BigDeal - #71 It's Boring, But It Will Make Even Beginners More Money

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Codie discusses strategies for entrepreneurs to effectively sell to wealthy clients. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the wealthy consumer's mindset, the value of exclusivity, and the need to create high-value offerings that cater to their desires. She also introduces the 'Rich Desire Pyramid,' outlining the key motivations behind wealthy purchases, including status, convenience, exclusivity, privacy, and scarcity. Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠Click here⁠ to connect with my consulting team. Download our Deal Review Calculator HERE: https://info.contrarianthinking.co/deal-review-calculator Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:27 Understanding the Wealthy: A Business Perspective 02:47 The Rich Desire Pyramid: What Wealthy Customers Want 06:06 Creating Value: Selling to the Rich 09:02 The Importance of Exclusivity and Scarcity 12:01 Engaging with Wealth: Learning from the Rich MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 ⁠Our community⁠ 📰 ⁠Free newsletter⁠ 🏦 ⁠Biz buying course⁠ 🏠 ⁠Resibrands⁠ 💰 ⁠CT Capital⁠ 🏙️ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you understand rich people? This is really, really critical in my mind for service businesses and so underutilized. Nine out of ten small businesses under charge. When was the last time you raised your prices? Sell expensive things to people who can afford them. I'm going to tell you how to make any of these make sense to you so you can apply it to your business in your life right after that. This is a big deal podcast and I'm Cody Sanchez.

Welcome back. Today we're talking to you builders about how to make more money. I call this the sell things for rich people. They pay more. And I know that's true and it's cute. but is it so easy. Having sold clients who are both not so rich and rich, there is a truth to this meme, which I want to read to you. You can see it here. It says, $500 client. I just feel as though with this investment I'm about to make in you that you should understand how our lives are about to change.

And I need results, and you need to bring them and I'm entrusting you with our livelihood and lives. $50,000 client? Money sent, thanks. Anybody who's been in business kind of chuckles at this, except it's true. Now, here's why I understand the $500 client. You have to remember that they need that $500 to do something for them. They actually have a visceral need. That might be what's called last dollar for them. They need the return on that dollar to be so significant that they hold you to a level that is actually irrational.

And so you don't want to just sell things to rich people because you're greedy. You want to sell things to rich people, maybe even because you're not the best to begin with. In order to sell things to people who don't have a lot of money, you have to sell a huge amount of volume to be able to live. Volume is hard to get when you're not a very good operator. So, rich people want you to sell them something. Remember that and use it to your advantage. There are two worlds of entrepreneurship. One world scraps selling cheap products to price-sensitive customers who turn the moment they find a discount.

In the second world, sell fewer, better things for more money. That volume game can work. It's built some of the biggest business empires out there, Walmart, Amazon, McDonald's. Three small issues, though. The game is brutally competitive. It requires you to be airtight in your operations and infrastructure, and even the best eventually move into higher margin products. So a different path. Sell expensive things to people who can afford them. The question you need to ask yourself is, when was the last time you raised your prices? Our guess, well, nine out of ten small businesses under charge. Why? Scary not to. If you start start to realize wealthy customers want to be sold. Their entire business can change. The question,

though, is, what do rich people actually buy? There are five reasons rich people buy. Only five. Every single reason falls into this hierarchy that I call the rich desire pyramid and teach to all of our portfolio companies. Number one, status. Status means make me look important. It's the top of the pyramid. How do you sell it? You position your business as the best, not the cheapest, when they ask, well, can I get a discount? You say, well, you could, but you might regret buying from that guy. Why don't you just pay a pro now as opposed to regret an amateur later? You showcase expertise, exclusivity, and premium service. What are companies that do this really well?

Because I always like to imitate, then I iterate, then I innovate. So you might want to imitate some of the marketing of Hermes, limited run purses that are mostly handmade, although I hear there's some, There's some confusion about that by China right now, but let's stick with the plot, which is one person makes each item from start to finish. It's special, and it's a signal. When you carry a Birken bag, you are saying something. No one who buys a Birken bag is trying to ask for discounts. This is a customer that actually wants to pay more for the alligator extra ridiculous thing on top. Except, is it ridiculous if they want to pay for it? In fact, I think you have to flip your

brain about that. Number two in the pyramid is convenience. makes my life easier. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business,

your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs national series on the Canadian standard of living, productivity and innovation.

Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it. So if you think about rich people, if they have it, infinite amount of money, they can buy almost anything, right, except more time. So if you can do something that allows them to buy back their time, they will pay you for it, potentially up to a complete no cap at the top, which I really like. So how do you sell something like this? Well, you eliminate friction. That would be things like white glove service, subscriptions, concierge treatment, private jets, fast and expensive. For instance, if you go to all major

airlines, but we'll use Delta as an example. Delta has really two classes of tickets, right? They have main cabin and they have first class. So you might think that the really special people go to first class. Well, actually, the really special people go to first class and then they get Delta concierge, which is somewhere between $500 and $1,000 for somebody to get them from the front of the airport, drive them around to the back, let them load up first and privately, and it's for no different experience. No different product is sold there as far as the seat. It is literally just that it increases convenience for them. So that is what you need to think about in your business.

If right now you have a landscaping service, why wouldn't you add a white glove offering to the top? What might white glove mean? It might mean, hey, one of our portfolio companies, we said, what about for new homeowners in really expensive suburban neighborhoods? What if you as their landscaping service said, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner, I know you're new here.

we're happy to give you a landscaping quote and to do your landscaping for you. Also, we have a group of five other of the top tier service providers in your area. So if you need somebody for cleaning, I can make a recommendation. If you need somebody for window washing, roofing, interior design, we have a Rolodex. And I can literally do a white glove introduction for you to all of those people. And what do you do on that? You actually take an affiliate cut on everybody. So this is not as scalable. But remember, because you have big market, margins, and because you create convenience, you can have a very sexy business doing white glove service of existing services. By the way, if you're building a business right now and you're

stuck or you want to break out to the next level, maybe you're not where you want to be today. Believe me, I've been there many, many times. I want you to know, I got you. We help thousands of business owners a year figure out how to scale to the next level. One of my favorite mentor said, every level you have, there's just a higher level and a higher devil. And so if you've been in business for a while and you're doing six, seven or eight figures, there's probably one thing standing in the way of your next level. That's why we host growth and scale workshops four times a year throughout the year in Austin, in Miami, in San Diego, and you may be a fit to come to one of them. If it sounds interesting to you to get help on how to scale your business to the next level,

you can reach out to my team at the link in the show notes. We believe in you builders, but we also believe that it's a lonely road and you can't do it by yourself. Number three, exclusivity. Let me in, keep others out. That's what they're saying. This is why there are private members clubs. This is why there are golf courses. Because rich people want to feel special, good better or otherwise, like them or don't like them. This is something that people want when they have a lot of money to buy. So how do you sell it? Restrict access, invite-only services, VIP tiers. This creates demand. Think about it like, I don't know, have you guys ever heard of Tiger 21? Tiger 21 is a fascinating community.

You have to have $20 million in net worth to be in a community that you pay $30,000 for a year and they validate your income. They will not let you in unless they can validate your income and also your net worth. How fascinating is that? And then you are in a room a couple times a year with only other people that are worth $20 million or above. They don't want any other people in it. So they charge you a premium for only allowing access to other people just like them. We can hate this and think it's elitist, or we can use it and get rich. It's really up to you.

Number four, privacy. Give me some space. So often, once you have a lot of money, other things come with that. For instance, you know, now that I'm public on the internet, there's lots of people that get doxed, right? So they want to make sure that they're protected. Their entire services for scrubbing all of your information off of the internet. There are services that scrub your businesses off the internet. Don't tell people about them. You know, supposedly there's quite a few celebrities to scrub their children's photos everywhere off the internet. And so as you get more famous and as you get more money, people want things from you.

If you're famous, maybe they want your picture, they want access to you, whatever. If you have more money, they want some of it. And so if you can create this privacy buffer space, then you can make a lot of money. So how do you sell it? Will you offer high trust, high security, high privacy services? A way to do this across the board might be like,

I have a cleaning company and I only clean really high-end customers' houses. So all of my cleaning ladies sign NDA policies. They make sure that they understand owner preferences. You can tell us how you want to be communicated with by our cleaners. So you can do this because you allow absolute discretion which builds loyalty. This is really, really critical in my mind for service businesses and so underutilized. And maybe if you don't have a lot of money right now, this one doesn't make sense to you. but I'm going to tell you how to make any of these make sense to you so you can apply it to your business and your life right after this. Five, scarcity, make it hard to get. So let's think about this

for a second. Why do rich people want something to be hard for other people to get? Well, they want to feel special, right? So at a certain point, if you have all the money in the world, it's not just about other people thinking highly of you. It's about you being able to tell a story about a thing you were able to do or get or see that somebody else couldn't get. It's almost like a rich person, They're like, I want to be the first one to plant my flag on a foreign land. So how do you sell this? You limit availability. You do this on purpose. And let me tell you how rare this is for entrepreneurs to do. What do entrepreneurs want to do? Sell more things to more people again and again and again because they want to make more money. It actually doesn't make sense of your head

commonsensically to think, well, maybe I should sell less things at a higher price. But that is what this is. And how you do this is waiting lists, premium tiers, applications, all drive demand. think about waiting for the brand new shoe drops, or we talked about Birkenbags before. In fact, you want to actually have things that are a real commodity, which means they're limited in quantity. I met a guy. I was at this event, and this was an event for a bunch of rich people. And, you know, funny thing about rich people is they have weird hobbies. And so this guy in particular, I just exited a second or third SaaS company. I'm sitting down with him, and I'm like, what are you working on right now? Lord, do I wish I hadn't asked that question? Because I got

a soliloquy on crystal marketplaces. He had just started a crystal marketplace. Now, now this isn't your ordinary woo-woo Austin crystal. He was showing me his crystal collection, which was like, I don't know, million-dollar crystals. And I felt like that meme were that, like, guys whispering into the girl's ear and she's just dying on the inside as she's listening to him. And that was me with crystals this day. And so he went on and on about how he's bought this million-dollar crystal and it couldn't be anywhere else. And this is so special. And I feel like he might have missed the plot about what women care about today because he appeared to be single. But why would he care about that? Because there's only one crystal just like that in the world. There's only one diamond just like that in

the world. They're buying into a feeling, a position, a lifestyle. They aren't price sensitive. They're value sensitive. And once you understand this philosophy, you'll be able to sell to rich people. If you want to sell to wealthy customers, you've got to ask yourself the rule of two. Does your offer hit at least two of these categories. If you're selling convenience, add exclusivity. If you're selling status, add scarcity. If you're selling privacy, add convenience. Rich people want to spend money. Give them a reason to. Here's the difference between the two. Selling cheap means you're going to have price-sensitive, high churn. You're going to have harder-to-scale volume game. You're going to have competitors everywhere. Selling rich means they'll pay a premium for the right product, no price shopping if they

trust you, and will keep spending if you deliver. The difference between the two is really one singular idea. Do you understand rich people? And if right now you're like, all this sounds great, Cody, but I've never even met a person who could buy a burking bag or wouldn't think a $30,000 or a $200,000 purse is criminal, then I need you to do something. You see, what changes in when we are around other people who have money, it opens up our eyes to what is possible. And so what I'd like you to do is I would like you to go to somewhere that rich people are. If you're in L.A., go to Beverly Hills. I just want you to walk around. You don't have to buy anything. You don't have to to do anything. Go to a luxury shopping mall. See how they engage with their customers there.

Try to engage with the people who are there and see how they treat you versus other customers. What can you do to change the way that they treat you? If you dress a certain way, will they treat you differently? Go and sit in the lobby of the most expensive hotel you can find. Brett's Carlton Four Seasons. Dress how you think is appropriate. I can bring your own food and drink if you want to. Be sneaky about that. But I want you to watch. the people coming in and out of the lobby. How do they engage? If you get a chance, sit and chat with them. One of my friends, Jesse Eitzler, when he had no money before he married Sarah Blakely and they became billionaires and he started net jets and a bunch of big companies,

he used to go to the Beverly Hills Hotel in California. And he had no money then, but he would spend the little money that he had buying the cheapest item on the lunch menu in order to sit at lunch in Hollywood and meet as many people as you could. And every single day, he would have a goal of engaging with one or two people there. And then he would see how do these people engage in life? How do they think about things? How do they build? How do they get opportunities? And he credits those conversations with some of his path to becoming a billionaire. So get around rich people, sell to rich people. You will make more money. See you next week. I believe you are capable of building big, beautiful companies. Hey, I have something special for you for being such a loyal listener

because you're here with me all the time. I get asked by a bunch of you, how do you, how do I tell if I should buy a business or not? Should you buy a business or not? What price should you buy a business at? How do you structure your deal? I got you, fam. So I'm going to gift you our deal calculator. Every time I look at a deal, I grab the numbers, plug it in here and see how much money I could make or lose if I did a good or bad deal. So this is my gift to you. And if you're serious about buying a business, we want to help you. You can talk to my team about if you're a fit for our business buying community or curriculum. No matter what, here's your free gift. And if you need a hand to hold. I got you too. Hey, crew, this is so cool. The podcast is growing like crazy,

and it's only actually because of one thing, you. I don't know if you know this, but the only way the big deal pod grows is when you share it with somebody else. We don't do ads, we don't do pay for play. We don't go on other people's podcasts and talk about it. So if you think there was something helpful here, if we made you money, we made you think about your business or life differently, the most beautiful thing you can do for me is share it. And the most beautiful thing you can do for someone that you care about is to share it with them, help them grow alongside. you. So please share the pod. That's how we grow. And also, tag me on anything you share. I love resharing other builders across Instagram, Twitter, and all other platforms.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You're super important to me.