Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - The Best (and Worst) Businesses to Buy in 2026

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

You know Codie Sanchez as the woman who made buying a laundromat sound cooler than launching a startup. Today, she's back to talk about her new book, Own or Be Owned, and why so many founders are secretly addicted to their own businesses. Codie explains why being "the hero" of your company is a trap (she compares it to heroin), the 12 owner archetypes she discovered after surveying 15,000 business owners, and why the goal isn't to work harder, it's to become unnecessary. She also gets real about the parts of founder life nobody talks about: the years she put her personal life on hold chasing a revenue number, the fear of telling her team she was pregnant, and why she now believes "later" almost never actually comes. Get Codie's book Own or Be Owned Find boring businesses to buy on BizScout.com What we cover 00:00 Are You Ready for Some Money Rehab? 01:33 How to Buy a Laundromat: Cost, Margins, and Failure Rates 14:29 The Thesis Behind Own or Be Owned, and the 12 Owner Archetypes 20:40 Why Being "The Hero" Feels Like Heroin 25:03 Founder Mode vs. Owner Mode 31:03 Stepping Away From the Business She Built 39:12 Pregnancy, Business, and Life as a Founder 43:16 How Codie Invests and Manages Her Own Money 46:48 Boring Business Grades: A Through F, and What to Skip in 2026 All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Always do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any financial decisions or investments. Start investing investing at SoFi.com/MNN Private Wealth Collective Nicole's boutique wealth management practice for people who want more than a robo-advisor and less than a hedge fund minimum. Real strategy, real relationship. https://privatewealthcollective.com The Money School Nicole's $149 investing course that actually breaks down stocks, ETFs, crypto, and building a real portfolio, no jargon, no judgment, lifetime access. https://themoneyschool.com ----------------------- Find other exclusive content at— Instagram: @moneynews TikTok: @moneynewsnetwork Website: https://moneynewsnetwork.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You don't need to be smart or brilliant or remember everything to run a really profitable business. You need named frameworks and systems that you can steal from other people in order to take their 10,000 hours and apply it to you. You know Cody Sanchez as the woman who made buying a laundromat sound cooler than launching a startup. She built contrarian thinking by shouting from the rooftops that boring businesses are the most overlooked past. to wealth in America. Today she talks about the thesis of her new book, Own or Be Own, and how to tell if you're addicted to your own business. If you are a founder and you are trying to be a hero all the time,

you will eventually do as Spider-Man says, you'll become the villain. You want to be a hero because it tastes like heroin. It is the most addictive substance in the world to feel needed. We talk about how conventional rise and grind advice is complicated for pregnant women. There was many a day where I was laying on the floor of my little office, and really just thinking, if I don't have the business established, I should not establish a baby. And that was because there weren't other women around me that I saw doing it.

And the step-by-step playbook, if you're thinking about buying a boring business. You want to find the best business in 26 to make the most money with the least amount of effort. The secret is. And Nicole Laughan, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Cody Sanchez. Welcome to Money Rehab. Thanks for having me.

I'm thrilled. I'm so thrilled to meet you. I say this is the highest compliment. You are the queen of boring businesses. Walk me through how to buy a laundry match. Especially as a baby mama, now you have all this laundry. You're probably more into it. It's so into it.

So lightning round style, starting with how do we find one to buy? Yeah. You find it on BizSkout.com, Zillow Marketplace for small businesses. I own it, disclaimer. But it's the second largest marketplace in the world. The first one sucks. So go there. How much money does it take to buy a laundromat? 10% of the purchase price down and an SBA loan, which the government will give you, or you can do seller financing where the seller will help you finance the business.

The average laundromat, I believe right now, is somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000. So let's call that somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 down. And then you should be able to get a mixture of seller finder. financing plus SBA loan for it. What's the overhead? Well, you have three most expensive expenses in a laundromat. Your lease, your utilities, and then your equipment. And so if you look at your laundry mat, that's going to be a majority of what you pay each month.

As long as you make sure you have a good lease, the equipment isn't too old, and the utilities aren't too expensive water electricity for the washers and dryers. You should be able to back your way into a pretty good number. What's the margin or what should the margin be? Laundromat's anywhere from 10 to 25, 30% on the high end if you do more expensive things like wash and fold. But the average small business is 15% margin. And laundromats are right in that sphere. How much risk is there?

Well, laundromats are one of the lowest failure rate businesses that exist. And how do we determine that by SBA loans that have been given and by industry laundromat loans that have. have been given. And so they're actually, when it comes to business, a relatively lower risk business, there is one caveat. It's hard to make a ton of money with them. You need a lot of laundromats to be making millions. Or like a specially branded baby clothes only laundromat. Yeah, you could. I mean, there's like two in New York that are pretty well branded. So like like a fancy coffee shop inside all organic stuff in it, really cool hangout spot and you do laundry. But just think about how many quarters you have to use to make a million. So the real way to make money with a laundromat

is to do wash and fold and delivery on top of it. That's where you're going to make your cash. Because tired moms everywhere will pay you 50 bucks, 75 bucks a week to take all the dirty clothes, bring them back, clean and folded, amazing. And then if you want the real pro move, it's go commercial. So go to all the nail salons around you, the Airbnbs, wash their laundry. Then with one customer, you could get a couple thousand dollars per month. Is it something that someone should put their life savings in? Listen, I never like to give. You're good because you'll give people good financial insight personally.

I like to say, I wouldn't. I've never put all my eggs in one basket and watched them closely, which would be like a, you know, a one person's move on Wall Street. I'd much rather do smaller deals, stairstep my way to bigger ones so that no deal independently can bankrupt me. That's my independent belief. But I also don't believe in telling somebody you shouldn't go all in if you want to. If that's what you want to do, bankruptcy isn't out for people. So if that's what you're comfortable with, you could. I just wanted to say congratulations on your latest joint venture with your husband. That's actually what my husband and I said when I was

pregnant. It was our joint venture, although I did much more work than he did. Stop it. I think Chris would actually be on board with that. He feels like that. It's his new favorite startup. That's for sure. He actually likes to quiz me on things that I know about pregnancy that he knows instead of me. You know what? It's not a co-venture. It's a U venture and he has like 1% of it. So he should be doing the research. He should do the research nerd part of it. In your new book, you talk about the journey that you went through to get there. It sounds like years of IVF. I went through IVF with my husband, too.

So congratulations. Well, thanks. You know, I think one of the things I try to do is like, I don't know that everybody usually tells you the non-shiny parts of finance, money, building, anything. And so when we announced at least, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just like, yay, this was so great. It was like, this took a long time. It was super expensive.

It was pretty miserable. I wasn't sure it was going to work out. Here we are. I'm glad it did work out. but for a lot of women, that's not the case, you know. And I think it's worth it to say that at least was my thought. I appreciate that. Yeah.

Thank you. Well, you know, I think, you know, and I'm sure, I don't know if you felt like this with your little, but I was definitely thinking, what if I talk about it and it doesn't work out, you know? And for a lot of women, that's the reality. And then, you know, you make an announcement and then you hear all of these women who went through the exact same thing you did and, you know, have lost babies and had all the heartache. And so, anyway, I think it's more normal to talk about it now, but I wanted to make sure that I just

didn't share the trophy case. I appreciate that. Yeah. I think that we still have a few taboos in society. Money is one of them for sure. Maybe mental health to some extent. And so when you open up first, it gives other people license to do the same thing. Yeah, 100%.

Because it's all related. I mean, what's the point of money and winning and owning businesses if you can't? pass it on to the next generation, if that's what you want to do, if you can't have a great family life, you know, that it's kind of no point. Very well said. I mean, we work hard for something. And I was digging into your new book. Thank you for writing it. You created a deranged, was that the right word, deranged pre-up with your company. Can you tell me about that? Couple things. So one, I think, you know, when I first started my company, I was really scared. And I thought I might fail at this thing. And, you know, and so I did something called

the anti-manifestation, which I talk about in the book. But basically, when you start something, it can be really scary. And so I like to write down all the things that could go sideways. I lose all my money. My employees hate me. The product's terrible. I have to go back and get a job. Oh, my God. Indeed. What are these job applications? This is awful. And when I did that, I realized, oh, okay, if the worst case scenario is I have to go back and get a job, I can handle this. It'd be miserable. I let myself sit without a second. It'd be miserable.

But one of the things that came up during that anti-manifestation is with my husband, I, in the beginning of building a business, thought, which I think a lot of owners do, I'm doing it for the family. I'm doing it for all of us, babe. We get to live in this house. We have the beach house. We have all these things because of what I've built. And one day, you know, Chris, my husband kind of looked at me and was like, I don't care about that other stuff.

Like, you know, he's a former Navy SEAL. He's never been monetarily driven, right? He wants impact. He wants to win. He wants to learn. He wants to help people. That's pretty much it. And if money comes as a bike product, amazing.

And so with this pre-up that Chris and I did, we did a little pre-up about the company, which was, what are the things that we both are going to promise before we enter into this contract? And a lot of this has been small things. Like you were joking about your joint venture, but I love to start businesses. So, you know, as a founder, you're always coming up with these crazy ideas. Well, what about this? And then we launched this. And the problem is, I kept launching them. You know, and then he was like, let's not do that anymore. Like, let's actually have a conversation before every business that we start.

Let's be on the same page about it. Let's make sure the company doesn't run our lives, that we instead run the business. And let's make sure we are actually not the miserable owners we see everywhere who try to tell everybody that ownership is misery and terrible and why did I do this and let me tell you all my horror stories. But instead, no, it's actually pretty awesome. And so I hope other people could at least lay out, here's the things that are really scary about business, then you can get rid of them. And here's the promises I'm going to make to myself, my company, my husband about why I will never do this in my business, because it will take it from you if you give it. Well, it's almost a stoicism exercise, which I love and I utilize all the time, but your

framework really nailed it. And then the pre-up, it sounds like, also had something about not having kids for a while. Why was that? It sounds like you perhaps didn't. see examples or why did you not think you could be a great CEO and a toddler mom from a CEO slash toddler mom? You know, I didn't know really any. Like I didn't have personal friends that ran big businesses like I did who had kids. I think it'll be just as successful as the limiting beliefs that you have in your mind. And so my limiting belief was very clear. And it was if I don't have the business established, I should not establish a baby. And once the business hits X, then I can. And that was because there weren't other women around me that I saw doing it. I mean, how many times have

you really seen, like, a pregnant woman running a business on video? Right now. Like, yeah, exactly. Literally right now. And so I just hadn't seen it that often. And I had seen maybe celebrities do it, sure, but not people that I thought were running a business actively. And so that was sort of a false story. I told myself, thankfully, like when I first was writing the book, we weren't pregnant. but I was very honest about the fact that like that's a regret. If I would have come up with a different belief earlier on, I would have realized you can do just about anything you want to do while running a business. It's just what level of business do you want to run at what speed? And so what a shame that, you know, I sort of built this thing that had to put my personal life on hold.

I don't think you have to do that. Now we have a lot of studies that show you don't. Well, I don't think I've actually mentioned this, but we did have. F didn't work and then got pregnant. Oopsies. I'm 40. And then needed to create that system as I went. And so I think when you have this idea of later, later always becomes later and later and later. When I turn 40, the doctors said, I don't think this is going to work out for you. And so I had this belief that it probably wasn't going to work out for me. I always wanted to have family, but I wasn't sure that I ever would. Did you ever get to a point where you feel like you lost hope? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think if you're a high performing individual, I think in a lot of ways business can be easy because you can hit the next target. You can hire the next person. You can always have forward moving action on something like getting pregnant, you know, that's up to God in biology. And so, you know, it was one of the first things where there wasn't more to do. It's not like, well, if I just do more,

and if I spend more, I can get there. That's, you know, at some point, you have to kind of let go. And so that's what I did. I mean, thankfully, I have a lot of faith now. But I just said, hey, at some point we're going to have a kid, whether that's adoption or surrogacy or whatever the case may be, that might be great. And if I can hold it myself, I would love that human experience. But if not, than it wasn't meant to be. And so at some point I became kind of stoic or tranquil with that. But there were many moments where I thought, we've made a giant mistake by putting my business first and waiting so many years. And so that's why I felt comfortable putting in the book because Lord, you know, when was the last time you read a book where people talked about the things that

their business held them back from? It's so much glory focus with business building. It's like, and then, you know, Henry Ford built this business and he's a titan of industry. His wife hated him. His kids hated him. He had mental problems toward the end. He was like monitoring all of his employees constantly as the morality place. That was not a happy dude that built Ford. And so we raised him on this pedestal because he was a genius.

But I don't think that's the only way to do it. And so, again, I think I got into a little bit of founder porn about only the sort of miserable, obsessed ones win. And that does not have to be the case. I mean, I think Jeff Bezos is a great example of that. That man's living his life. He's living his best life. He really is. He's got his hot Latina. He's out on his yacht. He's getting jacked. Like, you know, fine. Good for you, man. He looks like a completely different human being. That's money is what that is. It's not genetic. That is called money. Well, while I was reading your book this weekend, my husband and I were in Hawaii celebrating our wedding anniversary.

And I think you. I felt personally assaulted by a portion of it where you talk about this lipness test of going on vacation for a couple weeks. And if your business is not sustainable or if it doesn't grow without you, then you don't own the business. The business owns you. And there's a part of the book where you're like, if you're on vacation and the waves are laughing at you while you have slack open and I was like, is she here? Because that was exactly what was happening. Well, first of all, It's happened to every owner. And like for some reason, we were not given the book that gives us processes that give us sanity. And so we were told to go start a business, and that is an innovative thing. But once the business sort of exists, you know, you have some sort of product, you've sold it

to some people. There's some revenue and profit there. All of that becomes a factory. And I never knew that. I was reading like Steve Jobs biography as a young entrepreneur. You're reading Steve Jobs. You're listening to what he did. With all due respect, you're probably not. I'm probably not Steve Jobs. If I go and try to replicate his homework, I'm in real trouble. The idea with owner be owned is let's take from the people who are not geniuses, aka with love, private equity that runs a bunch of businesses, and franchises that run a bunch of businesses at lower failure rates. Let's just take their processes, apply them to our businesses, and try to enjoy life

slightly more. And so the test is really simple, which is, can you go on vacation? and take two weeks and not that you will not have anything go wrong in your business, but you will have something go wrong and other people will handle it for you. You will also have some things go right in your business and you really won't do much besides maybe have a member of your team, close a couple hundred thousand dollar transaction and all you do is like smile. And that should be what it actually feels like to own a business at some point. And so you can actually take a quiz inside of the book to see where you're at. And that is a little slap in the face. Oh, yeah.

I'm a ball hog. Oh, okay. That's great. Is that the right prototype? Yeah. So why don't you took one of the archetypes? Yes. So you have, right, explain it to us.

12 peas. Yes. So essentially. Love alliteration. Thank you for that. It's the only way I can remember anything. I have the mind of a goldfish. So that's the other thing that's good about the, you know, the process is you don't need to be smart

or brilliant or remember everything to run a really profitable business. You need named frameworks and systems that you can steal from other people in order to take their 10,000 hours and apply it to you. And so I am not. I'm not smart. I don't have a good memory. Actually, like, if you quote some stuff from the book, I'm like, oh, yeah, I do remember that. I have to write things down. And so, have you ever felt like somebody gives you advice? And you're like, I bet that worked for you. It sounds like it was great. That sounds terrible for me. And that's how I think most business advice is. You get advice from somebody,

but you don't want to live their life. You don't actually want their business. And you, sadly, don't have their skill set and they don't have yours. And so we started doing all this research on businesses that succeed. And we're like, how come we're applying all the same processes to these businesses and they're not having the same success rate? And the differentiator was one thing. What type of owner are you? So it's not just what type of business do you run, sector industry. It's not just what size business do you run. It's who are you as an owner? What skill set do you have? So we realize there's 12 archetypes of owners. And it's not dissimilar to like Myers-Briggs or even horoscopes. We're like, you just know that you have predilections, things that you're more likely to be like.

And after surveying about 15,000 owners and high achievers, because we wanted to get people on the climb and the people who had already climbed, we found we could categorize them pretty scientifically. And so they would say, yes, this is me. Their team would say, yes, this is me. And of these 12, the one that you are is the ball hog, which basically means you're probably a great closer. Like you're like the, you know, you bring in the deals, you're on top of things. but also nothing closes without you. And so this is very normal for high performing entrepreneurs. It's probably why you're like, you left. You're like, listen, guys, I got this. I don't, you can't employ me because watch, I'm going to do better than you. That's why you left.

Then you're in business and all of a sudden you're like, watch, I do better than you. And you're like, wait a second, I employ you. I pay you to be here. Why? I can't be better than you. You have to be good. And so I'm a workforce, which means I get off on this theory that I need to work hard all the time and I define myself by how hard I work and I think that's really impressive, which also means that I work on everything all the time and I can have no life if I do it wrong. And so once you see this light and dark side of yourself, you'll realize, oh, I need to surround myself. Like as a ball hog, you probably need to surround yourself with a few people pleasers. And those people pleasers will be people who actually want to help you. And so I have a couple of

them, Lindsay would be one for me. She took the test. And I'll be, because you have like some tendencies. So I'm mostly workhorse. I have some ball hog in me too. Nobody's shocked there. And Lindsay will say, hey, give me that. Like, that's not for you, you know, or Nicole yesterday was doing this to me about something else. And so now you can realize how you should build your team because you don't want all ball hogs. You guys will fight. And so anyway, that was the idea with the book. Yeah. My husband also says that I take the marker out of his hand. What's he? Have you had him? No, but he's next to take.

I'll send you the link, actually. It's easier so you don't have to do it in the book. Thank you. This wasn't a prototype, but I thought it was interesting where you quoted Ray Dalio saying that an issue is that people think that other people know what they're thinking, essentially. One of the reasons why, if you're a founder, you're successful is because you've been able to sell people a dream and a vision. You've got them to buy in on your way of thinking. Well, that's beautiful, except often you can rail, to their way of thinking. And so due to your force of will and brilliance as a founder, you have inadvertently really shut up a lot of your team, which is something I've definitely done too. And so once you take the quiz, you can kind of go, oh, wait a second, this is a natural tendency for me. What's the natural tendency for my team? And now I can play into it a little bit more.

And that helps me. So do you think there's a difference between being irreplaceable and being insecure or do they show up the same way? I believe that you want to be a hero because it tastes like heroin. You know, like it is the most addictive substance in the world to feel needed. And so in the book, we do say hero is a four-letter word. And so if you are a founder and you are trying to be the hero all the time, you will eventually do as Spider-Man says, you'll become the villain, which is you'll hate yourself, you'll hate your business. You know, your family will certainly hate it, too. And so why are you a hero? Because your entire life has been set up to reward you achieve in things. That is mostly how capitalism and business works. The more you achieve and the more you excel, the more people love you. And so you start to associate what you do as love from your business. And love might be money or attention or whatever gets you off. And so this happens to all of us in business. And once you realize that, you can take a pause and say, Actually, the best business owners in the world, their output has nothing to do with the revenue of their business.

And that statement can really free you if you realize I should never be the single engine driving this railroad. Instead, it should be actually the railroad runs by itself. There's train cars passing all the time and I am one engine amongst many. And so I do think it's not even that you're insecure. It might just be, God, that felt so good. You know, that little hit of heroin all the time felt so amazing as a business owner. I want to keep getting it. And then I don't realize eventually that becomes an addiction.

So the addiction is work? Usually, yeah. And it might be, the addiction could be work. The addiction could be your customers telling you nice things. The addiction could be your team feeling like you really needed. Your addiction could be that you're building something that you've never built before. It could be novelty. And so it'll really depend.

if you're the artist, you might not even look at it at work. You might just say, I build incredible things and I don't even have to talk about them in the marketplace because somebody will find me eventually for it. They don't get off on sales. They get off on, no, no, I'm an artist. I create, right? Whereas the people pleaser might get off on, my customers love me. I know we don't make any money, but look the impact we have.

And so once you realize what your brand of heroin is, you can figure out, how do I change my perspective on this. And I think that's the only way you hit multi, multi millions in revenue consistently and don't hate yourself. Obviously aim to not hit yourself. Co-sign hard on that, but should you aim to be replaceable? Yes. Yes. I mean, your job as a CEO is to surround yourself with a team so much better than you. You get a little bit embarrassed at times. You are winning as a CEO when you have a team of A players where in their individual lane, they are better than you. And your job is, you are. And your job is, really probably to do as Elon Musk says to find the series of compounding lies inside of your

business. So your job is data. What is the doubt really telling me? And then your job is vision. Where are we going next? Where's the next big thing in the business? But you are not actually employed to be the admin, the operator, the accountant, the salesperson inside of your business. That would just mean that you have a very stressful job with a terrible boss, aka yourself. And so we need to move you out of this idea of being what? we call a manager in your business into an operator. So a manager in your business is where most people are. I like to think about it like a triangle, four levels to the triangle. Bottom level, one entrepreneur. You don't have a business yet. You want to. You're kind of working on it.

You're thinking about it. Manager, you have a business, but it's mostly you doing everything. You know, your org chart just looks like a series of views. Then operator is we do everything, right? So I'm in it, the team, you and me, we're doing it all together. CEO is they do most things. and I either oversee it or I redirect or analyze the data on it. And that's where we want you to get. It doesn't mean you're ever going to give up oversight, but it does mean you should be doing a lot less than you probably are. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 20, kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. As you know, Paul Graham, Brian Chessie, love founder mode. He was on the show, touting founder mode. So is Brian wrong? No, I don't think Brian's wrong, but I'll start with, who was the first one you said? Paul Graham. Paul. Let's start with Paul Graham.

incentives, always follow the incentives. Paul Graham wants you in founders mode. Why? Paul Graham backs founders. Every venture capitalists out there wants you working harder, longer. Why? Because they know only one or two out of ten is going to succeed. They want to bet on a bunch of you guys sleeping in your basements and being pretty miserable for a long time with the hope that eventually you can be on the cover of entrepreneur and you can be Elon Musk. That's highly unlikely just mathematically. So I would say, and I respect the shit out of Paul, but most people are not happy in venture back companies don't ever succeed and then have to go somewhere else. It's just what the math tells us. Now, when it comes to Brian Chesky, Brian is an incredible operator. He has been for a long time. He's

been known as that for a long time. However, Brian is probably one of the top 1%, which are those unique individuals who are like Elon Musk, who I would never disagree with either, who say, I cannot help it. I must build this thing that exists in the world. And simultaneously, for Elon at least, he would say, you don't want to be in here. It's like a place of misery and chewing shard glass or something like that, he said. And so I would say for Brian, we got to be careful not expecting every single person who owns a business to want to have a business that changes the world, raises billions and billions of dollars, and then does billions of dollars a year. It's like 3,000 billionaires in the world. It's really hard to hit that. It means massive obsession

in order to do it. The question is, do you want massive obsession, linear type of life, and not much else going on for many years? And I think we should at least question that assumption. So do you think all of those, unfortunately mostly doves, 3,000 of them, they all fail your test? I think most of them fail the do I do this and I'm happy test. And how do we know that? How many billionaires stayed married all the way on the list? I think there's two. It's Zuckerberg and Michael Dell. The rest of them are all divorced, multi-times over. Doesn't mean they're miserable. Some of them are on the list because of divorce. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's the counterpoint. So I think, I think, you know, and you and I have both by now met a lot of billionaires through podcasting and getting to be online. And what I would say is I've met very few really happy billionaires. Most billionaires, I've met are defined by the money that they've made and the things that they've created. And I always joke, I was just joking with a friend yesterday that they billionaire on you all the time. You know, they'll be like, yeah, name your kid after me and I'll pay for college.

I'm like, what? Who says things like that? You know? Yes. And so, hey, it's all good. But let's just make sure that we're not defining our life by money if you don't want to. And so I would never tell somebody the way they're living is wrong as long as long as they're content with it. And I think what I hope is that we're a counterpoint for the people who have this like trauma bonding over being a CEO because that seems to be a thing. Like you weren't happy before you were a CEO. You're not happy as a CEO. And thus, no CEO should be happy. That's, that's actually correlation, not causation.

And so that's my push. Now, I guess shot in Freud too. Right. Yeah, exactly. And don't get me wrong. I think, like I'm obsessed with what I do. I love working and I work all the time. And that's a choice that I'm like constantly asking myself, do you want to continue to work like this?

And if any point you don't, let's set up the business you don't have to. So, hey, Brian Cheskey's like, I love it now. I got this huge team. The team is amazing. Airbnb is great. I get to keep rolling my business. Sick. But if any point, he wants to take a sabbatical, great.

Amazon's not struggling without Jeff. that to me is a real business, as opposed to the first time Steve Jobs left before I think he became a real leader. And Apple absolutely flailed and he had to come back. Why? Because he actually hadn't set up the business except to be a cult of Steve. And that I think is a real difference. So if you don't want that, what is addiction to any of those things, work being the biggest, look like? Yeah.

I think it's following the process that we call owner mode, which is basically, as opposed to founder mode, I want you to have an owner mindset where you think about the business as a business and an entity that's separate than you. When you go through the book, you basically see that there's four segments of this. But if I was going to explain it at a really high level, we want you to understand what type of owner you are so that you can figure out where your darks and lights are, the things that you should do, the things that you shouldn't. We want you to run a process that we call you call the 12Ps. The 12Ps will tell you what's wrong inside of your business right now as your next issue. We want you to fix one of those 12Ps to get to the next level of the game. And then we want

you to run a process to see, do I want this business to do one of three things? Do I want this business to be venture style, grow like crazy? Do I want this business to be lifestyle and cash flow to me? Or do I want to exit? And it's like when you know who you are and you know where you want to go is way easier to get there, right? You're like, I got the skills and I know where I'm going. And so if you want a lifestyle business, let's set up the business where you can cash flow on it and enjoy. If you want a venture business that's going to grow like crazy, let's set up the business like that. If you want to exit and do something else, then let's set up the business that way. Like, you know, choose your own adventure for entrepreneurs. It's not saying my way is right or

Ryan Cheskey's way right or Elon's way is right. It's like you pick your road and don't let anybody tell you that the way you run and run or want to run your business is wrong as long as it's true to you. Now that you hopefully are going to be taking some maternity leave, are you? Yeah, for sure. Okay. You want to build something that survives you or exists in your absence, right? So have you built that machine and are you nervous about leaving it? Oh, yeah. I mean, when I first told my team that I was pregnant, I was like, I think everybody's probably going to leave. I don't know if they're going to stick through this. I had totally unreasonable responses to what it would be like to not make my business the center of my world, which is weird because we own a ton of

businesses. So I have 20 businesses that I don't run at all that's still cash flow to me. So I know there is a mechanism to do this again and again without your business becoming your identity. What's interesting is contrarian thinking is so tied to my identity, so many founders, you know, we believe we are the thing we've built. And so even though I have this process across these others, I looked at this one and thought, oh my gosh, how am I going to move this somewhere else? So all that takes as a little reflection. We like to run it on what we call 90-day sprints, kind of like tech does. And so we started a 90-day sprint, and my team and I are talking about it right now. I do a lot of content. And I'm like, I really don't want to do content for about eight weeks when I'm feeling like a whale at the

end of precedence or pregnancy. So what do we do? So the team's already. So the team's already. pre-thinking, how do we film and schedule all the score before? And then I don't want to film until eight weeks after I'm done being pregnant. So the team's building that out now. Old Cody would have said, how am I going to do this? New Cody says, how are you going to help me achieve this? And usually your problem in business is like you think you have to solve the solution, but it's really always a who within your business that can help you get to the how of what you're going to do next. Well, so many founders are the face of their business or are the face of their content like you are. And so how do you think about replacing that or not being as present in that?

I know in the back of your book you have a link to what your system is and you say to steal it, which is so kind and generous of you. But how do you step away when you actually have to have your face out there? Yeah. Well, I think the number one question you got to ask yourself is, are you really key to your business? So I would be the worst example of a business that has key founder risk, right? So if anybody's like, no, Cody doesn't get it because her business is way easier to outsource. Like, my face is all over this thing.

I'm in all the ads. So one could say this business is not possible without Cody. Well, we've basically found that we have so many ways to make content, to reuse content, to repurpose content, and now to add characters to my cast that aren't just me, that even this business, which is so founder dependent, can be de-founder-dependent. And so I think, like, we've probably, I don't know, we've probably worked with how many different hundreds of business types by this point. But I've yet to find a business where I thought, wow, without the founder, this cannot continue. Like perhaps if you

were an independent inventor with no other employees whatsoever, then you have a job, not a business. But for the most part, that is a story that you are telling yourself about how important do you are in your business and you will be even more important to your business in a way when you are not critical to it. Well, I think it's so important to also, for real, and I never wanted to be that woman who had a baby and only talked about baby stuff or like be the mom business lady, but it really is a different conversation. And so we're talking about a bunch of dudes. Jensen, we haven't even talked about him yet, but he talks about like his 60 direct reports, Brian and Elon and all of these guys who have these systems and processes and have never been a

pregnant founder either. And so when you think about the systems and processes, how do you think about life changing? So, you know, you're going to have your eight weeks and your eight weeks. But what if you're like, I just want to live inside the, which I did, inside the leg folds of my daughter and just smell them all day long and just like be here for longer. That is so early specific. I'm sure I'm going to get it later. I'll be like, is the leg fold. It's the rolls. They're delicious. You'll get it. What if, you know, you want a different thing for after birth and you don't know that yet? Or what if it, you know, there's a curveball with it. So you can have these systems and processes. And I did too, by the way. I had like a system for a birth plan. I had a system for Matt leave. And then contractions came like out of a movie. And I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. I'm like, how fast can we get an epidural? Never thought I'd get an epidural. But I was like, have it ready for me when we arrive. Thank you. You know, two weeks later, a house burns down.

You know, I had this whole system and process set up. Like I was walking to my office. I was doing the thing. I was setting up like my mental health plan. And I love like a great system and process just like you do. But I think it's a different conversation, especially for women and especially around family planning. Yeah. I mean, I can't profess to know how to do that with families yet.

I don't have one. I don't have a kid. I don't want to pretend like I'm going to be some perfect mom and CEO. because I'm sure I won't and we'll figure it out as we go. So I think maybe my closest comparison is just, I think a question I often ask myself as a founder is, are you burnt out, are you just doing too much of the things you don't want to do? And I think oftentimes as founders were overwhelmed because we've taken on so many things that you just actually are kind of miserable in. And you actually outsource parts of your business that you like because everybody tells you to do it based on how

much they cost. And all of a sudden, you're running parts of the business that you don't really like anymore. And other people have the job that you do like. And so I think it's, if pregnancy becomes the thing you like and being with the baby becomes the thing you like, then the question you need to ask yourself is, what do you still want to do inside of the business? And, you know, this goes to one of the chapters on processes, which is where you ask this question, I don't believe you should just look at your business and say, whereas my highest ROI on dollar. I think you've got to look your business and say, where is my highest ROI and my highest ROI on fun? My husband has a line where he always says there's 100% return on investment on fun. And I say that is categorically

incorrect. Nicole would disagree with you on. This is not a one-to-one on that. But it's not a part of the equation enough. And so in that line item. Yeah, it's exactly. But it's a big one. It's actually a really big one. I don't like one-on-ones. I like Jensen's process of not having any one-on-one. with this team. I do not really have them. I have a meeting with my content leaders and I have a meeting with all of my leaders at my company and then I have a meeting with my leaders at varying companies that we manage. So three meetings. I got rid of one-on-ones and at first I thought that would be really a bad idea. Like everybody does this. Everybody wants a one-on-one. Everybody's going to leave. They're not going to feel focused on. It hasn't mattered to the business at all. And so I think going

through your calendar and asking yourself not just the Mark Twain if you have to eat a frog, eat the first one, you know, eat in the morning if you have to eat to eat the big one first, sure. But after a while as a business owner, if you don't want to eat frogs anymore, find somebody who wants to eat the fucking frog. And so I don't know why we weren't ever taught that. Some people like frog legs. That's actually a thing, you know? They pay a lot of money for those. Just not me. It's not for me. Yeah. I think that like a lot of these men that have written a lot about operationalizing business, have never had to even think about a deranged pre-up, for instance, or I've never thought about family planning and financial planning in the same breath. So I think it's

an important topic to talk about together. And also, I mean, just your energy levels and all that change a lot with pregnancy. I'm sure they change with children even more you would know. But, you know, there was many a day where I was laying on the floor, you know, of my little office in the first trimester. And like, you know, my office door is sort of closed, which I'm usually pretty open door. And I hadn't told the team and really just thinking, you know, this is odd. And it wasn't where I thought I would ever be. And so thank God we had built a business, not a job, because I couldn't have done that. Well, I was nervous to tell a lot of our partners that I was pregnant. And I didn't want to be, but I was naturally. Do you think that that fear is real,

that people are concerned about signing new deals with pregnant women or they're going to take time off or they're not going to be as much of beast mode or founder mode or owner mode or whatever mode you want to be in. I mean, I do think there's, you know, there's biases against everything. So I'm sure people, there are some people. But for instance, you know, it was funny. One of my employees actually came to me while I was pregnant but hadn't told anybody. And she very sweetly told me very early on. She had just started and she's like, I'm so sorry.

I just found out in four weeks pregnant. Like I totally understand if you don't want me to stay in the job. And if I can't do the role and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I was like, wait a second. You know, that doesn't matter. It's fine. You know, every life has cycles. You're in a cycle.

Just tell us what you need. Get what you need to get done and like, we'll work through it. This is kind of a zero issue. But I sort of chuckled because I was pregnant at that moment, sort of. You know, she didn't know. But I think it's a natural thing because we haven't been through that many cycles. as women, you know, generationally, where we're working nonstop or running businesses. But what I can say is, like, the only things that have happened to me are that people have

been hyped about it, although I did give my president a lot of crap because he, I told him. And then I was like, I'm going to do some time in December. And he's like, oh, great. Comes back like two hours later. And he's like, hey, November 25th or something like that, there's a really famous celebrity pro-am golf tournament and they want you to play. Like, can I sign you up? I'm like, Mark, for fuck's sake, I'm going to be nine months pregnant. No. And then he proceeds to text me,

which I can confirm with his wife, Carly. He's like, oh, I don't know. Carly like golfed four days before she gave birth. And I was just like, get the fuck out of my office. Get out of my office. Carly is a national. Yeah. And then she texted me. I did actually do that. I go, shut up, Carly. Like, I don't care. I'm not, first of all, I don't like golf. Second of all, I'm not doing that. Can you imagine? But I think for a lot of people, what I'm realizing is it's way more inspirational for them because that is the human experience. Running a business is really for the top 10%. Only 10% of people run a business ever. Humans since the dawn of time have been having families. And so the fact that we haven't seen a bunch of successful female entrepreneurs

be really public about pregnancy while they're running a business is like actually kind of shocking. And so I think for the next gen, it's going to be really inspiring to see them do it all while having families and pregnant. And our millennial generation didn't get that. It was boss, babe, don't need no man, blah, blah, blah. And that's fine if that's what you're into. But if you actually want to have a family, I do think you can do it all. And just FYI, as someone who gave birth in December, I was on the phone with our accountant before we closed the books while I was having contractions. That was real. Well, you know, it's interesting you say that. Since I wrote the book and then people saw that I was pregnant, I've gotten a few people that said, like, my,

employees have said, yeah, my wife was like writing a lease term, you know, while she was about to give birth to the baby. That's really common. We say in media, you know, a pound of pre-production is worth 10 of post-production. What I'm hoping is if we can put some of these processes in place, bad things will just still happen. That's life. But you will be able to say, no, I'm not going to do the fucking golf tournament. No, I'm not going to do the lease agreement. You're going to be able to just say, I'm shutting off my shit. Deal with it. And like at least. you know, you can blame me as the bad guy and say, like, no, other people have done this. I don't need to do this. This is a you problem. I'm excited to see you figure it out.

Amen, sister. Can't wait to see. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.

Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siyaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out.

somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Don't miss the new season of North of North starting September 8th on CBC Gem. Well, aside from boring businesses, I assume that you are diversified. Are you invested in the market? Yeah, yeah. I have a financial advisor.

I'm invested in the stock market. I don't look at it at all whatsoever. I just make sure the returns are reasonable. He's not stealing too heavily from me with his expense. ratios. And then he's dollar cost averaging and the taxes make sense. But that's like kind of it. So do you keep the equities part boring as well? Yeah, very. That's your whole. Yeah, I don't want anything. Investment thesis. Maybe the only thing fancy I do is like tax advantage strategies, opportunity zone stuff, a few things with real estate to get better depreciation. And besides that,

I really optimize for earning as opposed to investment income from the stock market. I just want to beat inflation. I want to keep, you know, compounding. I want to beat inflation. I don't want to touch it and be dramatic in times of stress or chaos. I'm never investing in an IPO. A bunch of my advisors reached out, hey, we can get you into SpaceX at X. And I've taken companies public before. And that typically doesn't work out for the average person. So even with like the most brilliant company of all time, I was like, I'm pretty much guarantee you the lockup's going to be too long. The thing's going to tank in the meantime. And you're going to wish that you hadn't got. pre-IPO stock and you would have been better off buying it at a dip. And that's what happened.

Just basics. The no for you, dog. No, I love it long term. I would never bet against that guy. But I'm just going to put in the market with everything else. I'd rather you bet on you than even like an Elon. So you're an index fund, girly. Yeah, index funds or, you know, I'll invest in private equity portfolios too. I'll invest in diversified venture capital. But I just want like a wide swath in my portfolio. So how do you think about your portfolio? with what you're betting on for yourself versus public equities or bonds? I put all my investable cash into things that have pretty easy liquidity. So those are going to be sitting at a series of financial advisor accounts.

One of my weird things is I don't ever believe in going with independence or family offices. I want the big guys because I don't want a birdie made off. I saw that happen a lot back in my day. So I think, like, if you can go to like the Morgan Stanley, the Merrill Lynch, the whatever big ones, they have a fiduciary liability and a bunch of oversight and compliance. So it's all held at big firms, which I like. I would never do any like independent financial advisors. And because of that, it's largely in the Black Rocks, Blackstone, Vanguard's Fidelity's of the world. I don't think too much about that return except to get market rate and maybe to negotiate my advisor's fees, especially on anything that's sitting there in cash.

I keep a ton of cash on hand. And then, you know, almost all of our earnings are from the businesses that we own outright and actively manage. What's a ton of cash? I always like having 12 months of cash for my businesses, which is a lot for how big our businesses run. So 12 months of cash. Now, that could be sitting in like, you know. Tea bills. Yeah.

Well, I don't know if we have any outright T bills, but it's certainly in slightly higher income producing fixed income. income. And so probably 12 months of capital. And then right now, I think there's a lot to buy in the market. And I think that's going to accelerate. So I have more cash than that because we're actively looking to acquire businesses. In the market you mean in foreign markets. Yeah. Okay. So let's rate the boring businesses. You grade them, Professor Sanchez, A through F, car washes. That's like a B business. Launcher Mads. Probably C, you can't make enough money, but they're a great entryway business.

Roofing. Roofing. B business. In the right state with the right certifications can be a great business. Vending machines. F business. Great entry level business. Terrible if you want to make a lot of money.

You can't make much per machine. ATMs. F business as well. Same thing. Your transaction costs, you make so little per dollar. then you got to run around town grabbing five bucks from machines unless you're inside of a cannabis store which we did own one inside of a canvas store once that was a good business a canvas store cannabis yeah you know how you have to i don't know if how it works now but back then you had to use cash

oh yeah yeah so that was a great ATM route actually okay so you could get robbed often so just go watch out for that okay some risk the cannabis so cannabis ATM specifically probably that's like that's a that's a bee business right there if you could just get all the cannabis stores I don't hate it. Nail salons. Might be illegal. That's a sples of asterisk. Details.

Let's check. Nail salons, probably a sea level business. The great part is the recurring. The tough part is the labor. And it is not very high dollar amount. You can't charge a lot ever for that. Pest control. Pest control is a good business.

A plus business. You can have recurring revenue. It can be really expensive. You can have commercial contracts. They're getting bought up like crazy by PE. A Shrack. Also a business for all the same reasons. Plus those contracts can be like 10x, what pest control could be.

And plumbing. Same thing. Killer business. Also, with all of those, the tech bros and PE bros love to talk about those businesses. So devils in the detail, if you want to be a little sleeper or sell, I think the real play with boring businesses today is take almost any home service business. Make the brand cool on them. Attract really good labor that you actually feel comfortable having in your home. I mean, typical plumber at HVAC guy, you're like, all right, I'll catch you in the back.

But if you can have somebody that you are really trusted for that homeowner, you can charge a lot higher price for your product. So home services being like window cleaning, painting, gutters. Gutters, yeah. What else? Landscaping. I think we're going to see sort of a renaissance basically in home service businesses, and we're biased. We have two that have really cool brands. That one painter in Pink's window cleaning.

And that one painter is the largest company now by painting franchise locations. And Pink's is one of the fastest growing window cleaning companies. And it's because they're cool. They're like cool businesses you want to own. What do you not want to own? Let me tell you some businesses you never want to own in 2026 are, probably in a year. Drop shipping. Don't compete with the Chinese and Amazon. It's a bad idea. But it's so sexy on the social media. Oh, yeah, exactly. Just only compete with it if you're

going to sell a course. The second one would be agencies. Agency businesses are super easy to start, really bad businesses long term because there's huge churn in almost all of them. There can be examples of that, but I typically don't like to buy agencies. Like marketing agencies. Yeah, graphic design, podcast service. is. They kind of pop up everywhere and then they die really quickly because it's hard to standardize and productize your service. The third would be any sort of consulting. Usually that is massive keyman risk. I hired Nicole. Who are you? You come in here. I'm not hiring, you know, you. I want Nicole back. And probably the fourth type of business that I would never buy is anything to do with

restaurants or hotels too expensive, really hard customer service, really low margins. We end all of our episodes by asking our guests for one final tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. What's a final tip of concrete, actionable advice if they want to get boring in any part of their business? Even if you don't own a business, remember, if you speak the language of owners, you're going to make more money. And so, you know, I have an entire section focused on one person, which is me, the person that used to work for somebody else, but eventually wanted to own my own thing. And it was like, how could I become so. valuable, other people want me to have equity. Other people want to pay me more because I actually speak owner. And most employees with love, they're their task takers. And so if you are a super hard worker that wants to win long term, then you should read this with the mind of, if I understand all this, can I ask for more money? Can I ask for equity? Can I ask for the next step of the game? Because I'm that valuable to somebody. And call yourself an owner. I gave someone this homework to call themselves an investor.

Yeah. It changes your mindset around it. It's very, very true. As opposed to like, oh, I just put money in and I kind of, it's like, you put money in, which means you are an investor. That's right. I like that. I own all the tech companies and I just invest in QQQQ.

Hey, dude, I love that. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.com.ca.