The School of Greatness - Stop Grinding: Build a Business You Don't Hate | Codie Sanchez

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

What if the grind you think makes you successful is the very thing keeping you broke and exhausted?Codie Sanchez, a former Goldman Sachs employee who has run 1,621 businesses through her company’s systems, sat down with Lewis to talk about money, freedom, and why most entrepreneurs across the US earn less than California’s $78,000 minimum wage. Her book Own or Be Owned is built on one uncomfortable question: do you own a business, or does it own you?She tells the story of walking into a bank for a loan and finding the account she thought held a million dollars almost empty. That night she sat in the dark and called her dad, who told her you are not really in the game until you have had a night like that. She never ran a business without systems again.The fixes she shares are simpler than you expect. Most businesses are underpriced by 30 to 300 percent, fewer than a third have recurring revenue, and hard work has almost nothing to do with how much money you make. She also explains why more than 80 percent of kids want nothing to do with their parents’ business.You will finish this one ready to raise your prices and build a life where work fits around the people you love.Pre-Order: Own or Be Owned: Build a Business So Good It Doesn't Need YouMain Street Millionaire: How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary BusinessesCodie's InstagramCodie's YouTubeBig Deal PodcastCodie's WebsiteIn this episode you will:Learn the OWN system of 12 profit levers Codie Sanchez uses to build a business that runs without youRaise your prices with confidence once you see why most businesses are underpriced by 30 to 300%Escape key man risk by building systems and hiring people who can outperform youTest real market demand before you build, so your next venture doesn’t start from your painBreak the money beliefs that keep you living paycheck to paycheckPay yourself first and add recurring revenue so your profits turn into lasting freedomFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1983More SOG episodes we think you’ll love! Get More From Lewis! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Again, thank you so much for being here and listening to The School of Greatness. Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. Money can be a funny thing. It can be something that gives you so much stress and overwhelm and fear and uncertainty. And it can also be a thing that gives you incredible peace, abundance, and freedom and flexibility. and I remember the time when I didn't have money and it was not enjoyable. I felt very dumb. I was just like I didn't understand it.

I didn't understand the language of money. There was a whole vocabulary around money and it just seemed like people that understood this vocabulary knew how to make money and I didn't. And I also remember the time when I started to learn the language of money. I started to learn the skill of making money, of developing more skills. to add more value to others and being able to package and charge for that value in a specific way, where I started to see incredible financial results for myself. And if you've ever struggled around money or building a business or launching something on

the side while you're at a job that you're trying to earn more money, this is the episode for you because Cody Sanchez, who is a former Wall Street investor, turned nine-figure founder and best-selling author of a book called Main Street Millionaire. She's also got a new book out right now called Own or Be Owned. And we're talking about this mindset that you've got a shift that the wealthy have. And it's not about working harder

or grinding or hustling. It's actually about shifting one specific thing around the way you think in order to earn more at the career you're at or earn more on your own. So if you're excited to learn more, then let's dive in. One of the biggest stresses that people have around, I think, work and money right now.

You said you did a survey to your audience about, do you want to have more money? Do you want to have more profits? Do you want to do more of the things you love? Or do you want to have more freedom? And you said, over 50% of the people said they wanted more freedom. And something you were just saying is like, I think a lot of people feel like they have to grind and work so hard to make more constantly to keep up with the bills, to keep up with the expenses, or keep up with the appearances that they're not.

just starting to feel burnt out and exhausted around work, money, or the idea that they have to do so much more work to make more. So what is the way out of this trap? Yeah. Well, first, I think you need to realize that most people who are giving you advice on the internet about business were miserable before they started their business, miserable as they're building it, and probably still kind of miserable post-success. And so, like, that was a huge realization for me. It's like, oh, all these people that I'm listening to have lives that I don't want. So why am I listening to them about building a business? And I think as a generation, a lot of us like trauma bonded as entrepreneurs saying like, oh, it has to be this way. It has to be so hard. Because if instead you say,

life's actually pretty good. Yeah, we're grinding, we're growing. And there's a couple things here and there. But like, by and large, it's good. People are like, you're a liar. You must not be trying that hard. It just sounds so much less sexy. And so I would say first realize that those people who say that you have to do the really click-baiting thing, which is grind to the point of misery until you eventually outlive everybody else, that's one way. You can. You can also do what Jeff Bezos talks about, which is he's always puttered in the morning, you know, or Tim Cook all through his life of being an employee, spent the first hour working out. I'm not saying that you don't have to work hard. I'm saying you could actually choose a life that you like

and fit work into it. And I actually think that's possible. And so I started writing this book because that was me. I'm like super pregnant. I'm slowing down. And I wanted to get pregnant. We've been trying to get pregnant for five years. So I started writing the book because I was like, when I am eventually a mom or pregnant, I don't want to go at this pace anymore. And I keep building all these things to keep up with all these other people that I don't even like.

Why? Why? How long were you running that race for? Oh, gosh. I mean, I've been in business for 16, 17, 17 years. now in varying ways. So, you know, let's call it 16 or 17 years. Do you think you were consciously thinking about, oh, I need to keep improving and growing and succeeding to keep up with others that you admire or respect or whatever, friends, or do you feel like it was more of an unconscious thing?

It's unconscious. I mean, I think you were all memetic desire machines, right? Like, you see the Joneses have something. You want what the Joneses have. And then social media just amplifies that until you think, well, to be happy, I need to have X. And that is such a, that's such a falsity. And in fact, you know, part of the book was me deconstructing, wait a second. Most entrepreneurs make $46,000 to $64,000 a year. Most entrepreneurs make $46,000 to $66,000 a year? Yes.

The minimum wage in California is $78,000 a year. So most entrepreneurs across the U.S. make less than minimum wage. Wow. Why is that? Because most businesses aren't optimized for profit. And think about it. how often most people don't even really think profit is sexy. If I was to stack ranked, what do you want?

Revenue, money, cash, profit. They're not going to rank profit first. And so most businesses aren't taught to pay themselves first and that that's okay. There's a great book called Profit First, right? Yeah, Michael McCallowitz. So they don't think about profit as sexy, right? No. And I think also as an entrepreneur, you end up feeling like revenue is the be all and all.

And all, I just want more, more, more, more top line. And eventually you realize, wait a second, I need to eat. I want to have a nice lifestyle. And I remember another mutual friend of ours, Dean Graziosi, said to me years ago, he was like, you know, he's like, I have a lot of friends that have run these scale businesses, these hypergrowth businesses. And he kind of leans in because he's a nice guy. And he goes, but I've had a plane way longer than all of them. And I joked with him. And I was like, why do you think that is?

He's like, because I've always optimized for having a lifestyle business that paid me first and cashload to me. And then I cash flowed to the business. Wow. And that is. Instead of like, oh, I'm doing $100 million a year revenue, but I'm struggling financially. Yeah. I mean, I was like, you know, most entrepreneurs, they pay themselves last. And then, you know, when you're an employee, I remember when I was an employee, I'd go to my boss and think he's super rich.

We just made millions. And you don't realize, you know, Walmart's profit margin is like. 6%. The average business is 15%. So if you're making a million bucks, you're only making $150,000 a year. Well, you'd be better off being one of now my employees than that. Yeah. And the challenges, if you're making $150,000, I guess, in profit, that doesn't mean there's not other expenses or taxes or legal fees on top of that that you might be spending at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, like one of the great realizations in life is that nobody's really doing as good as you think they are. Alternatively, you're probably not doing as good as they think you are. And so you realize

after a while, everybody's out there kind of massaging exactly what's going on in their world, whether through a mission or not wanting to have other people know about all the difficulty. Like, how many of our friends do you know, too, who are big names on the internet? And when I talk to them, they're like, I'm going through these lawsuits. I'm going through these issues. Like, everybody has something, including you. They're not doing as well as you think they are. And so it's okay wherever you're at in your journey. And this book taught me a lot about that. How has being pregnant taught you about money in a different way? Maybe you haven't had enough time to think about it yet, but is there? Well, it's really taught me that like the most powerful thing you can

have is, is time and freedom. And that eventually you'll have something happen in your life that will happen to you. You will have. no control over it. And whether you want to or not your business, your career, your money will not be first and foremost anymore. And you might not even be able to perform at the level you want to. And so that's not an if. That's a win. And because of that, it made me realize why am I trying to be a hero in everything I do in my career? Now at our company, we say to be a hero is like to take heroin because it is this addictive drug where you are the one always fixing everything. You're the martyr. It's all on you. And you idealize that at some point until you realize, wait a second.

Like, this is all supposed to support me. Like how you work or your job is what? How you support your family, how you support, etc. Well, when did support actually become primary? And so my push is that we should build amazing big huge things. It's super fun. I love what I do. But you should do it by choice, not by necessity. Do you think a lot of people are trying to prove something when they're building a business or scaling a business? Yeah, I mean, we jokingly say that entrepreneurship is really a bit of PTSD and that you can't have a lot of entrepreneurs without PTSD. Because if you go to some of the best entrepreneurs, they've really struggled through life. And so because of that, you have this bias that in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to struggle. And I don't think that's always true. It's just that

a lot of people felt like they had something to prove. And a chip on your shoulder can be just as much fuel as a purpose or a mission. It's just not as efficient fuel for a long time. And it's corrosive. You know, it'll eat you. What is the downside to always trying to prove yourself? Well, eventually, you figure out who are you proving yourself to? And you wake up one morning and your you know, wife doesn't want to talk to you the same that she used to and your kids don't recognize you. And your business has some sort of downfall and you realized that you loved things that could never love you back. And what a tragedy. And so instead of building a system and a business that can support you that you do like, but is a choice to pick up the phone every day as opposed

to an addiction. I don't know why I want to ask you about being a mom more, but it's probably it's going to be hard for you to predict the next 10 years of your life. Because you might have one idea of how things are going to be and then your child comes and then maybe something changes, maybe it doesn't. But if you could go 10 years in the future and imagine your child is 10, or almost 10, and it's that 10th birthday, what's the things that you think Cody today needs to hear from you 10 years away from now? You know, you know what I hope?

is I hope that like I have a picture of when you have a kid and you have a business and you've built all these things, that your kid doesn't end up thinking that your business is the reason that you aren't around. You know, I have a picture in the future about why so many kids don't take over their parents' businesses. And it's because that was their biggest competition growing up. So why would I take over the thing that kept dad away from me? me that I have resentment towards. And so I think about that now a lot with business where I want my kids to be involved in the legacy that we have built because I've spent 15 years building this thing. And wow, how sad is that that most kids want nothing to do with their parents' business whatsoever?

More than 80% want nothing to do with your business. Yeah. So you think about that. You spend your entire life building a business that then your kid says couldn't pay me to take that over if you wanted to. Why? Well, because it's why you weren't at the soccer practices. It's why you weren't attentive to them. And so what I hope is that there's a way to integrate the two. It's like my husband and I, we work together. It was hard at first. But now it's awesome because we are building something together and it's integrated. We make sure it's fun. And it's not fun every day. And some parts are miserable. But writ large, it's pretty fun. And it would be really sad if you want to. and nothing to do with it. And so that's what I hope in 10 years that the kid picks parts of the business that they want to be involved in. Right. And they get to see themselves in the thing that you've built for decades. Yeah, I guess it's interesting because my dad was in insurance and I remember doing like an internship for the company when I was like in college. And I was like, okay, like he really wanted me to take over the business. But I really just wasn't into it.

Like I tried it. And I also went to a lot of his meetings growing up. And he involved. me. So I got to be around it and I experienced it. I'd go like on golf meetings with him and go to see his clients and go to his office. And I was there. And I did the internship in college, but I was just like, it's just not what it calls me also. So maybe some kids just aren't excited about the business and they're like, oh, this is a business that they wanted, but wasn't my dream. But I think a lot of people have the opportunity, but they, like you said, they may just not want to be involved in the competition of it. Yeah. And I don't think it means that the kid has to. Yeah, yeah. Give me the opportunity. A hundred percent. And also, you know, could you imagine

you like built a house, you go to hand the kid the house down to the kid and the kid doesn't even want to sell it and take the cash from it? That would be weird. Yeah. Yeah. And yet with businesses, we think that's normal. So I'm like, if even the solution is at some point, you're like, I don't want to run all the parts of this business, but like, hey, this team's kind of good. I want to take some aspect of this. Hey, I want to write a book about sports. I want to start a media channel about sports, something totally different than what Cody does. I hope there's still like room within it for them. And so, but I, again, I don't think that that's what everybody has to do. That's just for me, in my, like, you get to design your life, right? Which is such an unfair advantage once you realize it.

Like, you get to design your life how you want it to. And I wish I'd realize that earlier. Yeah. Because the second that you realize that life and the universe is pretty malleable, and that if you want too, you can will different things into existence, is the second that you realize, okay, I don't know if this is what other people want, I'm going to try. Yeah. And it's actually, it doesn't have to be hard and miserable. It could be really fun and flow. Yeah. The challenge is a lot of people today are living paycheck to paycheck and they feel stuck and it feels like it's hard to get out of that. What is the mindset that you think keeps people living paycheck to paycheck rather than shifting them to creating more financial freedom? Well, you know, it's interesting. My whole,

husband and I were on a walk this morning. And we were talking about exactly this. I said, there's two types of people in the world. It seems like there are builders and there are people who only want to go take what the builders have built. And the builders, by and large, seem to believe that there's massive abundance and by me going and building this thing, I can create whatever I want. But there's a whole school of humans that just believe I have to only take what somebody else has because I'm not capable of building it or because it's unfair or whatever. So I'd say that the first thing is you have to ask yourself, are you a person that has to take? Are you a person that has to be given things?

Or are you a builder? Are you able to build things out of thin air? And I like to draw a really tough line there because it's hard. That's a hard thing to look in the mirror and say like, am I a builder? Am I a builder? Not everyone is though, right? Or can you be? I think everybody can be.

And by a builder, I don't mean you have to go be an entrepreneur. I mean, in the book at the end of every chapter, there's two parts. One, if you're the owner, and two, if you work inside of the business, if you're the employee. Because Cheryl Samberg, super rich employee, she's doing fine. Yes, she made money. Right. How about Glenn Shotwell, CEO of SpaceX, always an employee for Elon Musk. Making money.

She's a billionaire. So I don't think you have to go build something by yourself. But those humans also believe that they can build something in the world. So I think money is attracted to builders and it is repelled by takers. Interesting. And so you should go make sure that you are a builder, not a taker, first and foremost. Why is money attracted to builders versus takers then? What is it about it?

Is it an energetic thing or is it a value thing? Is it a worth thing? What is that? Haven't you ever wondered why some people, like money just comes to them and it proliferates. And back when I was poor, I used to hate that. And I used to say things like it takes money to make money. Or, you know, rich people just have it easier. Or rich people steal and take it.

I had a lot of limiting beliefs. Greedy. They must have gotten lucky somewhere in here. But I sort of believe that money is like anything that can grow, you know, a garden. And if money is like anything that can grow, that means it wants to multiply. Like, it wants to proliferate. It's kind of like the universe. I mean, every single animal and species on the planet wants to proliferate. You know, it wants to grow. And so money is going to go where it can proliferate and grow. And I've just seen it again and again and again. The people who are able to make a million dollars, who are able to make a billion dollars, if you took the money away from them, they would go and they would make it again. And the cool part is that you can become that type of person because they're actually not much smarter than you, the really rich people. And the crazy thing I've realized,

as I've met more of the really, really wealthy, they actually don't work that much hard with a new. I used to think they did. I used to think they worked way harder. Then I realized they worked way harder when they were younger, probably, hard ramp. But as they got older, it's actually just about better decisions, better leverage, and better narratives. They tell themselves. What do you think are the three keys or the three mindsets that makes someone a millionaire? Well, one, the number one reason that you'll be a millionaire or not is one thing. And that is, do you actually think you can become a millionaire? Really?

It's the belief that you can. Yes. Because if you don't believe that it's possible for you to make a million dollars, it's probably going to be hard to happen. It's going to be hard to happen. I mean, there are so many studies. Like, I saw this incredible study about, they gave two groups of people, a packet, like a newspaper packet. And they said, go and find the word Ralph in here and count how many times the word Ralph is in this newspaper packet. It wasn't the word Ralph.

I'm making that up, but I can't remember what the world was. My dad's name. Oh, there we go. He's in the room. So go and find the word Ralph. And there are two groups of people, people that self-describe themselves as lucky and people that describe themselves as unlucky. The unlucky people, they said, go and find it. It's in there.

The number was like 217 times, let's say. So the unlucky people, it took them like 15 minutes or something like that to go find the 215 times. Then they said when we're done, okay, great. The lucky group, it took them like 90 seconds. Wow. Why? Because on like page two of the newspaper, it said Ralph has written in here 270 times. Like there is a lot of research that shows the luckier you think you are, the more luck you find.

And so these are just these are your perceptive beliefs. Wow. Okay. So that's the first key or the first mindset is believing you can be a millionaire. Yep, is believing you can. And you've got to break through that before you can do anything else. That's why, like, Tony Robbins and this show is really important, I think. Because I teach people more like, here's how to grow your business.

Like, if you want to build a business less miserably and make more money, I can help you. If you don't believe in yourself at all, you should listen to Lewis and Tony first. Yeah. You know, so that's first. So you need both those. Yeah. But how do you, is there a difference between believing? you can become a millionaire versus believing it can be something else? Like, what is it about money

that holds people back from believing they can achieve or earn more of it? Yeah, well, money is just a byproduct of skill plus output. So, you know, I always say, like, first you got to believe that you can make money, then you have to have data or validation that you are worth money, which really just, I mean, I don't mean you intrinsically. I mean, your skill set. And then the thing, the third is you have to apply that skill set. So if you want to make money, you have to believe it, you have to have the skills to achieve it, and then you have to actually apply those skills. It's pretty much it. And I think the thing about money is if you don't believe that you can have it, it's really hard to commit yourself enough to getting the skills. And then it's really

hard for you to take the skills and have the belief, which is a little scary thing to do to put them out in the world and say these are actually quite valuable. You should pay more. Okay. So that's step one. What would be the second thing? I think the second thing, Oracle of Delphi says, know thyself, is the most important component of it. I think you have to ask yourself, who are you in this world of business building or money? In the book, we have an archetype. There's 12 different archetypes for business builders or money makers. And I think if you don't know who you are, like you'll have a really hard time figuring out how to make money.

And so one of the archetypes, for instance, is the ball hog. and you might think that that's okay, that you're like a really good closer and you do everything for everybody? The ball hog. You want the shot all the time? They want the shot all the time, which means they never give anybody else the shot,

which means they're Michael Jordan without Phil Jackson, which means no rings, right? So second, you've got to know who you are and what you're good at. And then I think the third component of it is, like, what does the market want? Can you like take, so you've now have a lot of ego. Timing.

Yeah, and like honesty. So if the first one is belief, The second one is know who you are and identity. The third one is not about you at all. It's what is the market willing to pay for? And this one I'm obsessed about because in the profit chapter, I think a lot of people, they build product that they want. But not others want.

Right. And it's so like, are you doing what you want to do or are you doing what is necessary? Because people get so tied to their idea. I have this great idea. I want to go launch this product. do this business, but then do people want that thing? Yeah. That's a challenge.

And when they don't want it, what does it say about me that I failed at delivering this result or whatever around my big idea? So are my ideas good? Is it bad? You know? And the real answer is it has nothing to do with you. Yeah. It has nothing to do with you.

You don't get upset when you take a shot and practice and you miss the basketball hoop. You're like, okay, I just need to do more iterations. That's it. It should have no bearing on who you are. Yeah. Google's killed 217, 218 businesses. They probably acquired a lot of businesses that they've killed also. Oh, 100%.

They probably spent a lot of money on businesses. Yeah, I mean, I became friendly with a guy by the name, an Astro Teller, who's the, he was the head of Google X, which is their incubation and innovation lab. And he famously outside of his door has a resume. And the resume is not all his accomplishments, but all of his failures. He has a failure resume. Every single, like, things that would have crippled me. It's outside of his door in his office. And he said, the reason is because I want to celebrate every single failure that I have,

because that means that we are trying and going big enough. And that really changed my perspective. So, like, in our bathroom, we have a, I guess it's like a photograph compilation of all of the negative things people have said about our product, of all of the products that we've had that have failed, of all the businesses that we've had that we failed. And it's one a reminder, it's not going to kill you. And it's to a reminder, you got to fail a lot if you want to win. Yes. And to kind of wear it lightly.

Yeah, I love that. I had Sarah Blakely on a couple times. And she said that every night at dinner, her dad would ask the kids, her, what did you fail at today? I love that. And you had to come up with something that you failed at that day. I think she was a teenager or something, right? And she goes, that's really what allowed me to launch Spanx by just having the courage every single day when all these manufacturers or men in business said, I couldn't do this thing,

I just kept saying, all right, this is just another step forward and it's okay to fail. Instead of being crippled by a failure, you know, early on. So having that mindset is really helpful. That is fascinating. What do you see people struggling with today around money, business, and AI, and just where everything is going around inflation and all the stress of the, the world leading into the next few years. What are people struggling with today? The largest struggle, well, let's be real about what's really hard today, especially, you know,

for some of the younger generations. It's more expensive to buy a house than it's ever been before on an inflation adjusted basis. Interest rates are still quite high. So that is another added in tandem with it being expensive. Wages have not increased in line with productivity. And And jobs have continued to climb. So we are writ large having a harder time in the job market. So I think you could pretty safely say it is a little bit harder during this generation than probably our parents' generation to have the American dream of a house, you know, a really nice life off of one's salary. Man, education costs through the absolute roof. Crazy. College has three X really in our lifetime since our parents. And so that's a lot. And so that's, That's all real. Now, the next question here is, what of all of that have we been sold is the American dream that actually isn't? And so I think some real questions to ask yourself that people are struggling with today is like, do you really need the college degree? You know, do you act, are you actually sure that what you want to do is buy another liability, aka a house when you might be able to rent

way more cheaply? How much are you sure you want to be an entrepreneur and take on all of the difficulty and cost of being an entrepreneur, I promise you they're not driving a lambo's around every single day. And so I think if we were sold a bag of goods about what the American dream is, can you actually reset what that might look like for you? And I actually am really proud of this generation because I think in a lot of ways they are. And sometimes it pisses us off, like being a little older. What is the younger generation doing right? I think they're questioning everything. You know, and they're saying, yeah, I'm not sure I need to own a house right now.

Actually, I want rental freedom. I don't want to have to be tied to a W-2 income and salary because I have to pay my mortgage consistently over time, which I think is totally reasonable. I think the younger generation today is actually being really smart about saying they're starting a lot of businesses, but they're actually not leaving their jobs to the same degree. So in 2025, there are five million new business starts. In 2019, there are 500,000 new business starts. Really? Yeah. Look at the difference between the two.

What's crazy, though, is that there's less profitable businesses than there were back then. So the big guys are eating way more, and the little guys aren't. The average small business, if you are part of the 60% of the middle, the 1 to 10% at the top are 30x more profitable. So, like, there's this huge curve between the have and half-nots, which means I think you should not feel bad about yourself if you haven't started to be. business, haven't made all your millions, you know, aren't flying on a private jet. I promise you, most people are not. And they're not. Yeah. And you can have all that and do all of that if that is what you want to do. I think it's totally possible. But just don't get a twisted that most people are not there. You know, and don't let them sort of clown you into this idea that that is necessary or

even be necessarily happier if you do that. I mean, you've studied a lot of wealthy people for a long ton, what is something you've learned from someone extremely wealthy in the last year that's made you think about money and business differently? Yeah. Well, one, I mean, you know what the craziest thing to me is with billionaires and the really, really rich? It's usually like one to three decisions that got them there. And almost all billionaires I've ever really gotten to know, it's come down to either

their systems that they run or the terms that they set. it's almost never anything else. And what do I mean by that? Like, I've become friends with a guy who's really big in private equity. And he's like one of the fathers of private equity. Super, super, brilliant guy, multi-billionaire. And if you were to ask him how he got rich, it is not from grinding from 6 a.m. to 12 in the morning. He would say, you know what I did? I bought businesses. I implemented systems in every single business. I ran those systems again and again over time. I found the few one to two things that were problematic in each business. And then I fixed those. And then I sold them at really good terms. And what's crazy is most billionaires are that. They're like, you know,

I just had on my podcast, David Adelman, who was kind of the founder of student housing, billionaire owner the 76ers, you know, more about sports than I do. I guess he just had LeBron come there or something. Yeah. Yeah. No big deal. No big deal. And if you were to ask David why he got so rich, it's not because he raised a bunch of capital and did something crazy. He ran a system inside of his business. He followed the system continuously. And he almost told people, don't be a genius. Just like follow the playbook. And so I am continuously baffled by the fake narrative and the real narrative. The fake narrative is you have to be a genius to massively succeed. The real narrative that I've seen again and again is you have to just steal everybody's homework and follow a proven system that almost all private equity guys run.

And if you do that over time continuously and it's kind of boring, you will have a much higher likelihood of success. And most people fail because their golden retrievers chasing after every new object. They do not fail from implementing something and sticking with it. Yeah, I feel like in my business, I've been really consistent of doing the same things, but trying to improve them every single day and every single week for 13 plus years now. But I also, for the first maybe six or seven years, got into two months. many different things. And it exhausted me. It drained me. But there was money everywhere and opportunities

coming to me as I was growing. So I said yes to everything. And then I was exhausted and drained. And then I said, I'm stopping all of this and sticking to the main thing that is bringing me the most joy, the most fulfillment, the most impact, and the most income. And for the last six or seven years, we've refocused on that. And it's just continued to be a better life, a better business, and a better product because of that, because I'm able to show up differently. And my mind wants to think, oh, but this opportunity, this opportunity, but I have to keep saying no to so many different things, stay focused. And almost keep it boring in certain ways, whereas I used to invest in so many different things,

but I didn't have the right system for investing. So I made a lot of the poor decisions. If I had a better system, maybe it would have been better. And now I'm just like, I'm going to put my money every single month into index funds and consistently ride this thing for the thing. the next however many decades. And just be consistent there as well. It doesn't have to be super sexy or know all the best trades or whatever, but just be consistent. Build what I love. Put the money in there. If a great opportunity comes that works now into my lifestyle,

okay, maybe I'll go for it too, but not doing too much and being very consistent now. Yeah. You know, you know what I realized is like early on, I thought that all of this was so complicated. And I think maybe that's what people want you to believe. Like they want you to believe that making money is really complicated because that serves a lot of interests. It means that we give our money to financial advisors. It means we give our sovereignty to employers. It means we sort of like, oh, I don't want to be in charge. This is so complicated.

And then now, you know, we've run like 1,621 people through our systems and processes. Why that's kind of cool is that's 1,600 businesses. So I got to see, like, what matters? And I found that like if you want to make more money, there's like three steps that almost everybody should do and nobody does. What's that? The first step is you need to sell more things to rich people. They pay more. We call this persona.

And so basically most people do not sell things to rich people because when you start out, you're not rich. It's really scary. And so you have something called the wallet share phenomenon, which means you think that your wallet is everybody else's wallet. At some point, it will realize, oh, no way, having 500 clients, pay you 2x more is so much more fun than having a thousand clients pay you one x less. And so it's like one, find your richest client, try to clone them or multiply them. And then two is pricing. So let's say you have a job.

Like, you know what the best way is for you to immediately make 20 to 30% more? Ask for a raise. It's the same thing in business. Most businesses are underpriced 30 to 300%. 30 to 300%. In fact, I've gone into 16211 business. where I can see their QuickBooks. I can like see into their business in the back end. They're not just telling me. I have the data in front of me. Do you know how many businesses I found that were overpriced? How many? Zero. Really? Not a fuck. Isn't that great like they undervalue themselves? Zero. Why is that? Because we think that well, actually there's a couple reasons. The first reason is because you wouldn't be willing to pay more. So you artificially limit what everybody else is willing to pay more. The second is because you have a team

and everybody on your team makes less money than you do, right? So what do they do? They artificially limit to the amount they'd be willing to pay and down and down and down and down. And so it's almost like this cascade. And so that's the second thing is pricing. And then the third thing is, for some reason, like what you really want in life,

you want to sell something once and get paid continuously. That's what you want. Recurring revenue. Sell once, get paid continuously. you wouldn't work at a job that just paid you one time. Like you want people to pay you again and again, right? But for some reason, when we start our own business, we are fine with people paying us once. In fact, we feel really uncomfortable when we ask them to go on subscriptions or recurring.

So most businesses, let's call it 60 to 70 percent, have a bad product set up because you are chasing. It's like only ever limiting yourself for the rest of your life to go on a date with a woman once. that'd be pretty hard to keep getting dates. Yeah, yeah. Right? How many businesses have reoccurring revenue? Less than 30%. Interesting.

Think of it. That's an F. That's an F grade. So 70% have one-off sales only. Yep. Completely transactional. Maybe the contract is for a number of months, but it's a one-off sale that you have to constantly resell.

Uh-huh. Interesting. Yeah, we consider recurring revenue when you put your credit card down and I get to charge you continuously over time until you, until you tell me to stop. Yes. That is the golden ticket. And only 30% of businesses in the U.S. are doing that.

Well, of the 1600 that we serve it. Okay, got you. I should look at it with the general. But I would be shocked if it was much higher. Yeah. I would imagine it's somewhere between 30 and 50%. There's no way it's more than 50%. Interesting.

I know. Well, even think about your business. Like you have a media business. Yeah. It's reoccurring, though, for sponsorships. It's reoccurring. Sponsorships, yeah, recurring. But probably you don't have the right to do.

charge their credit card every single month continuously. What would be if you had subscriptions to some degree, right? I did for many years, but that's got its own challenge. Yeah, because it might not have been the right kind of subscription. And the product might not have been perfect for media, and so people could churn. But I think the question we have to always ask ourselves as business owners is like, are you working harder than you need to because you have limiting beliefs that are holding you back in your business. And it's touchy-feely so some business owners don't do it, but it's where all the money is. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing,

manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now. And you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now, let's get back to the conversation. What's the percentage of businesses that have a recurring revenue model that succeed versus those that have one-off sales that succeed? Like, which ones last longer typically? Yeah, I mean, like, if you look at it over time, look at the biggest businesses that exist in the world. Amazon Prime. Recurring, right? You could say, but what about SpaceX, government contracts continuously over time?

You could say, look at Tesla. You got a subscription, baby. That's the perfect subscription business. So the most successful companies, they maximize for this thing that's like, not that sexy to talk about, but it's where all the money is called lifetime value. Right. And so, you know, you want to obsess on how much will one customer pay you over time. And if you want the secret to win in in your industry, it's to get your customers to pay you more than they will to anybody else.

If you can do that, you're really, really hard to beat. And so it's what Silicon Valley and all the really rich people obsess on. But even if you're an employee and you want to get paid more, use the word LTV more. Throw that around in meetings into your boss. Because most people don't think about the long term. They think really short term. And that's why you're probably not as rich as you want to be. Wow.

And I was the same way too. And maybe the only other thing that's a little slightly bit technical is like, you know, when you're early on and making money, or if you haven't made the amount of money that you want yet, a lot of it is because you don't speak the language of money yet. You know, early on in my career, I had a little notebook, Lewis, and I was a journalist. So I went to Goldman Sachs. Previously, I was a journalist.

And they said all these words I didn't understand. AOV, LTV, churn, you know, basis points, blah, blah, blah. And I would keep a little notebook, and I would write down all the words. Of course, LTV, yes, uh-huh. And I would go and search. them later, you know, and figure out what they meant. And then I would learn the definition. So I think one of the most powerful things you can do if you want to get rich is figure out what the language means. The language of money. And it's all the acronyms that they use to keep you out of the know.

And if you can learn all of those, then you kind of understand this foundational layer. And it won't be the only thing that will lead you to make you money, but it'll really help. I like that as another book in the future for you, the language of money. It's a good title. God, it'll be so boring, but it'll make people a lot of money. There's just be like a list of all these acronyms, you know? Make it interesting, though. Yeah. You've got a lot of great concepts in your book, own or be owned.

But I'm curious, in your mind, can someone become wealthy without ever becoming an actual owner? Oh, yeah. In fact, I think you're a little crazy if you want to be an owner. I mean, in order to own something, you have to be a masochist that kind of likes pain in the beginning because you've never done it before. So when have you excelled at something. that's hard without doing it before. That would be crazy to think that. So you do not have to be an owner to be rich.

What I think you do have to have, you have to have an owner mindset. And an owner mindset really just means that you own every task and every bad thing and every good thing that has happened to you in life is up to you. And if you can have the type of mindset where you say, I take ownership over the fact that I'm not making what I want to in my salary, I take ownership over the fact that I got fired. I take ownership over the fact that my side hustle failed. If you own all of that, then I believe you can succeed. Plus, you'll be so, I don't think people realize, I mean, Lewis, how rare is it when somebody comes to you? And they're like, hey, Lewis, I know I'm in

graphic design, but I saw over here on the website, there are a couple things I think weren't optimized. So I like spun up a new version of it. I wanted to iterate on that for you. I think this could help improve our LTV. You'd be like, what? You know, you'd be like, you'd be like, Amazing. Amazing. And if that person kept coming to you, understanding the language of money with an owner mindset, you would pay them more eventually. And I think they're thinking of how to make you more money. They're thinking of, let me optimize something that I'm skilled at. Yeah. And what's crazy is that most people will never do that. And why is that? Why is that? Why do most people working in companies not try to take the initiative to make the company more money?

Well, I think in the comments we'll hear this. But if this was to be a short, like, here's how to know you're never going to be really successful is that you hear somebody say, here's how to make your boss in the company more money so you can make more money. And your response is, they won't pay me more. It doesn't work like that. That'll never happen for me. They just keep getting richer. And then I don't, there's either one or two things happen in there. One, you work for a terrible place, in which case. you should leave and go find a new job. If you're good, you will be able to do that. Or two, you have a non-owner mindset. And you will never make a ton of money because you have a limiting belief that other people don't want you to make more money. And it's fake.

And if you don't believe me, go to a bunch of owners, talk to as many owners as you can and say, hey, what are a couple things that are wrong in your business? What do you need to help on? Like, I noticed this. Can I fix this?

if I did these things for you, do you think that you would pay me for that? And what you're going to find is they're going to say yes. So I think it's sad, but a lot of people, we limit ourselves. We don't even give other people a chance to pay us more because we'll never ask. In your book, you say that most owners are being owned by the thing they built. When was the time that you realized part of your business was owning you that you had to start fixing that? Yeah, so often. Still now?

last week. Yeah, I mean, I remember one moment in particular where I had a business that was doing really well. And I had done the thing that everybody tells you to do, which is hire great people get out of their way. Yeah. I hired a guy I thought was great. It's hard to do that.

It's hard. Well, I think it's wrong. I think instead it's not, it's never, you should never hire great people and get out of their way. You hire great people. You incentive a line then. incentive align them, you get out of their way and you track performance consistently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you don't do those four, weekly tracking, expect this to happen to you,

which is I had a business where I'll never forget I, one day I went to go get a loan for the business. And I needed for something else we were going to do. And I walk into the bank and I think there's a big pot of money than the bank. And I talked to the banker and the banker looks at me and goes, well, you can't get a loan for this account. There's no money in here. In fact, like we're going to need you to fill this up again soon. I'm like, excuse me, can you please turn that thing around so I can see what's on that screen? And the account that I thought had a million dollars in it was basically to zero. Come on. And I remember my gut just dropping. And not only it was about the money, it was like, oh my God, I have to make payroll. And I need to pay the lease. And what am I going to do

for this? And so I go to the guy who was the head of operations of the business there. And he was like, oh, well, you know, we kept this spreadsheet, but not this one. And I did tell you this one time that it might be tight this summer if we didn't do this and basically had sort of obfuscated and hid from me that we were almost out of money. And didn't want to give me the bad news. And so kept hiding the ball, hiding the ball, hiding the ball. And it was my fault for not tracking him, obviously. And so I remember sitting at home and I called my dad in the middle of the night. And it's lights out in the dark. I'm sitting on the couch. And I had no idea what to do next. And I thought I was going to lose the business. I'd have to go back and get a job. And I remember calling my dad and he said, you know what? If you haven't sat in the dark in the middle of the night with no idea of what to do next, you're not really in the game. And I remember he was like, so now what do we do? When you step on a nail, he's like, you don't complain about it, ask what happened, try to figure out the culprit and pull the fucking thing out. And then you tape it up and you figure it. And you figure it. And you figure. out how to keep going. And so I remember having a good cry and then trying to go to work

to the next day to figure it out. But what happened after that is it was so painful, like just my identity and that I was a failure because I had let an entire business fail, that after I'd cleaned it up, I promised myself. I would do everything in my power not to have that happen to me again. And that's when I realized, like, there's a reason why Calais. boys don't have long lives. You know, when you're out there just riding a bunk in Bronco with no system, no support, what do you think is going to happen? Eventually, you're going to crack your head. And most entrepreneurs, what do we do? We just look at other entrepreneurs around us that also have no idea what they're doing. We mimic them or we have some component or comparison between

them and we don't ever try to put a system in place to make sure that we have like airbags and we need that. And so that's when I decided, like I'm never running a business like this again because there's a too painful for me. Wow. And so what did you learn then? I have to build these systems in place when I hire great people and make sure that I'm always tracking everything. Yeah. I basically realized like, well, if you don't want to have something happen to you again, you usually need to study the cause. Right? And so I realized like I started to think about it like medicine. So if you don't want to have, so you have cancer and you don't want to have it again. What do you do? Well, you go and you diagnose yourself. Then you figure out what a score you have.

have in the business. So I have a diagnosis. Then I go have a score. Okay, well, I don't eat very healthy. I don't work out that often. I'm not doing a son. I'm not doing all the things that might lead to health. So my score is pretty low. Because of that, I need a strategy, right? How do I fix the score? To help the diagnosis? And then I need a review period every 90 days. Like, how am I doing? Am I going to the gym? I'm going to help? Da-da-da. I'm like, why do we not have this in business? Like, why don't we have, we diagnose, we give ourselves a score, we come up with a strategy and we review every quarter. And then I realized, oh, no, the pros do have that. I just didn't have that.

All private equity companies run like this. And that's why they're stealing all of our companies and making all the money. So let's just go steal their homework. Exactly. This copy to homework. Yeah, yeah. Copy the playbook. A lot of playbooks in your book called Own or Be Owned.

What is the difference between having an asset and what's the exact? question I'm asking you. What's the difference when you're having an asset and a really expensive job that feels like, oh, this is an asset, but I'm just working really hard, essentially, and it's an expensive job. And how do you tell which one you actually own? Yeah. I think, first of all, it's such a good question. Like, do you have a business or do you have a job? Yes. And most people, I would say, have a job. And how do you know the difference between the two? one, when you leave for two, four, six, eight weeks, what happens? Does everything collapse and the money stops flowing? If you do, you have a job, not a business. If you in your business have to be on your phone, on your computer, checking in constantly on your business, you have what's called key man risk, which means that you are like the key that opens the door to the business.

And if you don't open the door, the door is shut. And so I always try to get people to ask them, okay, if you're gone to, four, six, eight weeks, what happens? That's one. And then two, who inside of your business is better than you? Like, do you have anybody surrounding you who you think, man, in that zone of genius and that zone of genius, categorically better than me? And if they aren't, you've really surrounded yourself with what I call a sea of assistance. I was notorious for doing this. And what that means is, assistants are always just going to be there to do what? Assist, never to lead. And so it's like our ego

is going to keep us trapped in this thing because we have hired people who are not as good at us because we're probably a little afraid of what that might look like. Wow. And so those are the very two first things

I look for. What advice would you give someone like me in a key man business, you know, knowing what you know about me or this business or this industry? And knowing that I've already done a lot of coaching programs in the past, I've done masterminds.

I've been very successful in making multiple, million dollar revenue streams and membership sites, courses, coaching, masterminds, events, all these different things. But they also take a lot of time from me to continue to be the key man. I've tried a network of bringing in other talent. That takes time in energy managing and what would you see from the outside looking in on how to double the business or 10x a business without taking on more time from the key man? Is it investing in other businesses, launching other businesses that have partners in helping push audience to those businesses? Is it something else? What would

you see? Well, on every business you want to start at the source of truth. The single source of truth for every business is your profit and loss statement. And so when I come into a business, just like any private equity investor, the first thing I'm going to do, I'm not actually thinking about you at all. I'm going to your profit and loss statement. And when I look at your profit and loss statement, I'm going to do an analysis to say, where is this business hiding money? that's first. How do you money? What does that mean?

That means that inside of your business right now are areas that are inefficient and too expensive. Yeah. And the easiest thing to do is not go out and make more money. It's just to keep more of what you got. To fix those problems first. 100%. So I'm basically looking there first.

And the reason we don't like to do that is because we're like, I don't know. That's probably not in there. Where's the big things? That's not so big. But costs always costs. Like if you can control the costs in your business, you'll survive longer. And any great entrepreneur knows that. So I'd start with your profit and loss statement.

Then, as soon as we're done looking at your profit and loss statement, we're going to look at the big three. We're going to look at your pricing first. Almost every business, probably including yours, doesn't need to do a damn another thing. To increase your revenue by anywhere from 30% to 100%. All you have to do is change how you price and change how you actually get payment from whoever pays you. So could be your, you know, third-party providers. And this comes down to that idea from billionaires that a lot of the money is made in the terms. And so the smarter you can get with the terms, the more money you can make with less work.

And so I would probably tell you, Lewis, you're not allowed to do anything else. Don't invest in another business. Don't start another product. Let's look at your pricing and let's look at your profit and loss statement. And then we run a growth roadmap. So the third area is you're going to run, every business has 12 P's. And that's in your book too. Yeah.

And the 12, and we call them profit lovers. For most businesses, you're only looking at seven of them consistently. There are a couple that are like big questions, like do you want a lifestyle business, a cash flow business, or do you want to sell? But the ones that matter are pricing, product, persona, profit, process, people. and this is called the own system right that's right yeah and so for you we're going to go through every single one of those peas and you're going to get a score and you're not going to like the score at first yeah it's going to be bad yeah there's going to be two p's this is your owner score right there's going to be two peas in there that you really probably have to nail but usually they're

pricing and persona like i would guess for you for instance let's just take your business for a second one, there's probably somewhere in your pricing in terms that you're doing what the industry says to do and not something creative, whether it's your agents or your sponsorship team. They're doing what's called market-based pricing as opposed to value-based pricing. And we've got to have a few swings where you do value-based pricing. And you take a bigger cut for less work. And you're going to do that over time. Then the second thing you're probably going to find is that some of your sponsors or some of your clients are way more profitable to you than others. that's your rich persona. So we're going to actually find where can we get more of those where every dollar or minute of Lewis's time is worth more than anything else. And we're going to actually optimize first for the first two. And why I really like this is you don't even have to be involved in that conversation.

These could be your number twos who just start analyzing it. And in most businesses, we're so busy, especially these businesses are weird because your talent plus. And you're running it. Yeah. You're running it. It's doubly hard. Yeah.

But most business owners don't realize that hard work has almost nothing to do with how much money you make. You know, if hard work was going to make you really rich, my roofers and plumbers would make way more money than I do. Yeah, yeah. But they don't. Unless they own their business in a certain way. And that would be leverage. Yeah, yeah. And so, but I really think we need to internalize that because I needed to internalize that, I guess I'll just say.

I'm what's called a workhorse archetype. Yes. So I always want to keep working. I associate hard work. Like, have you ever, you know how you know you're a workhorse? People go, oh, she's a beast. Oh, like you work so hard. And you kind of like it.

Yeah, yeah, I have a beast. I'm a tough. I keep going. I work. I work. That is a huge red flag. Because what that actually means is that you're probably not very good at hyper-prioritization, boundary setting and choosing other people to do low-level tests.

Interesting, yeah. Which was me. You take it all on. Yeah, I did a lot of it too. Uh-huh. For sure. Yeah. I wonder what you are now. Like, if I had to guess your archetype, it's not a workhorse anymore. Where are the archetypes in here? Put him on the very back page. Okay. That like one that kind of stands out. Look at the back of it. okay let me see oh I see here yeah oh man I probably was all of these

at one point I mean like a mixture of all the good guy the one stop shop the artist the founder the martyr the closer

the ball hog the best kept secret I feel like I've done all these I don't know in some ways but if I'm everybody has a little bit

yeah if I'm like a more dominant one the dreamer is probably you know something that stands out to me

you have the optimist is in there too but do you have a hard time narrowing your focus and staying on one task and you want to do a lot of things at once? Yeah, yeah. But I'm also very consistent of like the things I commit to that I can be consistent with them. Like this show has been almost 2,000 episodes. Yeah.

Three times a week for over 11, 12 years now. How comfortable are you asking for price increases? Oh, I can ask for more money. Okay. So you're not the good guy. No, I can ask for money. The good guy usually doesn't like to ask. No, I'll ask for money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've come over, you've overcome that. one. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember that being your back in the day. Yep, yep. You're probably, I was going to, I think you're probably a dreamer, which is incredible because a dreamer is really powerful because once you commit, Lord help anybody in your way. Yeah, I've got some workhorse in me too. I'm like, I used to just grind it out. And I was like, okay, I don't have any systems. Yeah. I need systems. I need team. Um, got the optimist, I guess. I mean, I'm optimistic all the time. I believe things are going to work out. But I don't think you are, because an optimist typically

Doesn't take action? Right. Yeah, okay. So maybe the dreamer, the workhorse, kind of a blend. Yeah. And I've had to learn over time how to build team, build systems, you know. Will you kill things in your business if you find that, like, are you really tied to the things that you create and you keep them for longer than they're helping you? I have to ask Matt to my COO.

But, you know, I'd have to ask Cam. Because that probably some things, yes, and some things I'm just like, oh, I'm over this. Yeah. You know, so I've definitely let go up. I mean, if I've let go of multiple seven-figure revenue streams, so they're probably not. No, I'm done. If it doesn't feel good to me anymore, I can't, I won't focus on it.

That's good. That's because the founder is usually the one where you're like, this is what I created. I will never let it die. No, if it's dead, I'm like, if it's dead inside of me or no one's buying, I'm like, oh, I don't need to focus on this. Yeah, that's good. I'll shift. I'll move on the next thing.

I'll test something new. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if that's the dreamer. Yeah, you're probably, I mean, there was probably some, a lot of ball hog on me in early on because I learned all the skills. And so I was like, well, no one's doing this better than me, you know, from what I need to put out there. Yeah.

Ballhog is my second. Is it? A workhorse ball hog. Yeah. So maybe I'm... Sounds like a real fun at a cocktail party. Maybe a little dreamer, maybe workhorse, maybe a little ball hog in there. But yeah.

I was also the closer for a long time. Because I was doing, I was doing webinars weekly for like six, seven years. Yeah. And I was just like, put me in. I'm going to sell, sell. self. Yeah. Well, it's good. I mean, that's the nice part about the journey of entrepreneurship. I always find, like, if we go back to that thing that's the most important, it's like, first, you need to know what you want. Yes. You know, do you want to make a ton of money? Do you want to

make a ton of impact? Do you want to just build something and then sell it right away? No wrong answers. Yeah. Then it's like, do you, then it's like, who are you? Like, what are your strengths and weaknesses? What are you good at? And then it's, what's the processes that are missing in your career, business, or life. Yes. And so, you know, you could be the good guy, even if you have a job. Yes. Because you probably, like, if you haven't asked for a salary increase in the last year,

you're the good guy. You're underpriced. It's true. I like what you said in the beginning around kind of the three things that you need to have in order to become a millionaire. And I really think this is around kind of like a mindset thing. It's number one, believing you can be a millionaire. Number two, knowing yourself, which is a lot of what your book

talks about and own or be owned, it's really kind of first, let's analyze and assess who you are, what type of archetype you are. Yeah. And then what is the market want? It's like knowing, not sure, just because you have a great idea, it doesn't mean others want that thing. No, that's a hard realization. And it's so hard when you have, we have egos, we have dreams, we have these visions of something that we want to put into the world and we wish and we hope that others want to buy it or like it or want to watch it, whatever it is. Sometimes people don't. No.

And it's hard to not attach your identity to, oh, I came up with this thing that I think is really interesting and others aren't willing to buy it. Or maybe I haven't learned how to package or position it so they do buy it. Yeah. It's scary, though. Well, I mean, think about it. I've, like, when I think about when I started, I had a company called Threads Refined. I started that business as a fashion styling marketplace, massive flop, didn't work out

failed, you know, lost six figures on it. That was a lot of money for me at the time. And I learned two lessons. One, I do not actually think that you should build. You know, haven't you heard that line before? What's the exact line? It's like, all the profit is in your pain. Wrong. Wrong. Do not start a business from your pain. I actually fully disagree with that. Because what are you going to get more of? Pain. And the thing you don't like. Let's be real careful, not doing that. And then second, I started another business called Selling South, which was like a consulting business around U.S. Latin American relations. And again, it was what I wanted to build. Yeah. And so I ran so far from my pain that I built the thing that I wanted to do all day. And I didn't test the market first to see if anybody else wanted it. So it's like, before you start anything, go and ask three people if they'd pay for it. Then take their credit cards and see if they'll pay for it. Then deliver the results. Yeah, didn't deliver. And if you can't get three people to pay for it, don't do it.

Yeah, don't do it. And also, like, don't, I think a lot of times you start a business or some, or you, you take a lot of input from people when you start a business. Yeah. What do you think of this idea? That's great idea. And everybody says that. Would you give me money?

Yeah. Okay, give it to me now. And then they won't. They won't. And it doesn't mean they're bad people. This is just human nature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got to realize that.

And that's totally fine. Interesting. But don't take opinions in a. advice without taking capital. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. One of the things I really appreciate about you in this is a lot of people think you have to be so smart to launch a business or make a lot of money. And you continue to teach people like find something that people want. And usually it's pretty boring, right? This is the way you talk about boring businesses. Like people need to wash their clothes. So use a laundromat. People need roofing, okay, get our plumbing, get a plumbing service,

whatever might be. Buy a company. that people already are paying for every day. Yep. And just optimize that. Optimize that business. Don't have to try to launch something new, start something new. It is so hard to launch a new business. It just takes so much time and energy.

If you're excited about that, cool. But it is a lot of effort to launch. Unless somehow you're lucky and you have a big audience and it just effortlessly comes out and people, you know, but that takes time to build that too. And so I love that you continue to talk to people like, you don't have to complicate this. Keep it simple. Get involved in a business where people are already spending money. So you don't have to come up with some new creative idea.

It doesn't have to be that hard. Oh, yeah. I also think, like, you've got to be really careful today trying to follow what the really, really skilled tell you online. Yeah. Because even if I listen to every single piece of advice from Michael Jordan, I still wouldn't shoot baskets like him. No. So even if you listen to every single. piece of advice on how to build content from Gary Vee, you're probably not going to do content

as well as Gary Vee does. He's a G add. Some people have it and some people don't. And, you know, even if you get all the sales line, the sales stuff, we were talking about this earlier, one of my biggest pet peeves in the world, one of the worst piece of advice I think you can take is to copy everybody's offers and to copy everybody's pitches. Because guess what happens? If you continue to use the same pitch or offer that somebody else does, what's going to happen to you? You're You're going to sound just like everybody else. And it so quickly goes to the bottom. You know, I actually post a clip on X of Jefferson Fisher, who's a buddy of mine.

And he was on my podcast. I heard you got some heat recently, right? This is, maybe it was my post. Someone told me you got some heat. I remember what was your post. But here's why. Because he said in a conversation, if you want somebody to like you, how do you get somebody to like you?

And he said, well, you say their name four to five times in an interaction. And so it'd be like, Lewis, you know, how do you ever thought about that? and Lewis and the internet was like, yuck. Seems manipulative. I don't like it. It seems manipulative. And when people do this, my little red flag goes up. Now, that podcast was from probably a year or so ago from Jefferson and was a repost.

And my point is, he's right in many instances. It takes skill and art, though, to do it. Very. And Jefferson is one of the best speakers in the world now. Millions and millions and millions of followers. So when slow talking Southern Texan Jefferson says your name, you don't notice. You're like, oh, that sounds kind of nice, right? But if somebody else was to use it, it sounds inauthentic.

And so I'm really careful with these hacks because they'd only work for so long and they only work with massive skill. What I want are systems so foolproof. You don't have to be genius and they aren't a hack. Yes. And so that... It's powerful, yeah. And in your book, you have the assessment as well. I guess people can go to ownerscore.com

and they can take the assessment to see which kind of owner that you are. It's only a few minutes. You get your owner score, your archetype, and you find out exactly what's keeping you stuck. So you can go to onerscore.com and take that right now. I'm assuming that's free. It is. And then people can also go to the,

and get the book there as well, I'm assuming. Or you can go on Amazon or anywhere the books are sold. Own or be own. Build a business so good, it doesn't need you. And doesn't that sound good? something doesn't need you. It's going to need you in the beginning. It's going to need you for a period of time.

But this is really going to help you scale. And for me, a business shouldn't be owning you. You should be having a business that allows you to live the life on your terms. 100%. Where you're free to live the life you want. And again, it doesn't mean it's not going to be hard work at certain times. It doesn't mean it's not going to require a lot of your time and energy at certain times. But if it's exhausting you forever, that's not really a successful business or a successful life.

Yeah. I think it's so important. that you say that. And we need to like as successful entrepreneurs, stop making people feel like they have to be miserable their whole life to give it to their business. People can follow you on social media, Cody Sanchez everywhere. Instagram, Cody Sanchez, CT on YouTube and big, or excuse me, podcast, big deal as well on YouTube for your podcast. Here's a question I have for you. What is your dream? What is it really your dream? You got a baby on the way. You got a baby on the way. you've got, you know, your businesses are, I think, are valued in the nine figures. You're buying

more businesses. You're scaling. You're, you know, you're expanding all these different things. You're bringing a family to life here soon. What is your real dream for the future for you, Cody? Yeah. Is it to build and exit something at a certain number one day? Is it to impact lives? Is it to have revenue coming in where you can do what you want? What's the, what's the vision for you? You know, like I think your vision changes at different points of your career. And at first, early for me. It was, I don't ever want anybody to have control over me or my life again. I don't ever want to have to work for somebody I don't like or to spend a moment of my day in somebody else's life architecting their dream instead of mine. And even in points in my career, it was

like, fuck you. I'll become every single thing that you said I wouldn't, you know? And just try to stop me and try to get in my way. Because there's, There's no way you'll be able to stop me and you'll have to watch me on the climb and I will love every minute of it. Wow. It was angry. You were trying to prove yourself. Oh, yeah. Prove people wrong.

Let's go. And what did that do for you? It got me in far. That energy would get you results. It really, and I don't think there's anything wrong from building from anger. That is okay. You don't think Martin Luther King was angry. Yeah.

Like you can build at be angry. Yeah. And that's fine. But at some point you'll get past all. that. You'll have financial freedom. You'll look in the future. You'll have a lot of money. You'll have opportunities. You'll have people that you love around you. And then you get into this weird thing that you only care about when you're kind of rich, which is like, does any of this matter? Yeah. Like, now that you have it all, what really matters? What really matters. And at this,

so I'm sure in 10 years I'll have something else. But at this current stage, it's like, I think we can actually do two things. One, I think the world is better when more of us own a little piece of something. It's my bit my truest belief is that we humans like you are inherently capable more capable than you think and that you are the best decision maker for your life nobody else and that we should give you every opportunity to have sovereignty over your life. I want that for me. I want that for my kids. I want that for my friends. And I want that broadly. So my belief is I want to try to enable that. And the only two ways I'm any good at that are helping people buy businesses and build businesses. And so when I die and people stand around, I hope they say

she believed in human capability and she made some impact on more humans being more capable. That would feel like success to me. Yeah, because our mutual friend, Bill Parkins, you know, die with zero. He's trying to maximize life. And at the end of our lives, we're not going to have any money. Yeah. We're not going to have it. Whether you have it in the bank and you have millions in the bank or not, you're not going to have it. Yeah. Someone else. is going to have it. A hundred percent. And I love Bill dearly, but I would say to him, you know, I was just, it's so funny, he's come up twice today. I'll have to tell him that. But he, you know, he'll text me on a Tuesday night and be like, come to our werewolf raves. And I'll be like,

Bill, I'm busy, you know. But he really lives life and is so big and kind of doesn't care and does whatever he wants. He's very laissez-faire. But he has a huge heart and he's helped me a ton in my life in business. But I don't, I don't optimize for fun. That's not like, You know. Do you think you should, though? Or do you think you could add more fun in your life? I don't know. I don't think werewolf raves from the thing.

But it doesn't have to be that type of fun. Your flavor of fun, not wearwolf raves. I find really unique enjoyment. Yeah, yeah. And like trying to create something. And that statement from Emma Baumback I always go back to, which is like when I stand before God at the end of my days, I hope I can say, I used everything you gave me.

I have not one drop left. and that's sort of my life's motto. And so I find that to be the most interesting thing. And so that's, and my husband's the same way. I mean, he's a Navy SEAL. You don't go into Navy SEAL for fun, right? It's not like, but he loved it. And if he could have kept that job without the, you know,

sort of having to go into bureaucracy and all the stuff, he would have stayed in Navy SEAL forever. And so I know it sounds cheesy, except if you believe it. Yeah. That's beautiful. own or be owned. Cody Sanchez, thanks for being in.

Thanks for having me. We're the most. You're the man. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people.

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