of money which is equity and ownership and two because if you just go buy a business you're not going to know how do I negotiate it correctly what is the valuation of the business how do I determine this guy's not lying to me those it's called due diligence and so um I like people to learn that part and then once you've learned that part you can go out and you start to date just like you would on Tinder or anywhere else let me look at this business let me look at that business I call it the 100 to one so typically you want to kind of kind of like you're on Zillow you're probably going to look at 100 houses on Zillow right kind of like I like this I don't like this you figure out exactly what is important to you and then you filter it down to your your one the one that looks right for you at this moment that you're going to stay in for the next two to three years and where did you find these businesses to buy is there a website yeah there's lots um we have we have one that's coming out that'll be really cool but I don't think it'll be out by the time this podcast is there so basically the problem right now in buying small businesses is there's no good way to find them online there's no Zillow there's no NLS there's something called Biz by sell but it's shitty it's got all this trash on it so we basically are building something that's the opposite of that because the biggest two biggest questions I get are what type of business I should buy where is it where do I find it can you give me the business so we're building something to that regard um but right now you could go to bis byell you could go to bis scout.com that's the one that we own it'll be a waiting page you won't be able to see anything on it yet um you could go to um um e-commerce flippers
you could go to Flippa those are online business sites promoting all your competition I know well the truth of the matter is we're so good at this like there's nowhere better to learn m&a than us which is cool I'm really you know I want to invest in this biscot thing oh actually you should I I can't believe I didn't ask you for that actually are you you raising Investments we we rais a couple million dollars for bis Scout and in it is Shan rad so the founder of Tinder uh Bill Perkins um bology oh CTO coinbase me Andrew Wilkinson uh from Tiny capital and uh three guys called kmen Ventures their former Founders fund and um Uber PayPal guys and so we did a really small round because I think we can run it profitably so I don't want this to be like a uh you know we need to raise $200 million I don't think we need to do that I think with my audience because we'll already have Distribution on lock we basically can funnel all the buyers and sellers to this site and then create a better Mouse trp um so I hired the former had a Marketplace at SeatGeek who took it from 5% uh market share to 40% he's an animal and um and that's my Billion Dollar Bet what's the how do you monetize that I guess you do you take a cut on the deal lots of different ways so we're gonna try to not get too tied to one individual way to monetize but the idea is there's really like three things that suck about finding a business to buy one is if you're the seller you get all these this like all these offes reaching out to you who don't really want to buy your business and they're super distracting like they're not capable they're not able so we're going to create all these mechanisms to screen who's reaching out to you you're going to be able to see do they have funds cleared already what's their linked in you know do they have credit history are the SBA pre-approved like all the stuff that should be common sense doesn't exist we're going to have that screening then we also have uh for buyers we'll have businesses that are seller financing uh open so we'll have a whole screening of businesses where it's like hey you don't have financing well these people are open to seller financing we're also going to have uh we're using AI to basically curate the selection right now there's all these
like fake franchises and stuff on these sites and it would be like if you went to Zillow and they're like you like this house buy this house it doesn't exist but you could build it you'd be very annoyed right and that's what it is in in business buying land right now so we're going to charge for all series of that we'll probably charge Brokers for leads too but if I don't have that right now yeah yeah then you got to go to bis by sell okay and what about just like knocking on my local laundry M door and and well the best way to find deals we have something at bisc out that's called an off-market deal Searcher and so there's two ways to buy deals or buy businesses just like real estate right onm Market would be Zillow or bis Scout off-market would be door knocking right you're going around door knocking people don't do that in real estate really anymore but in small business land I have we teach 12 different strategies but one of the best strategies I think is called your personal p&l review so if you're a business owner this is a no-brainer if you're a business owner right now you should look at all the places that you spend money or you can actually get to the owner so not Amazon right and you're going to look at all your expenses on your credit card statement and figure out are any of my vendors small enough and good enough that I might be able to own part of that business or the whole business and so you know you would just go down the list and go ah we spend all this money with these people why don't I own part of this business business and then if you're an individual you can do the same thing a fun one that we teach people who've never bought businesses before never run anything before I could never buy a business I have no money we teach them the venmo challenge which is basically you open up your venmo or PayPal because that means you're doing TR cash transactions so it's a small business and you look through them all and you're like huh my landscaper my cleaning lady maybe my you know the the farmers market that I just bought some cheese from I'm going to go to all of these people where I could get to the owner and say hey could I buy into part of your business maybe and you know you cleaned my house do you need more customers maybe I could help you get 20
more customers and I could own part of your business if I help you grow it would you be open to that and so we do a venmo challenge with people who've never owned a business because then you get a partial shot at a business is there a bit of a generational opportunity in the sense that the younger Generations are native to social media so they have their own leverage when they're brokering those conversations they can go to their baby boomer and say listen you're running a great laundry map but there's this thing called Tik Tok and I can make you bang on Tik Tok and so if you give me I know 30% 50% 100% of your business we're going to with my unique leverage because I know how to make content on Tik Tok I'm going to send this thing to the Moon Grandpa yeah exactly Grandad yeah that's exactly right I mean I think all you have to do to understand this is understand how much a business makes so in order for you to ask for Equity you got to figure out what it's worth right and there's a very easy way to do that you go online and you go what is the average laundromat in Charleston South Carolina make per year oh it's about $200,000 okay what's the average profit margin of a laundromat 15% okay so I know that this business is probably making something like $30,000 a year because that's a profit off of 200k uh in Charleston so what does that mean well if I could double the profit of the business from 30,000 to 60,000 could I ask for half of the business bu maybe or maybe you ask for 20% to double it and it's a no-brainer offer for them you're already making $30,000 a year I'm not going to touch that $ 30,000 but if I double it can I have 15 20% of the business if I don't double it I get nothing don't worry about it great trade how do you figure out if it's a good product cuz I I've just finished rapping Dragon's Den which is like Shark Tank over here yeah and the single most frequently expressed reason why someone's business hasn't taken off yet when they're pitching to me in Dragon's Den is we just need some marketing help it's so you know and I'm the the dragon that's most know associated with marketing so often that's directed towards me they're thinking that I can come in and just press the button that I have in my
backpack and things going to pop what do you think about that you never have a marketing or leads problem you have a shitty product problem and nobody wants to believe this truth but it's true here's how you know here's how you know if you have a shitty product or if you have a marketing problem do you have 20 to 30% referrals or reviews to your product if you don't you have a bad product and you have a leaky bucket and you are trying to say Stephen please bail me out from my leaky bucket ship with your marketing help but what's what's the truth of the matter is and I see this with our companies and small businesses all the time they're like I have a leads problem I have a leads problem if I could just get more eyeballs my my company would grow no act like your first customer is going to be the only customer you will ever get get them to refer other people to you get them to write reviews where they say nice things about your business and treat the current customers like they are your marketing and sales and I think that is the biggest issue with startups is that they think that they just need more attention because they can't actually see that what's happening is when the attention comes in it's falling out of the Leaky bucket and it's falling out of the Leaky bucket so fix your problem fix your product and you'll fix your sales um so that would be the first thing I would ask them I would say what's your referral rate what's your review rate and then they're going to go like I don't know and you need to find that answer and if they say well actually for every person that we that buys one like what would be a perfect example remember that like squeegee face uh product Mr Clean is that what that's called Scrub Daddy Scrub Daddy there we go okay that's like a Dragon's Den but Shark Tank product okay so Scrub Daddy Scrub Daddy was perfect why it's a scaring pad for anybody that doesn't know like a little scaring pad to wash dishes with yeah like a sponge yeah anyway so it was kind of cute looking it looked different and it really worked and so what would happen with Scrub Daddy well Scrub Daddy they would you would buy it and then you would use it it would work great and so you would tell your friends you're like there's
this new thing it never gets dirty it doesn't have any issues with like all that gross stuff that gets on a sponge you can squeeze it all the way out it doesn't scratch in your dishes you should totally buy this thing and so you instantly know you have a good product because other people are sharing it and those are are those are network Loops it's very much like um you know chth poopa right billionaire from one idea one idea and every business has this idea and nobody looks for it and the idea at Facebook was called seven friends in 10 days they could tell with 99% predictive certainty that if you came to Facebook and you interacted with or brought seven friends in 10 days you would stay at Facebook forever so all they had to do was make sure that when they came to your city or School you had density enough where you had seven friends in 10 days and if you got those seven friends on your phone you're like woo I'm going to stay what is that in your business I have about 50 different companies in my portfolio at flight group now some of which I've invested in and some of which I've co-founded or founded myself one thing I've noticed is that most companies don't put enough effort into their hiring process in my mind the first and most critical thing in business is assembling your group of people because the definition of the word company is group of people and throughout all of my companies whenever I'm looking to hire someone my first Port of Call is LinkedIn jobs who I'm happy to say are also a sponsor of this podcast they've helped us Source professionals who we truly can't find anywhere else even those who aren't actively searching for a new job but who might be open to a perfect role in fact over 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites so if you're not looking on LinkedIn you're probably looking in the wrong place so today I'm giving the dire of the CEO Community a free LinkedIn job post head to linkedin.com doac now and let me know how you get on terms and conditions apply I am a big Manchester United fan and I travel all over the world one of the big lifes savers for me as someone that never misses a game ever regardless of where I am in the world is nordvpn because
nordvpn allows me to watch the game in territories and in countries where it's often not available for a variety of different reasons but it's not just about football it's websites movies that I can access and it helps me navigate those geographical blockers and that's why nordvpn are both a sponsor of this podcast but a lifesaver for me and it costs the same as a cup of coffee per month and not just that when I'm accessing Wi-Fi networks around the world it gives me a lot of security which is something that I think we don't think about enough if you want to check out nordvpn for a limited time only head to nordvpn.com doac and you can access our exclusive deal which gives the DI of listeners a huge discount plus four extra months when you sign up to a 2-year Plan and there's no risk with nord's 30-day money back guarantee so give it a try that's nordvpn.com doac or check out the episode description link below what you're speaking to there is this idea of retention so a great product is retentive and if it retains its customer then the customer is going to sit around and evangelize and bring other people with them like a like they're throwing fishing rods into their Network and the example you gave of choth who was one of the early Executives at Facebook is this the same thing if you bring seven people with you you're going to stick around for the party stick around for the party long enough these Network effects build now chth here so that you know and when these Network effects get bigger retention increases and and this is why it's so important to focus on the product right because we're talking about this term LTV lifetime value we're talking about if we make a really good thing people are going to tell their friends they're going to continue to use it and then they're going to Market it for me but most people will focus on just trying to get a Tik Tok video to go viral versus making something truly great elon's an example isn't he of that oh yeah it's much harder to um obsess on making a great product because it's slower you know you're like well I have one person and they're only going to you know re refer three of a person you know I can't grow fast enough with that and
so what do we do we top a funnel top a funnel top a funnel let's talk about it let's talk about it let's talk about it but the problem is you can either spend a bunch of time creating an incredible product once or you can spend the rest of your life marketing and doing sales so it's again it kind of goes back to this idea if you want to win and be successful in life upfront pain always leads to long-term gain and people do not want to hurt upfront so they hurt for the rest of their life I think that's the same thing with products they try and skip a step they skip a step and and and by the way I'm guilty of it too like we have one company right now where our referral rate is based basically zero and we slamming these ad dollars in and all this marketing budget and I I looked at myself the other day and was like Cody you're an idiot you're you're doing the thing that you tell other people not to do which is we have to fix referrals and reviews why because they fix there's three Rs referrals reviews and retention MH if your business doesn't have the three Rs you will spend your life marketing and marketing is actually quite hard and expensive and then you also have people that you don't even realize you think that they're uh they're proponents of your brand you know they pay you every single month for a service or a product but they're actually detractors they just haven't found a better a better product and so that's what often happens to business you're like no no no these people love us no they don't have they referred anybody to you have they left you a positive review that's the only way you know it's super interesting because there's a bit of a paradox in what we're saying here cuz on one hand we were talking about intensity and urg going fast and these kind of people that just kind of you know shortened deadlines and stuff like that but then on the other hand we're saying that you need to go slow and build the thing right because the slow way is the only way in the long term um I was hugely inspired by the story of Tesla and Elon Musk for this very reason because if you look at their stock price there's about I don't know six seven eight maybe 10 years where they're completely flat um they elon's not you know made a significant amount of money from it and
he's just going through absolute pain and then all of a sudden the company just explodes and actually the most inspiring thing for me having been a person who built a business that scaled hundreds of millions of dollars in Revenue but was really built on unsustainable foundations I I know what Elon did in that 10 years when that stock price was completely flat he laid every foundational brick of Tesla perfectly Y and he was doing it basically in silence and it's so tempting in business I think to take shortcuts when you're laying those sort of initial like building a house like you're putting the foundations down but he said you know we're going to completely make a new battery we're going to build the entire supercharging network um so that all of our cars can go to 15,000 charging locations around the country we're going to build a brand new Factory in fact we're going to build every single piece of this car and it's going to take 10 years but but the patience I think is is really the the thing that leads to the perfection in the long term and it's a big thesis that I've been playing with a lot recently because there's a part of my heart that just wants everything to happen quick but as I've gotten older I start to think that um slowing down in big thing in the big things like the the laying the bricks is actually the most important thing this is I'm throwing this at you as just a point to see if that it resonates in any way well I think you're right the thing that I think is the problem is when you're young and starting we're usually you're not as smart as Elon like you would if if you gave a 20s something 10 years to build what Elon has built in silence yeah they wouldn't know what to build they wouldn't know what a strong Foundation looks like so I always optimize for urgency upfront because you have to have all these shots on goals to realize oh whoops wrong goal wrong goal wrong goal wrong goal and then I do think you get to a certain level where then you become Warren Buffett Elon Musk where you know Warren Buffett says once in a lifetime opportunities come around about twice a year and so you basically do nothing else except those two each year the problem is he can recognize that because
he had Decades of shot on goal shot on goal shot so I think it's this it's this balance of yes once you understand what good or great looks like it is your moral imperative to work as fast as possible towards good or great but in the beginning since you don't know just do more faster it's interesting because the thing I was thinking about when I passed the floor to you there was I should have probably said what I'm actually referring to here much of it is actually hiring because you know when I'm starting a new company now I could because we you know we get tens of thousands of applications coming into the inbox I could resource that company with people in two weeks yeah but in fact one of the biggest pain points across all of my businesses is we hire so agonizingly slow yeah same because we know that that's when we talk about laying the fat foundational bricks of a good of a good company it's all about those initial hires yeah it's it's so true I mean every business is a people business before it's a product business before it's a profit business and and um the beautiful part about that is if you don't have a business right now and you're listening to all this you should feel very empowered like exceptional people are in such high demand and the the sky is the limit on what you can make both as your own owner or working for other people until you become your own own owner if you're great and great is largely just I say I'm going to do a thing I do the thing repeat and if the bar is that low um man I think there's way more opportunity than anybody realizes which maybe gets back to what you said before which is this ability to bend the world that I think both you and I see is really because we see how easy it is it's like like have you ever seen um have you seen like how um people will take one of those iron rods you know really strong iron rod and you heat it up and it just like [ __ ] it just bends immed but if you were going to try to brute force it it never would but once you see them heated up and then bend easy you go oh well I'm never going to try to brute force that again because look how easy that is if you just heat it up M and I think that's part of the hack of life is
just figuring out heat and time and what those two ingredients are that's that's really I always think about the bloody like um what do you call it that big hole in the ground you have it the Grand Canyon yeah you always think about the big it's just such a nice anal cuz I'm like how did that get there well actually it was just water trickling through there for a long period of time you didn't need to brute force it it wasn't like a meteor or anoid hit the earth it was just consistency of a very gentle force over a long period of time and that's really how all rivers and how Earth is literally carved um it's interesting because I was also thinking as you were speaking about this idea that at all times throughout your 20s and your 30s you are actually without knowing it interviewing and being interviewed by your former your future potential business partners oh yeah you I mean because I was 18 years old and I went to San FR no I was 19 19 years old when I went to San Francisco yeah and funnily enough I just sent a cold email to a billionaire I said I just saw you bought a company it was a funny email that said here are five reasons why girls call me back in bars and here's five reasons why they don't it was basically my CV better in that format I love it and he called me within 24 hours when I was in the UK I was like hey love this um I'm going to set you a challenge how would you get us to 10 million users I thought fine made a deck sent it to this is how I'd get this new company you've bought to 10 million users he goes cool I'm gonna give you $10,000 a month I was in the UK just sat in my parents house I'm gonna give you $10,000 a month I'm gonna fly you out to San Francisco and you're going to help us build this company and while I was there I was around some really really smart people one of those very smart people 10 years later when I had a new idea he was the first person I hit up through his Instagram DM through his Twitter DMS hadn't spoke to him for 10 years turns out he had bought a $50 billion company that had ipoed and he was the CTO and I said hey there's this new thing called the blockchain I'm really interested in it do you want to build a company with me in it and he goes yeah cool and I and I just I just reflected on the fact
that throughout my 20s there are so many people that I met that in my 30s I then leveraged so what I was actually doing is I was being interviewed by them without knowing it you know what I mean because a thousand per actually I won't say his name but uh we have a mutual friend that knew you from back in the day then and what is fascinating to me is watching the two of you cuz you're slightly younger than him I believe and um and he's been successful but your success is like way more and so when I was looking at the two of you and thinking what was the difference between the two he's also smart also driven um in the same ecosystem had the same network what was the difference between 20-year-old Steven and 20-year-old X and I think part of the difference is grit and time and consistency you chose a few things you stuck with them for quite a while as you have with this podast I mean how many podcast episodes have you done now I have to look at Che 400 3 yeah the average podcast is like what 11 episodes or something like that and then they then they cancel yeah and then you also chose bigger games like bigger and bigger and bigger as you scaled and this other guy that I know that I think really highly of too just like didn't want to work that hard for that long on that big of things and so I think if you can just have time consistency grit and then try to solve bigger problems because they pay better you know you're probably worth 100x of that guy net worth wise because of those four things so interesting you know one of the things I've I've thought a lot about over the last couple of years is that I basically have one skill set like I have a very narrow skill set and I essentially applied it to different markets in my life and I think we all kind of need to start thinking through this lens let me make this make really specific sense so my skill set at the start of my career my main skill set was in social media at the very start of my career now what can you do with that skill set you can sell dresses for boohoo.com which I did and the impact of me doing that for boohoo.com their sales increasing is X right not a huge amount but also there's a lot of people that have that skill set of social media so that drives down my potential to charge
High numbers when I was 26 or 27 years old I moved that same skill set to of social media same skill set I moved it to a different Market which was companies before their IPO now if a com and this was during that sort of Reddit um Wall Street bets moment where like Reddit took down a a massive hedge fund in America and they pumped GameStop I thought to myself I have this skill set um companies before their IPO now really care about retail investors the average person liking their stock so if I go and use that same social media Skillet that I used to sell fizzy drinks and um dresses with companies that are in the biotech industry they know nothing about social media they think it's witchcraft right before they IPO what would my returns look like and honestly the same skill set just move to a different industry where it's scarce and the person paying me stands to make potentially one to two billion if their IPO is successful delivers a thousand times the value of selling the dresses for boohoo.com and I just think people often they're thinking I need a promotion I need whatever much of the time I'm like just move your skill set to a better Market where it's scarce the person that's paying you stands to make more I don't you know I mean it's like a different way to think about career yeah and it's it's I think it's so brilliant because it's a little bit asymmetric it's like hard to put your fingers around it what people like what people like that will never make you rich is this here's steps one through four to get into real estate and if you do this now you too will be a millionaire L you're never going to get rich that way the way that you get rich is actually putting together multiple ideas that don't seem like go together and that cross-pollination is what gives you outsized returns you're like social media biotech IPO what and so when you have that weird cross-pollination that's where massive growth happens and I think you know it was the same with me I was like I remember with my CEO at the time when I I wanted I I was making a lot of money let's say I was making seven figures a year working for somebody else I was actually happy I would have stayed there for probably ever at this uh investment firm but I saw the future of social
media and newsletters in particular I was like why am I going why am I on the road every single day doing steak dinners trying to sell pensions and Sovereign wealth funds or investment vehicles I could be doing this all with the internet like we don't need to be meeting in person anywhere to the degree that we are and so I went and told the CEO of my company that and he was basically like if you want to row left and I want to roll right you need a new boat and I was like okay fine so I couldn't convince him and so he gave me his Blessing and said like go do it somewhere else cuz we're not doing it here and I was really mad at the time I had built up a billion dollar business for this guy in Latin America where a business didn't exist like three years before four years before and um and so I was mad I'm like I am your best International you know sales force I was total victim mindset about it I was like it's cuz I'm a woman you know all these dudes they don't get it I was I was mad so I left and he did me a huge favor by pushing me out actually because then I went and said you know what newsletters plus private Equity plus social media plus laundromats and car washes I don't know but I think and together they now are responsible for us having a business that has 26 businesses in it businesses that do tens of millions of dollars in Revenue some of the Venture ones do hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and we don't even have to have third party investors it's a lot of our own money because we've bought profitable businesses using using totally unfair deals because of our social media presence and so you've looked back in Connect dots there right so someone that's you know at the start yeah how do they get enough dots to connect like what's the strategy to even be able to look back someday and connect these interesting to think about if I wanted right now to figure out how could I find my cross-pollination of ideas I'd need three things I need a whiteboard I need a whiteboard pen and I need a smart buddy okay and all you got I can get you a whiteboard pen yeah exactly well all I would do is I would put it up on the wall okay and I would try to find my smartest most brainstorm open-minded friend and I would write down everything I think I'm
good at right to do it here yeah I mean so so let's say it's for you right now let me screen record so that I can see what you've done and put it on the screen for everyone at home to watch what a fun idea and what was the question again what are we talking so the question is if right now you want to find where is your unfair bet that can make you your Millions with your skill set that nobody else in the world can replicate except you here's what I need would need a whiteboard I would need a pen which I would do if I was you and I would need a smart friend perfect like so I've got Stephen here and at the top of the right whiteboard I would write on this side skills oh my God you're going to see my handwriting like a doctor and on this side I would write money and I would start writing down all the things that we're brilliant at so let's pretend it's it's Stephen here and we'll pretend like you don't have all the things that you have but your core skill set you could put your hand on the screen by the way it makes me nervous am I am I doing this like a boomer I am the hand a little bit it's giving doctor so oh yeah look at that okay so embarrassing okay so social media right you're incredible at social media what else are you probably good at well you know a lot of people you've got a network what else well it's not just social media though it's actually a few particular things it's like YouTube and I think you're one of the best in the world at short form video right you're also one of the best in the world at like a datadriven social media strategy so you can kind of say up front hey we think this is going to go viral because the data says this thing over here what else is Sten good at he's charismatic he can probably get people to agree to things just by talking to them you know what what else uh British accent you know so probably you want more in-person interaction because uh we've got you know uh a very charismatic person what else is Stephen really good at well he asks a lot of questions this is my hinge profile by the way I'm totally just going to copy and paste yeah goodlook funny yeah exactly so so we'll just say these there's a lot more deal flow but let's just pretend that all you're good at is social media you're good at getting to people which
is a network you don't even have to know rich people just can you get to them you're charismatic you're data driven okay great we've got all these skills now how could we apply these skills to get the most money humanly possible and I would do exactly what you said so how do you figure out most money humanly possible it's two things it's the how would I do this it's the size of the problem it is the value of the solution interesting okay and so if I'm thinking about this for you if I go and I give your social media skills yeah to a trade or service business I'm not going to make that much money how do I know I'm not going to make that much money because I'm going to go look up online what is the average revenue of this business and the average average profit margin yeah now you probably didn't even think this way when you were thinking about it but you guys look online right now what's the average profit margin of a biotech company in average revenue let me tell you what it is it's going to be like 50 to 80% and it's going to be hundreds of millions that you could potentially get Trade Services business a lot less yeah and so that's where I would start skills plus money really equals to three things which is like sector size of the business and profitability of the business and I would play this game and what that might look like is you go okay I know that I have some friends in let's go to the places that we know have the most cash in Silicon Valley in on Wall Street if they could make a lot more money if they had a lot more attention because what I'm selling as attention I want to get to the people who can make the most money with the most attention and that means that I'm not going to go to Walmart only has 6% margins I'm going to go to the highest person that I could get to and it'd be fun if anybody's listening to this right now try it like tag Stephen and I in your stories on Instagram of your little charts and let's see and I'll give feedback anybody that tags me in it if you're like here's the here's what I think my skill is here's what I think the industry is I'll tell you one way or another and it can be fun you can see other people's examples live so people for people that
are only listening on audio and then that can't see what the um this uh chicken scratch chicken scratch you've just drawn on the iPad um on one hand you have you list your skills and then on the second side you're listing the ways you believe you could make the most money from those skills based on the size of the problem you'd be solving with them and the value of the solution so for example let me let me try and play this game with you then so okay so I am a writer so I'm going to do my skills on the left hand I'm a writer and on write I'm going to write money yep I'm a writer I'm really good at writing stuff um that's it and I kind of get I kind of get the internet so I kind of understand LinkedIn blogs and stuff like that but that's it I'm a writer let's go with what would be the worst what would be the worst thing you could do if you're a writer to make no money to make no money cuz sometimes it's easier to do the negative okay working for a local newspaper local I was thinking like fantasy books like you could write like fiction you know really hard to make money in you could write for a local newspaper that's an even worse idea so I like that so now you've got your your bottom tier right which is like 14 bucks an hour or now if you look about you could Google this what is the highest paying jobs for writers I bet the thing you'd find on top copywriter why I got a better one oh what's a the better one do you know why I know this because when I was in working in biotech we couldn't hire one which is a medical writer oh so smart hypers specialized honestly we so a typical copywriter when I was working in my social media company we might pay entry level £25,000 which is probably about $35,000 okay a medical writer someone that can write about the cocin compound in my psychedelics business would get paid $150,000 or more we just couldn't find some we found loads of people that could write yeah but nobody that had within their skill stack even though it's quite easy to teach the ability to write using medical words slightly medical words it doesn't mean you need a medical degree you could probably learn how to write become a medical writer in a month if
you really committed yourself to it so that's true and same with Finance we go to the things we know so you know biotex you know there's a there I know finance and I know that again it's one of the highest paying Industries so a financial writer what would that look like it would look like somebody who knows how to write probably an investor update yes right yeah yeah yeah so hugely lucrative and then the other thing you could do is I guess I didn't even think about this before it would be like size of the problem it would be value of the solution and then it would also be structure of your job so like if you're a copywriter I wouldn't take a job for 35k what would I do I would say hey pay me what is the salary you want to offer 35,000 I'll take 10,000 so I can eat because I'm hungry but can I have a percentage of The Upside that I drive above and beyond goal so if I'm going to write copy that converts into Revenue like I'm going to write a funnel for your biotech company or I'm going to write a funnel to get investors for you if right now per month you get $100,000 through that funnel how about you just pay me an extra 10 % of everything I drive above your 100K so I think that's another way you can make more money is getting smarter on Deal structuring MH well that's actually when I moved into biotch how I got paid and when I talked about a th being paid a thousand times more than I would have previously it's because the way I got paid was in options in the IPO brilliant yeah so I got given in that particular company I got given 400,000 shares effectively in the company at a certain price um and so when the company ipoed at 3.2 billion dollars on the NASDAQ in July 20 I don't know 21 or something even though I'd only worked in the company for about 6 months just helping them build out the marketing team I think my like net return was on the equity value at the time was quite close to 10 million so 6 months work 10 million return because I you know and the re really really the reason I did it was because so interested in psychedelics but it just opened my eyes to the fact that any kid with social media skills and that knew how to structure a deal with these people could have walked in there and said give me some stock in this IPO and I'll run on your social media for 6
months you're so right could have changed your life yeah and it's it's something I'm struggling with trying to get people to understand right now is that even if you never buy a business which is what people fixate on I haven't bought a business yet I haven't bought a business yet it's like God you're never going to regret learning how to do deals you're never GNA it's I think that is the most valuable skill set in the world I completely agree and it's so unfair that people don't know about it it's so unfair but it's also your fault if you don't know about it because nobody's gatekeeping this information anymore it used to be gay kept like when I first started off in private Equity I wasn't allowed in the rooms where they were actually doing the deals and the terms and if I wanted to see what the final terms were like I had to kind of you know sweet talk my way into figuring out how they structured it but it's an unknown unknown so before I knew I didn't know that I didn't know yeah that's true yeah that's very true but now I think there's enough people out there talking about it where you're like I mean if you think about whether you like Donald Trump or not what is he really good at deals the art of the deal like it it that's it and that is what I mean Elon Musk how does Tesla actually make money they make money through credits through credits for solar so he was able to survive for those 10 years of building that company because he has some of the best solar tax credits in the world that he negotiated with the government so where does one go then where does a 25-year-old kid listening to this go to learn how to make deals well I have a book coming out yeah called Main Street millionaire yes exciting I know and we have we have stuff we can tell tell them about that later too okay well I'm going to link Main Street millionaire below so everyone can pre-order it I've pre-ordered I think 10 or 20 copies of it maybe a couple more um but that's like 30 bucks and you learn almost everything you need to know about doing a deal to start and that book is only what you need to know I made it on purpose not really long not overly intense it is exactly what you need to know and then if you like learning deal making and you like that book then you
go to contrarian thinking.com and we have courses and free newsletters and a community all about buying businesses um but that's where you should start I think I agree because the way that you break down information is so accessible and it really appreciates the naivity of the person on the other end you have a remarkable way of communicating in a way that's really um yeah inviting versus excluding and a lot of people when they're talking about these subjects they exclude you and they don't even know that they're doing it because they're so smart and they're so Advanced but um I've been lucky enough to take a look at the initial copy of your book the sort of first draft of it and it was exactly what I think 99% of people that are listening to this right now need to it's the Gap that they have in their thinking um so I'd highly recommend everyone go and pre-order I I'm going to link it below really really highly recommend it and if if I'm wrong about that please do send me abuse in my DMs yeah exactly well and I spent three years writing it and that that was always the part I was nervous about is like when I get it to all my smart friends what are they going to think so when I showed it to you and like Andrew Wilkinson all these people who had done deals I was like [ __ ] you know are they going to like it so there's that means a lot basically is what I'm heavily heavily anticipated a lot of people are talking about it so I'm very very excited um one of one thing I did want to talk to you about before I just go to the last question here is Prejudice because I don't think people talk about it enough obviously you and I and really everybody experien Prejudice in business and in life in wealth and everything investing whatever it might be what is your perspective on that when I say Prejudice I mean you're a woman in business I'm a I was a young black guy at one point that had a big afro and was very very poor trying to make it in life what relationship should we have with the Prejudice we face I had a woman ask me the other day um how do I show up as a woman in a male-dominated industry because you've you've done that Cody and I and she said I had I've had struggles with it and my feeling and response on it is this that what do you think the universe gives you when you tell the
universe that I struggle because I am a woman in business it's going to give you struggle what do you think the un would give you if instead you said I have such incredible opportunity because I look different than everybody here and if I am good I am so much more memorable than every Tom Dick and Larry in a blue suit that looks just like everybody else what if the thing that you think is your biggest weakness and the thing that makes you feel excluded and less than is actually your biggest strength and if you could flip your mindset on that how much more money and opportunity would you have and how much more interesting would you be for other people who are wealthy and successful to be around do you want to be around somebody who is labelings as a victim and complaining all the time or do you want to be around somebody who thinks that the world is full of opportunity and it's a hard lesson to learn because the truth of it is business is hard you will be [ __ ] on people will keep you out people will judge you for your skin color and being a woman or a man or not for sure but don't let that into your psyche instead choose the opposite and Watch What Happens so interesting it's so um it's so difficult to say that because you're not denying the reality that prejudice is real no you're giving people the most optimal productive way to move forward in spite of it exactly yeah it's like serves you they do not they don't like it no no people don't want to say that they want to be V some people want to be victims of their Prejudice it's true I think the tide is turning I mean I for the first time ever you know I posted the other week and I was like well we might get a we might get something interesting on here and like for instance I believe that the word I call it latinx because I think it's funny but Latin X is the most ridiculous thing you could ever call a Latino why because it doesn't exist in our language Spanish the word Latins makes no sense to anybody so I think it was made up by a bunch of white people at Berkeley is my joke and that in fact if you went to Latin America and you said you know how does it feel to be a latinx person they would laugh you out of the room they'd have no idea what you're talking about and and I said that on social media and
I thought I was going to get so much hate that I would would like have to not look at it for a while and what happened a bunch of people are like you know what yeah I agree so I actually think that if you want to beat the curve today do not be woke do not be annoying and victimized and woke instead watch what happens when you start being a little based today when you start saying the quiet part out loud and for the first time in like probably since preco um I think the world is changing and I don't think that means you should be a jerk or be divisive and I think we should like protect comedy at all costs especially in dark times but um I do think that that type of person is no longer interesting and if I'm right that means that a lot of young people have to change our perspective because for a long time we' have been able to get away with things like saying because I am a woman because I am a Latino because of this you should give me that and I think the world right now is starting to say I don't [ __ ] care we're all human and that's uninteresting to me so we'll see if I'm right or you can tell me in the YouTube comments if I'm just a a privileged [ __ ] no it's interesting because you said something earlier and I remember thinking most people wouldn't have the guts to say that and it was when you were referring to your working culture at your company where you're saying if you if you talk to me about work life balance in an interview you're not going to get the job yeah even saying that a couple of years ago would have sparked outrage Cody says that if you mentioned work life balance in interview but what you're actually being is honest honest you're being honest and people don't like honest they'd rather you lie didn't signal did some virtue signaling then just be really honest about how you feel yeah that's true and maybe you're toxic but at least you're honest about it do you know what I mean it's it's so true I think the worst thing that you could do is pretend to be something that you're not especially in this age of no trust on the internet all that means is that you're going to get canceled it's like what we saw happen with Ellen right yeah like everybody was like Ellen's the nicest person in the world and Ellen is probably like the rest of us human we're 20% of the time
she's crazy or rude or mean or having a bad day or gets on her high horse cuz she's super successful or gets out of touch and then but what happens because Ellen said that she was nice all the time she was perfect she was whatever when somebody finds that out about you then they cancel you because you were a liar and so instead I think the better thing to do is be like I'm human I'm flawed I'm really intense I'm kind of hard to work for sometimes but I also help make my people make more money than they could anywhere else and if you want to be exceptional and in a group where we pride ourselves on being the most productive people in the world um then there to love it at my company and let's just be honest about it we have a closing tradition where the Las leaves a question for the next the question that's been left for you is what is one business idea you've always wanted to try but never seem to get to what's held you back it's almost like they knew you were coming it is almost like they knew um K that's a good question I'm really good at taking my interests to the finish line um I think when I get to my Tombstone there's not going to be much that I regret at the end of my days because I've tried just about everything that I wanted to um and I feel very privileged to have been able to do that thus far oh I do have one though you know what I've always want to do that maybe at some point I'll get to is what's the most powerful book that's ever lived the Bible arguably right if we just say by total viewers over time and I think the reason why is because it's a story it's like truth and guidance in a story and one thing that I've always wanted to do is write a book that was a story that told people some truths fiction yeah and so I think at some point in my life I'd like to do I suppose a parable would be the word that I'd use I would like to write a book that's a that's a fiction story that's Beau that transcends that lets people escape and like secretly you don't even realize it it's getting into your brain and it's teaching you things and I don't know if that's a business but that is one thing that I have not done yet Cody thank you so much um you're a real real you're a real Beacon of wisdom and inspiration and hope and optimism in a
world that needs it so so much and you're also a wonderful human on and off camera so thank you so much for your um so for just being a wonderful person and doing so much for so many people that I'll never get to say thank you to you but they come up to me all the time in the gym the Chads and they they tell me how much they appreciate you so oh stop it you're going to give me allergies then people are going to not you know I have a black heart and they're going to see the truth that I'm kind of nice you don't have a black heart thank you so much Cody really appreciate it thanks [Music] oh [Music]