REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 494. Small Business Revolution In America Ft. Codie Sanchez

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

In today's episode, Andy & DJ are joined in the studio by investor & entrepreneur Codie Sanchez. They discuss what Codie looks for when buying a small business, the fake image of entrepreneurship portrayed online, and the best way to fix our country through our spending decisions.

What is up guys, it's Andy Purcell and this is the show for the realest sake of out of the lies, the fakeness and delusions of modern society and welcome to motherfucking reality. Guys, today we have a special full-length episode with a very special guest that I will introduce in just a moment. If this is your first time listening, we do shows within the show. This is not your normal podcast. We have a number of different formats. Today, you're going to hear a full-length podcast. It's very similar to what you see on most other podcasts, but other times when you tune in, you're're gonna have a variety, a plethora of options. We have Q and AF. Q and AF is a question and answer show.

For those of you that don't know, I'm an entrepreneur. I've been mildly successful to say the least. And I share my information with you guys for free when you ask me for shit that you wanna know. You could submit your questions a few different ways. The first way, guys, email those questions into ask Andy at Andy for seller.com. Or if you didn't know, we just started uploading our full length episodes on YouTube after eight years at being audio exclusive. I know a lot of you guys are still on all the, all the audio platforms and that's how

you like to do it. That's cool too. But if you want to submit some questions, you could submit a question underneath the video episode on YouTube of Q and AF, and we'll pick some questions from there as well. Other times when you tune in, we'll have CTI. That stands for cruise the internet. That's where we talk about current events, the news. We talk about what's going on in the world. We speculate. We talk about who's lying, who's telling the truth, and we make fun of all these dumb motherfuckers. And if you have no sense of humor, you're not going to like that show. So I just pass on that. And then other times you're going to have real talk.

Real talk is just five to 20 minutes. You guys probably call it a rant. I just call it the truth. And that's pretty much the wrap up of the show. And a lot of you guys ask all the time. Well, why do you guys talk about politics? You know what, Andy? I really I really like your business advice.

You know, it's really helped me a lot. But your politics are really fucking stupid. Well, let me explain to you something. It's very unlikely that I'm stupid in one area and good at the other area. The reason I talk about the social issues that you need to know about is because without a clean environment of freedom, we cannot prosper as entrepreneurs. So while we've all had our heads in the sand for the last 15 years, living it up, making great money, doing great shit, some people have gotten in the way and they're taking our freedom. And if they continue to take our freedom, we won't have the opportunities to grow our businesses. And that's reality. Think of it like fish in the fish tank.

If you don't clean the tank, the fucking fish die. That's why I talk about politics. That's why I talk about social issues. And for all of that shit, okay, if we provide value, if we make you laugh, if we make you think, if we do a good job, if you learn something, if it helps you out, whatever the case may be, if you like the show and it wasn't a waste of time, please share the show. That's what we refer to when we say pay the fee. I've never run an ad for this show. I don't run ads on this show. You're not going to hear me talk about a bunch of shit that I don't use, that I take money for. I'm independently wealthy. I don't have to take anybody's money, and that way you get my straight fucking opinion every single time. In exchange for that, please tell somebody about the show. That's it. If we do a bad job, you don't have to tell anybody. I'm not asking to share the show. Just if we do good good we just happen to always do good all right so what's happening dj what's going on brother hello

children we have a uh very special guest yeah we do this is cody sanchez in the house thanks for having me yeah good it's great to see you it's great to have you guys here both of you right back at you it's cool seeing your facility this is wild thank you we've only seen half of it we still got the other half of the tour that's tiny it's really small what i've seen so far now really little i asked you to come on the show because i feel like and this is a genuine feeling of mine that i feel like you're putting out some of the best entrepreneurial content on the internet right now so um as an actual operator of businesses, it's very easy for me to see who's who when it comes to who's giving advice. I just had Eric Spofford on. Eric Spofford is an actual operator. I can recognize it. You're an actual operator. I can recognize that. And we're filled

with a world of people pretending to be operators to sell their coaching. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to expose people to real entrepreneurs, people who understand real things. And I've been watching your content consistently for at least a year, and you're doing a freaking awesome job with it. So I'm excited to have you on the show. Well, same. I feel the exact same way. Just watching your operation here. I mean, talking about tactics. I've been listening to you for a while too, probably more than a year. And a couple of things really just blew me away when I walked in here that we talked about prior. But I hope on this podcast, what we get to do today is like, I think we should go pretty deep on tactics. I think your audience can handle it and can

actually make some change because we have so many crazy people in the world today. Let's make some more owners because like we were talking about before, we don't have enough people with skin in the game. Yeah. One of the things that I like about you that you talk about consistently is how successful boring businesses can be. Let's talk about that because that's something that no one else is talking about. Everybody else is talking about e-com and they're talking about, you know, I'm going to become the next Facebook or they got

these big plans, right. That never happened. And, you know, nobody's talking about the real bread and butter that actually produces most of the success in the United States of America, which is small mom and pop, medium sized mom and pop boring shit that you never think about. And give us a little history and let these guys know where you come from because that content to me is the shit where I watch it and I'm like, dude, that's fucking gold. And I don't know that everybody recognizes how gold that actually is. Well, I think one of the things most people don't realize is we're kind of under attack from a technical standpoint in this country. Like we got a bunch of people that fuck around on the internet and, you know, we're doing it right now that want to

be on TikTok and YouTube and don't want to go become a plumber or become a welder. And yet plumbers and welders make more than people in marketing, aka TikTokers by and large. And simultaneously, I think what people don't realize, but they do, is that when you don't have a lot of cash and there's a recession and things are going bad, but your toilet breaks, you fucking call the plumber. And so these businesses are not recession proof. I don't really like that word, but they're really resistant. And so I obsess on businesses that make communities thrive, that people have to spend money on no matter what because they're the trades that are specialties. I've done that for 15 years. I used to call it private equity. This is not

really a new thing. It's just nobody was on the internet talking about it. It was actually because when I started in finance, one of my first bosses, who's the CEO of a pretty big company, a couple of hundreds of billions of dollars under management. And he said to me, when I started speaking on a few circuits about private equity, what we do, we buy these little businesses, we apply leverage, aka other people's money on it, and we help them grow. And he's like, Cody, we get rich quietly here. And I was like, yeah, kind of. But we can't buy all of these small businesses. I think we should have more people learn how to buy small businesses because then they'll make the businesses bigger and then we can buy the bigger businesses. And right now, what's happening instead is all

over this country right now. There's 11.2 million small businesses for sale in the US. Let's be real and say like 10 to 12 million. It's real hard to track. And out of these 12 million small businesses, let's say, one in 12 in a year will not sell. So that means they're just getting shut down. And you know, because you've run businesses, every business has value. Like let's say just this little podcast business that you have. Imagine you shut down tomorrow. Well, what do you do with all the camera gear? Well, what about your historical videos? Well, what about your AdSense revenue on YouTube? There's a value in everything. And so I get obsessed with, how do I buy those businesses before they turn to zero? Because that's a travesty for the person who built that business

that gets no value out of it and for the assets that just disappear. They just go poof. How much of this do you think has to do with cultural differences between the generations? Meaning, so I noticed this too, right? I have a couple of building projects going on, actually a couple of really big projects, construction projects, and then some smaller projects for personal stuff. And it's hard to find trades, right? Like people don't want to work. They don't, they look at the sparkly, shiny things like we talked about, e-com, TikTok, YouTube superstar. And they think, fuck, I don't want to own a plumbing company.

You know how many rich motherfucking plumbing company dudes I know? Like quite a few of them. And dude, we're in a vacuum right now, I think, where, and I think the data shows it. You and I, I think we were talking about that article from Japan, where in Japan right now, they have a situation where a lot of the older business people want to retire, but they don't have kids or they don't have people interested in taking those businesses. How many of those 10 to 12 million businesses do you think that's

the situation where they just don't have an error or maybe they have a session plan? Yeah, but their kids don't want to work. You know what I'm saying? And it seems to me like it's a cultural difference, like where they want to work. But the reality is, is because what you guys all have to really think about, what I would encourage you to think about is that the less there are of those things, the more they are worth. So you might look at a plumber because you've looked at a plumber with a condescending view, right? Like you think of a plumber as like some big fat dude underneath the sink with his ass crack sticking out, right? Like we all think of, they made a million. But the reality is there's so few people getting into the electrical trades,

getting into the plumbing trades, getting into construction trades, that those jobs are going to become increasingly more high pay, not less pay. Because there's none around. So I'm curious to think what you think about all that. Yeah. Well, one, I mean, in Japan, yeah, they're giving away businesses for free, which is wild. Yeah, giving them away. That's crazy.

And these are profitable cash flowing businesses. These are not businesses that you have to plow money into. These are not what I call hopes and dreams, aka Silicon Valley, venture capital, social media apps. These are real businesses that the day one you take it over, they start cash flowing to you. And the reason is exactly that. I think there's a mismatch. You know, where we are in my mind is we're like 20 years ago in real estate. Remember when real estate, and maybe a lot of people listening, but there didn't used to be MLS forever publicly. Zillow and Redfin are very new. You didn't used to be able to go and see what something was worth really easily in the real estate market. Now it's become a commodity.

Stocks used to be like that 50 years ago. The next, I think, venture is businesses. Right now, businesses are just a little bit harder to buy. They're not all the same. They're not the same price on the same block like a house is. But in the future, I think there's going to be technology that changes that. So anybody that starts buying businesses now, you're taking advantage of, this is kind of a big word, but in finance, we call it opaqueness in a market. And anytime there's opaqueness, meaning that you can't see through it, it's not see-through glass, then you have an arbitrage window, meaning that you can make more money. And every time an arbitrage window happens, they close at some point.

And usually they close pretty quickly. But this one won't because businesses are really different. So I think actually there's a couple of false narratives. First false narrative is there are actually my businesses. We don't have a hard time hiring your business. You probably don't have a hard time hiring. Why? Because you're a good operator.

This is the beautiful part about small businesses is the guys operating these businesses like bless them because they powered our communities for years, but they're operating on fax machines. You know, we got, I mean, I have, I went into a place the other day but they're operating on fax machines. You know, we got, I mean, I went into a place the other day. They're running on dot matrix printers. Yeah, he asked me. And Rolodex. He sent me his AOL address. I'm like, immediately I want to buy your business because I know there's opportunity for the upside.

Right? And so they just don't have the right technology. But when you are our generation, you're interested in technology, you can overlay technology, marketing, and social media on a plumbing company, it becomes pretty damn sexy. Actually, if you like money in your bank account and not egotistical follows on social media, then you'd be into it. Now, I'd rather just be famous on the internet. There's some downsides I think people don't realize. Oh, dude. Yeah. We could talk about that all day. Yeah. So what do you, so let's get into some of these tactics that you want to talk about

because I'm definitely, I want to showcase the things that you want to talk about here because I think you're, like I said, putting out some amazing content that people need to know. What are some of the key performance indicators that you look at when you're looking to buy a small business that make it appealing for you? Yeah. Well, you know what's cool is you just told me a story that I didn't know about you, which is how'd you start this bad boy?

You did a $0 asset acquisition, basically. Yeah. You know, you basically had first form. Well, it wasn't first form back then, but let's just simplify it. It's called Submarine Superstores. Yeah. It's our retail company. We still own it.

Right. And you probably didn't even know what it was called back then. You were just like, you have this excess machinery and you have a problem with it where you can't make that machinery make you money. And so I'm going to come in and I'm going to make this machinery make you money. And for that, you're going to give me part of the company. That's right. And that's called an asset acquisition.

And you did it with zero dollars and just your smarts. And the thing is, in finance, we learn all this stuff real early. We learn terms like leveraged buyouts, which basically just mean buy something, use somebody else's money. You know, we learn these things like asset acquisition, which basically just means somebody has something that can produce and you buy it. And but when I was starting out, I didn't know any of this stuff. So I think the most important part for people listening today is basically the second that

you want to get bored listening to us and the second that you want to get bored listening to us and the second that you want to instead go watch, I don't know, the Senate hearing or whatever it was and they're shitting on Howard Schultz or you want to get into what's happening in Nashville and you want to get on the wheel of angriness because of what's happening in the media, stop and listen and get excited when people talk about taxes, finances, and individual metrics, because that's where all the money is. One of my favorite mentors, he said something like, he's a KKR, which is a big private equity firm for people listening. And he said, rich people don't bitch about taxes and then pay them, which is what poor people do. Rich people learn about taxes and

then outsmart them. And so I think that's the same thing with buying businesses. So the first thing I would say, if you listen to anything, it's just like, hey, a bunch of businesses are for sale. If you don't know how to do deals, you should probably learn how to do deals. And you can go to the internet and just Google dealmaking. You can Google private equity. So I think that's first. The second thing that I'll say, and then I'd be curious, your take is like, when I buy a business, a lot of people, they put a lens on a business that's Pollyanna. And so they'll look at a business to buy and they'll say, well, if I'm in charge of this business, then we're going to do X millions. The most important thing you have to remember when buying businesses is you want to buy

businesses for what they are today. You want to look them in the eye. And if they're ugly, you want to tell them they're ugly. And you don't want to try to buy a business and think that you're going to be better than the plumber that was in place there before, because you're probably not. And so I buy profitable cash flowing businesses. And so my little framework to make it easy, because I think that's important on the internet, this stuff intimidated me before too, is called BRRT, which means buy boring businesses that are profitable. They have to make

money in recession-resistant asset classes like plumbing, landscaping, construction, right? Raise prices because the average small business is underpriced by 3x in what they sell, and then add technology. And that's kind of it. If you understand that, then you can take it to the next level. But I think it's really cool because i never knew that you started your company through an acquisition kind of yeah well i mean sort of i mean we still had to operate it wasn't from like an investment standpoint you know my my take on my take on what you're talking about is like because i'm not a that's not what i do i'm a i'm a brand builder i'm a business builder pure operator so like i'm not a guy who goes out and invests and buys shit.

The shit that I've acquired happened to be just stuff that was coming my way that made sense and I picked it up along the way. I really don't do any sort of investment outside of my wheelhouse because I'm literally dedicated to this for life. I'm going to build the next fucking Nike. Do you ever buy companies and add them in? Yeah, we do. We've done it a couple times.

But most of the time, those companies would be the exception to your rule because they actually were run like shit and I was able to turn them into something completely different. So I think it depends on how much you want to put your hands in it. But running a portfolio of a number of different companies that are unrelated like you guys do, I think that's just a different animal. And I think your system for that will probably make a lot of different companies that are unrelated like you guys do, I think that's, you know, it's just a different animal. You know what I mean? And I think your system for that will probably make a lot of sense. And it's probably very true. I look to vertically integrate. So like when I acquire anything, it's all about where does it fit in our supply chain? You know, we own things all the way from some of the land that some of the shit that we put in our products

has grown on all the way down to the finished goods in our own finished stores. So my whole plan is to vertically integrate all areas of our business so that we have more value. So I think there's multiple ways to look at it, but I think that there's massive opportunity, especially for young people right now who are in their 20s who are like, dude, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be a business owner. I want to do this to do it just like you guys have done it, which I think is fucking cool. Well, I think the other thing is too, you had an idea and you were obsessed with that idea and have stayed obsessed with it for 24 years. What if you're sitting out there right now and you

don't have an idea, but you don't want to work for somebody else and you know that you've got the grind and the hustle and the figure it out, but you don't have an idea, but you don't want to work for somebody else. And you know that you've got the grind and the hustle and the figure it out, but you don't have some brilliant Facebook, YouTube, Tesla in your mind. And for those people, I really like this type of entrepreneurship because you start, I call them the gateway drug businesses, because once you get the business bug, you can't stop. I mean, we were talking about this before. I mean, we were talking about this before. I mean, it's painful, right? Running these things.

It's the weirdest shit ever. Because it fucking, it sucks. We got on this tangent before the show started about fucking happiness. Like people, all right, I'm just going to fucking say it. A lot of you young motherfuckers have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. And you fuck yourselves over, over and over and over again in your life. And you really don't even know how bad you're fucking yourselves over because you put happiness at the forefront of the life equation. When in reality, happiness is something that you produce

through struggle, through purpose, through discipline, through overcoming. Okay. And what you end up doing is you go from this thing to that thing, to this career, to that career, to this, to that, to this, and what's going to end up happening. And when it happens, don't fucking come crying to me. Cause I don't give a shit. I try to warn you. You're going to be 50 years old. You're going to be tired as fuck. And you're going to have to work because you're going to have to eat. And that's going to, that's where this chasing happiness shit that these young people are all about right now is gonna end It's gonna end up because i'm gonna tell you something and I know this is true for you guys, too

I've worked every motherfucking day since I was 19 years old hard as fuck Okay, like none of this shit was given to me. Not any of it was given to me. In fact I believe I should be much further down the road for the amount of work that i've done And I just see these young people all day long because they see these dudes traveling the internet or these people traveling in there and they're fucking rented band, you know, taking pictures of fucking mountains and shit on their journey. Right. And they still think that, you know, when I get to be 35, I'll figure it out and then I'll start, bro, there's not enough time. You're not that good. You don't have the time you think you have. And people don't realize that. And so one of the things I like about what you're talking about and what you do is that it

allows these exact people who may not like their career, they may not like exactly their job, but instead of hopping from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, you could actually learn what Cody's talking about and you can build a portfolio, an asset portfolio that could be bigger than even maybe like what I do with one or two or three brands, right? Like that's a huge thing. And the reason I really wanted you to come on was to show people this because nobody's talking about it. And it's a huge issue.

And there's like, dude, 12 million fucking businesses out there for sale that people can't give away. Like you can't tell me that you can't get creative on some financing and figure out how to pick up one or two of these things and get to work. Like that's, that's, it's right there for us to take. And in fact, I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, shit, dude, I should start building a portfolio of these small businesses. Like this is something I could do with very little effort. You absolutely should. And you know, And the other thing to talk about happiness for a second, happiness looks like purpose. And I think people are robbing us at the elite levels in society by making us think that

we're not capable. Hold on. We're the elite. No, that's true. They're not the fucking elite. Fuck them. That's a good caveat. I think anybody who tells you, you can't, somebody else has to solve it for you. Here,

let me help. You should run. You should run, not walk away from them. In fact, you should be leaning into everybody who tells you, it's hard, but hey, you can figure it out. And that's the thing about small business. I get pissed because people on the internet all the time are like, oh, you can't really buy a small business if you've never run one before. Oh, buying small businesses is just for people who have a lot of money. And I'm like, I can show you. We track. I'm ex-finance. I can't help it. We track every single dollar in profit and revenue that somebody has sent us their actual bank statement and PPM, basically the offer doc that shows people they bought a business. We track every single dollar that we aggregate. Our people who follow us in one capacity or the other on the

internet and in our groups have bought $97 million in profit. And so we've only been talking about this for a year and a half. These are people who, one of them, Renan, is a single father. He bought an $8 million business. This is not normal. This was a cool deal. But he bought an $8 million business for $0 in seller financing. And he now runs this big HVAC trucking company in New Jersey. And instead of having to travel nonstop because he wanted to hang with his kid more, he gets to run a local business. Is it easy? No. But is it simple? Yes. And so I think the purpose that Renan has from that job, as opposed to working a job that he hates and resenting the

person who's giving him money to feed himself, that's a sickness. I don't think- That is a sickness. It's a sickness. And I don't think that everybody needs to be an owner, but I think more people need to be an owner in the US. I think there's a lot of people. I think there's a distinct difference between operators. Look, entrepreneurship, I've been in this entrepreneurship platform game for 12 years now at a high level. 12 years, 10 years at a high level. I went right to the fucking top. I can tell you for fucking sure, for sure, that most of the people out there that are out there

looking to do whatever it is that they want to do, they are consistently overlooking the low hanging fruit for the big glory plays that everybody else seems to be hitting it big with. And it's so frustrating to watch these people do that because they talk about purpose and they talk about what they want to be happy, right? Well, bro, if you want to have purpose and you want to be happy, all you have to do is decide what the fuck your purpose is. And a lot of people, they're chasing this fake, because I've seen it happen for over a decade. There's this fake image of entrepreneurship being sold. And in my opinion, I think there's a lot of people who think they are equipped to actually operate

that really aren't. But I also believe on the flip side, that there's a lot of people who are intimidated by doing it that could do it, that won't do it because of the fake shit that's been spewed out on the internet. The entrepreneurship has been branded as something for everyone when it's not. It's not for everyone. That doesn't mean it's not for you. It's just not for everyone. And it's hard as fuck. And it's not for someone who says, oh, I want to be happy every day. It's not for that. It's for people that want to solve fucking problems and actually build real shit. And it's interesting to me to watch the dynamic of like people who should be entrepreneurs, not be, and then people who quote unquote are entrepreneurs that shouldn't be like watching this whole thing happen.

And then seeing all of these influencers out there who are pretend entrepreneurs, tell these people how easy it is and how simple it is and how quick it can be and how rich they got. And here's look at my cars. And by the way, I fucking love cars, but guess what? I earned every motherfucking one of them. I didn't fake it. Okay. And like, dude, we have such an interesting cultural dynamic around the idea of being your own boss. People don't realize that when you're your own boss, you're not really your own boss because the customers are the boss of you. That's the reality. And so it's just interesting to me to watch how this has all played out because I see like, dude, even when I go to events and speak sometimes, which I don't do very much anymore, the questions I usually get are like

they come from a place of total confusion. Like people are totally confused about what it is they should or shouldn't be doing. You know, they hear, they hear, and I love Gary V bro. He's one of my really good friends. I talk to him all the time, but they hear Gary say, you know, happiness, passion, purpose. And they, they, they, what they hear because Gary presents it a certain way, which is always a nice way to present it, a lot of times they hear like, no friction, easy, fun all the time, right? And that's not reality. And so this issue of happiness that we talk about, and by the way, bro, I love you, Gary.

I'm not talking shit. I'm just saying people sometimes misinterpret what you're trying to say. I know what you're trying to say. But that happened to me too. Like my team, we put out content now, right? But I own these 24 businesses. So content is 10% of what I do and the businesses are 90%. And maybe now it's like 20, 80.

But so my team puts out a lot of content for me too. And I review all of it, but sometimes, and one of these times I saw them use the words passive income, which is a huge no-no for me. I don't believe in those two words. I don't believe it. It's not a real thing.

It's not real. Now, I believe in horizontal versus vertical income. Vertical meaning you make it in your nine to five and that your time is tied to that dollar. Okay. You can't have horizontal, which means your time's not exactly tied to it, aka rental properties, a secondary business that you own, the bonds or mutual funds that cashflow to you. Horizontal. Yeah. Not passive. Ask anybody who owns a real estate company

where they rent property if it's passive. Ask anybody. The internet got very mad at me about that though. Really? Oh yeah. I did a tweet, which is always a dangerous thing to do. And it said, it said exactly that. It said, if you've, if just about ask any, ask anybody who has run any sort of real estate portfolio, if it's passive. And I'll tell you if they're a liar or

not. And the internet was like, no, I run it completely remote. I'm like, I can tell you who's got a course or not based on the answers to these questions. No shit, dude. No shit. It's a fact. Like, dude,

that's a flat out fucking lie. And it only takes your first property to learn that lesson. Yeah. You know, now, now maybe if you own 10,000 units and you have proper management in place and your cashflow and real good, maybe it's,

maybe it's passive then. Right. Cause you're fucked. But like, dude, the amount of work it takes to get to that point, it sure is fucking passive. No. And that is the biggest lie told on the internet. It's the biggest lie. But I also think there's joy in it. I mean, we talked about this before your company does a lot in revenue. Now we won't say how much,

but it does a lot and it doesn't get easier. There's always somebody fucking up when you have a big company, but you actually find joy in it. I mean, I find if you put me in a room with a bunch of people who only want to talk about the weather or sports, sorry, Cardinals, I know it's opening day. I'd rather shoot my brains out than sit in that room. Now, if I get to sit in a room with a bunch of people who are building things, I don't care if it's tractor supply or carpeting. I find that so much more interesting because we humans are meant to be here to build something. And I think there is an assault on ownership in the US. And you saw it yesterday, actually. If you watch, do you watch any of the Howard Schultz stuff?

So they basically, you know, Bernie Sanders was coming after him. Shocking. Shocking. And kept calling him a billionaire in the way that you would say a four-letter word, right? And so Howard stopped him and kept calling him a billionaire in the way that you would say a four-letter word. And so Howard stopped him and said, hey, wait a second. I don't like how you're using this word. I grew up in subsidized government housing. I built a company up from nothing. Nobody handed

me anything. And I thought I was the achievement of the American dream. He is. And now you're calling me a billionaire, but it sounds like fuck you. Right. And, uh, and you might've not said those two words. Yeah. And Bernie tried to shut him up.

And Bernie tried to shut him up and, and more power to Howard that he, you know, pushed it out, pushed back. But I think, uh, they're trying to pit us against owners,

which is why I want more small business owners, because tragedy of the commons, man. If nobody owns anything, if everybody's responsible for something, then nobody's responsible for it. That's the goal. That's cultural Marxism. It's scary. The goal is to pit, like if you go to Karl Marx's grave, it says on his gravestone, workers of the world unite, but they don't want to do work. They're not workers. They just want the shit. And Bernie Sanders is just a dude who is

perfectly okay with owning three fucking massive houses on other people's money. But for Howard, and by the way, it's kind of, in my opinion, it's interesting, at least. I kind of think what Howard is getting is part karma because he's facilitated this fucking bullshit in his own company for how many years? Like I think most of the socialism in this country was born in a fucking Starbucks. So now you're starting, I'm being real.

Go to Starbucks. Listen to the fucking employees. He's cultivated that woke assass culture inside his company. Now he's getting hurt for it. I don't do that shit here. So you woke motherfuckers come here, you'll find out real fast about what it is. Real talk.

You won't get in. I won't hire you. Discriminate and sue me all you want. I don't give a shit. Well, you're looking for people who actually want to put their nose to the grindstone. And I think, I mean, my husband and I kind of joke about it. There's part of me that loves those humans.

There's part of me that loves the people that don't do the work. Because for every person like that, it just means it's a little easier for the rest of us. And so I actually think, you know, people in finance, we don't like to teach people how to buy businesses using leverage and using these structures because then people would realize, oh God, why am I paying two and 20 to a bunch of financial professionals to run a private equity company when I could go out and buy the neighborhood laundromat or when I could start really small? If I was a high school student, my father was an entrepreneur for years. He would never call himself that, by the way, which I think is funny. He'd be

like, I was a small business owner. But I would start with a vending machine route. He would never call himself that, by the way, which I think is funny. He'd be like, I was a small business owner. But I mean, I would start with like a vending machine route. I would buy a couple of used vending machines and I would learn the game of business by understanding a P&L and inventory management and doing it with a thousand bucks. Yeah. And you know what? You can learn that shit in a fucking day. A day. A day. Like one day. Like the terms intimidate people. A hundred percent. You know, they hear Like the terms intimidate people. 100%. You know, they hear all the terms or they hear someone who's smart.

Like you are talking about all the shit that you know, like the back of your hand. And it confuses them to where they're like, oh, I could never learn all this. But really, dude, it's like 10 things. And if you could learn them all like real quick, like, you know what I'm saying? It's interesting that you say that about the, uh, about the building thing. Cause I'm the same exact way. Like I, I don't care if we're building a snow cone stand. I don't care if we're building, it doesn't matter. I have to, I have to create shit. Like I help a lot of my friends with their businesses for free because I care about them and I want to see their businesses

win. And it's honestly like, that's more fucking fun for me than even working on my own shit at this point in time. And, um, I love, it's funny because it's, there's a paradox almost there. Cause like, it's hard and it's kind of stressful, but I'm also the happiest when I'm like that. And that's, what's so interesting to me about how people value their happiness. It's like, dude, if you're really, if you're really being honest, are you happy when you're sitting at the, at the Starbucks with a coffee and a fucking donut working on your, are you happy? Or are you really happy when shit's hard and you're like coming up with a solution and you're overcoming some of the shit that we have to overcome that to me. And I know everybody's not wired like me and you. Okay. But, and this is what I'm talking about,

that, you know, the 8% of people that should be running businesses versus the 92% that shouldn't, most of those people should be those kinds of people where they can recognize the happiness in the struggle. Because dude, for me, I am happy. This is really fucked up to say, and a lot of you guys might not get it, but I made this post yesterday when I'm out doing my ruck. i've been doing rucks every day for like 40 days straight or some shit

because jason mccarthy owns go ruck trolled me on the internet for a long time saying that i was a pussy for doing walks during 75 hard so now i'm gonna ruck for the rest of my fucking life all right it is what it is i'm gonna shove it down his fucking throat in a friendly way but here's the reality i made a post and i love you jason you're my fucking boy my boy blue you're my boy blue that's right you don't even know that shit bro no but i know the same yeah that's right i know you haven't seen the actual movie so dj's the guy that we pick up on the roof tie the block to his dick so sounds terrible yeah so dude uh i made a post. I was doing the go rock. I'm like

talking about happiness and it's like, dude, you know what? I'm happy. This like when I'm truly happy is when I'm doing shit that I know motherfuckers aren't doing. Like when I know that people who are on my level competing, like dude, most of the people are on my level or smoking cigars, fucking off. They're're on vacation they're on a boat they're flying their helicopter you guys i'm working bro and i take pride in that it makes me happy when i come in here which i don't have to do and i sit down with the team we get on the whiteboard bro that's my bread and butter i love that and it's hard and like so it's weird to me how how different people see happiness as totally different

things. Like, dude, if I sat at a Starbucks all day, just on my computer eating fucking donuts, bro, I'd be the most unhappy person on the fucking planet. Like I could, I can't even tolerate the atmosphere. Like it makes me cringe. I feel like I'm going to catch something in there. You know what I'm saying? Like, like I'm going to catch mediocrity.

It's going to get on my skin. I'm going to fucking wipe it's just how i feel and you know so i i think a lot of people misjudge happiness when it comes to their career because it's hard oh yeah right like the minute it gets hard i'm not happy what the fuck are you talking about this is a challenge to get over this challenge gonna make you happy well it's because what they paint the things you have to do to be happy as oh well now nowadays here's what it is dj you gotta fucking wake up at four o'clock in the morning you got a cold plunge you got a journal you gotta fucking do 25 jumping jacks upside down then i can get ready for my deep work right and by the time like dude it's just this constant dude these people are full of shit.

Dude, I wish the internet, like real talk, I wish the internet had a, like, we have a glass door, right? Let's have a glass door on Instagram for people's bank account. Oh, yeah. Okay? That would solve the problem real quick, all right? Half of these motherfuckers out there telling you,

dude, do this deep breath work and all this shit look you can do whatever the fuck you want i promise you when you look in their bank account it's fucking small yeah small i'm living minimalist not because you want to bro yeah that's right because you want to you're just fucking broke dude you haven't been there tuck it you know i'm saying how it worked. I wish too that there was something on the internet where you could track people's advice. Like all those people who were hawking crypto, NFTs. I mean, I wish we kept a list of that. I think that is criminal.

I think MFTs are definitely, that was definitely fucking bullshit. That's how I know not to trust almost anybody who touched one. Crypto, they're intentionally going to bury. Which is what I've been... Dude, I sat on a board in 2017 at this crypto conference as the person who was anti-crypto. Okay, so I'm on the board with all these fucking crypto experts. Oh, I bet they loved you. Oh, they fucking hated me, dude.

Because I'm exactly who I am. Like, I am who I am on the show. I am who I am in real life. I am who I am on stage. Really quiet. who I am in real life. I am who I am on stage. Really quiet. Yeah. Really quiet. Definitely not annoying. Happy. No sense of humor. No perfectly polite. No smart mouth. Never interrupt anybody. You know, all the things. I'm actually totally a perfect human being. But dude, these guys were talking about crypto. I said, look, dude,

I said, you guys are talking about like crypto at retail level. That's what they were talking about. I said, look, all right, let me prove to you why this ain't going to fucking work right now. Explain it to my dad. What do you mean explain it to your dad? My dad's 77 years old. Explain it to my dad. Explain how he's going to fucking use, how are you going to price something in crypto dollars? Like they couldn't explain it. And I know Explain how he's going to fucking use, how are you going to price something in crypto dollars? Like they couldn't explain it. And I know there's a workaround to it now. But the point is,

is that it's not usable enough for the average person to adopt. And that's what they were trying to sell it as. And now they're selling it as like a secure way to hold funds outside of the federal reserve, which I think is a noble idea. But the problem is these people are criminals and they're going to fucking crush all that shit like i've been saying that too so but yeah dude i agree with you like terrible advice non-stop and if we could just see like dude if you guys could just see in these people's lives like see their bank account see

where they're leveraged like dude a lot of these people with the flashy shit bro they are leasing that shit to max they do they probably have less than 100 grand shit, bro, they're leasing that shit to max. Dude, they probably have less than a hundred grand in their bank account. And they're talking about how they're a deck of millionaire and all this shit. And like, dude, it's fraud. Yeah. Well, I think you got to show me what you know, not what you bought. I don't care about what you've bought. I want to know, what do you know that I don't know? And one of the things Chris and I were talking about, like Chris is my husband, why do you think we've had any sort of success,

if you could say that we have? And I think there's like three reasons. One is we go where the game's played. So if I wanted to be in supplements and fitness, I'd probably get my ass out here to first form. If I wanted to be in tech and innovation, used to be Sam Fran, now it's probably Austin, right? And so we've just gone where the game's played. That's step one. Most people won't do that. Most people

will never leave where they were born. And then step two is we're ruthless for the people that are around us. And it's that stupid saying that you've heard a million times, except it's true, about the average of the five people surrounding you. Except what you find in life, and what Chris and I have found is, and you are way ahead of me, so you've seen it probably much sooner than I did, but there come these unlocks where you level up, you level up, and the people around you can't support your next unlock because they know the past version of you. And they expect that. Yeah. And they love it. They love you. They love you. And so they love that version and they're scared for what the next version might be.

So even if we're being super altruistic and giving them some benefit of the doubt, they're not ready for the next unlock. And so that's why I obsess around getting around other builders, other people who tell me more reasons why something could happen and not more reasons why it couldn't happen,

because it's really easy to tell people why they can't do something. It's actually quite easy to tell people why they can't do something. It's actually quite hard to show people how they can do something. And so anytime I'm around those people that show me, oh, here's what I know. Here's how you can apply it. And like, yeah, I think you're capable. And like you might fail, but we're just going to make sure two things. We're going to make sure we never let you make a decision that bankrupts you. We're going to make sure that we never have your first deal go sideways. Because if you think if your first deal goes sideways, a lot of times people think, man,

deal making is bad. Not, I did a bad deal. That's right. So that's what we got to protect against. But I think a lot of people, you know, and the other part that I actually, we have a mutual friend, Alex Ramosi, and I always joke with him. I was just thinking about that. Like literally, as you were saying that, I was just thinking about that

because the last conversation I had with him he said almost the exact same thing. Oh, he did? Like personal conversation, not on the air. Yeah. He and I always jokingly go back and forth because... He's a smart motherfucker, man. I agree. Well, I think both of you guys are low-key. You know, you do a really good job

of being very broad, which is necessary on the internet to bring lots of people in. But then if you double tap, you can go real deep, which I think is the sign of real intellect. Yeah, that's where I do it. I do that with RIT, with M.I.L.E.T. We go real deep inside RIT.

But on the show here, we're talking to lots of different levels. It's exactly what you want to do. You want to have a big... I mean, it's not that different from religion. you want to have a big i mean it's not different from religion because it actually is pretty deep yeah i think i think that's spofford does the same shit he talks about concepts and ideas that you have to be an actual operator to totally grasp and i actually you know for me dude i love that content because it's real shit. Yeah. You know, it's not just this like, you know, Instagram buzz stuff.

Don't tell me to fucking manifest. That's my, that's just bottom line. I am a huge believer in that, but like, that's, that's not what you lead with. I think it just helps. I think that's right. Well, maybe I believe you. Chris is a big, we call it visualization, which I think is something different. You think about it like an athlete, you don't, and you visualize exactly what you're doing

to do exactly the next step. You know, it's tactical in the way that you execute it. Manifesting to me is like, I'm just, it's coming. You know, I'm going to get rich. I see the riches. Visualization is tomorrow. I'm going to have this meeting. This is exactly how it's going to go because I prepared this way and I see it going down. Yeah. I think there's, I think there's, I think there's truth to all three of those scenarios a little bit. I think where people really fuck it up is that they don't accompany it with the work. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like I've always been, I, the, the, the law of attraction truly changed my life. And I know that sounds people, people, cause I, when I first heard this shit, um, it was from this girl that I knew back in 2006. She was a chiropractor. She was super

hippie. At first, I was like, man, she's very granola. This sounds crazy. But I was broke as fuck, dude. I was living at my dad's house. I had to move back in with my dad six years after I started my business. I'm like, I don't give a fuck. I don't care if this doesn't work. I'm going to try it because I didn't have nothing to lose and dude I promise you like it changed my entire life but here's the thing I did that most people don't do is I did the work I I did I I think it's I think it's like 50 percent you know knowing where the fuck you're going and then putting that energy out and then 50 percent just working your fucking face off until you get there. Yeah. And at least that's how it's been for me, man. No, I agree.

Yeah. I think, well, a lot of it, what stops us, what stops us before anybody else, before failure, before anybody tells us we can't is that we don't even try. Yeah. We don't even try to do it because we don't believe in ourselves and because things like we don't have a belief that we could actually do it. And thus our energy says no dice. So I do, I mean, we live in Austin. We got a little bit of the crystals and woo-woo

going down too, I feel ya. I do think though, you know, one thing that I like to preach on the internet that's really different is I don't care how you make money. I just think that everybody should have a moral obligation to get enough tools in their toolbox to protect themselves on the downside. And a lot of people see people, I think like you or like Alex, for instance, and they're like, I need to sleep on my couch, on my floor for three years in order to do this. And that's what they did. And they had this huge idea and then they went big for it. I don't think that many people are like you and Alex. You guys are relatively rare. And so people can take that way,

or they could also take small steps and small bets. And that was, I'm a little different because I was risk averse. I was scared. I don't know if I would have been able to go sleep on a floor and do that. I was in a finance job. I mean, I worked in hardcore finance at Goldman, State Street, Vanguard, all the big guys for 12 years. I was working for the man, 60 hour weeks. I didn't see the sun. I lived in Chicago. We literally went into the office before the sun, left the office after the sun. But I did it working for somebody else because I was too scared to go do it by myself. I didn't have the balls. See, I just didn't have a choice. It's not like I wanted to sleep on the fucking mattress.

You could have gone and worked for somebody else, right? You took a big risk. Could you imagine me working for somebody? Let's be fucking honest. Like it wouldn't work out. Like it would last a day. You're unemployable. Yes, absolutely. Like I did not have a choice and I agree with you. It's not for everybody. That's actually fair. Yeah. But what I think most people should do is get in the game a little bit. Take that first tiny step to having one income stream and then getting another one. And Alex always breaks my balls because he's like, no, one thing, laser focused nonstop. And I think there are different types of humans. Some humans can do the laser focus. And I think there are different types of humans. Some humans can do the laser focus

and I think that's incredible. Most humans, I don't think can. I think they have to start with having a few things because those few things make them feel safe and then they could narrow down

and really go ham on one. But I like, one of my missions is basically to make people feel comfortable that they don't have, you don't have to be an incredible operator. You don't have to be a savant that you don't have to be an incredible operator.

You don't have to be a savant. You don't have to be a hard ass. You could be a scared single mom with nothing to fall back on. And become an incredible operator. Exactly. That's true. And start small. Look, I didn't know shit when I started.

My first customer, well, my first real customer. My first customer was a guy named Nick V nick vespa who's still a buddy of mine he bought a seven dollar product from us because he felt sorry for us he still buys product from us i believe um thanks nick uh yeah the first real customer you're my boy nick yeah i remember whenever i had my first real customer dude and i didn't know i had a guy and this is why retail is such a great great thing man um this guy walks in and he's like looking around and he like looks at this and i remember the product it was cell tech by muscle tech and he looks at it and he shows it to me and he's like what do you know about this and i'm like i walked over to him real quick i

grabbed the bottle i go well it says right, seven pounds of muscle in seven days, man. Sounds pretty good. I didn't know shit. I didn't know shit. So like, just understand everybody starts there. I didn't know fucking anything, dude. Like people used to walk in my store and they'd be like, so are you going out of business soon or what?

And I'm like, I had no idea what they were talking about because i thought i thought we had something like i was like dude we're gonna be rich bitch like this is gonna be great no bro we just opened yeah and they would look at me and they'd be like really but they'd always buy shit yeah and i know why because they felt sorry for us they were like look at these fucking idiots and they would buy shit but you know we learned along the way and i think that's the thing is like we have to all realize that you guys listening who are scared who don't have um you know like dude look this personality i have hermosi's personality leila like all these people bro this is this is learned skill it's not it's not that's not a gift like dude if you saw me 20 years ago i was just a dumb motherfucker.

Actually, I'm still a dumb motherfucker. I just talk a little better. Right? Same. Yeah. Right. Same. I'm fooling a lot of you guys.

You should get words. Yeah, right. Peruse. But the truth is, man, I don't, I'm not really that smart. I'm just not. I've just been doing this for so long that I understand this and really not a whole lot of other stuff other than tyrants and shit going on in the world. I know that. Well, and pain tolerance, I think.

That's a big deal. If I could give one person, so I've, I don't know, I've probably invested a couple hundred companies by now, not all my own cash, but with our private equity and venture capital funds. And the number one trade, I mean, it's Angela Duckworth talked about it in her study at University of Pennsylvania, GRIT. GRIT, yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, and so the number one study for success is just how much pain can somebody tolerate?

And it's not physical pain. That's my husband, former military. I can't do that. But it's can they show up every single day and deal with the shit? And I also like, we were talking about Ben Horowitz earlier. He said a line that I thought was amazing, which is if you have to eat shit, don't nibble. And and sort of like the Mark Twain frog.

Get it over with. Get it over with. And so that's the thing that I think we were talking about the fitness community, like the fitness community gets it because you do the really hard thing in the morning. You work out in the morning. You get the result. The rest of the day, you kind of are like, bring it. I could maybe have a beer at two because I've done the hard part in the morning. And so I think that's really, really big. But I also like, did you ever have, I suppose your really hard experience that I know of,

at least was this beginning of starting this company. You know, I, I didn't have like a failure moment like that in a company early on, but I had a, what I call sort of my tipping point was that early in my career, I was a journalist along the US-Mexico border. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, human trafficking.

I read that. Drug smuggling. That's badass. I did, I remember reading that and I was like, dude, that's fucking badass. Yeah, I don't talk about it enough. I should, but it was really- Especially with what's going on now.

Yeah. You probably have a lot of good insight on it. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've crossed the border illegally like 20 or 30 times writing stories. That's crazy. Yeah, it was- That's really cool. It was incredible.

Yeah. And the part that formed me that I'm so thankful for that only an idiot who's like a young kid would go do, because I did it when I was still in in college is I lived in Juarez and El Paso and Juarez at the time was called La Ciudad de Muerte, the city of death. And I was writing this story. Sounds friendly. Yeah, super lovely neighborhood, really. Great neighbors. Sounds like St. Louis. Actually, you guys are number one.

We are number one. We've been number one for 23 years straight. We ain't no losers, baby. We ain't no number one for 23 years straight we ain't no losers baby we're not number one baby that's painful because but and so you guys have probably seen it because i remember i was writing stories about you grew up in the worst neighborhood in in the worst neighborhood in the united states yes you know there was this you remember the documentary uh called ganglands yeah they filmed the episode on my blog wow it was It was bad. That's incredible. Good times, though, man. His story of his upbringing is incredible.

It's actually probably worth an entire episode by itself. Yeah, I'd want to listen to that. You're very humble, too. I mean, I don't like the problem with that stuff. It can very easily turn into that victimhood shit. Yeah, it's a fine line. I'm not proud of anything that I came from. I don't regret it or

hate where I came from. But saying I'm from the mud, I don't take any pride in that. It is what it is. I'm no longer there anymore. You're just getting started on your journey. It's just, to me, I've seen where he's grown up and it's incredible

that you're even fucking alive, dude. Real talk. Thanks, man. Yeah, I'm glad you are. started on your journey it's just to me like i've seen where he's grown up and it's incredible that you're even fucking alive dude real talk thanks man yeah i'm glad you are thanks yeah me too me too well i think other things too about that is like uh my generation i think a lot of the reason why we why we have all the things we have today is because people feel like they don't have real struggle so they want to manifest it 100 so like a lot of people you know oh man they want a victim story so true they grew up so fucking soft that the minute their feelings get hurt they're fucking have this sad story of something yeah well i think it's even deeper than that i think deep down a lot of people feel like i feel guilty i feel guilty from having it easy. And so I must be privileged. And so I must give back.

Right. As opposed to, I think, man, if you went through that, my father's the same. He came from a really tough background. And every time I bring it up publicly, he's like, he always jokes with me. He's like, yeah, it's amazing. I speak English and have a company and stuff. He's like, almost a little embarrassed. He's like, don't talk about that. And I'm like, no, no, no. That's incredible. It's inspiring. It's incredible. But he just doesn't see it like that.

He doesn't want to talk about what he's been through. And I respect that a lot. I do too. I think those stories are necessary though. I think it's important for people to understand, especially right now in these times, that even as tough as they are and even as the boot gets more pressure on our

necks as american citizens um it's still the land of opportunity and there's still many many many amazing opportunities for every single person listening regardless of where you came from and those stories inspire those people you know i i think it's important for people to tell those stories but i also understand the other side of that mentality too yeah no i think yeah i think you should tell the story i'm i'm team dj podcast episode i agree with that it should be a video segment bro we should here's what we should do bro we should do a video episode and take motherfuckers to where i grew up and then taking where you grew up yeah i'm down with that they look similar yeah yeah no shit well i mean it's it you know you lived it but i only was in juarez for like a year back and forth and i remember when i was there it was when the sonoran and the sinaloan cartels were going at each other aggressively one of the biggest prisons

was in juarez and they brought uh fucking Apache helicopters in the cartels with anti-tank missiles and broke out one of the wait the cartels on Apaches well I see I gave it to him but yeah yeah give me one I want one yeah you would not be allowed now I'm on the list give me a fucking helicopter you go to Mexico you can probably get one yeah but they you know it was it was i mean i would see bodies hanging from freeways my job at the time was to go to the morgue not every day but almost every other day and uh and determine how many women were actually murdered and mutilated uh that day because there were two newspapers there was the cartel-backed newspaper and there was the government-backed newspaper.

And we were trying to figure out- What's true. What was true. Yeah. Yeah, because they have this thing there called Las Disaparecidas, which is the disappeared women. And every year in Juarez,

thousands of women are found murdered and mutilated in the desert. And they can't quite figure out why. And back when I was covering this, nobody had covered it. Now there's like a J-Lo movie on it and stuff like that. And so we won a few awards, but at that time what was wild is... So J-Lo basically

plays you. Yeah, hardly. There's a few slight things different there. I really want to work out of my boots a little bit more like her. I'd say you made it, man. Let me hit J-Lo, if you're listening. Copyright infringement.

But what was wild is it only hit me after I had been there for a minute. But have you ever been to Juarez, either one of you? No. I mean, great vacation destination. But you cross the Rio Grande, right? Which separates Mexico and the U.S el paso and there's this highway and it's exactly how you would picture it tons of of steel and things cordoned off and as you cross it i wonder if it's still there but there would be this there was this huge wooden cross and on this wooden cross were all of these pink ribbons and

mementos and pictures and And so as I got closer to it, I realized that it was covered with missing posters of these women. And what was wild for me at the time, one, there's thousands. You would go on every street corner and you would see these missing women. But then I realized, oh my gosh, wait, I've got really long brown hair. I've got brown eyes. My last name is Sanchez. Whoa. You know, I could be on one of these and I was covering it. And what it made me think is like, what's the difference? Like, why do all these people go missing and nobody gives a shit?

And why if I went missing in the US, like probably there would be some noise startled up. And I don't think it's a race thing. I don't think it's a gender thing. It is one thing. It's who has money. I don't think it's a gender thing. It is one thing. It's who has money and who doesn't. Because money makes you hard to kill and hard to silence, as you know. And so that's why I think it's so important that we all get some skin in the game and some cash on hand, because it's a lot easier to speak your mind when you have cash to back it up. If you can't pay your

rent, if you don't have the bottom pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you're probably not going to speak out because you're going to be squashed. I think it's the biggest problem we have in America right now. We have this cultural environment that's been created by most of the biggest companies in the world that is then copied by the small companies because they see it as the way to do it. Small companies tend to emulate the big companies. And now we have this culture inside the workplace where people feel afraid to say anything because they're going to go to hr they're going to lose their job they're going to do this and dude like

this is the bane of my existence i've been doing this for three years trying to get people to speak the up but they won't because they're afraid that the culture in their workplace won't allow it for it to happen. You know, they go on social media and a lot of people won't even share my show because they go, they think that if they share it, their boss, I hear this all the time. Their boss might hear it or they're like, dude, we talked about this on a, what's what's spot for. Yeah. So dude, I got some DMS about that. They're like, bro, I love your show. I'm one of those people that can't share it though and here's why and the reason they can't share it is because they're

afraid they're gonna get fucking fired and like bro that's insane like we live in a fucking free country dude which to your point that just made that that's an obvious indicator that you are past the threshold and you're just a consumer well dude yeah you don't want to be leveraged like that like you don't want to have to answer to people like that. And like, I think it's a man. I think what you're saying is super fucking important. It's not about having a billion fucking dollars. It's about having enough money to where you're, you can actually have some sort of sense of

freedom and self. Meaning like if you do get fired from your job, well, fuck it, dude. I stood for what the fuck I believe. And like, because we're not responsibly looking at money the right way. Now we're not me, but a lot of us are in a situation where we can't say what we really believe because we're afraid that we'll lose our way to live. And dude, that's no way to live, man. That's you're a slave at that point.

Like you should be calling your boss fucking master at this point, because that's the truth. That's no way to live, man. You're a slave at that point. You should be calling your boss fucking master at this point because that's the truth. That's the truth. That's exactly right. We'll take it a step further, bro. Even think about all the employees, all your fellow colleagues. If you left that business and you went to go start your own

and then you create an environment that is freedom, and now all those colleagues at your last employment, they can come work for you. That's a massive ripple effect. Dude, look, I think half of the reason that most of these companies have problems hiring people is because they've copied the culture of the Fortune 100 companies

that has been passed down by the World Economic Forum and tied to ESG and diversity inclusion requirements. And they've copied that culture and nobody wants to work in that culture. Nobody. So you can't hire anybody. So like, dude, do you want people? Like you said earlier, I don't have a problem hiring people.

There's a wait list to come here and work. You know why? Because it's fucking free in here, dude. You could say whatever the fuck you want in your political beliefs. Like, I don't care. We have plenty of people in here that disagree with what I'm saying. It's just, it's just it's america man that's the fuck we do you know like disagreements produce better results better

solutions well it's you know it's wild so i started our little media company contrarian thinking in 2020 yeah i was never on the internet before and uh yeah you came out of nowhere dude yeah i was i was heads down building companies, buying them. And and in 2020, we stopped traveling. So I had some free time because I wasn't running around all the time doing road shows. And the reason I started Contra and think if you go back to my very first little article, the reason I started it is because people were losing their minds in 2020. And I thought, God, we can't meet.

You know, we can't have conversations. I'm going to start this newsletter. But really, it's going to be back and forth between me and my friends. And I want to debate the ideas that are happening right now because I don't agree with a lot of them. And my thought, hey, I have something I call the modern hierarchy, which is like, first you need financial freedom, then you get physical freedom, then you can have philosophical freedom,

aka think what you want. I like that. Yeah. I think it's pretty true. Yeah. That's what I thought too. I thought, let's try to get more people into this pyramid. The problem is

nobody thinks that they think poorly. Everybody thinks that the way their brain works makes sense. They also think that everybody else thinks the same way they think. If they don't, they're idiots. They're bad guys. They're villains. White supremacists.

You especially. Oh, absolutely. Blackface white supremacy right there, buddy. You guys are giving me too much credit. You are the elder. Good. And then what I realized is, so I started contrarian thinking,

trying to get people to talk about mental frameworks, and I realized nobody wants to talk about this. And so I used the Trojan horse strategy, which was, what does everybody want? Money. Riches, bitches, Bentleys, right? That's what everybody wants. And so I was like, all right. I love that. It's not the top of my list, but that's what I've heard.

So anyway, so then I started talking about money. Because on the internet, if you say, here's a way to get X money that this person made, you're kind of backdoor sneaking them into skin in the game and ownership. And my idea, we'll see if it proves to be true, is once you own a part of the house, you don't burn it down. You build it, right? You know, once you own part of Main Street, you don't light that shit on fire.

That's right. You protect it. That's right. And if you look, we did this analysis, which is fascinating, across all of the main sectors in the US, you see one trend, more of that sector going to fewer companies. And in fact, when I looked at grocery stores- Think about that. Every sector.

Yeah. Every sector. In. Every sector. In fact, the top 10 companies. That means the rich will be getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That's right. Yeah. And most of those companies

then become subsidized and then they create rules that stop competition. They're anti-competitive. And so, you know, when we looked across these sectors, 25 to 30% of them are owned by the top 10 companies.

And that number has just been going like this. So I started thinking, man, we got to do something against that. Because how much easier is it to collect taxes on 500 S&P 500 companies as opposed to 30 million small businesses? How much easier is it to do COVID mandates on 500 companies than 30 million small ones? They couldn't do it. Right. Yeah.

And so that's why we have, I mean, people talk about- But they tried it. They tried to do just like I said they do. They did. Dude, people don't understand this. They show the businesses that are mom and pop how to operate, and these mom and pops emulate these big companies, which is the wrong fucking way to do it. Just because Coca-Cola is doing whatever-cola is doing does not mean

that your 17 person company should be running the same culture system or the same operational system inside and we have they they're smart dude they understand that if they put that down through the biggest companies that those 30 million small businesses will start to copy it and they tried to get their way and that's what they did with that vaccine shit yeah you know they dude they threatened us uh with a seven hundred thousand dollar fine per employee if i didn't force them to get in vaccine that's wild do the math on that we have 450 people in this building yeah that's insane that's total tyranny dude i sold fuck it put me in fucking jail i don't give a shit yeah it takes a lot of balls to do that that's really hard to do and i think but like that's why we need more people talk about decentralized

ownership, Bitcoin. I'm like, I get the idea, but I think decentralized ownership is actually ownership of small businesses. Yes. Yes. Because you're decentralizing the money, the power control that they have. That's exactly right. Dude, this is why I say all the time. And you're busy doing your own thing. And I know you listen sometimes,, this is why I say all the time, and you're busy doing your own thing, and I know you listen sometimes, but this is why I always say personal excellence is the ultimate rebellion. Because dude, if you can get yourself financially in a great place, dude, this gives you the freedom to actually say the truth that you believe, which makes a difference. Dude, that's a great fucking point that you made. I agree with you a million percent. Yeah. I mean, our goal is a million small business owners. That's what I want to create.

I love that. And I don't think it's that hard. You guys are pouring into the revolution that we need. I don't know if that's your main purpose or not, but what you're doing is important work because of what we're just talking about. I think you're right. Dude, I sat in on this crazy, I was in a room that I can't mention with people that I can't say their names. And it was the day before SVB collapsed or came out publicly as being taken over by the government. And my husband and I do a decent amount of stuff with political donations. Because I think once you have some money, you have a personal responsibility to do that. Yeah, I do too. To be a civil, if you're not going to be a civil servant, to donate. The only problem with that is the fucking text messages afterwards asking you to donate more.

Holy shit. Especially during somebody's campaign in particular. Fucking kill me, dude. Yeah, that was awful. Yeah, and the list you get on. Oh, God, yeah. I gave a couple million bucks this year to some pro-freedom, I won't call them conservative because they're not year to some pro-free.

I won't call them conservative because they're not. They're pro-freedom candidates. And they happen to be in the same primary race. And they actually, you know, I'm good friends with both of them. And they fucking hate each other, which sucks. They're both great dudes. Bro, they're both great dudes. But I understand why they don't like each other.

I get it. But it's funny because I started getting these messages from Trump's team. Like, donate to Trump. Donate to Trump. Dude, I'm writing back. Fuck you, motherfuckers. Stop texting me. Like, bro, and I don't even feel that way about Trump.

But I just got so annoyed with the text. I was just, see what I can get away with texting him. Yeah, right. You know? They don't care. No, they don't. They keep sending them, dude. It must work.

Because, yeah, they do it on both sides. Yeah, I got like Nancy Pelosi, Bernie them, dude. It must work. It must. Yeah. They do it on both sides. Yeah. I got like Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, whatever. Yeah. But I think the part that was fascinating is, so we're in this room and we're with a bunch of investors who are freaking out because their cash is in this bank and contagion is going to happen. And I was at Goldman in 2008.

So I saw what the run of the bank run on the banks like actually could look like. And what was wild is the person who was up on that stage, it was a member of the government in a position to make things happen. And he acted like it was nothing. And why are you guys even talking about this? Incredibly dismissive. And I was like, wow, this is not the crowd to do that. Two, one. And two, you really must not understand finance if you don't understand what a bank run could look like. That would be horrifying for this country.

And then, so I chatted with a few people who are behind the scenes on it. They told me that JP Morgan made an offer to buy SVB that weekend and the government blocked it. And in that moment, I just- Yeah, two people confirmed it. Dude. that moment, I just, yeah, two people confirmed it. Two very high up people. I have no firsthand knowledge. I don't know, but it makes sense to me. Why? It does. Because they don't want the- They don't want crypto. Exactly. Well,

that's the signature bank thing. That's the real deal. But the part that I thought was fascinating is there really is this narrative that they want to go against the owners and the people who fund decentralized ownership, which is what Silicon Valley does. Now, I don't like everybody in Silicon Valley. I'm the opposite of that. I buy fucking laundromats. I don't have a social app. Yeah. You're being the American citizen version of BlackRock right now. Yeah. Yeah. Right. For real. Right. That's what they're trying to do. And all of the shit that we're talking about here,

this is about taking from the middle class, consolidating to the ultra wealthy and leaving everybody else to be poor. And this is why what you do, and this is really so critical. Listen, dude, I'm about the like, dude,

communist, in my opinion, like this real shit, they should be killed. Okay. That's where I, that's where I stand. It's my opinion. If you don't like it, I'll give a shit shit they should be killed okay that's where i that's where i stand it's my opinion if you don't like it i'll give a shit they should be killed they're they're thinking is flawed it's killed more people than any disease than any war and

actually than all the diseases and all the wars combined it's killed more people than that it's a very very very bad thing and what we're witnessing and the true reason I wanted to bring you on the show was, yes, your content is amazing. But what we're talking about here is actually the revolution that needs to happen. Yeah, I agree. It's fucking amazing. And the cool part is it's doable. Because I think a lot of times if you hear, you know, I don't talk about the SVB stuff

or like if you watch my content, I talk really tactical stuff you could do every day. Because when I hear that stuff I'm like gosh I have some wealth and success and I can't do anything about SVB and the government blocking JP Morgan it makes you feel sort of helpless I didn't know that ask around I believe you a million percent

but I thought that was astounding because it's insane dude yeah well it makes sense though doesn't it because they want to demonize the the only people who are almost more powerful than them right now and who is that big tech yeah big tech and the people who fund them and so those people are on a collision course as you can tell by how ridiculous the lawsuits are that they brought against um facebook and what they really should be looking at are maybe some other companies in the realm.

And so, yeah, I think when I listen to all this stuff, what I go back to is, what can you do as a human today to get some ownership and some skin in the game in your community? You've done an incredible thing here in St. Louis. Built this huge company that you guys have built up that employs people locally. I was asking around to people, where are you from? Where are you from? St. Louis, St. Louis, St. Louis, which was, and I'm sure there are people from all over. But I thought that was really cool that is this local. And we were standing in front and what were a bunch of people doing? They were getting ready to go to the first Cardinals game. And so when a day and you know budweiser gets sold out to another international

company which is okay they're still bringing money to your local economy you guys are sort of you're a little fence post you're you're a stick in the ground we're we're actively working to so before that happened the imbev uh takeover of of ab yeah look dude no i can't explain this and i can't be i can't i cannot overstate this you could not buy a coors light in st louis could not buy it could not fucking get it okay and that goes for any beer that wasn't maybe if you drank a fucking if you drank a coors light in st louis bro somebody'll punch you in the. That's how it was before that embed. And everybody was crushed when that happened. One of our main things in first form that we like to do, that we, that our goal is, is to replace that feeling of pride that everybody, cause we don't have a lot in St.

Louis, dude. You know what I'm saying? We're not known for a lot of shit. And so what I want, what my, one of my main goals, we do a lot of community stuff. We do, you know, a lot of charitable things, uh, because we care, dude, these are our fucking people. You know what I'm saying? Like we don't have shit here. And, um, we've got some incredible people. And so one of my goals, it's funny that you brought up a B because we talk about this internally all the time. One of our goals is to become, um, that source of that fence post, like you say, for our community. And it's an important thing. Yeah. People take pride in that shit, man. Well, and I mean, before we go and try to fix the problems of the world, maybe like starting your

home, then starting your neighborhood, then starting your community, then your city. And so, I mean, we live in Austin and we're pretty big on this. We're like, we're going to donate to the local situations happening in Austin. We're going to actually probably invest in some local businesses. I own some laundromats in Austin and they're nice. They're like a place where somebody can come in, they can get their clothes clean. They've got stuff for the kids to do. It's not a hard business to understand, but you can have a little pride in your local community. I think people really underestimate how good that feels. It's like super selfish. I also think it's, I think they underestimate

how important it is, right? People are tired of global corpse, man. Like they're tired of everything feeling like it's owned by BlackRock or one of these bigger companies or, you know, dude, I think people are tired of fucking shopping at Amazon.

In fact, I have the data to prove it. Oh yeah. Like dude, my retail company, uh, supplement super stores here. We have, I don't know, 30 something stores. Um, those were killing it. We're better than we've ever been. And there's no explanation other than what I've been talking about on the show for the last three years is that people are becoming more aware of the

way to counteract what some of these things that we've been dealing with in society. And they started to understand like our dollars matter. Our dollars matter. We vote with our dollars. We buy from independent companies. And I can see this because in our retail, like dude, in a time where money is getting a little bit harder to come by, people are becoming a little more discerning. They're thinking about where they're shopping their money. Our sales continue to go up. And I believe our sales go up because yes, we do a good job. Yes, we service the customer.

Yes, we create a great experience. We do all the things we should do. But I think that that extra thing, like where people are starting to become conscious of reinvesting with actual real people, right? Instead of like faceless corporations that nobody knows, investing in their... I think people are becoming aware. And I think that the time, the pendulum is sort of swinging back away from convenience into, okay, some things are a little more important than convenience or even price sometimes. We have to reinvest in these

businesses that are giving back in our communities in order for them to thrive one of the things i'm very grateful for about st louis in general st louis has always been very conscious about that we have deerbirds which is a family-owned company we have schnooks which is a family-owned company they're both billion dollar plus grocery companies and people support these places because they understand that these are real people that employ real people in their neighborhood and there's a pride there so like dude even these like these these laundromat like i think i i truly believe that what you guys are on to is a huge it's a huge i think you're way ahead of the curve of what buying uh behavior is going to look like for the next 10 years or so i think you're right yeah you have a business that makes a hundred

thousand dollars how can we turn this into a million dollars through acquisitions, right? And I think there's going to be a flood of bankruptcies. This is like a little bit of a pivot, but thinking of acquisitions, there's going to be, do you know right now, I was looking at the data yesterday,

private equity firms who touch something like one in $4 in the US economy, depending on how you calculate it. In 2007 and 2008, so big recession period, obviously, they had about negative $100 million on their balance sheet because they're levered, right? 2015, it was like $300, $400 million. Today, $700 million. So these companies are- So it's coming. Yeah, because rates are up, man, right? Yeah, it's coming.

You know, you guys don't do that because you didn't grow through acquisitions and all of this crazy financial levering. But I think we're going to have so many bankruptcies that you're going to be able to pick up businesses for pennies on the dollar. We're already seeing it. I'm already seeing that in a number of industries that are parallel to what we do. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so I'm not going to name any names because I'm friends with a lot of these guys and I'm not happy about it. Never. Nope.

But the truth of the matter is, and this just isn't for us, it's for anybody that's in a strong position. And this is why you should do it the right way. This is why you should take the long road. Because when the long road, when you take the long road and you build a solid foundation,

when shit goes haywire and everybody else is panicking, you actually get to leverage up three or four different levels. In 2008, I was just running my retail company. We had just started First Form. So it took me 20 months to launch our first product at First Form because we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. And like I told you, we partnered with a company that also didn't know. So we were learning as we went. And so there was a lot of trial and error. It took a long time, but dude, during those four, those five years, we grew our retail company a hundred percent

every single year for one single reason. No one else tried. Everybody else quit. Everybody else said no more marketing, no more advertising. We're pulling in all of our assets and we're going to ride out the storm. And while everybody else rode out the storm, I took all their shit. And now they're all gone. Like we cleaned them out. And that same type of scenario is about to happen. Yes, 100%.

That's what she's saying. That's what I think you're saying. 100%. Yeah. Well, and I mean, the part I was at this- That's what the data shows. The data shows is coming. The data shows.

I've been talking about it. Dude, how many times have we talked about this? A million? About, yeah. A million, one, two, right? A lot. A few, right? At least once.

That data that you just said, that just fortifies my position that this is going to happen. Yeah, I'll send it to you. And dude, it's going to be worse in 08. Yeah, I think so too. And longer. Yeah. I mean, this is like so technical and weird, but I was at this company called First Trust at the time. Actually, you would love the CEO.

It's a private company. He wipes his name off the internet. You can't find him anywhere. I definitely had my disagreements with him, but he's a billionaire. Hundreds of billions of dollars under management. America is fuck. I mean, they have a Christmas party. They don't have a holiday party.

You know, they have like these lines in the sand. Yeah, fuck yeah. Yeah. He is, he's a hardcore dude, Jim Bowen. He's going to hate that I'm talking about him right now. But anyway, I have a lot of respect for him because of the culture that he's built. And he has this one economist, Brian Westbury, on Twitter. And I'll give Brian a shout because he's, I think, the best economist that I've ever followed in that he doesn't follow the narrative at all. He spoke out about everything you guys have spoken out about and has an analyst team that does a ton of research. So it's all backed by data. And he told me one thing in 2007, 2008. I had come to their company more like 2009, 2010.

And I was working and running their Latin America business. It was a pretty big asset management business at the time. And Brian gave me this presentation that blew my mind and basically showed how, again, technical, but like follow me for three seconds, something called mark-to-market accounting, which basically means like if I have this desk right now and we bought this desk for a thousand bucks, I have to, at this exact moment, go try to sell it in the market. And whatever the market will pay, so let's say eBay is the market, whatever the market will pay is what this desk is worth. So if I have a thousand dollar desk and I'm going to go sell it on eBay, what are you

going to get for it? Like 10 bucks, a hundred bucks, there's a big discount to the market. Well, in 2008, they changed the mark-to-market accounting regulations. And what they did is they changed that for the banks. So imagine billions of dollars worth of loans, right? And they said, if you have loans on your balance sheet, you have to mark those loans to what the market will pay you for them at any given time. Well, that's okay. Normal day-to-day, things trade with a lot of liquidity. But when there's a liquidity crisis, aka 2008, and nobody's buying anything because we think the world's going to end, how much are people going to pay for that

desk? They're going to pay pennies on the dollar. And that's actually why the crisis happened. It wasn't what everybody talked about, which is, oh, the banks are so bad and they're out doing these crazy loans. It was that the government changed one tiny little tax practice. And that tiny little tax practice of mark to market essentially meant that the banks looked bad and like they had bad assets on their balance sheet. But if you have a mortgage portfolio and you pay your rent, that's all a mortgage is, right? And that rent is getting paid every single month, let's say 80%, then the mortgage is worth at least 80% of its value. So 80 cents on the dollar, right? Well, the market would only pay 10 cents for that loan. So they mark it down immediately. The second that they change mark-to-market accounting, and you can look at

this on the notes for the Fed, is when the V-shaped recovery happens. So I'm like, I fuck you not. It happens in 2009, the second that they changed the accounting. And so they pile all this stimulus and tarp and all of this money into the economy. And that has a correlation to the market going up. But Brian's argument is no causation. That's not why the market went up. It's just that they changed this mark to market accounting. And so that's why I go back again and again to, it's all about, do you understand the finance terms? Do you actually understand what's happening at the dollar level? Because that's what drives our economy. And so the reason we had this really quick V-shaped recovery is

because we didn't have as bad of a market as- As it was portrayed. Right. But today, there's no mark to market accounting. That's right. It's something different. So it's not going to feel like that.'s i think it's going to be i think it's in my you know hold on uh-oh there we go all right now i can qualify to talk about this um i personally believe that what is happening is an intentional destruction of our financial system because it's irreparable. And the intent is to hyperinflate the currency, trade out what people are insured for in the banks or digital currency, and then basically start everybody over at 250 grand or less and say, oh, by the way, you still owe your debt. That's what I think is going to happen.

I hope you're wrong. I know. That has been a word from our- I'm usually not. Yeah. That was a word from Andy Thomas. That's right. We come right back to normal Andy. Well, but I do think you have a point, which is what's the only way to combat that?

Assets and not just cash in the bank. You need to own companies. You need to own land. I mean, everybody talks about inflation being bad for everybody. No, it's bad for people who don't own anything. My houses, my businesses go up in price. If you don't have any assets, you're inflating away your salary at 3% a year salary increase. Yeah. It's an unwinnable war. It is. And, and, and this goes back full circle.

Okay. Uh, to you not quitting when you're unhappy. That's real talk. It's real shit. Because what ends up happening is you get to be 75 years old and you don't have shit because you guys all think that you're going to save a million bucks or 2 million bucks and it's going to be worth 2 million bucks when you're 70 and it's

actually going to be worth like 200 bucks and that's where the that's where the dude you said our economy runs on uh you know people's understanding of currency i actually think our entire economy runs on people's ignorance to what's going on in the financial system. That's the only reason they're able to do it. You know, we don't know. We don't know. We don't know as consumers what's actually going on. And like you said, with the opaque thing, where there's mystery, there's money, right? And they got a lot of mystery with their shit for most people.

It's highly confusing for the average person. This is why they don't teach us this shit in high school, which is very easy for us to learn. We don't even learn how to manage our personal bank accounts. No, but I know the Pythagorean theorem, so that's important. I learned that. Yeah, I use it frequently.

Exactly, dude. Exactly. Well, hey, I'll tell you what. This has been an awesome conversation. I really, really appreciate you making the trip up here. Thanks for making the trip up here, Chris. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for having us.

Guys, where are you doing most of your work? I know you've got a big YouTube and you're doing a lot on Instagram and that's growing like crazy. Tell people where to follow you. Yeah, probably Cody Sanchez on Instagram, YouTube or Contrary Thinking, which is our newsletter.

Okay. All free and just follow along and buy a business and tell us if you do. I would love if somebody tells Andy or me or DJ, if you bought a business because of this, if you employ people because of this, let's show them that it's not just trolls that respond to the comments. You guys are doing amazing work. And you too. trolls that respond to the comments. You guys are doing amazing work. I knew this show was going to be cool, but honestly, this has been one of my

favorite shows that we've ever done. Just based upon your experience, your knowledge, and also the purpose of why you're doing what you're doing, I think is incredible. I would appreciate if you guys gave these guys support. Support Cody and what she's doing. I couldn't say enough good about it.

Well, same right back at you. Can I say one last thing? For sure. I think it's really cool what you guys do. Chris and I were talking about this beforehand. No shame on The Rock. I like the guy. But then I think, man, you have this giant platform and you choose to do a tequila company and an energy sports drink company is the only things you do. I'm like, why? Like, he's a healthy dude. Like, why not do something that would be really great for the country and the world, too?

I mean, tequila is fine. I like tequila, but like, I'm not sure that's the deal. And so what I think is really cool is even in conversations here, you walk the talk, man, which is weird on the internet, first of all. And like, uh, I wish more people out there would listen to this and like, don't just go create the next social media app. Don't just try to go get rich quick on a new alcohol.

And if you actually listen to this and you have massive reach, maybe do the hard thing. Like the rock works hard as fuck. Why not do a company that could actually really change this country? Um, and so I think it's really cool what you're doing. I'm really stoked to be here. Thanks for having me. I actually think the way that you guys are investing,

like the way that you look at acquiring small businesses and building a portfolio, you know, and you can do this with stocks. You know, you could do this with crypto if you feel a little risky right now. You know, there's other ways to do these things. But what i love about what you guys are doing and by the way i own a tequila company oh shit yeah well shit that's okay though it's okay because i'm building brands and it's gonna you also offset it with a giant gym and some stuff my main my main i also own cannabis too so like you know I got all the vices. Me too.

Yeah. The, the, but the main thing is, you know, personal development is improving. It is getting better. And anyway, I just think what you guys are doing is incredible because it really is that revolution that we need. Yes. We need higher standards. Yes, we need you to become disciplined. Yes, we need you to become fit. But when it comes to where your assets are going to be focused, I think what you guys are doing is incredible because what you're doing is you're bringing back small business America. And I think that's just, I hope that you guys listening and watching understand how big of a fucking deal that is and how you can actually be a part of it very easily. Yes, it's going to be hard. Yes, it may be not easy, very simply. But it is an obligation for us as citizens to own the economy that we operate inside of.

You know what I'm saying? That's something that we don't talk about. Nobody talks about that. You guys have an obligation to own these little stores that people utilize and these businesses that people utilize in your community. It's a big obligation that we have passed on to companies and corporations that do not have our interests in mind. They have their own interests in mind. And dude, if we're going to fix what's going on in the country, what you guys are doing, and I just hope that people really listen to it and pay attention to it because that is actually what's going to save everything. Yep. No more Starbucks.

Yeah. No shit. That's right. That's right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. This has been amazing.

Thanks, TJ. Oh, thank you. All right, guys. That's the show. I think, you know, that's a word to share, don't you think? So give us a little Sherry share. Give us a little like you like. And we'll see you next time.