Hot Smart Rich with Maggie Sellers Reum - This Is Why You’re Not Rich in 2026! (how to get financially free) with Codie Sanchez

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

If you want to get rich in 2026, stop thinking like an employee and start owning assets! Money expert Codie Sanchez breaks down why we’re in an ownership race, how AI and the shifting job market are rewriting wealth creation, and why those without equity risk falling permanently behind. She explains how to use your 9-5 income to build leverage, negotiate equity, and start buying cash-flowing “boring” businesses without quitting your job. They expose the spending traps targeting women, the mindset shift from consumer to owner, and the exact businesses Codie would invest in right now. Timestamps: 00:00:00 Intro00:02:00 The Asset Ownership Race00:03:13 Women & Money Conversations00:04:40 Speak The Language Of Wealth00:08:05 The Cost Of Crying At Work00:11:39 Women In Male Industries00:13:56 Your 20s: Get In The Room00:15:56 Business Or 9–5?00:18:01 How To Get Hired In 202600:19:31 Codie’s Hiring Formula00:21:28 Why Women Must Learn AI00:22:37 Get Rich With A 9–500:27:40 Fiverr Ad00:28:43 Skip The MBA00:33:10 If You Want To Get Rich, Do This00:40:59 Traits Of Great Entrepreneurs00:44:42 How To Buy A Business00:49:01 Where To Find Deals00:51:12 Businesses To Avoid In 202600:53:09 Why Main Street Wins00:54:57 3 Ways To Get Equity00:57:32 Wealth vs Fame00:59:46 Train For Risk01:00:51 Stan Ad01:02:55 Losing $12M01:08:11 Building Your Asset Portfolio01:11:07 Why Founders Need A Personal P&L01:12:32 When To Sell A Business01:13:39 Why I Don’t Raise VC01:18:17 Working With My Husband01:19:57 Love & Power Dynamics01:34:28 Last Credit Card Purchase01:35:47 Laundry Or Painting?01:38:16 This Season Of My Life01:40:09 Where To Find Codie ⸻ Sponsors: . Fiverr - If you are scaling a business, then you need to visit https://pro.fiverr.com . Stan - Learn more at https://stanley.stan.store/?ref=maggie_sellers&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=youtube ⸻ Follow Codie Sanchez: Instagram: /www.instagram.com/codiesanchez ⸻ Hot Smart Rich: Join 250,000+ angels and subscribe to the Hot Smart Rich newsletter: https://hotsmartrich.com/subscribe Hot Smart Rich Money Mindset: https://shorturl.at/pJWLc Merch: https://hotsmartrich.shop/ YouTube: https://shorturl.at/IXXFZ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotsmartrich/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hotsmartrich Maggie Sellers Reum: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggiesellersreum/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maggiesellersreum LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sellersmaggie/ Locker: https://www.wantlocker.com/users/maggiesellers ShopMy: https://shopmy.us/maggiesellers Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/maggiesellers ⸻ Hot Smart Rich is your place to hear unfiltered conversations with the people shaping the future of culture, creators, startups and community. Hosted by Maggie Sellers Reum, investor and media powerhouse, and guests breaking the mold, you’ll get the real deal as it relates to navigating the startup fast lane, leveling up your life or becoming your hottest, smartest, richest self. New episodes weekly on Wednesdays. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Flip. Or that. And enjoy. Via rail, love the way. When you lost $12 million, what did that feel like? Go cry in the shower like an adult. And you deal with it later because it is overrated to go be an entrepreneur. You can get paid multiple six figures a year still as an employee.

What is your first rule to get rich on that nine to five? I think there's three ways to do that. One, Cody Sanchez, you break down money to be so easy to understand. I'm always like obsessing on how do you make money. I did that on Wall Street and private equity. Now I do it for myself. But I come from nothing, like no money. Because it is harder for you now economically than your parents in many ways.

Also, as a woman, you're never going to be as strong as a man. That's physics. So we can't compete in the strength. game. You know where we can compete? In the money game. And the data is pretty clear. If you want to be wealthy, you need to, wow. But be careful because you can very quickly build a life that you don't really care about, that other people you think will pay attention to. But in fact, nobody's thinking about you at all. We're in an asset ownership race. And until you have that, you aren't really free at all. Can you talk a little bit about businesses that always fail?

It's good. Well, I have a surprise for you. You're going to make me cry on the internet. In case you missed it, you're allowed to be hot, smart, and rich. So let's get into it. Cody Sanchez, what have you spent the last 20 years of your life doing? Obsessing on how do you make money? How do you do it repeatedly? How do you help other people make more than you ever thought was possible? And I did that on Wall Street.

And then I did it in private equity. And now I do it for myself. Because I think that if you can get financial freedom, you have all other types of freedom. And until you have that, you aren't really free at all. A lot of people have clicked on this conversation for whatever reason. What do you think we're going to talk about today that will be interesting to someone who's just clicked on it? In the world today, we're in an asset ownership race, is the way I would explain it. And more than ever with what's happening in AI, in the economy, and in our job market, like, nothing is safe unless you own things.

And we were never taught to own anything. and that is the key to, I think, all freedom. So, you know, when this country started in the 1800s, 80% of Americans owned a business. That's now down to 6 to 10%. You know, the only country beating us, actually, Canada. Which is, you know, Canada should not be beating us in entrepreneurship, by the way. Much love to our neighbors in the north. Today, if you're listening, the hope for me is that you get ownership before you don't have an opportunity to.

This is like getting on the last lifeboat off of the Titanic. And if you don't understand how to get equity, how to get ownership today, I think that there will be something called the permanent underclass and we won't be able to get out of it. I didn't think this was this intense five years ago. Now that I see what's happening with AI, I do. And I refuse to let anybody, I don't know about getting hot. But I think I know a few things about getting rich. So hopefully we can help them with that today. Why do you think that our society has been structured the way where it is more intimate?

for women to talk about even something like money or capital or equity than it is for men. Well, everything in life is a repetition, right? And so the more swings you take, the better you get at hitting home runs. And women just haven't had as many at-bats to figuring out how to get equity and capital. And once you do have a lot of at-bats, you win more often, which is evidenced by the fact that now women are actually outperforming men in universities. You know, more of us go to university, more of us graduate, and we have a higher GPA on average than men do. Not that I want to. of Battle of the Sexes. I think you should be, you know, we should work together on it. But I think women just have to get used to being in these realms. And we have to stop listening to people who just want to turn us into consumers and start listening to people who want to turn you into a creator. And that is a conscious decision. And so I do it on my feed all the time. We're humans are memetic desire machines, right? We don't actually realize we want something until I come into Maggie's beautiful house. And I'm like, oh my God, you know, I've been thinking about that light. And I wanted

Venetian plaster here? And all of a sudden we start wanting all these things that we didn't want before. And so you can very quickly build a life where you buy things that you don't really care about, to impress people you don't actually care for, to build a life that other people you think will pay attention to. But in fact, nobody's thinking about you at all. I think women, we just have to start having conversations about money and cash and getting comfortable with it. I fundamentally believe that women don't actually want as much money as we think we do to buy designer handbags or go on trips or to decorate our house, I fundamentally think there is an ingrained trauma response in us, watching so many other women in our lives be controlled by money and not be able to leave

rooms that they are no longer being respected in because they don't have the financial freedom to walk away. You believe that being confident in the language of money is the key to being successful. So for someone that's listening, that really resonates with what I just said, what is your first rule to the language of money? That's good. Well, you know, first I'd say, as a woman, you're never going to be as strong as a man. Like, that's physics. The best tennis player in the world, Serena Williams, has said publicly she would get pummeled by some of the worst rated tennis players in the world that are men. So we can't compete in the strength game. You know where we can compete? In the money game. And so if you feel powerless,

if you feel like you can't get out of rooms, maybe you should stop focusing on the physicality, and we can focus on the financial capability of exiting rooms because money doesn't care about your sex. And so I really resonate with what you're saying because the key to all freedom is cash. The more money you have, the more you can assert your will on the world as opposed to having the world assert its will on you, which has been happening to women for millennium. And so, you know, if you feel like you are in a powerless situation, I think the most powerful thing you can do is obsess on getting capital because it allows you to push back, even like the conversation you and I were having before. I am a way more confident woman today because I'm like, you can't mess with me like that. I don't have to stay here anymore. I will take my cash.

I will go somewhere else and you will lose a consumer. And it doesn't mean you have to be a bitch to do it. You just stand in your own confidence. And so the language of money to me is really, really simple. Do you understand how power structures are created financially? You know, if you sit in this country, America today, then you've probably realized the truth that like Chimoth Pollyopatia talked about, big billionaire investors. that about 150 people run the world. And it's been that way for a long time. And we're just now saying it. I was watching the Super Bowl last night for a second. I'm not really a sports fan. I was there for

Bad Bunny. Let's be avia. Let's be honest. I'm a Latina. So that was great for me. I also understood the language. So everybody's like, I don't understand it. I'm like, not my problem. But guess what? 500 private jets flew out of the Super Bowl right afterwards. That is the equivalent of about 4,000 people not eating meat for year. So while people on high tell us don't eat meat and use paper straws, they're flying PJs out of the Super Bowl. And so the language of money says to me, look at who the really, really wealthy are, how they got there, how can you reverse engineer it so you can become part of the class that actually makes some decisions in the world. And then try to be better than the people of power when you get there and try to help the little guy, which is why I think shows like this are hopefully helpful to people

because I don't think you should get rich quietly. You should get rich and then tell other people about it, but pull them up. Don't play the game. And like, for me, it's like, I don't think you should follow people that make you feel like you should spend more money on things because that will keep you broke. I think you should follow people that tell you how to make money. And so you'll see on my feeds, there's not a lot of like fancy stuff. I mean, I have nice shoes. I have nice stuff. I don't post about it. Why? Because that doesn't matter. That should be the least interesting thing about you. I'm so interested to talk about women's superpowers, specifically with things like our emotions, our emotional intelligence, because I think that's like a big language of money and power

specifically. You can really learn how to use it for you and it definitely can be used against you. Crying at work. Where do you stand on that? Oh, God, that's going to hate me for this. Listen, I have a dear friend Jefferson Fisher and he was on my podcast and his response to crying at work was, you should let it out. The tears are your stress releasing itself. You should just let it out. And with so much love and respect to Jefferson, who's an incredible human, I think that is fucking ridiculous. You do not cry at work. Let me tell you why. Because here's the truth. Even if it feels good, and even if in the perfect world we should be able to cry at work, you will make less money, you will get promoted less, you will be respected less, and you will not be seen as a leader

if you cry at work. This is just the truth. Whether we like it or not as women in particular, you are not going to be respected or push forward if you cry. You have to have emotional regulation. So you go cry in the shower later like an adult, you know? You shove it down inside until you're home and you deal with it later. And, you know, people will hate this. But the truth that matter is, do you want to be right or do you want to win? And so go win. And you win by saying like, that really hurt me. I feel really sad. I don't like how I was treated. I'm going to stand firm in this moment. And then when I'm by myself, I'm going to process it. I'm going to figure out a plan. I'm going to crime to do whatever I need. But you do it privately. And that is a hill I will die on. And I'm sure

there's going to be studies proving me. I mean, just imagine for a second, you're in an office. You go to your boss. Your boss is a woman. Shit's going wrong at the company. You know, things are going sideways. You walk in and you're like, hey boss, I don't know what to do about this. Like, should I do this? Should I do this? She starts sobbing. What do you do? Are you like, I'm going to stay here? No, you're like, indeed job search. What the fuck is going on? This woman's not going to be able to handle it. So whether we want to believe this or not, it's true. And it doesn't have to be fair to be real. This is exactly why you would have been successful in investment banking, and I never would have gotten it. And like, I die on this hill. Oh, girl. Like, okay, so here's my thing.

I absolutely believe in every single thing that you just said. However, I think that me crying on the internet at times makes me relatable. Because a lot of the time, my life of like starting angel investing when I was like in my mid-20s, working at all these amazing companies moving. It wasn't a relatable life. Yeah. And crying on the internet actually made me human to people and it wasn't. I mean crying on the internet. Like put up the camera and start crying.

Like I will be mid-crying and we'll post a video. And it is the most empowering thing. At least you're crying first. I'm crying first. I'm not like, you know, and then I start crying. That's what I imagine. Totally. Totally.

All the answers are doing. No. No. But I think that it does. And again, this is where it's like. Like, everything is compartmentalizing because a lot of what you're saying I could resonate with. Like, yeah, if my boss was crying in a meeting, I would be so like, well, this company is going nowhere. Right.

But I think with the power of social media and the social currency that a lot of females can actually start to get and then use their money for positivity, it does create that emotional regulation with your audience because you're seeing the human design of who this person actually is across all different specters of their life. But I do think this is why fundamentally you would have been successful at investment banking and I would never have gotten in. You said this thing that 87.6% of investment bankers are males. Yeah. Having navigated it, do you think that it is different for a female to navigate investment banking than it is for a man? Yeah. And I don't know if those stats are still true. I think that was from a few years ago. Yeah. In male-dominated industries, there's a good and a bad to being a chick.

If you are a woman in a male-dominated industry, you're different. They're not going to remember Tom and Larry and Brad and Fred. They all wear blue suits. They all wear gray ties. Like, everybody looks the same. So you have a real advantage because you're going to stand out. Simultaneously, you're never going to be invited to the golf club. You're going to be invited to the strip club and going to wish you weren't invited to the strip clubs.

Like, you're going to have all these male experiences. And then you have to be careful to not turn into like what I did for a little bit, which I guess was like a pick me girl, you know, like a little bit like, yeah, bro. It's like, oh, you know. And so I had to be careful to not, you have to be careful, I think, to not become that, to still try to keep your femininity and who you are and that that could be okay. But it is incredibly difficult to be in a male-dominated industry because you're different. But I also think that's where the opportunity is. And so, you know, would I have the same opportunity if I wasn't, you know, the youngest Latina and woman in my class back in the day? I'm not sure. I think that helped. And, like, I'll take all the help I can get. Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And so I'll say that out loud all day long. I'm still not over the crying on the internet. We're going to have to circle this. I send you one of my videos. Oh, my God, I don't worry about it. My team knows I will die. But what I do think is true is like, we're all struggling in the human experience. And if you right now are like struggling and lost and don't know what to do next and you just see a perfect vision of everybody's life on social media and it looks like it's not hard for us, that's not fair. Because it's hard for everybody all the time, you know. Everybody dies. Everybody goes through difficult things. So I think showing the hard part is important.

I think just don't do it at work. I guess technically your work is your life. And so that's okay. But as long as you're not doing it in front of the team. And here's the, it's power dynamics. You're now in charge. So you kind of get to do whatever you want to do. I always call this points on the board.

Yeah. Like when you have points on the board, it is easier to do things that once were looked upon as like a faux pa. Yeah. And I think that goes back to like talking to the girl who's in her 20s right now that's listening to this and is like, I want to be Cody Sanchez one day. Like, do I go and work at the Goldman Sachs and have investment banking on my resume? And I think you have a really specific perspective on your 20s.

Can you share a little bit more about that? Yeah. If you're young right now, go get into an office. Don't do this remote nonsense. It's going to suck. You're not going to like it. Your first job is supposed to suck. But you are going to learn so much from doing hard things while you're still capable of it.

The older you get, the less you can handle the bullshit that comes with an office work in hard jobs in the beginning. But if I hadn't done those impossible things, long hours, whatever, I wouldn't have the, like, pretty comfortable life that I have now. And so I think you either get to choose pain now or suffer from pain later. And there's nothing sadder than a 55-year-old woman who has not worked hard enough early on and thus has to work hard now in life. It's hard. I mean, I'm 39. And the older I get, the less I want to work 12-hour days nonstop. When I'm young, though, you have this fire. You can do it. And so I think we've pushed back a little bit too much on the hustle culture.

And I think we got to suck it up a little bit when we're young. David Foster Wallace has this incredible essay where he talks about how the terrible part about your youth and the work that you do is not that it is hard. It is that it is so monotonous and so boring that you would rather die and go one more day in that fluorescent office with a cubicle doing work that seemingly doesn't matter. He's like, that's the horror of youth. And he's right. And yet you're not supposed to say there. And so I think get in an office, get around people who are building something incredible. Get around the smartest people you humanly can. Try to be the dumbest, the least in every room and stay there longer than everybody else. And do that for like two to five years and watch how you leapfrog everybody else who talks about remote work, Zoom's work life boundaries and traveling to fucking Thailand. There's also the other flip side of it where there's like the girl boss who's young. young 20s. And I feel like I've seen a little bit more of this come on to the scene recently. Yeah. If you could pick one or the other, like work in the office, climb the corporate ladder for the first two to five years, learn network and or you have a great idea. You're in your 20s.

What are you choosing today? I love earning on other people's dime. Like, you can make $500,000 worth of mistakes and somebody else pays for it in the beginning of your career or you do. And so I think is actually really underrated to go work in companies today. And it is overrated to go be an entrepreneur yourself. I think now you can entrepreneur on the weekend, get paid multiple six figures a year still as an employee, and use the earnings to power whatever your next business is going to be. I think it's a little bit of a fallacy that we've been told where you have to go, sleep on a couch all by yourself, has to be miserable. You don't have to do that. You can literally have both these days. So I think enough people evangelize or are really excited about entrepreneurship. And I'm, like, if that is you and you

know deep down inside, like, I have to build this thing where I will die, like it needs to exist in the world, then nobody's going to talk you out of it. You're going to do it anyway. I think enough people need to be told that being an entrepreneur can suck a lot that most entrepreneurs make less than $46,000 a year. Most startups don't make money for the first three to five years. You pay for the right to one day eventually make money. And so it is perfectly okay. hey, if you want to go do some of that while making money simultaneously. And you might be able to still enjoy life, have vacations, do all the things until you figure out exactly what you want to build. And the last stat I'll say that I'm sure your husband is seen too. But like, you know, we both invest in a lot of

companies. You know, the average unicorn founder is 40 plus. You know, it's a fallacy that Mark Zuckerbergs are who build these companies. Oftentimes it's somebody with a little bit of experience. So you're not too late. You're never too late. And in fact, you have a little bit of a bias to win if you were a little bit later when you start. One of my favorite things of yours is hire someone hungry enough. They might bite you. It's true. You know, we hire, like if you want to get a job right now in Contrary and thinking, it's never been easier because you just go show me you're going to build something, do what I call a sniper rifle instead of a shotgun approach. Don't go apply to 4,000 jobs on the internet. In fact, I would never do that because now most of these days, if you're applying right now, if you can't get a job today, the horrifying truth is most resumes are pre-screened out by AI.

You will never actually get in front of a hiring manager if you just do it on a site like Indeed. In fact, the real way to get hired is to figure out how to get to the hiring manager. And so these days, if you're young and hungry, I want you to send me some ideas. I want you to send me what we're doing wrong. I want you to send me something that you've built and be like, you're out of your mind not to hire me. And those people are so rare that often they get hired. I've hired a bunch of them at my companies, which should be like, you know, for all young people, it is hard out there right now. The data is real. It is harder for you now economically than your parents in many ways. The youth unemployment rate is higher. The cost for housing and hard assets is higher than it's ever been. We actually have had this generation since the Fed started collecting data has had the smallest slice of the economic pie since the data started being collected in the 40s. It is hard out there for young people. I don't want you to think that I don't see that. It is economically hard. Simultaneously, for the few people who want to go the extra mile, I don't think it has to be hard. I think we need some help on both sides. You have an interview matrix you use to square candidates. How do you measure the success of an interview so someone listening to this can be like, I am going to ace that interview and they are going to have to hire me for this job. People who are obsessed when. So the more you can show you are the type of human who chases down.

down rabbits until they catch them, the more likely you are to win. And so one of my favorite questions to ask in an interview is like, when was the last time you stayed up all night building something? And you'll immediately see, it's very easy, like you could be like, well, this one time, but people who are real on it, they're like, oh, last night. So what I built was this, this, and then the Claudebot, and then this, that person I'm hiring. Because they'll just figure it out. You have to be smart, but you got to like want it more than anybody else. And so that is how you waste an interview. It's like, go figure out something that you're so obsessed with. You could lose a little sleep on it. You know, apologies, you know, to Brian Johnson and the biohackers of the world. But I do think

that losing a little sleep, whether you're partying or having fun or building something worthwhile is worth it, even if it shaves a few years off my 90s, you know? Do you hire people for the role or do you hire people for the person and then figure out what they're going to do? I mean, if you find an incredible person, you hire them. That's like rule number one. Great talent will always find its place. And the best, you know, leaders of all time sort of say the same thing. But if you are a great talent, it's really helpful. If you tell the people that you're trying to get a job from, why you're so great. Hey, you have all these roles. Let me show you how you could work in any of these. Right now, for instance, we just, it's up on Twitter. You can see it. X. We're hiring vibe coders. So like, I just put up a piece and I was like, literally, if you want an unlimited AI budget, you're a little bit unhinged and you want to build things using vibe coding, but you don't have engineering experience. like we want you, drop what you've built. And then, you know, hundreds and hundreds of prize later, five of my hiring managers are combing through it. And they're like, we have some really interesting candidates. So I think, especially for women today, like this AI thing is, I mean,

and I am, I'm like a little bit of a Neanderthal, you know, like, I literally am that boss that people joke about. They're like, how do I make it a PDF again? I'm not like some tech genius at all. But the amount men are building on AI versus women right now is not great. The amount that men are on things like X and Twitter and women are on things like Instagram and TikTok is not great. If you want to make a lot of money, I think you need to spend more time on X and Twitter, even though it's a gnarly, just angry little gremlin-filled place of probably a lot of in-cells. You go there for the AI content. And you should be playing with these things because for the first time ever, we don't have to be engineers in order to build things really, really rapidly. And it'll suck the first. first few hours that you spend there trying to figure out how to get this stupid lobster bot to do what you want. But then eventually, you'll build something and it'll completely change how you see the world. I had someone over at the house a few weeks ago that has children around like 14 to 17. And he was like, wow, I'm so glad that my kids weren't in college a few years ago because all the advice to college kids was like coding, developing. And that could be the most

obsolete skill set that you need. Now you need more critical thinking and you need to be able to do things like coding without needing to have to code. Yeah. Which is why I love that we're on this like kind of employee conversation right now because I think so many people feel the pressure of like, I need to be able to do this and you can have fun with experimenting with AI and going on to acts on the weekends and figuring out what you actually want to do. But you have a very specific thesis that you can actually get rich when you have a nine to five, which is a contrarian thought, makes sense contrary and thinking to what we hear a lot about in the news, which is like to get rich, you really have to be an entrepreneur.

For someone that's listening to this, let's call her Bella. She works in PR. She's been in PR for five years in New York City. And she's making like $130,000 a year. She is really eager to take the next step in her financial future. Maybe she's saving a few hundred dollars a month. Like, what is Bella doing to get to the next phase? to get rich on that nine to five.

Yeah. Well, the most important skill you can have, period, is learning to do dealmaking and how to get equity. And in fact, some of the fastest way to get it is not to start your own company. It is to understand how to negotiate in order to get equity in the company that you have, how to negotiate. If you're in PR, it's a perfect example. Let's say that you're really good at getting placements for people.

You're like, I can get anybody in any location. I can do SEO. I can get you in local publications. You need to understand what a P&L is. You need to understand a profit and loss statement. You need to understand how to look at somebody's financials in a business. And you need to understand how what you do drives revenue. One of my favorite mentors in finance back in the day, he used to say, in your employment or in your job, you can be a cost center or you can be a profit center.

And if you don't know which one you are, you're a cost center and you're going to make less money because of it. And so I need you to figure out in PR, how do you make money for people? What is every single thing that you do worth to the person that you do it for? And when you understand that, you can reverse engineer how you could ask for more money from your clients or from your boss because you could say, hey, I know I did these three press pieces. That drove this many views. Those views, if the average view has a click-through rate on an email because we got 5,000 emails of 2%.

That's worth about, I don't know, $3,000 to this person. So I drove $3,000 of value here. And then we did it 20 times. Okay, so now I've driven tens of thousands of dollars of value to this individual. Could I take a small cut of the value that I drive, the actual revenue I drive to a business? This is what I call dealmaking. It's why I'm obsessed with it on the internet. I try to teach it to people.

I teach it through the frame of you could go buy a laundromat. You could go buy a car wash because that's what I did. And so I teach the thing that I know. You know, I had a 9 to 5, and I hated my boss, and I was in the boys club, and I didn't want be there anymore and I didn't know how to get out. I didn't have a brilliant idea and I didn't make money anywhere else and I liked expensive things and I just felt stuck. And so I was like, well, I don't want to leave my nine to five. Like I still want to make all this money that I'm making, but I need an exit clause in case these guys piss me off way too much. And so I started buying

these little businesses on the side because you can buy a business, you can buy an $8,000 newsletter. I've done that too. And then you can go sell it for two to three X that as you grow it. everything around us is a business. And once you like, we call it turning on your reticular activating system, you turn it on part of your brain, which helps you see the world differently. And once you do that, you'll find businesses all around you. And so I did that. But you could do it inside of your job, too. In fact, my best employees that stay with me over time, they get access to all the deals that we do, they can invest in them. And that's how most people make money. I mean, you know this because we're both investors. We don't make money off of our salary. My salary is probably one of the lower in my

company. How do I make all my money off all the businesses that cash flow to me? That's how I make money. I make money off equity. By the way, the government taxes at the highest level your salary. Rich people don't want salaries. Rich people want distributions. They want capital gains because those are the lowest tax rate. So if you want to be a rich person, you've got to look at what rich people do. They don't optimize for salary. They actually take their money and they put. Put it in equity in other businesses. They invest their capital into things that cash flow. That's what all the private equity guys do.

How come we're not talking about that? Instead, women on the internet are like, watch me sell a bunch of things and how I make money this way, or my salary is X. That is still part of a poor person mentality. A rich person mentality only thinks in equity capital gains and distributions. And so that's what I would want you to do. If you don't understand anything I'm talking about,

go take a course on how to do dealmaking. go take a financial literacy course. It doesn't have to be ones that we have out there. Go watch 10 of my YouTube videos on the subject. And you're going to understand more than most people do on how to actually make money. I have a confession. Until recently, I had no idea that we've been using FiverPro, our sponsor across HotSmartR because Katie, who you know and love, handles all of our operations.

She has been quietly running HSR like a well-oiled machine. She delegates because she understands that our job. job isn't to do everything. It's to stay focused on what we do best and bring in the right expertise when we need it. So about a month ago, we had this really complex project that required specific skills. So Katie pulled in a hand-vetted freelancer from Fiverr Pro, who delivered to such a high standard that I didn't even realize it wasn't Katie. Fiverr Pro connects us with the best of the best freelancers working across so many categories, including emerging skills like AI, native expertise. They help us tackle big problems, and they enable us to continue moving while we do.

So if you're scaling a business, then you need to visit pro.fiver.com. I'm so glad that there's other women that I can have these types of conversations with, because I'll tell you my crazy journey to being an investor, which actually haven't even told in the podcast, I only had ESOP ever at companies that I worked at. I understood the value of equity, and I was like, this is amazing. And I was Bella, like seven years ago. I was so debating, like, do I go back and get my MBA? But then I was like, oh, it's like $200,000. I really can't afford that. I don't really want to go and take out on debt right now. And so what I decided to do was do equity deals with all of these different companies that I was obsessed with. And I had this thesis where I was like, 85% of consumer spend is held by women. We are the best type of retail type of investors, especially in private

companies because we actually know what people are buying. Let me try to do this. The exits that I have to date are actually not the cash investments I've done. It's the equity investments that I did when I first started because I was so fucking naive to think that like every single one was going to be successful. So I was just like placing so many bets. That became unsustainable to a certain point where I was like, I only have so much time in the day. I actually need to start investing capital now and kind of like leaving it at the door. But as someone who holds an MBA, who's someone who's like done a bunch of different videos on YouTube. Bella's considering that. She's like, this sounds really scary dealmaking. Like, that's what my dad does. Like, I'm not there yet. I think it's safer for me to go and get

debt to take on a $200,000 MBA. What would you say if that is in the back of your mind? The best business school is being in business. You are not going to learn how to become richer going to an MBA. You're going to learn how to become a great consultant. You'll learn how to do transactions for other people who make all the money, not you. The education system is not set up to make people wealthy. It is set up to make incredible employees. And we know that because it was actually created by Rockefeller. And he says verbatim that we do not want excellent thinkers. We want excellent doers. They actually created the entire education system on the Prussian model, which was how the Prussians trained their military. What does the military do? Do they question things?

Do they come up with innovation? No, no, no, they do what they're told. And so if you go to university, just realize that you're doing it because you don't exactly know what you want to do next. And you're willing to just take a little time to think about it. And it is the easy path. And you maybe want to go get a corporate job and climb the ladder. It could increase your earnings in a corporate job.

But it is not the fastest path to wealth at all. In fact, I am like, I have one. And I went to Georgetown, not a slump of a school. I can tell you, if I had taken that money instead, and started investing it, or if I had taken that money instead and bet on myself, I would be much richer than I am today. I think more people need to realize that. My pushback on the MBA is so intense that we created what I consider a better MBA because it's all about M&A mergers and acquisitions, how you do deals, how money works. And I was like, we're going to create that entire program. We're

going to do it in a year or not three. And it's going to be less than a thousand bucks a month. And I'm never going to raise the price more than that. Because I want people to actually realize, if you want to learn business, you got to do it. And so I was talking to Joe Lamont, like billionaire. He created a school called Alpha School in Austin. He's incredibly intelligent, much more so than I. I was talking to him about this. And I was like running my thesis past him. And he's like, oh yeah, that's exactly why we've done everything we've done in Alpha School, because you have to have what's called applied learning. So if you go to an MBA, it's all theory. You learn from people who have never done the fucking thing. So it's a bunch of theorists teaching you

how to think about the thing while not doing the actual thing. It's actually ludicrous. And so the way we teach it, you got to go and do it. And so every single week, you've got to go out and you've got to read P&Ls and you've got to look at deals and you've got to try to put some money on the line, even if it's $100. I try to not tell people what you should do whatever you want to do. And it's your life and you only get one of them and who am I to tell anybody else what to do. But if it was me or if it was my kid or if it was my best bud, I would tell them, or if it was one of my employees, I would tell them you're absolutely out of your mind to do an MBA these days. And hopefully they change it and they make it better.

But right now it sucks. Okay, I love gossiping with you. This is my type of gossip. I really want to gossip about this. Because I think this is something that is talked about so behind closed doors. And I will never forget the moment that someone sat me down and said this. So I had this dream when I first started investing to like raise a fund. It's like I'm going to raise $30 million.

Like I can do this. I have great deal flow. I have all these connections to the VC funds. We'll do the diligence. Whatever. I go for a coffee with this guy. and I don't know if he thought it was a date or like if he thought it was a coffee, but it was like, oh, kind of weird meeting to begin with.

And I was like, so you raised a hundred million dollar fund? How? And he looks at me dead in the eyes and he goes, I'm around rich people. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, if you want to be rich, you have to be around rich people. It means going to things like Super Bowl. It means going to San Trope in the summer. And I remember calling my sister and being like, it is so weird.

he basically told me to be friends with rich people's kids. He told me to go to San Trope, go to the Super Bowl. And then I actually put his advice to the test. It was Super Bowl two years ago, and I was maybe going to raise a fund. I was just starting creating content. I was like, I need big brand partners. Who has big brand budgets that are going to be activating Super Bowl? And I was like, I think I should pay the $3,500 and go to the Super Bowl.

We have never closed so much business than when I was in those rooms. But it is something that I think people find actually gross to say out loud, like be friends with rich people's kids, be in rich people's environments. And I would love to hear from you what your whole POV is on that take. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the data is pretty clear that if you want to be wealthy, being poor is contagious and so is being rich. And so there's actual real data surrounding economic integration that basically if we sum it up, and not so fancy of words, if you are young and you live in one neighborhood,

Maggie 1 lives in this neighborhood, Maggie 2, you're a clone, just like you, everything the same, with the same family. So you've got the same family in both cities. But City 1, you have more interaction with rich families, even though your neighborhood writ large is the same. And Maggie 2 has less interaction with rich families. By the end of 30 years,

Maggie 1 will be 30% rich. than Maggie two. Nothing different. Your family's the same. The actual social economic cluster is the same, but you just have more interaction in one versus the other. You will be richer. It turns out humans are very contagious. And so the saying of if you want to be rich, you should get around rich people is just statistically true. And so even if it sounds gross, again, it's do you want to be right and fair and just or do you want to win? Like it's not fair that people who are around rich people get richer. It's not. And yet that's what happens. And so the question is, is I think that's why we have to open more doors. You know, that's why I think when people make it,

we got to talk about it online. I think most people are kind of gross because they make all their money. And then once they make it, they're like, you know, I'm sure you've had people on here before. You're like, oh, tell me. Like, how did you make your money? Or like, how did you start getting big on social? And they're like, you know, I just got lucky. And I started posting it. And I don't know what happened. But like, all these people started following me. Like, bitch, I know you were working hard. I know you were in those rooms. I know. No, everybody clawed their way to the top. That's the truth. And we often did it because we got lucky and we got around a few people who are better and smarter than us. And so, you know, it's fascinating. I'm reading like Bill Gurley's

new book right now. And we've become friendly on the internet. And his entire thing, and almost all people in Silicon Valley's entire thing is something they call networks, right? And not networking, but being in these clusters of winners. And so the truth of the matter is, you cannot stay where you were born if you were not born in a cluster and you want to become incredibly rich. It's very unlikely you'll get rich by staying in P-Bot, North Dakota, unfortunately. One way or the other, you've got to get to a big city at some point. You got to get around other people who are building things you cannot even imagine. And then two, you don't have to, you know, lose your ethics and morals.

I mean, Lord, have we ever seen that from the Epstein files lately? Like, you know, you don't have to get around rich people who are pieces of shit. But you do need to get around people who are building something big. And the data seems to suggest if you do those two things, you're just more likely to win. And so I think you're right. And then you've got to not be thirsty. You know, Robert Green says this beautifully about this, this idea that like the needy will always have needs. And so you never want to be the person who is always a hanger on, always grabbing, always taking.

That is an energy that doesn't transfer well. You want to be the one that's actually giving, that's helping. That's a great vibe to be around. That's one thing women really got going. Like, you can just be a vibe and win. You know, we've all met those chicks. Like I have a- I am that chick.

Are you that chick? Oh, yeah. Like, I always, Cody, to this day, when I think about my career, I'm like, how? Like, what happened? Obviously, and this is what I fundamentally believe. Like, I work harder than anyone. I have great instincts. But, like, I love my life.

And I, and it's, by the way, it's not something that comes naturally to me. I admitted this on the Stephen episode. Like, I have really dark thoughts. I have really serious mental health from my lineage and my family. And it's like, I had to train my brain to be positive, to be able to put myself out there, like to not care what people think. This did not come naturally to me. But when you think about people where you're like, how, like, I think about myself like

that, which is why I know it's possible. I don't have Goldman Sachs in my resume. I don't have an MBA. I have like from Canada, didn't know a single person when I moved here. And I think that's why I love having these types of conversations because you break down it to be so easy to understand when so many people, and I hate to say men, because once they've made it, when you know how hard it is to make it, you're almost like, do I let other people in? Because it's so hard and it's so small. 150 people rule the world, right? But that is, I think, how we break

this generational trauma of like only a certain amount of people can have it because I believe it's like win, win, not win, lose. Oh, 100. But you know who's one of the best at this? Is a buddy in mine now? Gary Vee, the most giving a motherfucker out there. Actually, so is Stephen. I mean, Stephen will give me tricks and tips for my podcast when, like, theoretically, like, I have a, we could be seen in competition, right? Gary Vee's never been like that, because he knows if you bring other people along, like nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. And so I am of the exact same mindset. I'm always like, girl, hey, I found out this weird thing about podcasts. Let me tell you about it. You should probably mess with your thumbnails. Okay, awesome. Like, let's all grow together. But the problem is,

not a lot of people are like that. And so I do think you're going to find in your career as you grow when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. And if they show you that they are the type of person to close the door behind them as opposed to pull at you by a hand up, then do not let them in. And so I believe hugely in the people that who help me and the people who help others, I'm going to be your best bud. I'm going to gatekeep, not a damn thing. because the energy and that vibe and what we're going to build together is going to be amazing. But if you fuck with me, oh, I take receipts. I remember and I'm not going to bring you along.

And like, I also think we women have to get good at that. Like, help every single good human you can find and call out the ones who aren't. Because in this world today, I think also we women sometimes can let other people step on us too much. Because you're a bitch, you're a whatever, you're a this, you're a that if you do it. And yeah, so what? You know, the people who are good people know, I'm going to help them no matter what. But if you're bad, I'm going to put my foot on your neck. And that's okay.

I love that. We talked a lot about, like, what it takes to be an entrepreneur in terms of, like, the mindset. What else do you think that it takes to be a phenomenal entrepreneur? I do think the pain tolerance. Like, if you want to win in building a business, you need to get used to pain. and I haven't found a way around it. It doesn't always stay like that, but even my husband will say, like, love hurts and I feel that deeply. You know, my fights with my husband hurt and I feel that deeply. When I let a friend down or a family member down, those things are horrible for me. Watching, you know, like those videos with Sarah McLaughlin, like with the dogs and the cats, I'm a mess. I'm immediately crying. But in business, it's all a game. Like, you got to just, not let it get to you in the way. Like you've got to do everything in your power to put that in some box and realize it's not your identity. It's not who you are. And it is all a game. And unless it is

going to bankrupt you and make you homeless and make you not able to feed your family, then just see it as another level. You know, one of my favorite entrepreneurs, Sam Zell, always used to say, wherever there is a problem, there is profit. And so if you can train your brain to every time something goes sideways, like have a little fun with it. Be like, oh, okay, we're losing money over there. Weird. Why? I'm going to figure that out. Make it a game for my employees. Like we were having a problem with something. And last week I was like, no, no, no, it's a competition. Whoever figures this out first, 200 bucks. Whoever figures this out, second, 100 bucks. Whoever figures out this in a huge way, a thousand bucks, like ready go,

48 hours. And so I think just try to have fun with this game of entrepreneurship, because here's the truth. It's not going to kill you. You know, whatever. We lose some followers online. Our business deal doesn't go through. Our express sell spreadsheet is broken. Who cares? Like, keep going. And I think, like, one of my employees came to the other day. She was super distraught. She's a stud. She's great. But she came to me and she was like so concerned over a mistake she made in business and kind of thought like she might get fired for it. And it was not a small mistake. But your job as a leader is not to be served by your employees. Your job is to actually serve them. And, you know, and I said to her, like, there was a line one of my favorite mentors told me, which was, there's no such thing as failure until you give up. And so if you are still alive and breathing, there is no failure until complete destruction. So I'm like, just like, think about that for a second. You can't fail unless you've given up. Keep going. What are you going to do next? Because I also think your job as a great entrepreneur is to make your team believe that they are more capable than they actually are. Like if you can push competence into them, one, it will be incredible. Because

you'll get to see these people change their lives, become somebody they weren't over the course of a couple years, but also you'll get more out of them than anybody else because most leaders suck and they don't care about their people and they care about themselves and that's it. So it's not that hard to be an inspiring leader because you just, especially for women, women, we actually care about our people. And so, you know, I'm sure at some point there'll be a hip-wit piece that comes out about me that I'm some bitch on the internet because I am. I'm intense with my employees. That's because I want to push you, like Jensen Wong says, into becoming, I want to push you through pressure into becoming something you did not think you could be. And like, how incredible is that?

Because leaders did that for me. They were like, no, no, you can go run Latin America business. You kind of speak Spanish. You can build it to a billion dollars in assets under management. You can do it by yourself as a woman who'd never been to Colombia or Chile or Venezuela or Brazil. By the way, you don't speak Portuguese. Go. And I did.

And like, that is a great entrepreneur. an incredible leader. It's so inspiring to hear, like, that's where you came from. And then now to see what you're doing, helping people buy these boring businesses. And it clicked so much for me because I had my bachelor at party a few weekends ago, even though I'm married. But one of my friends who, you know, was in sales, her whole career in tech sales, she's just had a baby. And she pulled me aside. And she was like, listen, like, I don't really have like startup money type thing that I can be investing in.

But I really want to get my hands dirty. Like, I'm really organized. And I was really thinking about buying maybe like a long. or a car wash. I was like, you know what? I have zero experience with that. I can give you no lessons, but I am having someone on my podcast that can help with this. How does someone know if they're right to buy a boring business? Because that's a very, actually prove me wrong or right. Is that a very different type of entrepreneur as like a tech startup founder or a consumer brand startup founder? Yeah, I think the person who wants to buy a business is someone who wants to make money

from their business. Like, it's not that you have some burning need inside of you to build this thing. You have a passion project. It's like, I want to make $200,000 a year. I don't have a brilliant idea on how to do it. So I want something that already exists, that's proven, that's sustainable, and has a high likelihood of continuing to succeed and a low likelihood of failure. That's me. I think that's most people, actually. It's like, I want to have my podcast, but Lord help you if your podcast is the only way you made money. You're not sitting in this house with only a podcast. Maybe one day, right? But this isn't going to build you much cash to start at all. It's going to be fun and you can still have it. But you make money in the boring things. This is just the truth that

nobody told us. And in fact, there's something called the song hurts matrix that proves it, which is the more sexy an industry or job, the less money the average person makes in it. The more boring a job or an industry, the more money people make in it. So if you want to make a ton of money, is anybody telling you, you know, it's your sure. do you want to make a ton of cash, you go to Hollywood. You become an actor. You're going to be so rich you won't even know it. No, no, no. You're like, bro, do that if you cannot sleep for the one of it. Otherwise, don't. Listen, this is not always going to be the case. There's always an arbitrage window for everything. There's a time where the window's really open and there's a time where the window's closed.

We have a generational shift in the U.S. We have this baby boomer generation, biggest generation of all time. Maybe will be the biggest generation of all time. And that generation is aging out. And as they age out, And as they age out, 60 to 50% of them, depending on how you look at the statistics, own a small business. And a lot of the businesses are what I'll call jobs. Like, they're high paying jobs. You know, 90% of those baby boomers businesses make money, 90% because they're not startups that get funded. But nobody wants to take over those businesses. That's your opportunity. And so it doesn't mean that it's like no work, four hours a week, make millions. That's how what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you compare it to owning a house, like I have a single family home rental versus I have a business,

there's no comparison. The average single family home makes you somewhere in the realm of 140 bucks a month profit for having a 200 to a $400,000 asset. That is a huge risk for no money. The average small business at $200 to $400,000 makes 15 to 30 percent margins. So you can make tens of thousands of dollars with a business a year or you can make like a grand. the house. This is just what private equity has done forever. And we're trying to normalize it for normal people. And I think the only mistake you can make in this is not learning how to do it, because then something wild happens. Like, you'll see it. I always, like, you won't be able to turn off. You'll text me some point after this. And you'll be like, I've got all these startups over here.

But you know what? I had this like outsourced studio that I was using or this podcast production thing, or we were using this marketing team. And I realized we were paying them a lot of money. And then I was going to talk about them on my podcast. And wait a second, that would be like thousands of dollars for them. Hey, can I just own 25% of your company and you just cash flow to me each month? And all of a sudden, you have an asset that is a boring, predictable business that doesn't have to cure cancer. I still think that there is nothing more sustainable and long term than a business that has been around for 10 years already and is likely to continue producing cash flow for 10 years in the future. So my friend is like, yep, Cody, like, I'm doing this. Where does she go to find a business to buy? Yeah. Well, we've tried to solve all these problems. So we have a couple things for you.

One, we have a website called Biz Scout. So it's kind of like Zillow, but for small businesses. So now there's 58,000 listings of small businesses on there. We're adding internet businesses to it next. And it's free. You go on it. You look around for businesses. Obviously, there's premium options if you want to get notified of the first deal.

you can, but you kind of scroll like, SILA. The second thing I recommend you do, we do two events a year. They're called MSM.Lives. And it costs you $40, I think, to go to the event for an entire weekend. And the entire event is focused on how to buy a business. And the only reason I charge for it is because I want people to show up. Otherwise, if you do a free event, people don't show up. And so it's $40.

You come and you learn how to buy a business. You learn how to do the 10 steps, which is how to find, how to, screen due diligence, how to finance, how to structure, how negotiate, how to put together offers, how to do the legal documentation, how to originate, how to do your first 90 day close, and then how to make sure your deal team is there. So you'll learn all 10 steps. And like, it sounds a little overwhelming at first, but by the end of three days, you will know enough to decide, one, do I want to buy a business? Or do I just want to invest in some of these businesses? Or the third, which is, I don't want to do this right now, but I'm going to do.

I have the information because I just want to look around for it. I want to see if anything falls in my lap. And often that's what happens. So we do this a couple times a year, like I said. And last year, which was so that would have been February of last year, we have people who came for three days and bought a business afterwards. Again, they had to do the hard work to get there. This isn't some get rich quick scheme. But like, that's where you start. You go to Bizcout. You come to MSM live. You go to our website where we have a ton of free information at contrarian think thinking.co. And I think. And I think. And I think. you like try to shake off the belief that we've been told for so long that doing deals and investing is really scary and you have to have a ton of money because I just don't think that is true. It makes it easier, but it doesn't have to be true. I think there's also so much information that you put out that's so helpful for people that are just like wanting to dip their toe into things. And one of my favorite YouTube videos that you did was the seven businesses that always fail. Can you summarize what those businesses are?

Yeah. So these do change in every market. So what I will say is let's talk about the businesses that I don't. don't love in 2026. Yeah. Hotels. Really high failure rate and they're really expensive and they really don't make any money except on a tax basis. They have very low margins. Consulting businesses, especially in the age of AI, but typically they have what's called key man risk. So one person in charge of it, if they go sideways, they get lost. Restaurants, really hard business margins. They got there. There are restaurateurs out there. I love you guys. They always yell at me about

this, but it's a hard business. Yeah. Really cyclical. Obviously, you have a ton of inventory that goes sideways. Retail. So for us ladies, I think there's a great line, which is always that, you know, there's people who own those boutiques, they probably have another job or their husband pays for it, because those things are not making money. Another one that I've seen pop off a little bit late recently, vineyards. There's a great saying about vineyards, which is the best way to make a million bucks with a vineyard is to start with three million. And so that is not a good industry. Let's not play with that one. I also do not love anything that's like backed by Amazon. So let's call it like Amazon FBA businesses.

They're sort of like this arbitrage window that the Chinese have just figured out and they're going to get them before you. The other one that I would say a lot of people are doing right now that I'm really thoughtful on. It's like, don't fall into the AI wave too hard with launching your businesses. I would say use AI to augment your business and to be better. But be careful because what happens in every wave like this? We saw it in the internet wave.

We saw it in the crypto wave. We saw it in the NFT wave. We see it now in this wave. Most of the AI businesses will fail. And, you know, 10 to 1% of them will make people billionaires. And so I want something instead that's going to make me money a long time instead of I have a very, very tiny shot of making a lot of money. Yeah. So you recommend buying Main Street businesses. Can you explain what that is? I think about a Main Street business. Like, this is a business that has, it's so simple your grandma can understand it. It is recession resistant. So you're still going to call a plumber. Even if you lose your job in your toilet is broken. I also like them to be a low competition, low moat businesses, which means like you're not competing with Jeff Bezos at Amazon, right? You're competing with the local handyman down the street who probably doesn't even have a great website. And then the last thing is these businesses are ones that you usually need to have recurring. So I think about it like roofing, landscaping, painting, window cleaning. We own all of those, by the way. And those

businesses, the cool part about these Main Street businesses, they don't have very good marketing typically. So especially for women where a lot of times we're creative. We want to build something kind of cool. We like to do things on the internet. Well, I have a window cleaning company called Pinks that these guys are the cutest rascals you could imagine. They have like this amazing branding on their hats. All the guys are kind of good looking. My joke for them, I'm always like, why don't you guys do a calendar? I'm like, get like a sunsed up calendar, which is also hysterical because they're very Christian. So they're like, ma'am, no. But, you know, this is like, now a fun, sexy business, even though it's a window cleaning business. They have these

uniforms and these really cool vans. And so anyway, do not think that just because the type of business isn't sexy, you can't make the business sexy. So it's so interesting, as I think even for people that don't fully understand private equity, it's like, this is kind of their whole thing. They like take a business that's already working, hopefully profitable, and or making money. And then they think, like, here are the levers that I can pull to make this business make more money before I basically offload it and either sell it to another company or let it go public, which very rarely happens. For someone that's listening to this, that's like, oh, hey, who are you? Like, yeah, I'm going to do all of this. I'm coming to your

conference. Like, I'm going to look on the website. I'm going to start to think about this. What are the actual levers that, like, in their DNA is something that they feel like they are equipped to do as, like, a natural person to join this industry? The one thing that I think is important if you want to go buy a business or you want to do a deal is you have to be willing to take some risk in life. You know, one of my favorite mentors said to me, you can't get rich without risk. And I think that's true. And so I'm very honest about that. I think anytime you have a way that somebody tells you that you can make money with zero risk, run. That is typically a scam. It's not real. And so you are going to have to take some risk. You're going to have to take risk in your time.

You're going to have to take risk maybe in your money, if not your time. Or you're going to have to take risk in your reputation. Those are usually the three levers. And so, you're going to have to take risk in your the three levers. And so how I like to think about it is, I think there's three ways to buy a business. One, you can actually use your time, which would be like sweat equity, right? So you could go to a small business owner and you could be like, I'm really good at marketing. Can I help you market? If I help you market the business, can I get a cut of it? That's like my friend Brittany, who's in our community. We taught her like she really is good at marketing little gyms for women, like Pilates Studio, cycling studios, whatever. So she went, helped a few of them, got distributing

equity. That part's really important. That's equity that cash flows to you, not. just like one day I hope this thing sells. So you can do it that way. So what equity? Second would be expertise to equity, which would be like I'm an ops person who runs the back end of the PR company. Okay. So could you go into a small business and say, this is a mess? Let me like clean this up. Let me get your nice little air table. I'm going to get you a Canva. We're going to put in some little note taker AIs for you. Okay, let me use my expertise to get equity. And then the final way is capital, which can either be yours or you can use the governments, aka the SBA. or you can use third parties, aka raise equity or debt from other people.

So those are like the three legs of the stool if you want to buy a business. And what you need to decide is what kind of risk do you want? Do you want time risk? Do you want expertise risk, aka reputation risk, or do you want capital risk? And you can use any of them or all three of them to get deals done. I love this video that you did that was about reputational risk because I think it's so interesting when you think about even the creator economy, right? There's so many creators that have like millions of followers and are making

zero money and are like living paycheck to paycheck. But the more eyeballs that you have, the more harder it is to take risks because it's so much harder to fail when everybody is watching. That's right. Can you talk a little bit about that the matrix that you have about like fame and money and what is the best and what is the worst? Yeah. Well, there's a great line, which is if you want to get famous, you should try it at least getting rich first and then double check. And so, you know, there's nothing worse than being a famous person with no money. And, And we've all seen them. I mean, I won't name them, but like I was on a flight the other day, and there's a really famous ex-comedian, and he was sitting, you know, middle seat at Southwest, and he had two people, like, bothering him on both sides of it. And he was, I was talking to him afterwards on what that felt like. And he's like, you know, humans, we all have a death fear. And the death fear could be actually dying. I'm scared of dying. The death fear might be irrelevancy. Nobody cares about me anymore. The death fear could be failure. What if everybody figures out about me and on a failure? We all have like something that's scared. is the shit out of us. Mine, I think, is that nobody will care about me or I am a giant

failure and like none of it mattered. Like that, if you were like, Cody, you could die or you could have that happen, I might choose death. So we all have it. This is kind of like Arthur Brooks Freudian psychology. What do you think yours is? I was actually just thinking about that because I think a lot about like, I'm still getting over 100% what people think about me. Yeah. But kind of crazily to say at certain times of the month, like when I I'm in my follicular phase, don't give a fuck. Could post anything, don't care. When I'm in a leudial phase, I'm very fragile comparatively. So I think mine, I'm still figuring out, but I do think there is an element of like, it's not necessarily failure because I'm actually okay to fail.

It's more so like being embarrassed. Shame. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I resonate with that. It also probably makes sense with what we've chosen to you as a profession. This is attention seeking, You know, whether we want to say that or not, and whether part of our mission is not to help people, there's also some part of us that wants other people to like us, aka like and subscribe. So, you know, like, so I think I think that is there. I think the other part that I'm not sure people think about enough is, especially with how much attention is in our face every single day, is that you will probably be happier and the data seems supported by like two. to three X. If you're much happier, being richer than you are being famous. In fact, there's a negative correlation between happiness and fame at a certain point. And there is a plateau of happiness at a certain level of wealth. And so I'm of the belief that you should go try to at least chase

that first 500K. Don't apologize for it. Go hard at it. All the data says you will be happier after you make 500K a year. That is true. The fame portion of it does not make you happier. And so go do it, but like get rich first and then do the famous thing. Because at some point, all of us will be completely irrelevant. Nobody stays relevant forever. In fact, tomorrow, my podcast, I'm having Jeremy Zimmer, the founder of UTA. And what fascinating to me about him is he has been in this business for decades with celebrities. And so he has seen them all rise and fall. And it really messes with human psychology to go from peak fame and attention to nobody cares about you. You are irrelevant, nobody is watching. And I think that's why a lot of them kind of go crazy.

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You can learn more at stanley. dot stan. I love thinking about contextualizing risk from a reputation standpoint, but I think that there's also a lot of people that are listening that can't necessarily relate to that, but really want to learn how to train them to be able to take on more risk. And I can't think of someone better to ask

than someone who's lost $12 million. Can someone learn how to train for risk? Yes. How? Well, everything is a math equation, actually. You do not need to be smart at math to understand the risk of losing money or making money. So what do I mean by that? You have an emotional tie to every dollar in your pocket, right? And as humans, we do not like losing it. We would much rather keep it and even not make it than lose it. And so we have this fear of loss. It's called loss aversion. And so every single human out there is more scared of losing than they are excited about winning.

This is by and large, true. So if we know that to be true, then what I think you need to do is you need to start playing a little game of risk. And I actually learned this lately, but from a woman who also was on my podcast who's become a dear friend, Jenny Jost. Have you ever played poker? No. Doesn't it horrify you? Right. Me too.

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Save the everyday with Amazon. That sounds awful. I'm at a lose. Also isn't it math. I see these geniuses do it. But I'm pretty comfortable with it. risk in finance and investing. So why am I so scared of poker? I think most women are. Actually, it's why very few of us play. But I played with her and she taught me how to play. And I was like,

oh, we all make more money when we get used to taking more risk. In fact, if you go into trading, so you know, trading financial securities, the women who take less risk make less money. The men who take less risk, make less money. The ones who take more risk make more money, which is sort of counterintuitive. You're like, well, what about if they lose it? You have to learn how to take risk. And so one good way to train it is if you can't get comfortable just put in money on the line, which is the best way to do it, you just take a percentage of your income, you invest it, you aren't allowed to redeem it, you are only allowed to reinvest it. You do this every single week, month, or year. And if you can't do it actively, you do it passively,

and you're not allowed to redeem from the markets when things get scary. That's like how I trained my risk at first. And then I would just write bigger and bigger and bigger checks. And sort of, it's um what is that called where when you're around something a bunch um you stop being fearful of it um i don't know but they they train it like the other day i had to do a video which is a ridiculous thing to say out loud but i had to do a video with scorpions and tarantulas and boa constrictors which is not my happy place and i remember they put them on you know i have like three bow constrictors on once and then one of my team goes oh let's put a tarantula in your hand too i go simultaneous to the three boa constrictors i have on me right now you know You want to put a large spider in my hand. What the fuck is wrong with you? Also, you're fired. But I didn't fire her. But I did it.

But because I had sat with these things for a couple hours by the end of the shoot, by the end of the shoot, I was like playing with the scorpion. It was kind of like running across my hands. I had the spider. I was hanging out. Also, fun fact. Do you know tarantula women eat their dudes every time they have sex with them? Every single time.

So this tarantula, I was like, how old is she? She's like, she's 30. She's like, she was pretty chill because she just made it. I go, she just ate a dude. She goes, well, yeah. She actually ate three. this season. So I'm holding this man-eating tarantula woman here, which is wild. But because I have exposure therapy, that's what it's called. So because I had so much exposure to it, I stopped being

scared by all of them. And actually by the end, I was like, I could own a snake, which is a crazy thing to say out loud. Poker does the same thing to you with risk. So if you're really scared about taking risk, start playing a no-stakes game of poker, go to Jenny Just's channel. You can play for free on her app. Do it with girlfriends. Or try to put a little bit of money. in the market because the more you expose yourself to it, the more you realize you won't die. When you lost $12 million, what did that feel like? A real swift kick in the dick, I imagine. What the scary part of it is is not losing it.

It's not knowing what to do to save it. You know, there's been multiple times in my career. I think this instance is when we had invested in a company and the company we found was fraudulent. And so we had just put in $12 million to a deal. And, you know, I come from nothing. Like my parents, my dad didn't get to go to college. I didn't know what finance was. I didn't have a credit card until after college. My debit card was always failing on me in college. Like, no money. And middle class family, but like I never had any money. I made $37,000 when I graduated college. I still have that paycheck. And I was like, I'm rich. This is a billion dollars. So I come from nothing. So the idea of like making $12 million was unhinged or losing $12 million was unhinged. And so when it happened, the feeling is really, I'm so dumb. How did I miss this? What an idiot? What kind of idiot would make this decision? So it's instantly usually shame. And then after it happens a few

times to you, what you realize is they're all patterns. And it's almost like, you know, when Neo can see the matrix in the movie? At some point, once you start having these losses, to whatever the degree you have them, you start being able to go, oh, this guy is this type of person. This person is going to lie, cheat and steal with me. Oh, I've seen that avatar before. It's not that dissimilar from men. You know how there's an avatar and your friend starts getting in, you're like, oh, that's a fucking Brad. I know that's a Brad. I know what Brad is like. Girl, don't date Brad, right? But you have to go through those cycles to get there. The same thing happens with making money and investments. And you realize like, oh, that's a Brad investment. I'm out. That's a Chad. He's a. He's a

going to keep going. You know, that's a Tom. Nobody likes Tom. And so at some point, then you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and you realize, oh, there's a way to get out of this. And it's going to be okay. And we're going to figure it out. But in the beginning, the only way to get there is to lose a few dollars. And so that's another reason why I like being an employee first. Like my MD at my managing director at Goldman said to me, I don't ever want you to invest your first dollars all by yourself as a fund. He was like, because the first 500K you usually lose. So he's like, go and work for a fund so you can make mistakes on their dime and then go win on your own. I think this is what is so scary for a lot of the startup founders that are listening to this

because they have put everything that they have into their companies. So we're talking like consumer brand founders, tech startup founders, a lot of them listen to the show. And it feels so weird to say like diversify a portfolio because you are trying to put everything that you have into your business. But how would you suggest that someone that's listening to this, like start to think about asset allocation in terms of a diversified portfolio? If all of their assets, their time, their sweat equity, all of their money, all of their network is in their one startup that they will do anything to make sure is successful. Yeah. First of all, it's hard. So you've got to just recognize that like you're part of the 1%. Less than 6% of the people in this country will ever own a business. Wow. You're rare. Yeah. It's incredibly rare, actually. And we don't realize.

that because the circles that you're in, you probably feel like you're not doing enough. You feel like I'm not big enough. Everybody else is raising millions. Everybody else is at eight figures. Who am I? That's what we get in our little bubbles. And so you don't realize you're already rare. So I would say, first of all, like, give yourself a little pat on the back for even doing the damn thing because most people never will. And then the second thing is, I think founders, in particular, you want to give everything to your business. And a lot of times you don't have a lot of spare capital to, to, to, to, do anything with. And I think you have to ask yourself a question, which is, is my business the best way for me to make money at this stage? Like, if you're a VC-backed startup, you're going to have a

harder time diversifying and doing things outside of your main business because the VCs are going to have some things to say about that one way or the other. That's why I don't think that everybody should go raise VC capital. I think most businesses are bootstrapped businesses or lifestyle businesses. But a lot of times I think we hold on to this founder mentality so intensely, as opposed to saying, well, what if I had other ways for me to eat and live? Would I not be able to make better decisions in my startup if I had a little bit more money in the bank account? And I wasn't always operating from fight or flight. And the data seems to suggest that if you can do that, you make better decisions. You know, now we see this like a lot more common, but there are a lot of

founders who, yeah, they might have other assets. And we never get mad at them if they're second time founders. But if it's a first time founder, it's like red flag, you know, second time founders, you can have all the things, you know, it doesn't matter. And so I would just say, you have to really ask yourself, like, is there another way for me to make income in this? Even though this other thing will probably never be my asymmetric upside, right? It'll never be my billion. A car wash is never going to make you $20 million, right? The best car wash, most car washes are like $500,000 to $300,000. million dollars in annual revenue. So that's not going to be your huge upside. But might it cover your salaries? You can put more money to the business and hire somebody else. Yeah. And so I don't think

you should feel bad about that. But you just need to be honest with your investors or yourself about can you do both. You suggest that every founder does something called a personal P&L review. What is that? Well, the best way to find a business that makes money for you that you already understand that you'll have an unfair advantage in order to continue to make money is that you already work with the business and the founder. So basically you pull up your profit and loss statement or your financials or your credit card, whatever you use in your business, and you screen it. Now you can just throw it into AI and say, give me all the small businesses that are not publicly listed that I could potentially get to the CEO. It'll screen it for you. You ask it to put in an Excel spreadsheet. And then you look at that

spreadsheet and you go, okay, how much money do I spend with everybody on here? And if you realize, wow, I spend a decent amount with my marketing person, my ad buyer, you know, rent. And Okay, well, can I get to the owner of that business and can I strike a deal so I could either buy part of it or own part of it or use my little three triangle in order to get part of that business. And that's how I bought. I didn't buy my first businesses like that. I bought a laundromat, but I would say my mid businesses when I was still an employee, I bought almost all of them that way. And I'm most of those I didn't own 100% of. I owned like 49% or 30% of it and I just had them distribute equity to me. Like I bought my podcast production company. I bought 49% of it. And then I helped it grow. And then I took a check every single month, just like if I was an employee there. And that was really helpful because I took that money and put it in the next deal and into the next deal. How long is the average like hold time? Because like you get this distribution equity, but like I'm assuming, I don't know, did you sell that first launch amount or you still own it? No, I sold that one. I think you stair step up. I like to think about businesses when you do it this way,

like houses. So you start with like a studio and then you get a two bedroom and then you get a townhouse. And then you get a And then maybe you have a triplex or whatever. It's totally okay to start with a smaller business, especially for women, we're more risk-averse. So typically the least risky thing is to have a business that has enough cash flow to cover things that go sideways. But if you're just like, I fucking can't imagine buying a multimillion dollar business with debt. No way. That's too scary. Fine.

Buy a really small business. You'll see what feels good or not. And then grow it a little bit, then sell it. Then grow another one a little bit and then sell it. And that's perfectly fine. And in fact, Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett started with a gumball machine distribution route. That's how one of the richest men in the world started. He bought a gumball machine distribution route.

Then he bought a couple more. Then he sold it. Now he owns half the world. You don't have to stay where you start. I love that. One of the things that I love about having someone like you on because I know you're not going to be afraid to hurt my feelings. Oh, no. Is talking about creators raising money.

I believe a secret of the rich is that they really never use their own money to purchase things. they leverage their assets in order to borrow money from other people, and then they use that to get more wealth, which was interesting to me when I was thinking about prepping for this, and I was listening to you on Stevens show, and you were like, I would never raise money for contrarian thinking. Like, that is my media company. It is what I own. And I was of the belief of that.

And then I met Stephen. And both him and I have chosen to raise a specific amount of money for a certain percentage of ownership for our companies. And I didn't know. you back then when I was doing this deal. Like as part of diligence, I probably would have called you and been like, why would you not do that? I hope he gave you good terms. So otherwise we're going to talk shit. Great terms. Okay, okay. Question for you. Why would you never raise money for contrarian thinking? I am unemployable and I don't want other bosses. And I think most entrepreneurs have one regret if they have

success in their business. And that's giving up control. I'm a control enthusiast. And so I don't ever want somebody else telling me how I have to run my kingdom. It's mine. It's a mess half the time, but it's mine. Investors aren't in the game. Let's be honest. Most investors are not worth shit. Most investors where Patagonia vests sit in their office, write checks, pretend like they operate things, and try to boss founders around and push them out of companies that the founders built with their blood, sweat, and tears. I think most investors are just financial check writers that arbitrage and with love and respect because I am one. And so I am a founder first to the tune of being wildly aggressive about that. And the only way I would take investment is,

what if I had to? And two, if I felt like the person who was coming along with me was so helpful, strategic, incredible, and an operator and was going to give me not my whole grape, but part of a watermelon. And in your case, I mean, Stephen's one of the best in the game. And so, you know, and he didn't pay me to say that. It's just straight up true. And so that's a strategic investor. That kind of makes sense. But I've turned down a lot of people like Stephen because I am irrational about the fact that I think we can do it all by ourselves and I want complete and utter control of it. And you may be able to grow faster with a ton of capital. Capital will make you a lot faster. But I'm more optimizing for long. I don't ever want somebody having a term where they say, well, at the end of my seven to 10 year investment period, you have to exit. Now this is my game. You're going to have to pry this company out on my cold bed hands. So that's how I feel about it. Now, I don't think that everybody needs to be that way. And in fact, I think, especially if I had some money going into this. Like I'd worked in finance for 15 years or 12 years or something. So I had not taken risk in a different way. And I built this little nest egg. And then I put it all into this business. I'm, like, very protective of it. But if I didn't have that and my only way to grow was raising capital, hell yeah. I mean, some of our best companies that we invested at Contrary and Thinking Capital are venture companies. I mean, Brett Adcock, there's no way he would be able to build a, you know, $38 billion robotics company without raising capital. Serronic, Dinomavrucus,

you know, multi, multi-billion dollar company that's going to change the port infrastructure in the U.S. He needs capital for that type of business. For me, for a media company, that is also an investment firm. I'll just take capital in my investment business, but the media company, I don't need to build ports or robots. I can use a different type of capital, which is audience attention and leverage.

And so we'll see if I'm right, but that's my thesis. But I don't think you should ever feel bad for raising capital. You should just be careful about who you raise it from. And that's probably why, I mean, I'll like sing my own tune for a second here.

My husband runs our venture fund, and he has the number one performing venture fund in his vintage on Angel List. It was a small fund. It was $10 million. A lot of it's our capital. And it was a tester to see if like attention plus access, plus we teach distribution and how to grow to our portfolio companies would outperform. And it seems to have worked. And that's really due to him, him, not me. And so that, those companies, they needed the capital to grow like crazy. And they'll be multi, multi, multi, multi billion dollar companies before mine is. And so I don't think there's any right or wrong way. That's just my way. What is it like working with your husband?

It's the best. I mean, I think, I think, you know what? I think you were like told a lie that working with family was nepotism, that to work with your husband was wrong or bad. Like, how could I be with the ball and chain all day long? You know, my husband and I could never do that. We fight too much. You know what? You have to reintroduce yourself to your husband every single day if you guys don't work together. You have to catch up on all the things happening in your business every single day if you don't work together, you know, you can't build an empire together if you're both trying to build your own separate ones and there's no overlap. Why did we, why were we told that it was bad to work with our significant other? It's bad to work with a bad significant other, but probably

just don't marry the fuck, you know? You have a higher surface area of friction, right? So any time, if you put logs together like this, they're going to rub. So we see each other more. There's more friction there. But I also know that if something happens to me, he can run this bad boy. You know, I know if something goes sideways with him, I got. him and there's nothing better than working with your spouse on building something bigger than the two of you. And so again, I don't try to tell people what to do. That's like, that's for me, but I don't think you should be told that it's wrong. In fact, like my little conspiracy theory is that, of course people told us we shouldn't work with our spouses. And of course people told

us we should take a bunch of capital because why? Well, then that becomes this like corporate structure that removes the nuclear family, that removes our ownership structure. It really serves people on high if we don't work with our families, if we hire other people or get capital from outsized people as opposed to families. Like, your familial unit, you should do everything you possibly can, I think, to preserve the legacy. How do you find, because you even say when you didn't want to raise capital, you being like aggressive and wanting to do it your way, how does that work in the dynamic of feeling like you can turn off that side of yourself when you're in and out of work, Cody and wife Cody?

Well, one of my, I had a therapist back in the day, and she had a great line. She's like, every time before you walk in the house, I just need you to like take a couple of breaths, shake it off. I usually wear a jacket. So she's like, take off the jacket. And that's where you need to get rid of the CEO. You're not the CEO when you walk in the door anymore. And so now that's what I do. Every single day, I have a little trigger where I like kind of shake it off and I go inside. And then I'm not a different person, but I'm definitely a softer person. And, you know, I think I personally as a woman, I like to be led. You know, I I want my man to like take charge of things. I want him to be strong. I want him to be capable. I want him to be able to handle things. I would never disrespect him. You know, publicly I don't talk down to him. I don't talk bad about him. Relatively traditional. Like I want a man. I don't want a wuss. You know, I don't want somebody I can run all over. I don't want somebody that would tolerate me making snide little passive aggressive comments at him. I don't want a boy. So that means that I have to respect him in a different way. And so I do. So when I, you know, when I come home, he always jokes that. I don't know, he always jokes that. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm a little I just become a passenger princess. I'm just like, da, da, da, da. And he gets to kind of pick where we go and what we do for dinner and where we go vacation. I don't really care. And I just hang out. So we have that dynamic. Like he's very intense about like, this is how we cook the food. He's like really into food. And I kind of don't care. That works for me. It doesn't work for everybody. But I also think when you have a really strong man who doesn't have to prove himself to anybody. I mean, he's a former Navy SEAL. He doesn't need to prove himself to anybody. And I think a really strong man

doesn't feel intimidated by a strong woman. He's like, this is amazing. Great. We're two totally different entities. And as long as you respect me and I respect you, we're going to be, incredible. But I am really big about that. Like my husband and I have a rule. We do not talk badly about one another. No passive aggressive jokes. No talking down. No calling up a friend. And can you believe what my husband did? None of that. Because I think you are either your your spouse's biggest cheerleader or you are toxic. There is no in between. And it's really hard to build when the person who's supposed to have your back puts a knife in it. And I think every single time we do that thing that women do sometimes, which is like, yeah, my husband was so annoying today.

And like, I can't even look at his face. Like he came into the bathroom. He breathed wrong. And I was just like, get out. And we get a giggle. Every time you do that, you're de minimizing the most sacred union you have, your marriage for people who don't really give a fuck one way or the other. And they don't understand long term. No. And you're going to actually degrade their relationship with your husband because they're going to remember all those little slides. And so it doesn't mean we can't be annoyed with our partner. That is totally reasonable. But maybe you talk about it with like one best friend and your mom or your therapist and your mom or your dad or like you're one person. And it's a trust tree and it's somebody who adores your husband too. But you don't do it broadly. I've just seen it become too toxic too many times. And he taught me that. I would do the passive aggressive jokes or I would like make a comment. And he like. It was kind of hot. But back then he was like, we don't talk about each other like that. I was like, oh, we don't. Like, I kind of thought that's what we did. I thought like, you know, nobody taught me that that is not good for a relationship. And him standing the line sort of did. I learned this on a podcast with how friends do business. And I'm so interested with people that are like in the trenches with their significant other. Like, do you guys have a contract for the business to work together? No. No, we have one contract. That's our marriage. It always comes first. Like my husband will come before anything in my life always. And there will be moments where I will tell him my priority this week is I have all these podcasts. So I can't go to dinner with you. I got to focus on this this week. That is my priority. But it never comes first. We'll have exchanges. And listen, it's like 60% of the time every time. You're never going to be perfect at this. You're always going to fight. I don't think it's healthy to not fight in a relationship. That's totally fine. But he and I will sit and sort of say like, what's the plan this week? But I do not think you need a contract because Lord help.

you if you try to stick to one way you thought your business was going to run in the beginning later on, it's too malleable. So you have to have a few overarching rules. And the rules for me and him are, we're always a team. We never fight in front of the kids, the kids being our employees. We never talk down about each other in front of the kids. We always bring each other the problems that we have that day and we allow the other person to talk about them. But we ask beforehand, when the other person's bitching, do you just want to talk about this or do we want to fix it? And that's helped us a lot. And then at the end of any time we're bitching about something, we try to put a spin on it. So like this happened, today was awful, blah, blah, blah. And then we call it silver lining. So, okay, what's the silver lining? What are we going to do about that? Because the one thing you could have happened. And we've been through periods is if you work with your spouse and then you're bringing home all the bullshit and then all you're doing is talking about the bullshit, that's not very good for a relationship. And so we put a little silver lining on it. I have a surprise for you. You're going to make me cry on the internet?

I hope so, because, like, that's how we started this podcast. Cody, my partner in crime, the team asked me to send you a note today ahead of your podcast. It asked me to dig into how I've experienced your impact over the years around your drive, how you do it all running an enterprise. I'm already turning up. It's kind at that. I forget often that the world is not so fortunate to see the side of you that I do. I see your genius.

I see your intuition and your vigor. I see your focus. I see your tenacity, I see your resolve. I am a daily witness to the many traits it requires to make the impact you do. And the world shows it. As whenever we're approached in public, the first words are always, thank you. Which is usually solving a big hang-up, keeping that person from reaching our ultimate destination and the journey and life and business.

You are unapologetically you. That willingness to push boundaries, test assumptions, and break rules is the essence of your entrepreneurial spirit. you pursue like a lion, your environment captive to your will. I'm proud of you. I'm in awe of you, and I am thankful for learning from you and sharing this life every day. Glad you picked me. Go learn them up. You did it.

Oh, no. Now it's on camera. I had to cry also. Dude, also hysterically, the first podcast I did was Stephen, I told them, I was like, if you think that I'm going to come on there and cry, I was like, you've got another one coming. And then you did it. Well, I gave you the secret in the beginning. I said if it's about love, my husband, my family, I'm a softie.

If it's about business, not as much. But he really is that man, you know? And the other thing is like, and you feel the same way about your husband too. But if there's any woman out there where you can't find your person, like they are out there. And, you know, and he has all these incredible friends who are a lot like him. And I know that I did just, like, win the lottery. I got really lucky with him. But also, I think if you keep trying to like be a better human, you keep talking nicely about the men in your life, you keep showing up, you know, you give,

you build, like, I just have a belief that there's one of those for everybody, you know? The reason I'm so happy about that is because I think it humanizes what we're all doing this for. And I think we've seen these 150 people run the world and like keep that part of their life so separate and or hear rumors of like what they're really doing behind closed doors. And I think the reason those types of videos and those reactions like mean so much to me is because at the end of the day, like that is what matters. That's what we're all doing this for. What do you think? I'm so hot now. I'm like hot. I'm crying. You're hot to are rich. But that's what it means. Okay. Now the podcast makes sense. If you could boil down.

one trait that you guys do to have a dynamic like that? What is it? Women want to be loved and men want to be respected. And I really respect my man. And you can't really do too many things to me to make me mad. But if you mess with him, we're going to have a problem. And so I think that like, sometimes I think about this is very cheesy because we're not like, you know, fighting wars. But I think about that scene in 300, you know? That movie. Incredible. Where the wife, you know, says to the husband, like, are you going to do this? Like, I've got your back. And she knows he's going to go die and he's going to, you know, lead this. But she's like, yes, I'm choosing you. And I think we've lost that in society a little bit. We've lost that like, this man I will stand beside no matter what happens.

And I think he feels that same way about me. And it's not us against the world. It's like us for the world, you know, us and the world. And I want to stand by that. And the more that I see some of like the things that happen in the world around us and how people treat their spouses and how men treat women. Like I was married before. I wasn't like this in that relationship because that man did not deserve my respect like this man does. And that was my fault for choosing that other man. That was on me, not on him. But, you know, I strive to like show him every single day that I respect him that way. And like small things. You know, you don't hear me talk that much about our relationship. And that's a little bit by design. Because who the fuck knows? And 80 years from now,

let's talk and see, like, what I've learned from them. Until then, like, I don't profess to be a relationship coach. I just only know what's worked for us. And I know that, like, I could talk to, like, what young Cody should have done differently, but not broadly. And I think maybe the other thing is, like, every single day we start the morning together. So you don't always get the night, right? The day can run you. But in the morning, we wake up early. And there's like a cup of coffee and a conversation. And if you can sit down with your spouse in the morning and have like that quiet time. And even like we don't have kids yet like, you know, hopefully one day. But that quiet time, the two of you before the world has risen, we're up really early to make that happen. And he'll tell you, I think that those are one of the most powerful moments we have as a couple. And so like what if you could change your relationship just by having that like cup of coffee and a conversation in the morning? I'm really listening. to each other. You know, I've become friends with this guy James Sexton. He'd be great to have on your podcast. He's a divorce attorney, which sounds weird, but he's just seen so much hate in love

that he has a lot of lessons in love. And I think often our partner just stops feeling interesting to us and stops feeling heard from us. And so I always try to really listen to him, even though sometimes I'll be like, where are you? You know, like, I'm not professing to be perfect. But like, try to listen to your man, really listen to him. And try to like, bring. And try to, like, bring, all of us are interesting, but we stop bringing it to our men too. Like, why does that happen? Why do we just ask them? Like, how was your day, honey? As opposed to, like, I found this fascinating thing. What do you think about this? You know, what did you find today that was fascinating? And, like, keep that interest level there. Because otherwise, like, I think the devil kind of creeps in through those

crevices of other people seeming interesting to you when they're all the same. You know, one of my, one of my favorite, my best friend who's been married to her husband forever. She always, she was with me when I was divorced previously and going through that. And now we've both been with our partners for a long time. And she's always like, just remember, this is what we say to all of our girlfriends, like, it would just be a different dick the same day. And so she's like, she's like, they're all the same in some way. Just like, you know, stop trying to think that you're going to find something else out there because you're not. You kind of create the man you want.

I love that. And I love talking about it because I do fundamentally believe that, like, the most important financial decision you will make is who you marry, like a thousand percent. So thank you for sharing that. with us. I think that's really powerful. What do you and your husband do? I think, you know, as you were saying everything, I was like, you know, sometimes he gets, like, I get on the phone and I'm so excited to talk to him that I like, this is what I did and this is interesting in this. And he's always like, whoa. And then he, after says, he's like, that is what is so amazing about our bond and relationship, because we are so, you specifically are so excited to talk to me that sometimes it feels like

you're dumping it on me, like, right away. But that's just because it's like a genuine best friend. It's like you just can't wait to tell them every single thing. And, you know, it's funny because when we first started dating, he would say, like, let's tell you other the top 10% and the top bottom, or the bottom 10%. And after a while, we've kind of both merged to be like, that's actually not our rule anymore. Because if it's only the top and only the bottom, like, you're missing so much of the middle. And often it's like where the really important stuff is happening that's like subconscious. And so I think it's like exactly what you said. It's like being best friends and wanting to do life together.

Like it is not a chore to be with each other. I posted this the other day like when we were finished our three hour face time because he's actually away for a stay of two weeks. He texted me after and he goes, I love talking to you. And when we first started dating, he actually told me he's like, don't ever prepare to be on the phone with me for more than 20 minutes. I'm extremely busy. because all of his ex-girlfriends, that was their dynamic.

Interesting. And now we'll talk on the phone for four or five hours. And he's like, you are literally my best friend. Like, I can't even believe this was possible. I had no idea. Yeah. It's like finding your best friend. Yeah.

It's very, I mean, Lord help. I always wonder about the men, too, who like, you know the men that marry like the hot chick that got, this got nothing going on upstairs? And you're like, really? The next 60 years, we're going to. What are you going to? do? What do you do at the dinner table? Like there's nothing going on up there. How do you engage? I think you're right. You want to be interesting. You want to be interested. And like that is what keeps the dynamic. I think so many people focus on the intimacy part. Like is your sex life crazy

all the time. It's like the answer is no. It's not. Yeah. You know, the, you know, those werewolf ripping each other's clothes off every second fairy books. Like that ain't real. But like, are you always finding them interesting and you're always interested? Like, that's the sign. I love that. You know? Okay, go do we have to finish on some rapid fire. Let's do it. What is the last thing you put on your credit card? This is a little silly, but it was like fancy boots from the real reel because, and I bought like five pairs because they were on a huge discount. And I think I like to tell myself that if it's a discount, then it's free. If it's free, it's for me. So I really like boots. So as I can see in their fire.

Favorite podcast that isn't your own? Ooh. David Senra Founders Pod. Yeah. What's the first episode that someone should listen to if they're new to hearing that? You can't go wrong. Pick any of them about the greats. I really like the Raising Cain's founder because he made billions with fried chicken in a market where there's lots of fried chicken all over the world.

I just think that's fascinating. Like if you can do that with that, you can make money with anything. Yeah. Okay. Who is your favorite comfort creator? You know who I really like? and I always forget her name, but like John Boof and his wife, they're like, they create like couples content and baby content and they're funny and skits. So I always find that one hysterical.

And then she has another friend whose name is cat, I think. I like like little cute comedy skits. It's incredibly wholesome too, so I sound way more wholesome than I am. Those are probably, those are my comfort creators. Yeah. Okay, you could only buy one of these businesses for the rest of your life, a laundromat or a painting business? A painting business. Ooh, okay. Less capex. Laundermat, it's like you have a lot of machines, you have a site, you have a limited constraint on how many you can put them in there. A painting business, you really just need painters, trucks, paint, and you can expand really wide. And from learning from this room, painting is expensive. It's extremely expensive. Don't even try to lime wash your walls, just in case anyone's wondering.

And the other cool part is, well, this is cool if you're a nerd, but if you come in like, I'm painting your house. let's say. And I've literally done this with our painting company that's called that one painter. We'll come to your house. Then we'll say like, hey, well, we're working on this. we're just going to put a sign outside to your neighbors in case they see, like, trucks outside or anything so they know that we're working. And if anything goes sideways or there's paint anywhere or anything weird, they can come get to us. Is that cool? And you're going to say, oh, yeah, sure. That sounds reasonable. Okay, great. And then while one guy's in here painting and doing whatever, another guy is going to go around your neighborhood. And he's going to knock on all the doors in your neighborhood. We're the gates because there's not a lot of doors. He can talk here. So he's going to knock on the gates. And he's going to do something, which is not a hard sell. It's a very smart, soft cell. And you knock on the door. or the press the button on the gate and you just say, hey, I just wanted to let you know that we're painting your neighbor's house in case anything, you know, if a truck's in your way or anything, you need anything, I wanted to give you my number. Is that okay? Of course, they say yes. You know in sales, you always want to get the first yes because that makes the second yes easier. So they go,

okay, great. And then you go, and also, you know, because we're here in the neighborhood doing theirs, I'm happy to do a walkthrough and see if there's anywhere on your property that you want to get a quote for painting. And obviously, since we're already here, we can do a discounted quote. but you just tell me if that would be interesting. And I would say about 30 to 40% of the time, somebody says yes. So that means you get one job. So say just to paint this room like, you know, how you have it painted here, it's probably a couple K. And so if I was to do your whole house, this is a pretty big job. But if I get some of your neighbors too, we're really in business. So anyway, I like those. I'm obsessed as that. Yeah, I know. You should try it. And the door knocking

is really good for the soul. Like any woman who hasn't done door knocking at some way, shape, or form, I really think it makes you a better entrepreneur. Just like careful in the neighborhood. Yeah. Or do it virtually. I did a hundred cold calls a day when I first graduated college. It was crazy. It's miserable. Yeah. It's miserable. Yeah. But aren't you better now? Isn't it hard for you to like take no? It was rejection therapy. Like it was the best thing I've ever done in my entire life. I hated every single day. But I'm so grateful I did it. 100% agree. If you could title the season of your life, what would it be called? Every year, I have a word for the year. Last year was flow. the year before that was full send, and this year is Reap. And we've spent a lot of years building this business. And we've done it in a way that I think was really intelligent, but we haven't really, we haven't reaped what we've sown yet. And so this is the first year that we start doing that. I love that. Okay, so I do these things on social media every single day that's called like

HsR Love Notes. And it's basically a way to retrain my brain into positive thought. So I'll say something like, I'm going to have an amazing interview today, even though I'm intimidated by Cody Sanchez. And it's just a way to reframe your brain. So if you could have one HSR love note that you could tell yourself for the rest of your life, and anybody that's listening to this, what would it be? You just win. You got this. I mean, it's actually fascinating.

So we train entrepreneurs to build their businesses, right? So first, like, what happened is we taught a bunch of people to buy businesses. And then I always say, congratulations. And I'm sorry because now you own it. And so then we help people build their businesses. And so now, like, our average entrepreneurs doing $2 to $5 million a year in revenue. And so I have all this data now on what multi-million dollar entrepreneurs think and who's going to win and who's going to lose. And there's some hard data, but one soft piece of data, I'm loosely calling poor owner mindset as opposed to rich owner mindset. And a poor owner mindset is one where when something bad happens, they panic. There's an emotional response. Oh my God, what are we going to do? I don't know what to do next. I'm going to have to shut down. They're sort of like this spiraling. And the rich owner mindset, goes by and large. I've won up until now. I'm likely to continue winning based on all

historical evidence. So I got this. I'm going to figure it out. We got a problem, but I got this. Just label yourself a winner and say that you're going to figure it out. And I think you'll do that more often. You're amazing. Cody Sanchez, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find you? Right back at you. Cody Sanchez on all the socials and contrarian thinking.com. Thank you guys so much for listening. Please don't forget to subscribe. This is the first time I've ever said that because Cody told me to, she's an excellent motivator. So listen to her podcast and follow her on all socials. Thank you guys so much. I love you and thank you, Cody. So good. 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.