The School of Greatness - The #1 Financial Freedom SECRET Rich People WON’T Tell You! | Codie Sanchez

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

BIG NEWS! Today’s guest, Codie Sanchez, will be speaking at SUMMIT OF GREATNESS in 25 days! Have you saved your tickets yet? Get them before they sell out at lewishowes.com/tickets.Welcome back to The School of Greatness! Today, I’m thrilled to have Codie Sanchez with us, a true powerhouse in the world of finance and entrepreneurship. Codie has taken the world by storm, teaching individuals how to break free from traditional money mindsets and achieve financial freedom in innovative ways. In this episode, Codie shares her journey from financial struggles to wealth, why saving alone will never make you rich, and the power of boring businesses in creating extraordinary wealth. If you’re ready to shift your mindset and unlock your true earning potential, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!Buy Codie’s book for yourself and a friend! Main Street Millionaire How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary BusinessesIn this episode you will learnHow to shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset around money.The crucial steps to maximize your earning potential and create financial freedom.The importance of cash-flowing businesses and why traditional financial advice may not work.The power of negotiation and how to leverage your skills for greater financial rewards.The significance of relationships and choosing the right challenges to build resilience.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1656For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Scott Galloway – https://link.chtbl.com/1636-podGary Vee – https://link.chtbl.com/1618-podDan Martell – https://link.chtbl.com/1642-pod

I don't ever want somebody telling me again that I can't do what I want to do. I don't want to feel the control of another human on top of me. Money is freedom. The more money you have, the more you get to exert your will on the world. What are the things that broke people think they're supposed to do to get wealthy that will never work? Save. Save. It's never going to get you to rich.

It's way easier to earn more than it is to save everything. Once you learn how to earn, you're unstoppable. Cody Sanchez is an award-winning journalist. She's the founder of Contrarian Thinking and Unconventional Acquisitions. Amassed millions of followers and now educates people on the basics of finance. The wonderful Cody Sanchez. You need to learn to love the game. If you want to make money, you have to learn to love making money.

And see it just like you do a scoreboard. You can get to a million working for somebody else, working really hard. But if you want to go to that $10 million mark, you got to do something different. Every human in their life has an energy vampire. If you want to be successful, you have to realize that you are going to leave behind most people. What would the kind of five, six or seven step formula be on going from zero, from broke to millionaire. The very first thing is we say at our company. I wanted to let you know a big announcement.

Cody Sanchez is speaking live here in Los Angeles at our annual Summit of Greatness event. If you're looking for the next level of breakthroughs in your life and specifically in your money and business, make sure to click the link in the description and come live to hear Cody Sanchez along with David Goggins, Joe Dispenza, and more at the Summit of Greatness. And now let's jump into this episode with Cody Sanchez. Welcome back, everyone, at the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Cody Sanchez in the house. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, very excited about this. You've taken off in the last few years really about teaching and educating individuals about what I think is financial

freedom and new ways of looking at money and how to earn more in your life. But I'm curious, when was the moment that you believed you were deserving of earning more than what everyone else thinks they should be making? Was there a moment or moments where you were like, I actually believe it's possible to earn more? Yeah. Well, first it actually started from a moment where I felt the most unlikely, like I would never be able to make enough money. And it wasn't that tragic, but it was, I was in college and I didn't have any money like all college students don't. And I remember my mom would like track my bank account to see how close it was to going under.

And then she would sort of get on me about anything I bought, would be like, what are you doing with that? What are you doing here? And I felt this intense control and I didn't like it. And, you know, I was like, it's my money. I'll do what I want. If I overdraft, it's on me. And that moment for some reason was like the little trigger of my little inner rebel. And at that point I was like, I don't ever want somebody telling me again that I can't do what I want to do. And I don't want to feel the control of another human on top of me. And so for me, money is freedom. And I think it is really your ability to push back on the universe. Like the more money you have, the more

you get to exert your will on the world. And the less money you have, the more you get exerted upon. And so I didn't like that. And so that was the moment that I was like, bah, I don't ever want that to happen again. And then the moment where i was like oh i think i can actually do this was when you know do you remember like the first time you met a really rich person and you were like they're not that smart and i had one of those moments where i'm like how's this person have money yeah i was like what this guy like you know he didn't inherit it you know he didn't get it given to him. Right.

But he, and it was at a company called Vanguard. And there was one of the really senior executives there. And I remember asking him a question that for some reason I knew about our segment of the business. And he had no idea what he was talking about. And I was like, oh, that's fascinating. So you're a millionaire, which to me felt like a billion dollars. And yet you don't understand this thing. Wow.

And if he doesn't, what did he understand? Yeah. I don't think I was smart enough then to know that. You know what I mean? I was like, this guy's dumb. And sometimes I think that is a benefit, you know, almost not realizing that he probably had these other superpowers and instead being like, well, if he doesn't know that, that means he's not flawless, which means I could probably do it too. How old are you then? I would have been 21. 21. Yeah. Before then I was broke. I was like broke. I was always falling in and out of having cash. I was always overdrawing. I was always worried when I would go swipe the card, there would be enough cash there. You were stressed

out about it. Yeah. What are the things that broke people think they're supposed to do to get wealthy that will never work? Save. Save. It's never going to get you to rich. Saving money. Only saving money. Yeah, you can only save your way to zero, right? You could save your way to like not spending anything, I guess, if you don't need to eat or live or have fun. But it's way easier to earn more than it is to save everything. And I do think that there is a benefit to things like the fire community and whatever. Spend less, sure. But actually, once you learn how to earn, you're unstoppable. And I don't think anybody becomes unstoppable by saving. In fact,

you get very scarcity mindset. It's really hard, I think, to earn like crazy if you're obsessed with saving. And so I actually think those two ideas might be in conflict. It'd be interesting to have a debate with Dave about it because I think really, really rich people do not think about saving at a 10 to 1 ratio of earning. Really? Yeah. But are they saving something? Yeah.

I just don't think that... They think about how can every one of my dollars be more productive? So we think almost upside instead of downside. People who are saving think, how can I not spend anything? People who are earning and growing think, how can I make every dollar that I spend bring friends when it comes back to me? And I think that's the material difference. Multiplying it. Right.

As opposed to just, can I just save it over here under the mattress? My parents did that forever. And I love them dearly. They're brilliant people, but they do not understand how to make money, make more money at a really high level. What would be the three best ways to have your money make you more money that doesn't take all the time in the world, all the risk in the doesn't take all the time in the world, all the risk in the world, and all the stress in the world. Because some people start taking on

these different investment strategies or buying businesses, and they realize they're spending double the amount of time on their job or their career or another business trying to fix something or try to grow something. It seems like it's exhausting, or maybe it fails.

Yeah. So what would be those three things that you think would help multiply your money? Yeah. Well, the very first thing you have to do is maximize your earnings potential. That's zero risk. Yeah. The zero risk way to make a lot of money is to make the most humanly possible with your

skill set. And most people don't do that. In fact, only 30% of people will ever negotiate their salary without proactively having the company come back to them. Now, don't be an asshole and ask for stuff that you're not worth, but I really think that maximization of income is super important. And then the second thing I think you should do on top of it is not just think about how you can earn more,

but how can you, within your sphere of influence, get paid more for doing the same activity? And so that might be like, for instance, don't just ask for more money, negotiate upside. So for your podcast team, for instance, if they wanted to make more, I would say, hey, you pay me $75,000 a year to edit this podcast and produce it. If I was able to grow it by X over goal, would you bonus me out for that? 100%. Of course you would. Why does nobody ever ask their boss at that? And also, by the way, people will listen to this on the internet and completely ignore it. It's the weirdest thing. It's almost like

they don't want to hear about these two things. They don't want to have short-term pain for long-term game. We also have to have the belief and the confidence that you can grow and add more value. And a lot of people don't think, maybe they think they can, and then they try and they fail and they say, oh, well, I'll just take what I can get. So you can actually have the confidence and the skill to go help your company grow a certain sector. You should be rewarded if you can really track and say, this is what I did to increase my skills, either on my own time or company time. This is how I applied it. And this is how I consistently got more growth or more revenue. You can do that. Amazing. You're an all-star A-team player. That's what an A-team player is.

Yeah, it's true. I think the part that people don't realize though, is that even if you don't win by hitting your goal, you still win because you're getting paid to learn. And so- So much. And so, you know, it's such a huge opportunity to say like, Hey, are you going to fire somebody because they didn't hit an extra goal they put on top of them? Of course not. But if they're saying, I want to try to go for these goals and if you can fail at half of them, you get some of them, it's like, Hey, you're ambitious. You're showing you're trying. It's great. Yeah. And, and you're, you're doing the thing that

people actually need to do to progress in their career, which is like take the next job before you do the next job. And I don't think enough people do that. Right. You know, when I was at State. Say that one more time. Not enough people take the next job or do the next job before they get the next job. What do they try to do instead? They try to get the next job and get the pay before they're actually capable of it.

Uh-huh. Which, to be fair, is a terrible the pay before they're actually capable of it. Which, to be fair, is a terrible thing for you to do often. Perfect example. I had a guy who came from operations and wanted to have a bigger job in marketing. And I gave him that opportunity. But I said, hey. From a different company?

From the same company. So he worked in this part of my business, wanted this part of my business, but wanted a bigger job with more pay. And I said, okay, you can go ahead and do it. But this has really big goals associated with it. So if you can't hit those goals, you don't get to stay at the company. Right. Or you're getting demoted back to something else. Which I don't really do. I don't really demote. It's either demote or you're gone or figured out. Exactly. Why don't you demote? I have never had it work out well. After somebody takes a step back in a company. They're kind of gone.

They're gone. Emotionally, mentally. Emotionally, mentally. It's bad for them. It's bad for the company. It's bad for morale. And in this instance, the guy couldn't hit the goals. So we had to part ways.

And instead, I should have, if I was a better leader back then, I would have said, I think you should try it first. And I can pay you some success if you hit it, but I don't think you're ready to do the full job. And so that was actually my fault. What's the difference between giving someone an opportunity who may not be ready, but allowing them space to make mistakes and grow into it versus hoarding them back or however you want to call it until

you think they're ready. When you run a startup like this one was, there's just not a lot of room for error. And so at a big company, you get opportunity to make a lot of mistakes. You can hide more. You can hide way more. Startup, you need to give results and everything. You can see everything. Yeah. Otherwise it hurts the overall business, which hurts the rest of the employees. So I think in that instance, there just wasn't a lot of opportunity. But the beautiful part about going and being an employee for somebody else at a big company or taking on these extra jobs is there's room to run and it's not your money you're learning on. You're getting paid to master skills.

MBA plus make six figures. That's what working for somebody else is if you're a go-getter. Yes. And then, you know, stay there until you stop learning. At least that's what I did. Right, right. Yeah.

You talk a lot about kind of a millionaire mindset on a lot of your content. If there was a formula that you have seen over the years, personally or others, who have gone from zero to millions what would the kind of five six or seven step formula be on going from zero from broke

to millionaire yeah well the very first thing is we say at our company I'll take curiosity over IQ any day of the week and I'll take follow-through over experience any day of the week so really I'll take follow through over experience any day of the week. So really being a millionaire and making a lot of money is you doing two things, asking a lot of questions and doing the things you say you're going to do, which is beautiful. What a low bar that actually is. And yet most people don't. Why don't we do the things we say we're going to do? We're overwhelmed. We overcommit. Our word doesn't mean something. Our word is not our bond.

And what I found from people who are successful is when they say they're going to do something, they do it. And they probably do more than what they say they were going to do. Then they also ask a lot of questions. Like, you know, I have a friend of mine that had dinner with Warren Buffett. And I remember asking him, I'm like, Alex, what'd you learn? And he's like, you know what I figured out? By the end of the dinner, after we were shaking hands, I realized he had just asked me questions the whole time. I didn't ask.

I didn't get anything. And he didn't really tell me anything. And he just took all the information that I had. And he made me feel good about it. And I think that is what the wealthiest people do. They actually ask a ton of questions because the right questions are worth so much more than you showing another person how smart you are. Right. What would you say are other things that rich people do that broke people don't do?

I mean, rich people do not try to look rich, typically. Really wealthy people do not care about looking rich. Broke people care about looking rich. Why? care about looking rich. Broke people care about looking rich. Why? It's a signal, right? At a certain point, you know, when you don't have money, you probably don't have a lot of confidence. You probably have a little bit more imposter syndrome. Once you start making a lot of money, you know, there's actually a lot of downside to being rich, you know, which is people want it. People want handouts. The IRS is coming out of your pocket. And so I think at a certain point, you start changing your game. And it becomes a lot more important, your competence level, how you execute than just what you wear or show. So

care a lot more about being rich than looking rich is a big difference. And the other thing is, you know, rich people trade in knowledge. You know, they typically do not ask for favors. They give favors because they know that there is a price to asking for things. And broke people do the opposite. They try to take, take, take, ask too many favors. And I did this wrong, too. You know, when you're young, you're like, hey, can I work for you? And you could just pay me a little bit. And teach me everything you know. Can I just be by you all day long and watch

you? I just want to shadow you for months and take up all your time and resources. Exactly. Please. And that's what I'd ask. I would ask ridiculous things like that. And then as I got wealthier, I realized, ooh, time's the only thing we can't make more of. And I'm wasting a bunch of people's time. And that's not the move. So how can I be a gift giver of time and not a taker of time? And I don't think poor people think that way. Wow.

You know, and I get it because it's all, it's constrained, right? Like Chris and I, back in the day, we lived in D.C. for a period. And we didn't realize that we lived, we bought a place, and DC is kind of like block by block in some areas. So we lived in the hood. Like it was like not a nice part of town at all. What was fascinating though, is that we would talk to some of the people who had been longtime, you know, residents. And, you know, there was a one young lady and, you know, she had never, her father was like in his eighties probably. And he had never left the district of Columbia, never been on a plane, never been on a train. And she was really interesting too, because

a lot of people would sit outside and they'd want to hang out and they'd want to talk for a long time. And we were just busy. We didn't, we didn't have that much time. And so she kind of picked up on that and was like, hey, can I walk you back to and from the gym? Like when you walk to and back from the gym, can we go? There's a neighbor. There's a neighbor, young girl. She wanted to go to college. She would have been the first one in her family to go to college. It was really interesting because she would just ask us questions as we were on the go. And, um, and lo and behold, got into Howard, you know, figured out where she wanted to go next and what she

wanted to do. But I think that was the difference. They would waste a lot of times sitting outside, you know, kind of with this idea that time was abundant and she was the opposite. She was like, I know you don't have time. Can I take up a little bit of it while I walk? Interesting. Yeah. Wow. And I don't know the other story, if they're just out there watching all day, but there's usually if you're with the same people watching others, you're judging, you're assessing, you're gossiping. I'm not saying they were doing that, but that's kind of the general theme. If you're not asking questions and bettering yourself, you have time to allow your mind to go into a negative place a lot of times.

100%. Judge, assess, make wrong, compare, whatever it might be. Yeah. And, you know, and also I think it became cool to not strive, you know. Really? Yeah. I mean, in the neighborhood, a lot of the young kids would, you know, they were kind of goofing around and they would sort of make fun of, you know, her ambitions. of, you know, her ambitions and, you know,

because it's, I think if you don't make it, but you say you never wanted it, then you don't feel like a failure. Like, I didn't want it anyways. Right, right. Right? Didn't matter to me. Didn't matter to me.

I didn't even try. But if you actually want it really bad and then you don't get it, oof, am I going to survive that? So I think it's really easy to fall into that mentality. What do you think for those that do want it and they do make it, what is the biggest mistake that people make when they reach a hundred grand or a million dollars or millions? What's the biggest mistake at that point they make? I think at your first hundred thousand and your first million, your biggest mistake is thinking that the thing that you got you to a hundred K is going to get you to 10 million. The thing that you got you to 100K is going to get you to 10 million. The thing that you got you to 100K will probably get you to a million bucks,

but it won't get you to 10 million. It's just more hard work. Yeah. But not to 10 million. Exactly. So that first 100K, you can do all of that working for somebody else, working really hard. You can get to a million working for somebody else, working really hard on the same things. But if you want to go to that $10 million mark, you got to do something different. What do you need to do differently? Typically, I think you have to get some skin in the game. This is when you have to start earning not just with your time and brain, but also with your money. So you've got to invest in something. You've got to understand deal structuring. You've

got to get a little equity in something. You've got to become an owner in some way, shape, or form. It could be an owner inside of a business, but you've got to get some sort of upside potential. And I think that is where the public school system kind of stops teaching us. Yeah. They don't teach it at all. So what would be the best strategy for someone to get equity in something, whether they're at a career currently, or they're looking to start or join something where they could have equity that has big enough earning potential to create more. Let me tell you what not to do these days, I think. If you go back and you look at startup employees over the last 10 years and you look at what their equity options were worth, so you're like fancy, you went to Silicon Valley, you started off with an app, you worked really hard, you took a low salary because you have equity options.

Most of those equity options are worthless today. They're not worth anything. They're underwater. And maybe one day they eventually will be. But I think people were sold a dream that they could eat equity and you can't. You need earnings. And so one, what I would say to do is, yes, you could maybe be part of the next Facebook, but the likelihood is you're not. And so 90% of the startups fail. So I think we were sold a bag of lies there. And we have to be really careful that we don't bet only on equity. And Chris, my husband, would tell you this. He was at a couple of companies where he got equity, but that's not where we made our money. And so realizing that. The second thing I think that people should do if you want to get some skin in the game is the best way to do it is actually get your earnings going and ask to invest alongside.

So this is what private equity and private investing firms do. So we basically allow for what's called a club deal. So if you work at a private equity company, you typically can take some of your money that you make from the private equity fund and you can put it into deals. And so I think if you're listening to this and you're with a company today, try to think about how could you get a piece of maybe not even the company that you work for, of a deal that you bring to the company. And so like, nobody really does this outside of private equity. But, you know, if somebody brought you a new ad sponsor for School of Greatness, and it was a company that's going to pay you cash, but also is maybe small, right? And so they're up and coming. And they said, let's get some equity

in this deal. Plus, you know, a little revenue share or something from them. If I bring you this deal, if I structure it for you, and maybe even I put in a little money for it, could I have a percentage of the company? And so this is the great unlock, I think, that once normal everyday people start understanding this, they can get equity while being employed, which is, I think, the best thing to do

because it's hard to get enough money being an entrepreneur to invest in other things. Most entrepreneurs have all our money tied up in our business. What is the mindset that people need to start thinking about in order to choosing the right opportunities? Because 10, 12 years ago, I read 4-Hour Workweek mean it was 15 years ago, I don't know, and it was all about like investing in startups. And I think I invested in like seven or eight startups, right? I didn't make money out of any of those. And they were all come from credible resources, other people were investing in them also that I trusted. It wasn't like it was just some random

pitch deck. It was like, okay, there's opportunities out there. None of them paid me anything. And it took so much of my time and energy to like get on calls with people and help them and promote stuff. Now it's an education that I gained from it, but I didn't create wealth. I spent more time and energy helping people fail than I did getting a result. Right. And so I learned a certain lesson there to put more resources back into my own projects, which are guaranteed a result if I'm going to be alive. So how can people get the mindset of knowing I'm going to invest in this, whether it be time, energy, money, talent, whatever it is, and hopefully I'm getting a return in two, five, 10 years? So what I would say is until you've made your first at least a million,

don't invest in startups that are non-cash flowing. Just don't do it. And probably more than a million in this environment. So that is for people who already have so much money that they can throw some chips on the table, just like at the casino with the knowledge that 90% won't work. If I was young Cody again, what would I do? I would be investing in cash flowing businesses and deals. And so instead of going and doing the crazy startup app, say, hey, why don't

we own this vertical that we do business with right now? Hey, let's go in on an Airbnb for when our employees are traveling back and forth and I could help manage the Airbnb for when our employees are traveling back and forth. We get rid of some of the costs that we have from flying people and putting them up in hotels but simultaneously we own a cash flowing asset that has real value today so we own a little equity in it but we also only cash flow we can get a portion of it and it's it's so technical and sometimes I think people get overwhelmed with these ideas. But if you just start thinking this one sentence, which is cash flow is king and I don't invest in hopes and dreams. I invest in realities and revenue.

Right. That's what I do until I've made so much money that I'm like, no, now I need. I can't do the same thing that got me to that first million. Now I got to do something else to get to 10 and 100. And it's not going to be Airbnbs, probably. I mean, you've mastered the researching aspect and investing aspect in these kind of boring businesses. What would you say are three to five best cash flowing businesses if someone wanted to get into today? Yeah. Well, there's lots of ways to look at this. I think the first thing that I like to look at is

what are the businesses that have the lowest failure rate with the highest potential for you to make money? So let's start there. And if we look at the numbers, that's why I started with laundromats. It's like a 90% success rate with laundromats. They don't fail as often. They've been around a long time. They don't cost a ton of money. They don't make you a ton of money. They don't make a lot either, right? You're not making millions unless you get a ton of money. It don't make a lot either, right? No. You're not making millions unless you get a million of them. Yeah. Yeah. My first one was $67,000 in revenue. So not much cash, but that's okay because you're starting to put a few chips on the table and those chips pay you back with consistency. And how much did that first one cost? 100K-ish. It's not bad. No. I mean, here's why it's bad. It's bad because it was a job. It was like a low-paying...

Full-time. It's a low-paying job for $67,000 a year, right? Yeah. In the laundromat. Right. But then I go to sell it. If I can increase from $67,000 to, let's say, $200,000 in revenue, then I can sell that business for $400,000, $600,000, $800,000. That's a pretty good payoff. It's not bad. It's not bad. And so you can get it on the back end and you can cashflow in the meantime. And you learn without a lot of risk. Like I didn't want to put hundreds of thousands of dollars down. That seemed like too much money for me back then. And so I would start with something like a laundromat. I like it because it's low.

There's potentially less risk there. But before you go on to the next one, I mean, what you said there, I think people have this idea of like, okay, it's a cash flowing business, but you might have been there 20 hours a week at some times, maybe longer in the beginning, I don't even know. It becomes almost a full-time job managing a boring business. Something's not exciting and it's not bringing you exciting cash flow, it's bringing you some but not a lot. How do people stay motivated and excited and passionate about something that they really don't care about as much?

How did you do that for yourself? And how do others do that? You need to learn to love the game. If you want to make money, you have to learn to love making money and see it just like you do a scoreboard. I mean, I always joke that every time a troll talks, I just go scoreboard. Because at the end of the day, it's like, who's winning or losing? And here's the board. And it's a fun game for me because I've just trained myself to like this game. And so

I think that is what you want to do when you buy a first business. It's like, it sucks. It's hard. Just like when you go and play a competitive sport, you get beat up, you fall down, you get hit in the face, you're tired, you break things, but it's fun. Like why do we play sports? Because we like hard and that's what business is. And so I think if you can train yourself to love the game, then you start with a little business. Then just like with your first piece of real estate,

you start with like a studio apartment and then you go to a townhouse and then you go to a house. You do the same thing in business. You stair step your way to bigger games. And if you're good and you're already a business owner, then you're not going to start with a laundromat. You're going to start with a business that already has an operator in place and a managerial team, you know? Or you're going to buy a business and you're going to be like, hey, why don't you operate this thing for me? I'll put up the cash, I'll find the deal, but you run this thing.

Right. No different, really, than you buying an Airbnb- And having a property manager. And putting a property manager in there. But you make less money in that cash flow. Exactly. So you're not managing the time, you're not doing the time, but you make less money as well. Yeah, that's true. Theoretically, you make less money on that one deal. But the idea is, how can you become good at doing deals so you can do more of them? Right. You know, typically people who are in real estate don't just own one house. Same thing with business. You could own multiple laundromat locations. You could own the laundromat. I

mean, we have one business that we just and giggles said, okay, how can we turn one business into 11 income streams? And it was like, all right. How'd you do that? Laundromat starts. Secondary line of revenue, really passive. What would that be? Okay, vending machines. Let's put those on location. Third, why don't we add wash and fold so we can have a different revenue line inside of it? Upsell charge, yeah.

Exactly. Fourth, what if we add vending inside that's like soaps and detergents, softeners, et cetera? Next one, why don't we do pickup and delivery? Okay, additional. Next one, why don't we do pickup and delivery? Okay, additional. Next one, why don't we do commercial? Can't we do, you know, when everything else is closed, can't we also go to some of the local hotels, clean their stuff? Okay, maybe. Next, why don't we buy another laundromat? And so now we have two locations on side of them. And then let's also put vending and all these other things on theirs. So you kind of can stack up your income streams in one business.

And that's how you go from a laundromat that makes $67,000 a year to one that makes 3 million, which our biggest one at the time did about $3 million in revenue. A lot more work, but a bigger business. If you have, let's say you have between $250,000 and $500,000 that you can invest in something, and someone is thinking about real estate, any type of real estate investment versus a stock market versus starting or buying a business. What would you do with that $200,000 to $500,000 today to try to maximize earnings, cash flow, long-term equity,

but also you're going to work hard but not spending all your time on that thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. What would be, you know, some type of real estate investment, some type of stock investment, or some type of buying a business investment? Yeah. Let me tell you how I think of the three types. Real estate is for tax and it's for long-term wealth. So it's where you go to have savings in tax and have long-term wealth, not accumulation, but preservation. So we go there to skip the IRS and we go to real estate so that long-term I have more safe assets. Stock market we do to beat inflation.

So we want 10% sort of max per year. That's why we invest in the stock market. Neither of these two things, unless you have a ton of money, are going to make you rich. Right. Let's get 20 million in one of them. Exactly. Then you can, if you have a ton of money, these two things are great, which is why most people who are really, really wealthy own a ton of this after they've made their money. The only way that you're really going to make your money is by starting or buying businesses. And so in my opinion, this is where you put the $250,000 to $500,000 because you can have an infinite return on it. You can't make real estate make you 50X return in one year. I mean, unless you have some crazy deal. But in buying a

business, you can't. But lower time investment in the real estate of the stocks. Theoretically. Stocks, for sure. Unless you're actively managing it, stocks are the closest you can get to quote unquote passive income, which is why there's a lowest return. If it's a set and forget, yeah. Right. But real estate comes with its own set of challenges and its own set of work. Unless you have a property manager, but then there might be other costs and things to fix up. Right. And what's really different about property management versus having an operator of a business?

The difference is real estate can't go to zero typically. You don't have a house and all of a sudden go, it's gone. Now you can't have that with a business. So I think that's what you want to manage. More risk. Right. There's definitely more risk and more reward. And so laundromats is one. But what would be, if you had 250 to 500,000 a day, and you didn't have any other of your

businesses right now, and you had to invest it in something in either buying or starting a business, but you had your knowledge and you had your platform, what would be your next three moves or next couple of businesses you would get involved in? Yeah. Well, I would, if I had $200,000 to $500,000, even less than that, like $75,000 to $100,000, this is why we bought Resi Brands. I would do a franchise. And the reason why, and I would be really careful about which franchise because there's

a lot of rules and they can be expensive. And I would be really careful about which franchise because there's a lot of rules and they can be expensive. Yes. But what I realize is if you've never run a business before, sometimes buying a small business is not right for somebody who has never run a business before ever. But buying a franchise has systems, marketing, operations, a blueprint that is successful already. That's right. And so in my mind, here's where you don't want to buy franchises. You don't want to buy franchises if they're like a flash in the pan, like no offense, crumble cookie, right? It's like really expensive, like a million dollar build out,

plus like cookies. I don't know, here today, gone tomorrow, right? You got to sell a ton of them. Yeah. Orange Theory, like really hot, now who goes there, right? I don't want to play that game. I want to play a game where I have a boring business with recurring monthly revenue that people are going to need forever. And so when we started thinking about it, we were like, okay, there are three types of people. There are people who have never done a business before, and they need some hand-holding, and they have cash, but they have less than, like, a million bucks, right? For those people, probably a trade services franchise makes sense. Systems and processes, boring business, more resistant to recessions, cool. You should do something like window cleaning, pressure washing, painting, and you can layer

on top of the infrastructure and system. That's the first type of person. Second type of person is maybe like, hey, I've managed some teams before. I think I know how to run a P&L. I like the risk associated with running my own business. So I'm going to buy a business. I'm going to do it outright. I'm going to do it my way because I'm kind of unemployable. I don't want to do anything with a franchise, right? And then the third to me is the person who's like, I really am open to risk. And because I'm open to risk, I'm going to do a startup. I know I'm going to make no money. I know that like for three to five years, I'm going to have to pay to make money until eventually, maybe someday I'll make money. And all three of those

types are totally fine. You just need to know which one you're at. Wow. You know? And so if someone wanted to launch a business, is it all based on their own skill sets then, what they already have? Or is it better to go buy something and apply your skills towards that business that's already making money? I'm very biased, but to me, the average startup in the US doesn't make money ever. The average, they really don't. It's true. They fail. Yeah, I mean, 90% of startups fail. The most businesses, only 10% of businesses make it to a million dollars a year in revenue. 0.4% of businesses ever make it to $10 million in revenue. The odds are not stacked in your favor. So I'm kind of a math junkie from my days on Wall Street and in finance. And so I look at those numbers and I'm like, I don't like that. I don't like a 10%

chance of making a million dollars. Why? A million dollars is a lot because the average small business has margins of 15 to 30%. So if you're making a million dollars- You're really not making much at the end of the day. No, you're making $150,000 to $300,000 a year. Then you got taxes on that. Then you got taxes on that. So what are you really making? $75,000 to $150,000. Working 200 hours a week. Exactly. Dealing with stress, problems, breakdowns. Right. That's why the average founder of a startup only makes $60,000 a year. Say that again, because I don't think most people understand this. They think that,

oh, I should be making more. I'm going to go launch my own thing. I'm going to do my own thing. But what was that you just said? The average startup founder makes $60,000 a year. And that's after not making money for the first three years. And that's working 150, 200 hours a week. A lot of times. Seven days a week. Right. And I don't ever want to dissuade somebody from going and starting a startup. If you have that fire in your belly and an idea that you can't sleep for the want of, please do it. We need people like you in the world. But most people don't actually want that, which is totally okay. And buying a business or buying a franchise will give you more potential success. Yeah. You just have a higher percentage

likelihood of success. And especially with a business that already exists, we have something called the Lindy effect, right? Which is the longer something has been in existence, the higher the likelihood of it will continue to be in existence. And so because of that, if I have a business that's been in existence for 10 years already, making a couple million dollars a year in revenue, the likelihood that it continues to do that is quite high, actually. And much higher than the likelihood of you ever getting to 10 million. So, you know, and you could look this up yourself. You could go to the SBA right now, the Small Business Association, and you could look at the failure rate of SBA loans. That's the loans you use to buy small businesses. And the failure rate

is typically in single digits. So... Really? So of them giving you money to go buy a business, the failure rate is in single digits. Yep. So meaning those work a lot. Those work a lot. That means when you buy a business, and why is that? Why do banks not loan to startups? Because they're risky. Because they're going to fail 90% of the time. They don't loan to them. Why do banks loan for buying businesses? Because they have models that

show them that they have a higher likelihood of success. Yeah, and they have a track record. Right. So I say, buying a small business, I think your likelihood of success. Yeah, and they have a track record, yeah. Right, so I say, you know, buying a small business, I think your likelihood of failure is somewhere between 10 and 30%. As opposed to if you start a small business, your likelihood of failure is the opposite of that. Let's call it 60 to 90%. And either way is fine, but you just need to know the odds

of the game you're playing, right? You don't go to the slot machine and go, I can't eat today, I better play slots, you know? Right? Same with startups. Sure, sure. So if you got a hundred, let's say a hundred to 200 grand right now, and you wanted to go buy a business, I don't know what you'd get for a franchise for that, but you wanted to buy some other small business in your town, what would you be looking at? Well, the cool part about, let's say you have even 50 to $200,000. The cool part is that, in my opinion, is you don't want to use just your own cash.

What we like to do is use seller financing or creative financing methods. How does that work? Yeah, well, 60% of all businesses are sold using seller financing, which basically means that if you wanted to sell School of Greatness, you'd probably have a hard time selling it without saying, hey, Cody, you could take over this business. Look at this podcast, this big, huge YouTube channel. I want X for it. But because you probably can't get a loan on this business, how about I let you buy the business for, I'm going to make up the numbers so we'll just be fake here, but you buy the business for a million dollars. And since the business makes, I don't know, $500,000 a year profit, then that means why don't I pay you, why don't you pay me over three years for that million dollars? So that's 500, 500, 500 a year. And that allows us to get to the million bucks. Plus you get to

buy the business using the profits of the business. And that's seller financing. And it's very normal. And my mission is kind of like, I think we have so many middlemen in the world that eat away our profits. The middleman is a bank. The middleman is the person telling you that you need them in order to do a transaction. You don't. We can be our own banks in many instances. Wow.

How does someone have the knowledge or the courage to do that? Well, that's why we started Contrarian Thinking, because I realized in private equity, I was like, wait a second, I can just buy a business like myself. I don't have to be at the firm. Like I could just go out here and do this deal. That was foreign to me after being in, you know, investing for 10 years. So when I started doing it, I was like, wait a second, there's no difference really between like a hundred million dollar deal I'm doing with a private equity firm and a million

dollar deal I'm doing by myself. The difference is just size. And so I started buying businesses myself and thinking, God, more people should know how to do this. It's just like real estate. What would be, if someone's like, okay, there's a laundromat down the street for me that I love, that I'd go to or whatever, that I see that everyone's always there. Yeah. I have no idea. I've never owned a business or bought a business. Yeah.

What would be the steps to being like, I want to buy that laundromat that I see in the corner there. Yeah. Do I call someone first? Do I go talk to a manager first? Do I find the owner first? What are the questions I ask them and how do I get a deal closed within 30 to 60 days? Love that.

I would give yourself 120, but let's say 30 to 60. So here's what I would start with. One is please do me a solid. I always say this when I'm on podcasting. I think if you do a bad first deal, you'll never do a deal again. So self-serving because I run an education company about M&A, but whether you go with us or somebody else, learn how to do a deal. It is complex and there's no infrastructure. Like in real estate, you just go to a broker, they fill out all the paperwork. You don't know what the paperwork says. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Yeah, you're like, fine, mortgage company, escrow, it's handheld, right? Buying businesses

are like the Wild West. None of that exists. In 20 years, I think it will be just like real estate. It will be very normal to buy and sell businesses and assets. Right now, please know what you're doing first. I think you need to spend 60 to 90 days learning how to do deals. I can almost promise you that you will never regret learning deal making. You will be so glad you understand how do I negotiate, how do I do due diligence. You'll be better at negotiating your salary. You'll do better deals in your personal life.

I think it's the best skills you could do. But before you buy a laundromat, don't just go buy one and be like, Cody said it's fine. That always stresses me out. Now, here's what we teach. We teach 10 steps that I just stole from private equity. 10 steps to buying a business with seller financing. First step is you got to understand the opportunities there. So we've already done that.

We call that the foundation. Second step is deal clarity. What's a good business for Lewis? What's a good business for Cody? We have all these worksheets we run people through. Third step is selling you. How do you convince a seller that you're worthy to be their buyer? Fourth step is called origination, which is finding the business. How do we find somebody that wants to sell? Fifth step is financing. What are all the ways that we can get loans, et cetera? Sixth step is negotiation. How do we negotiate a good deal, a bad deal? Seventh step is structuring.

So how do we learn the terms that define money, like warrants, options, you know, payback period? Eight, we are going to talk about your deal docs. So how do we close these underlying deal docs? Nine, we're going to talk about due diligence. How do we make sure they're not lying to us? How do we make sure we're really looking at the right thing here? And then 10, how do we close the business? Make sure it's done correctly and properly with all the right transferring of information and money, et cetera.

And then your first 90 days. You bought a business. Congrats. Now you got work to do. You're all excited. Then there's problems. More problems than you thought. Exactly.

Yeah. And so those are the 10 steps that we teach and that you need to know if you want to buy a business. Was there ever a business you bought after you went through all these and you did your Yeah. And so those are the 10 steps that we teach and that you need to know if you want to buy a business. Was there ever a business you bought after you went through all these and you did your due diligence that actually was better than you thought it would be after buying it? Oh yeah. Really? It happens more often than not. Really? Yeah. At least for us. I mean, a good example is, I have recency bias because we just did this deal,

but we bought the company Resi Brands. And we did a really big transaction. A lot of cash. A lot of cash. A lot of money. Lots of time under the hood, kind of looking at it. Due diligence, a lot of back and forth. Yeah, and putting my brand behind it. So I'm like, God, Lord help me if these guys end up being bad and then my audience uses them. And what if they're not good? What if they don't execute well? And we got under the hood and we were like, not only are these brands incredible, but the operator who's running them is just a very high integrity human, family guy, extremely hardworking and works harder than we do.

And so we got under the hood and we were like, oh man, we're going to make way more money than we thought we were. And this business is going to be really great on fulfillment, which is what I care about because it's my reputation. Wow. So that happens a lot. Was that before you bought it or after you bought it? It was after.

I mean, I thought all this going in, but it's- But then you're working with the operator, you're connecting with the team more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have something called the contrarian way, which is how we analyze businesses and then how we integrate them. It's based off of Vista, which is like a very famous private equity company that buys tech companies and turns them around. And so where I want to get to on a go-forward basis is we look at a business and we do all the work up front. And then the second we take over,

it's just implemented. I would say we're like 40% there. We're not perfectly there, but there's only one business that we bought. But you may not buy that business even after doing all that work, right? Well, that's the problem. So you spend all this time and energy for six months. I don't know what some of these companies like researching, investing money, energy, time, trying to build it to get ready to buy it. But then you may say something's fishy and pull out. And that's six months of your life. Yes, you're right. Yeah. My dad has the best line ever, which is never fall in love with something that can't love you back. And that's true with deals.

So you have to be willing to walk away. I think- That's tough though, when you've spent that much time and energy. You have to. Yeah, I mean, Warren Buffett also says, once in a lifetime opportunities come around about twice a year.

And so I think you need to realize that the most important deals that you ever do will be the ones you don't do. Because that'll suck the life out of you. Yeah. It's a rep. And so it's totally okay to get far along in a deal and go, oh, whoops, not the right deal. But the problem is most humans, we have sunk cost fallacy, right? I'm so far in this. I'm so far in this. We're like this in relationships. We've been together forever. I guess we should just get married. And that's the worst thing you could do. Instead, you got to go, oh man, I learned a lot of lessons here. I'm so grateful for them. Time to move on. Wow. What do you feel like has been the best deal you've ever made?

Besides your marriage. I was going to say husband. I knew it. I knew it. Yeah. A thousand percent, it's humans chosen, not deals done. Or humans removed. Right. That's also the worst deal. My biggest mistakes have been humans chosen. I mean, one thing I will say is, you know, the worst deal I ever did was a deal that not only ruined a friendship but You know was really hard on my marriage with with Chris and I because it was somebody we both knew And it wasn't that much money we lost but it was enough to be annoying and then we had we had to clean up a bit of a mess and so Mass relationship mess. There's a business deal. It was a business deal

But here's the difference a lot of people say don't do business with family and friends. Chris and I have a line, which is you don't want business from friends. You want friends from business. And so a great red flag indicator is does this person seem to want something from me right away? Or do they want to be friends with me because we're in business together? And so if you're starting to get close to a deal and they're like, hey, how am I going to get paid? That's like, oh, okay. You want into my business. You don't want to be friends in business together. And so I'm very cautious on that yet. And also,

the more successful you get, the more insulated I think you need to be. Yes. Like you know this well. Smaller circle. Smaller circle. You know, no new friends. And people have to prove themselves to you first. Yeah.

Can't just open up everything to everyone. No. And I think, you know, we have a time constraint now. Like, we don't even consider doing business with people that we haven't known for more than a year well. Yeah. Because it's hard to hide who you are for a year. Right. You know?

Yeah. And it's hard to invest time with someone for a year too. Right. So it's like a lot of things have to happen in order for that to happen. Yeah. I think in life one of the best rules I've ever learned is like you trust yourself, but you set yourself up to not trust yourself. Yeah, of course.

And so often it's like, how can I just, yeah, I don't want to gain weight. So like, I just don't buy the cookies and put them in the house. Even though, sure, I have some willpower, but I'm just not going to do it. So it's the same in business. It's like, I'm only allowed to invest this much money. I'm not allowed to invest with somebody unless I've known them for a year. You know, I do business with friends only after they've proven to me that they have sort of the same level of work ethic that I do.

And so all these little rules is what keeps you close to your money and lets it not run away. Yeah. Speaking of love and money, what has marriage taught you about abundance or what to look out for around money and love? The biggest thing that my husband has taught me about money, I think, well, he has a couple things.

One that I love that he always says, which is that there's 100% return on fun. And so one of the things that he's really good at doing is we don't really spend on fancy things. We've got a few nice nice things but we spend a lot of experiences together and so he kind of taught me that he's like you got to enjoy it along the ride yes and a lot of us high performers i'm sure people at greatness you know they're workaholics we work a lot and so having a partner who is the opposite of you like who's the fun one in your relationship who wants to do more fun i'm pretty fun but i like to i mean she

loves adventure all the time interesting i'm pretty playful and fun yeah she's like every day is an adventure she wants to do more activities and i'm like and you're working hard i'm like i just want to chill you know she's like let's go do this now and i'm like we just relax you know so so she's chris my husband and i'm more like you yeah and it's it's been really wonderful because he pushes me otherwise i'm working all the time and I'm more like you. And it's been really wonderful because he pushes me. Otherwise, I'm working all the time and I'm tired. He pushes you to play. He pushes me to play. And I'm pretty fun, but I get in my zone. Yeah, you want to work. You're focused.

Yeah. And so I think it's good to have a little bit of both of that. The other thing that he taught me about money though is I'm really good at making money and he's really good at protecting us. So I think it's nice in a relationship to have people who have two different lanes. Protecting you in what way? Besides physically, since he's a military beast. Exactly. My security guard. But emotionally, financially, you know, spiritually, like how does he protect you? Yeah, I think, well, certainly these days he's a lot more protective of like, hey, I don't think these people are working our best interest. You know, hey, do we really want this person to be employed by us?

I notice these characteristics. So he's just a lot more downside focused where I'm pretty optimistic. You know, and in his world, it's nice having a military friend because their mistakes are life and death, which means, you know, an entrepreneur, you have to be kind of wildly optimistic or you'll never succeed. But if you want to keep your money, you have to be slightly pessimistic. And so it's good to have that balance. And also we play a game where it's like, what role are we playing? You know? And so my role in a lot of instances right now is I'm like the big, let's go after it. Let's look at these big, huge things.

And then he kind of looks at the downside of them. And then our venture fund, he brings me a lot of different ideas. And he calls me Captain No, because I don't like any startup. And then we don't fight because we know we're both playing a role. It's preordained. Wow. What are the questions you guys talked about before getting married around money or conversations you wish you would have had before getting married around

money? Yeah. Well, he, I was married previously and then, you know, got divorced. And so when we first got together, people are going to be like, she's a psychopath. But I remember we did a whiteboarding session and it was actually more about what do you want out of life? It wasn't so much money because money is a byproduct of action and money is a byproduct of vision, I think. And so in my last marriage, he wasn't a bad guy or anything. I wish him well. We are different. We want different things from life. But what I realized is like, I want this huge, abundant, crazy life that's stressful and requires a ton of work. Chaotic in moments. Yeah. Exactly. And I wanted to see if Chris wanted that same thing.

And so we basically sat down and I said, I want you to tell me, like, what does our life look like in one, three, five, 10 years? Like kind of play it out. So I think we eventually went for like three years and 10 years. And we wrote that out. And I said, what does our life look like with kids? What does our life look like with money? How much are we worth? You know, what do we, what does our day to day look like? Where do we live? And we did it from a place of fun. So we were kind of like, and then we came and saw like, where do we overlap? And we do this every year. We do goal setting every year together on New Year's. And we go to a cool destination. And we think about what does the next year look like?

Because one of the things that he taught me, too, is don't tell me what you want. Tell me what you're willing to sacrifice to get it. And so if we have this big vision, you can't go, hey, I want to make $100 million this year and travel all year and take a bunch of vacation and relax. No, it's not going to work. And so we have to agree on the sacrifices. Yeah. And that was really, really important. And I didn't do that in my first marriage.

In fact, when we were getting divorced, I did it. I was like, I think we're moving in different directions. Let's write down what we want. And, you know, he was like, well, I want what you want. And I was like, I don't think you do. And so we sat and wrote them down and they were different. And they were materially different. And neither was wrong.

We just didn't go into the marriage with our eyes wide open. And it doesn't mean it can't work in some ways if you want different things. But you have to be aligned and accepting of the other person's vision in the relationship as well. That's exactly right. Yeah. And I really think the growth first fix mindset is super important. I wanted to make sure when I got married this time around, I'm like, we have to keep accelerating at the same speed. Personally. Yeah. And I

remember, I can't remember who said it to me, but somebody told me something that I loved. They're like, imagine you eat your petri dish. And you remember those science experiments we did in high school? And you put whatever little bacteria in each of that, that's us. And if you keep putting a bunch of stuff into one petri dish and the other petri dish gets nothing, this grows like crazy and this stagnates or dies. And so I think one of our biggest commitments between the two of us is we travel through time together. We try to spend as much time as we can traveling together because I don't want his life experience to be this full growth and mine is totally different. And that has worked for us at least. I've had a number of financially successful women on the show who are also extremely powerful leaders,

you know, business owners. And some of them are with men who make less than them. I don't want to, I don't want to assume where you guys' money situation is, but most men, it sounds like, are threatened by powerful women or women who make more than them or have more than them before they get into a relationship. I don't know if that's true or not or the facts around that, but that's the way it feels in society right now. What's your thoughts on that? If women are making more than men, how they can harmonize and come together and both feel safe and women can still be turned on by men making less than them and find value in other ways. Yeah. Well, first I think we should talk about men. I've never met a man that says, hey, your bank account has 10 million in it. Yeah, I'm out. I'm out. It's not a bank account

that emasculates anybody. What emasculates a man is your attitude and your actions. And are you big-timing him? Are you making him feel less than? Are you defining him only by his monetary worth? Men are not meant to just be providers monetarily. What about protectors? What about your human, you travel through time together? What about somebody that you really respect their opinions on? The high integrity and yeah. Yeah. What about the future, you know, father of your children and what that means? And I think the reason why we're having problems with women who say, hey, I make all this money and men aren't interested. It's like, are you just playing the victim? And is that the easiest thing for you to say? What if your story was different? What if

your story was instead, I make a ton of money and it's incredible because I get to be a partner to somebody. I don't get to be a cost center. Now I'm a profit center and we get to do all the other fun things. But I think a lot of women, because we define men by how much money they make, of course they don't want to be with somebody who makes more than them because they go, oh, now you're worth more than I am as a human. Interesting. And so I push back really hard on that. I don't think that's true. And I think men have just been with women who are kind of jerks about making too much money, you know, and who only wanted that definition. If you met Chris back in the day, I mean, Navy SEALs aren't millionaires. No. They don't pay well at the government, but he never defined himself by how much money he made. He was like,

are you kidding me? I'm a top 1% protector in the world. Wow. You know? That's a pretty big turn on. Yeah. A hundred percent. Same with you. Well, not everyone's a Navy SEAL like Chris, right? So not everyone has that level of mastery, skill set, you know, athletic and sexual prowess that he just walks around and oozes. Oh my gosh, that's going to be this big. But there's a lot of men that don't have that value, that skill set. You know, what maybe he didn't earn from the government financially, he, you know, multiplied in other ways and skills that take decades to learn. in other ways and skills that are that take decades to learn yeah and he has a you know he's a military weapon by your side uh with a good sense of humor and all these other qualities but

you know for a guy who's making let's say 75 grand a year yeah and there's a woman making 130 to 150 000 or more a year and they're in normal civilian society and their skill set is something at a corporate company not what Chris has. How can they not be insecure of the lack of value they bring to a woman and how can a woman in this kind of setting see the value in a man making half as much with similar skills in corporate work environments, society, things like that? I think competence is incredibly sexy and there's not much of it in the world today. Every single human has some area where you could be great. You might not be great right now,

but you could be. And so I think people underestimate how sexy a human is who is in their sphere of genius, whatever it is. Like if you are a bad athlete, amazing. If you are a bad at your job, if you're hysterically funny, you know, find that area of greatness, obsess on becoming great, and then bring that along for the ride. You know, nobody can, nobody really falls in love with money alone. You know, what if you're just incredibly great sexually, you know? Be incredibly great sexually, and then she might have a great bank account, and then the two of you might have something incredible together. Right, right.

And so I think we're just allowing it to define too much, and we shouldn't. What are the three biggest turn turnoffs for women who have money of men? I mean, turnoff number one, in my opinion, is this is a little, I think it's a little tough to say, but weakness. What type of weakness? I think it's not vulnerability. It's not crying. But, you know, we women, we want to be protected in one way, shape or form. And so I think a lot of men today, you know, when you go on the Internet and you cry on Twitter about how there's no good women, it's the same as when women go on the Internet and cry about there's no good men. Both of it's unattractive. It's weak. And so I think it could be mental weakness, but you can't be weak in every area.

So find some area of strength or greatness. That's number one. Number two, I wouldn't even play the money game. You know, if it was me, I mean, Chris, hysterically back in the day, I was leaving my private equity firm and I was like, you know, I'm not sure what I was going to do next. And I remember he was so funny. He's like, oh, well, you know, I got you. I'll financially take care of you. And I was like, you don't know how much to spend. You don't want this burden. Like, you know, but he just, he was like, I got you. And that feeling. I'll figure it out either way. Exactly. That feeling of, of even if he, you know, didn't make enough to cover what I spent on a monthly basis of like, we'll figure this out is so sexy and the knowledge that they might be able to.

And the third thing that I think is an immediate red flag turnoff is Chris and I have, we believe in strength-based relationship, which is basically Chris is an incredible chef. He's like, and he really, when I cook, is like, I wish you wouldn't. A little bit less of that would be awesome What's the definition of strength based? Relationships you do the things that you are uniquely skilled at and great at in the relationship You don't expect to be defined by traditional gender roles in any way shape or form And so we're really honest like I am whatever your best role is right you do that role right and so For instance, you know, I like to clean

and take care of the house and everything. That's my role. I'm really aggressive on it. He really likes cooking and buying all the food and the groceries. And I think we're kind of getting into this weird period now where, you know, there's like this trad wife movement. There's this man being a man thing. And at least for the two of us. What is that? Trad wife? What is that? Trad wife. Trad wife. What is this? You haven't been. And at least for the two of us. What is a trad wife? What is this? Trad wife. Trad wife. What is this? You haven't been on the internet lately? I don't know.

Oh my gosh. I only consume positive content. That's probably true. Well, trad wife is- Trad wife? Traditional wife. So it's like- Oh, okay. You've probably seen this. Like there are the women and they like speak really softly and then they're like baking a bread in like an outfit. You haven't seen this on the internet?

In the kitchen? I mean, I've seen like- You have a different algorithm? I've seen like- the kitchen? I mean, I've seen like, I've seen like, I'll send you some. I've seen like cooking content, but not like, Oh man, there's a whole,

like they wear like bows. It's called Trad Wife? Yeah, Google it after this. They wear like bows on their hair. They only break sourdough. It's all made from home.

There's like sunflowers around. Right, right. It's the traditional housewife of the past. It's like a reemergence, which I think is cool.

But is it women mocking or are they like owning their role? They want to be this. Correct, correct. They love it. They love it. It's in their feminine. It's in their experience. Right, sundresses, the whole thing.

And so I think that's cool if that's what you want to do. But I also think it doesn't have to be cool. Owning whatever role you want. Yeah, exactly. Like why do you know? Okay, trad wife. All right, cool. Yeah, this is a whole new genre, exactly. Like why do you know? So like... Okay, trad wife. All right, cool. Yeah, this is a whole new genre for you.

I don't want to get in the algorithm. I don't want to get in... Yeah, that's probably a good point. No, I mean, my algorithm is filled with like homesteading, trad wife stuff, chicken coops. Tiny homes. Yeah, exactly. Some of that stuff is interesting to watch actually. My feed is like catios.

What is a catio? Now I'm concerned. A cat patio? No. I have two cats. Are you going to build a cat patio? And I'm debating it. I'm like, what's the best cat patio?

How can I do it? Because I let one of my cats out of my backyard because she begss she screams let me out right she's like scratching at the door yeah but i don't want to be out for too long because she gets eaten yeah like coyotes or whatever right so it's like i want to come back yeah and so it's like you kind of have to watch and make sure she's good or like call for her like yeah search for her sometimes yeah but a cat this is a thing i've heard is, actually. Is taking over. At least it seems like it on my Instagram feed, right? Taking over one man's Instagram feed.

I know, right? It seems like it because it's like feeding me more of them, right? I think it's a good point, though. Like that right there, for instance. You're a very manly dude. You're big. You're an athlete. You're all this thing.

And yet, you're into catios. Yes. And like, I think that's cool. And that's the way the world should be. Well, i want my cat to have a great life right i want it to be able to go out and have convenience i like it be in nature i want to come back in my next life as your cat exactly my cats are treated well they're true i adopted both of them me and martha did so oh i like that's one of the that's one of the things is like you know that's on my feed but but not now we're gonna add trad wife but you know kind things is like, you know, that's on my feed. But now we're going to add TradWife to it.

You know, kind of speaking into this, you know, the TradWifes and the catio builders. Yeah. Like the catio dudes are crushing it. I feel like they're showing all their builds. Yeah. And it's like they're finding a need that people want this thing. Yeah. I don't know how much these things cost, but I'm assuming it's at least $10,000 to build this extravagant outdoor patio at least.

That is wild. Right? For your cats to just have play outside. Okay, I'm going to have to dig into this. If you can use a skill set and get creative about it, you can find a way to make money around these things. If you really put yourself out there, if you're willing to document, if you're willing to use the digital tools. document if you're willing to use the digital tools. And I think one of the cool things that you do and you've talked about is boring businesses, but how do we take boring businesses offline and bring them online? And this is like what you've done with Resi Brands. It's kind of like these boring traditional businesses that are like window washing, painting, or whatever it

might be. You know, a carpenter building cat patios is an offline thing, but if you can document, record, and showcase your trade skill, I don't care if you're a trad wife making bread or if you're a catio guy building patios, if you can do it in a specific creative way that's engaging, you can earn a lot of money. Oh, totally. I mean, I think what we do with a lot of our businesses, that's the future. If you right now have a business that's a service business, so a catio guy would be a great example. It's just called productizing your service. And so a catio business by itself doing one-off builds, not a great business. Takes time, energy. Takes too much time,

custom RFP, different every time, non-repeatable, non-scalable. What is scalable about it though? Maybe you do those custom builds, you document it all on Instagram and TikTok with the cool individual customization, but then you productize it. So then you have- How do you productize it? You're selling cat toys, you're selling cat food, you're selling cat insurance, whatever. You create a little cat climbing thing. Toy, that's your custom thing. That you drop ship to other people or that you do e-commerce with.

You know, you sell merch. And so I think it's, you know, in our businesses, we consider a business that's one-time revenue transactional, like a catio business, to be not a great business. So immediately- Like window washing. Yeah. We wouldn't do that business unless we added a monthly recurring. Subscription.

Exactly. So whether that's in window washing land, you're not going to be able to do that very easily on residential, but commercial you can. Every single commercial building has a monthly process where people come and they clean their windows, sometimes even biweekly. So you automatically create a productized service that is the same and repeatable every single time. And that just gives you a higher multiple so you could sell your business for more later. But why would people do that business when you could do a digital business and create a membership online potentially and not have as many people, not have as many, you know, I don't know, just more profit margin also

than instead of a physical in-person business. Two different reasons. One, it's a lot easier to copy an online internet business, and they're much more volatile. They go up, they go down, and they can go away entirely, as we both know from having those types of businesses. Easier to start, easier to lose. When you have a brick and mortar

or an in-person business, they're stickier. They stick around. Those customers aren't as easy to grab because their attention isn't as easy to grab online. And then the other thing is, I think we're sort of sold a bag of lies about the fact that this would make us happier in a room by ourselves on screen every single day, vitamin D deprived under fluorescent lights. I don't think it makes us happier. In fact, if you see, you know, Brandon and Carter who run Pink's, they're two good looking young guys who had really good jobs, one in finance and one in marketing, both like this on a keyboard. And what did they find? That they weren't very fulfilled. They were a little bit lonely. And like Brandon said, you know, he would talk to his mom who he was very close with

and he was miserable. He was miserable in that job. And then he was so miserable that he decided he wanted to go window cleaning. And I've cleaned some windows with him. But then I realized, man. You're exercising, you're outside, you're talking to people, you're having fun. And think about what you're doing. You're going to somebody's place of business or house and you're making it better, like real time. Like you see a before and after and you're like, I did that. I made the change between the two. And I think that's something that we as humans actually need and we forgot it in the age of the Internet.

Yeah. And unless you're in a digital business that you feel truly fulfilled, like you're making a difference or an impact, it's hard to stay excited. You know, something we do every Monday on our team call, it's like everyone goes around and shares a testimonial of how they made a difference in someone's life. Oh, we love that. Through the feedback or comments we get

or people watching or listening or reading a book or whatever and how that insight helped them in their life. And it's a reminder that, you know, whether you're here now or you leave later, whatever it might be, you're making a difference here. And you can work anywhere, right? You can go sell shoes if you want to, but is that going to be impactful for you? If it is, great, go do it. Yeah.

And I think people need that reminder of, like, why they're in a place and the transformation they're making in another person's life. Totally. Especially in the day and age where, you know, I was reading a study the other day that one in three millennial and Gen Z people feel like not one single friend truly knows them, which is wild to me. One in three of them feels like they do not have real friends. wild to me. One in three of them feels like they do not have real friends. I was with a buddy of mine last night, a guy that I recently have hung out with through the gym actually. And he wanted to go to dinner with me and Matt, my COO, who's my best friend for the last 20 years. This guy's worth over a hundred million, exited a massive company, you know the company.

And at the end of the conversation i go do you have one guy friend that you can open up to like you've opened up to us because because i'm going to have dinner with someone i'm going to really go deep with them yeah i go do you have one male friend that you can speak like this to who's like in your corner because he has tons of acquaintances of course tons of people he knows i do have one person and he goes, no. And this is a guy who's got over $100 million, who's actually at a massive company, who knows everyone. Yup.

But doesn't have one close friend he can truly open up to. Yup. And he's in his, he's our age, right? He's not, you know, in his 20s. And I think a lot of people struggle with that. Why do you think, what did you say? It was one in three? Why do you think one in three Gen Zs don't feel like they have a friend they can truly be open and honest with? I think that generation hasn't gone through something really hard with another person yet. I think that the statement

of iron sharpens iron is real. And so when I see my husband's friends from being in war together and going through the military together, there is no topic off limits. And if I ever needed something, I get the residual effects of their difficulty, their chosen difficulty. I think these days, everybody wants to talk about, you know, the trauma that they've gone through in life. But what's even more powerful is like, what trauma did you choose? When did you choose hard, you know, and choose the hard thing, regardless of whether it would benefit you or not. And so I think Gen Z, if you're, you know, if I was going back to young Cody, I'd say choose something really hard. Choose something really hard with a few other humans, and you'll never let go of those people because you've chosen hard together.

So that's one. For the people who are really successful, I think what happens is you get insulated by success. And so I'm sure we've all seen this. How did Rome fall? It was surrounded by yes-men. Caesar was surrounded by yes-men and sycophants who would want something more than the betterment of that human. who will constantly disagree with us, and where there's no, it's friends from business, not business from friends. And those relationships are deep. Arthur Brooks is incredible. Have you had him on yet?

I haven't had him on yet. Oh, God. The happiness guy, right? The Harvard happiness guy? Right. Yeah, yeah. And he talks about there's two types of friends. There's deal friends, which would be like business friends, and then there's useless friends. And that word, business friends, and then there's useless friends.

And that word, useless friends, triggers me inside. I'm like, I don't want to use those friends. Yuck. Right? And he says, happiness is highly correlated to having useless friends. Friends that can do nothing for you, that you do nothing for them, but you are just friends with them. They're not trying to get something from you. They're not trying to get something from you, and They're not trying to get something from you. They're not trying to get something from you, and you're not trying to get anything from them. Yeah. And no matter what, you just enjoy each other's company. It doesn't mean they have to be useless in life.

Yes. They could be high performers, but you're not friends with them because of that. You're not trying to gain something from them beyond being friends. Exactly. And the deal friends, you and I know this very well, it's like how many people do we know

who the second you become irrelevant, they don't lose my number, bro. Yeah, exactly. They're like, oh, Louis, he's not hot right now. Oh, Louis has a little controversy going on. I'm out. Yeah. And, you know, I've started with Chris really seeing who are those types of people.

You haven't been in a long enough to have controversy. You know what I mean? I inoculate myself. I throw it out there enough where, you know, it happens every so often, but you're right. No, but I had something like, you know, I went through a breakup, I don't know, five years ago. Um, and there was like, you know, she posted some nasty stuff about me online or whatever. And there was just like a question. Okay. Like what really happened? What didn't happen? And I saw so many people that I

thought were friends, not reach out to me, not check in with me, not respond to me or whatever. And then I remember thinking to myself, I was like really bummed about it for like maybe six months. I was like, this is really hurtful because there's a lot of people that I had given so much to.

They were business friends, but I thought they were real friends. And I come from a place of how can I add value and give first, kind of like what you talked about place of how can I add value and give first, kind of like what you talked about, not how can I ask for something. Right. It's no give, give, give, and then, okay, I've got a book. If you're open to sharing a tweet, you know, that's cool.

You know, whatever it might be. Yep, yep. It's like how can I give? And I remember thinking, man, I gave to so many people that didn't even just check in on me. Yep. And I remember being very hurt by that. This was like, I don't know, five, six years ago.

And I remember thinking, after kind of the dust settled, and I was like, you know, less sad, I remember thinking to myself, gosh, in like three to four years, I bet a lot of these people are gonna come back and ask for something from me. And I'm gonna keep receipts. You know, I'm gonna keep receipts yeah and it's so

funny because i remember like four years later all these people started texting me and i remember kept seeing like the last message was four or five years prior right of any contact and they started texting me hey hope how you're doing hope you're doing well and i remember thinking when's the ask coming next when's the ask and swear to God, it was like dozens of people all around the same time. And I just kept being like, hey, hope you're doing well, you know, really neutral. And then a few texts later, a few days later,

by the way, can I get a quote from my book? Can you promote me? Can you have me on your show? They saw me continue to grow and explode and they were like, oh, this would be a great opportunity to leverage something from him yeah i'll tell you what the best thing that can happen in your life is going through controversy or some type of like confusion where friends question you because then you really figure out who your friends are yes and it made me i was very naive before then yes thinking like oh of course people just going to understand me or it's all good.

But it made me get really clear to like tighten my circle to people that are only in my corner. Yep. And not expanding my circle and just giving to everyone. And it's been a game changer. It's so true. Chris and I always talk about we believe in choosing sides. You do be. Yeah.

Not like keeping it neutral and being on both sides. Well, we believe that if something is right, we will choose the side of right, even at the expense of what is convenient. And Chris has taught me that a lot, is that what is expedient is not always what is right. And so what I've realized, at least, and we saw a lot of this was, you know, what happened with COVID and different political factions and everything. And, you know, if there were people that were going to outlaw you on either side of the equation and not side with you, I kept receipts. I remembered that. I definitely forgive, but I never forget. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It's like, I don't wish you wrong. No, I wish you well.

But I don't need to go over my way to help you and promote you and give you something. Yeah. I don't need to do that. We're not friends. Exactly. We're not friends. And really realizing that. And now what I've realized is I think a good barometer of who I choose to be a friend now is when have they taken a stance that was counter to their best interest because they thought it was right?

100%. There's been, you know, when you go through something and you realize who your friends are, like I'm willing to stand up for my closest friends when they're going through something or any type of like little minor controversy or whatever it might be. I'm like, I'll post a photo of them right away and just be like, oh, it's so good to see my friend. Even when I know, oh, people might judge me or question me. But like, I'd rather have four friends in my corner than 400 not in my corner.

Well, it also shows you what type of human are you. Like I think every time you can stand up in the face of controversy, if you think it's right, it's kind of like it inoculates you. It's like taking a little bit of a shot to inoculate against the next time. Absolutely. And I think more people need to realize that because what happens is most people end up

just doing what's, what's expedient for them. And they don't think that it's, they don't think that it's obvious. It's very obvious. It is loud. Yeah. And, and I'd rather somebody was really honest. Like, Hey, this is kind of what I need now. You know, do you mind that?

Like, don't, don't, don't foot around it. We see what's happening. you know do you mind right that like don't don't don't foot around it we see what's happening tell me how you feel about me yeah you know i don't like that you did this and i don't want to hang out with you anymore okay cool i want to have a conversation about it or i'm scared that if i post it not knowing the inside story something might happen exactly you would respect the hell out of that you'd be like i'm upset that you think that i could do that but i'm glad you told me because I'd like to talk about it. Yeah. You know, let's be that type of human.

But, you know, what I've found, at least in my very short time being on the Internet, is that a lot of people on the Internet, you know, you're incentive aligned to be likable. The goal, the more likable you are, the better it is for you. Right. The more likable you are, the better it is for you. Right, and so a lot of these people don't want to do anything that could make them less likable. Because then they'll lose engagement, views, likes, followers, all these things. Yeah, and hate on the internet does suck. It does suck. It sucks.

But at least for Chris and I, it's like I want to know kind of where I stand. He's actually really good at this. He immediately catches on and I go, we're all friends. I'm like the golden retriever. I want to be friends with everyone. Yeah. Yeah. He's the opposite. You can't be that way. No, you can't. You can be friendly, but you can't let everyone into your life. Yeah. And then I think I've helped him realize, you know, he a lot used to think that you have to, he would give, he's like you, he gives and gives and gives and gives. And then he'd get sad if he didn't get it back.

Cause you think everyone's going to act like you. Right. But most people want to take. That's right. And I don't actually expect anybody to give it back. I sort of, I don't do anything that I think I wouldn't do if they weren't going to do X for me. Uh-huh.

Yeah. I just go, do I want to do this for this person? Yes or no? And then it's done. I have no emotional weight on it. For me, it's when i want to give but then someone all they want to do is keep asking oh then you got those were the worst as opposed to even just saying hey is there anything i support you with like you don't even

you know i don't even need the support yeah but just offering it at some point down the line it doesn't have to be right now like favor for favor i don't need that but just being like generous with your wanting to see me win too oh in any small way possible it doesn't have to be a big thing but it's like just a generous energy yeah you know what i mean well you you have that i mean i was talking like vanessa van edwards who's a good friend of mine she's great yeah and she was she was saying that about you you know she's like one of the cool things about lewis is he's like a really good guy which is weird oh they hit her to it i've never asked her for anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, that, that stands, but I mean, every human in their life has an energy vampire

and you know, if you want to be successful, you have to realize that you are going to leave behind most people. A lot of people. How do you leave people behind on your team that are not living up to their standards? Yeah. Or they're pulling down the energy of other people next to them? After you've given performance improvement plan, after you've communicated over and over expectations, after you try to give them training and coaching, what's the best way to fire someone from a company? Yeah. Or is there no good way? You just got to give them training and coaching, what's the best way to fire someone from a company? Yeah.

Or is there no good way? You just got to cut them off. I've never had somebody that I fire be surprised by the firing. They always know it's coming. And because of that, it's not as hard. And so the only time it's hard is when I haven't set a plan to do it.

And when I haven't been clear on expectations and KPIs. And so I think the best way to be okay firing is to be, it's like prenups, you know, upfront, you're like, hey, this is what you're responsible for. If we don't hit this in this amount of time, we have to make a change. What do people say? Well, I don't want to do that. Then I say, I will help you find a new job. There you go. And I respect that you told me that, but that doesn't work for what the company's goals are. Right.

And don't get me wrong. I have one person right now that I have to make a change with. But the reason that I'm not doing it yet is because I haven't set the plan in place to make sure that there's not structures so it's not painful for the rest of the team. Right. It's not offloading everything else on everyone else. Exactly. So that's usually my issue, but it's not, hey, that person, I feel bad about it. You know, the thing that released me the most from ever feeling bad about making changes in my company was realizing that every human that I keep that is not hitting the potential

we need in the company, that doesn't feel good for them. Having you worked a job where like you weren't good and it wasn't working, did it feel nice? No, it feels awful. And there was something else for you that was gonna feel amazing, but you're holding on because you're scared. They're holding on because they feel bad for you.

And everybody's operating from fear. And that is the opposite of what we wanna do. So when I let go of people, we give good severance packages. We make sure we take care of people. But I believe that they have a better opportunity somewhere else. And I think we all have to believe that. I'm not God.

I'm not responsible for their future. They are. And actually, there might be something beautiful for them if I give them that opportunity. But we'll get murdered on the internet for saying that. Sure, sure. But I do think it's true. Yeah. What is your biggest fear or insecurity for accomplishing every goal that you have?

I have a lot. I mean, I'm scared all the time. I just do it anyway. I'm fearful all the time. But what is the insecurity or fear of actually accomplishing your biggest goals? Oh, of hitting them? Yes. I mean, the things that you and Chris wrote down this, you know, six months ago during New Year's Eve, I want to have this type of business, this type of wealth, this type of lifestyle, this type of success, this type of following, of actually hitting those things, which I believe you will. Yeah. What is your insecurity or fear of being that successful?

I don't have a security, insecurity or fear about being that successful. I have an insecurity and fear about failing. have a insecurity or fear about being that successful. I have an insecurity and fear about failing. What if I can't do the things that I want to do? And what if I talk all this big game and then I can't actually follow through? My fear is the thing we talked about in the beginning. Sometimes I don't say the quiet part out loud because I'm like, if people know how bad I want this, when I don't get it, they'll know that I'm not good enough, you know, and like I wanted it and I couldn't do it. And that's scary. It's actually why when I did sports, I had a really hard time mentally getting over being like the, the one person that everybody

had to rely on. So like, you know, at the end of the game, you know, match breaking point in a volleyball game, that was really hard for me. I think athletes have incredible mental resilience because they have that, you know, you win or you lose. That's it. There's no gray. And that was hard for me to get over for a long time. Really? Yeah.

And so that's my biggest fear. It's like, what if I don't accomplish everything that we want to accomplish? What if you don't? Yeah. Then what? I haven't thought it through. What's the worst thing that could happen if you don't accomplish your biggest't? Yeah. I haven't thought it through. Then what? I mean, what's the worst thing that can happen if you don't accomplish your biggest dreams? Yeah.

I mean, I immediately go to the irrational, which is like, we'll probably be homeless. We'll lose all our money. Everybody will hate us. They'll realize I was never good enough anyway. Those are like the dark, you know, the dark thoughts. But who cares about those people? Yeah. That seems rational. I'm just not that rational about it.

It's like one of the things that's driven me for most of my life. And so it's a fuel, I think, in a way. Let's do it the other way. Okay. You achieve all those goals. Yeah. 100 million, billions, whatever it is.

Yeah. And it happens. It happens faster than you think. It happens in the next few years. Then what? What does that prove? Oh yeah. Just a new goal.

I mean I like the game. I'm married to the game. I think that… What does it prove about the people watching you or in your life, not in your life but critiquing you? What does that prove? Yeah. I don't think it does. I think, you know, all the things that I push for this day and age are, one, because I think about my tombstone a lot.

Like, what's going to be on it? And what do I want to have at the end of my days? What's going to be on it? I wanted to say, I mean, the original thing that I wanted, and it shifts every so often. But, like, if you simplify it shifts every so often, but like if you simplify it, that it mattered, you know? It mattered that I lived. What would matter enough for you?

I would really... What scares me? That my kids, when I have them, will live in a world in which they are controlled by others. I think that's my biggest, darkest fear. And I really don't like other people being able to control me. And so what would matter is, can we help enough people have enough personal sovereignty that they can push back on what I see as increasingly overreach by the few to the many? And so that would matter. Did we make a

little impact on getting some more people personal sovereignty? Or they could say like, hey, you know what my mom did? She helped a bunch of people own their own future and be able to push back on the man. Well, haven't you already done that? Yeah, theoretically, but not enough. What's enough? Enough would be that we change the tides in this country. But what does that metric mean? Well, we say 1 million

financially free humans, which would be 1%. No, let's see. It would be 0.5% of the country, right? 300 million. Okay. Let's say you were able to measure and you did that. Then what? That'd be sweet. Then I'll retire on my yacht. No, you won't. No, I'll probably write, so find a new goal. But do you feel like you'll feel enough then? Like you mattered? Yeah. Do you feel like you'd actually matter and feel like you're enough when you accomplish that massive goal?

I hope so. I think I matter enough now. But I want, here's what I think. I think at the end of the day, there's this Emma Bombeck quote. Have you heard it? It says, when I stand before God at the pearly gates, I want to be able to say to him, I gave it all. I rang a dry. I had not one drop left. Or the Hemingway like scratched and beaten at the end of my days. That to me sounds like fulfillment. And so that's what I'm

going for. It's like, have I left it all on the table, you know And if I have then I'll feel like it mattered and I did everything I could with what I had But definitely I don't do very well with like sitting Reflecting not doing anything, you know, not my DNA. What do you feel like will be your three biggest regrets on the last day? Oh That's a scary question. You accomplish everything or not, what will be your three biggest regrets? Well, I really want to have kids.

So we're working towards that. I think we're both shared in that. I would regret if I didn't get a chance to have the full human experience of having kids.

Of being a mother and having kids. Yeah, yeah. But you're working on that. So God willing that happens soon. chance to have the full human experience of having kids. Of being a mother and having kids. Yeah. But you're working on that. So God willing that happens soon. Yeah. So that for sure. That's one. And then I think the second part of that would be like, how do we do with them? You know, are they capable? Can they handle themselves in the world? I would regret if we didn't try to be the best parents we could in some way. And then, you know, three, my biggest regret would be, I do, I want to make sure at some point, um, both Chris and I write like for fun too. We write a lot of stuff that I think is highly valuable at this stage. Like I want to give instructions for young Cody to financial freedom, but at some point I want to

write ridiculous things just because I want to. So that's something I want to do in the next five or so years. What would it look like to do it sooner? More work right now. But writing something fun and silly doesn't seem like work it seems like fun and silly one book at a time lewis it doesn't have to be a book that's true why can't it just be a page uh a post uh you know man that's that's a little kid 10 page book it doesn't have to be some massive children's book sell a million copies be the biggest in the world uh undertaking you know it doesn't have to like consume you yeah you know what i mean yeah but how could you have a little joy every day yeah yeah something to think about i know this is this is why you're good and i think why people listening like it's it's a truism like the things one of my favorite mentors

said to me early on you know how can you achieve, so tell me what your goal is in five years, then tell me how you could achieve it in six months. And I think about that a lot with business, but I think thinking about it with fun would be, my true belief is though, you're just in seasons of life and you kind of accept the season. And in this season of my life, we're in a build season. Sure. And a build season is kind of hard it's focused on a lot of stuff maybe you don't want to do but it could be a build for 10 20 years if you're like never reaching what you want you're almost there well we got to go bigger goals now that's very true we got to keep building until we get this and then what yeah that's true and then you'll

feel like you mattered yeah probably yeah you know, though? Chris is pretty good at tempering that. Yeah, I get that. Finding a second human who goes, we have a hope where somewhere in our early 40s, we'll take sort of a full year off, do the Europe thing. But to be frank, for right now, that would not make me happy. Sure. Yeah, you're on a momentum swing, you're building, you're crushing, all that stuff. But at some point, and I'm sure you've felt this too in varying ways, naturally, I think there's very few humans who have the dog in them for 50 years. And I'm not going to want to do that forever. Nobody is. But that's when you pass the torch on to the next generation. I also think it's why people get sick with power because they try to keep it forever.

Forever. And we don't want that as humans. Yeah. i was in another uh interview earlier that i talked about this which i thought was an interesting concept you asked me beforehand you said what's the biggest guess you want to have right now the number one guest and i said jim carrey right away for whatever reason i've just been a fan of his movies but i've been a fan of his transition and how he's transformed his spiritual philosophy towards life and how he communicates, I think, fearlessly in the media sometimes.

He doesn't do or say what people want him to say. He says what he wants to say a lot of times. And there was an interview he did recently, maybe it was a couple of years ago, when he did his final movie. And he said he was retiring because the interviewer said, what's next for you? What's your next big movie? And he said, I think I'm done after this one. I think I'm retiring. And the interviewer got sad and was like, no, you can't retire. You're so amazing. We love you. We love your movies. We love everything you do. And he said, I'm going

to say something that no celebrity will ever have the courage to say. He said, I've done enough. I have enough. I am enough. And most celebrities will never feel that way. Now, it took him, I don't know, 40 years until he was able to say that of like being in the entertainment world and making tons of movies and making lots of money and all these in the fame and success. And he said, I'm really enjoying my spiritual life. I'm really enjoying making art for me and for just the people that want to see it painting. And, you know, I don't need to be caught up in chasing more. I have done enough. I have enough. I am enough.

And listen, he's in a different season, a different stage of life. We're not at that season yet. We're in this building growth phase. But that's why I was kind of asking you, when would you feel like you've mattered enough? Yeah. And would you feel like if you died today that you didn't matter? Yeah. No. And I'd be like pretty happy if I died today. Like I feel before I met Chris maybe not. I think finding a partner in love

was more important to me than I realized. But I wouldn't have a lot of regrets with the time that I've had thus far. Thankfully. Surely there are

many mistakes I've made but not exactly that. You know it makes me think I've always been a big Bill Murray fan. Maybe he would be one of the podcast guests that I would love to have. And we got to go to this unique experience. My friend Gavin did this little town, like a Bill Murray town.

And they basically, he reached out to Bill and asked Bill to come to this event. And it would be about Bill's whole life. Wow. asked Bill to come to this event and it would be about Bill's whole life. And each of the little houses had different stories that have been told about Bill. And then Bill wrote on these stories, his truth, what he actually saw happened. And so you walked around this town and there were all these Bill Murray stories and images and paraphernalia from him. And then Bill showed up, which was weird. And as Bill does, because he's such an enigma, you know, just showed up by himself, kind of walking around,

checking everything out. And people were pretty respectful. They like hung back from him. It was only a couple hundred people there. And as I was watching all of his stories, what I so loved was that he, to your point, I think embodies that. I am enough and I've done enough. You know, no cell phone that people can reach him on. A landline with a voicemail that he sometimes listens to, sometimes doesn't. No handler, no assistant shows up or doesn't show up when he wants to or doesn't want to. And I do think there's something really beautiful about a human who knows whatever the limit is for them. Right, right.

He doesn't have to keep chasing more fame or movies or money or whatever it might be, right? Yeah, and yeah. Not saying that you're chasing something, you're trying to build and be of service and add value. Well, and you know when to go. I think that's also a beautiful portion. I mean, in this world today,

there's a lot of people who hold onto power and they don't want to let go. And we can tell, you know, there's a few really prominent examples right now of when it's time to go. And how can you go off into the sunset with a little grace? But I think it's really hard to understand until you're a little bit older. Like when you're in your twenties, you're listening to us right now, you're like, what are they talking about? I just need more money, a little bit more sex, some love. More girls, more this, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. More followers. Right. And I'll be happy. And definitely it doesn't lead to happiness. If anything, more success leads to more paranoia about keeping it. But I think people should get the right

to figure that out of course of course yeah like let them go make their mistakes yeah make their first couple hundred k make their first million realize that that's not enough and then move on but maybe we could get people there faster right you know no i love it yeah you've got contrarian thinking.co slash 30 oh 130 so that 30? Oh, 130. So that is, if people want to know what types of businesses I like to buy, it's a list of 130 boring businesses that I think are good starter businesses. That's great. Yeah. And you've got an amazing new book out called Main Street Millionaire, msmbook.com, where people can pre-order it right now. We'll have a link in the description as well. What's the main takeaway for Main Street Millionaire,

for people when they get the book that they're going to take away from it? How to make extraordinary wealth by buying ordinary businesses. That the ordinary path can lead to a lot of money and freedom, and we just weren't taught it. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. Well, people can buy it right now, msmbook.com. They've got to follow you everywhere on

social media. You've got amazing content. They can follow you. Cody Sanchez everywhere on social media. Instagram is probably the biggest place right now or YouTube, Instagram, your podcast. Are probably the same. Uh huh. Yeah. Your podcast has been out for a few months now. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. It's that one's a little different. The big deal podcast is more if you want to care about culture, if you care about politics, if you care about business overall. Everything else I do is pretty much all business all the time, business, business, business. But the Big Deal Podcast is like my passion project. Even if people don't care about making money or business, I think they should follow you because you do a great job of being authentic about how to create content online.

Oh, thank you. And so you've done an amazing job of being consistent, of being creative, and being authentic with your content. And I think it's hard to do that well on social media in an authentic way, and you do a great job of it. So you and your team are all doing a great job. So people need to follow you there. Yeah, I've only danced in one TikTok video ever, and I regret it it i'm sure you can find it on the internet somewhere i'm dancing a couple

i don't i don't regret it i don't know if i'll do many more but i'm like what am i doing you know no more than pointing exactly yeah i don't play that game um a couple final questions for you cody yeah tell me what do you wish more people asked you that they don't ask you? I wish more people wanted to know specifically about... This is a little bit of a tougher area for people to talk about, but I think we should talk a little bit more about the fact that chasing money is good. And I wish people would say, like, why do you think it's so good to go after money? And we don't talk about that enough because I think people think that money is bad in many instances. It will lead you to bad things.

But in my opinion, you should chase your first $500,000 relentlessly. I do think that life gets easier and you are statistically happier after five hundred thousand dollars. We now know. And it's OK to chase that at first. I think it's important that you don't get addicted to that forever. But I wish more people were like, why is it OK for people to obsess on money for a period? And I think, you know, there's been no better system of pulling people out of poverty and thus unhappiness than capitalism across the globe. It is an imperfect system, but the only one that functions. And I think we've got to tell this next generation that it is there best system we have. And I think we have to push back on socialism and on communism. They are failed systems that have never worked.

And it's not that fun to talk about that because kids are sold a lot of ideas these days. But money is okay. It is a tool for freedom. And I think we should push back on the idea that communism is actually good for you. It's not. Right.

Why should people chase making money versus chase adding value? Ooh, that's a great differentiator. Here's the only caveat I have. You can add a lot of value in charity work. The problem is, I think, as Jeff Bezos said, you're probably better off going and becoming rich and independent first, because then you have a much bigger opportunity to do more charity. It's the Jordan-Peterism, which is clean your room before you clean up the world. And I think a lot of times, because we have these idealistic big ideas in a world that's full of abundance at the peak time to be an American of all time, we think, well, let's go save the world instead of become an accountant.

But to be fair, if you're a really good accountant who makes a lot of money, you have a better likelihood of saving the world. That's true. And clean your bed. And make your bed. Make your bed, clean your room, do all that stuff. All of it. Get your house in order first, then go take care of the world. Yeah.

And I think, like, shouldn't that be common sense? Like, why are we walking around giving advice we haven't done? Your room's a mess and you want to tell me that we've got to clean up, you know, the ocean? Yeah, like fix it first on your side. Right, right.

Let's start in our community. I love that. Before I ask the final two questions, Cody, I want to acknowledge you for a moment for putting yourself out there the way you do on these topics. I don't think there's a lot of women that speak like you do openly

that are great leaders and examples for not just women, but for everyone coming from that space. And I think leaving a situation that you learned a lot from so you could go do it on your own and fail and make mistakes and try, and then creating all the content and the value you've made to be able to add value to others is really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for continually showing up and I acknowledge you for knowing that you are enough at this moment, even if you haven't accomplished all your biggest goals. I just need you to text me that every couple of days. But I acknowledge you. It's inspiring to watch. And I think

I acknowledge you for allowing the idea that like going after what you want is okay. You don't have to feel bad for like being successful and for making money. You can do it in a good way and help people along the way. So I acknowledge you for a lot of that stuff. It's inspiring. Thank you. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So imagine you did accomplish all of your goals before you die and you get to live as long as you want. But it is your last day on earth many years away. And you've accomplished everything.

You've lived the exact life that you envision. But for whatever reason you have to take all of your content with you. So all the books you create, all the businesses you create, all this interview, anything you've ever posted online or in the digital verse in the future, it's gone. After your last day. So no one has access to your content anymore that you've shared. Your wisdom. But on this final day, you get to leave behind three lessons.

And that's all we have to remember your content by. I call it the three truths. What would those three truths be for you? I think the very first one is you can't teach desire. And so if nothing else, go find the people who have it and serve them and go be the person who has it. You can't teach desire. My dad taught me that. The second is that tell the truth. Even when it's inconvenient, it's easier to remember. My dad also taught me that.

And the third is write your own Bible. So what are the words you want to live by? Nobody else has to write it for you. And Chris and I do that. We have the rules that we live by. And it helps when you have a hard question. You just go, well, what are the rules? And can I go back to that?

That's interesting. You know what Chris and I did are the rules? And can I go back to that? That's interesting. You know what Chris and I did once that I don't know if you've ever done? We wrote, it was like, this is so mushy. I can't believe I'm about to say this on the internet. But we both sat down and we wrote, I think it was before he went on his last deployment. We wrote out, if we knew we were gonna die,

we had one day left, what would our final day look like? And we took a book right about that size, so not very big, and each of us got a page. And we wrote down every single thing we would do on that page. And first of all, by the end of it, I'm like crying, he's crying, everybody has allergies. And it was so simple, like the things that that day was comprised of. It was like, wake up early in the morning, go get a coffee and a donut together and go on a walk with our dog, surf the perfect set together, blah, blah, blah. And it was a really good reminder of your point of if you had very limited time left, what would that day look like? Yeah, what's a perfect day look like? Yeah.

And that was it. That was all we wrote. And then we went and lived that day and it was beautiful. And we try to go back to that list so often and live that day every so often. And, um, and I thought it was a really cool practice to do, you know, with a loved one. Have you and Martha ever done anything like that? In my first book I wrote, I have an exercise called the perfect day exercise. Shut up, that's hysterical. Yeah, yeah. 2015, this book came out and I have a whole chapter on the perfect day exercise that is kind of two parts because some people can envision their perfect day but then it's like

on the backside of the page of writing it out, of expressing it and emoting how it would feel, taste, senses. The experience, the backside, you actually make a calendar. Like from the moment you wake up every 30 minutes, what happens? And then fill that in and try to repeat that every day. You're not going to be waking up in the coast of Italy or something every day or whatever your dream scenario is. But how can you move closer to that every day? And I think when you do that, you live a pretty good life.

Yeah, it's true. If you live your perfect day every day, you live a pretty good life or you're working towards an hour of that perfect day every day. It's like, yeah, I'm doing more of the things I enjoy that I would do on my last day. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's kind of a little bit odd how much more successful you become when you have that little bit of joy in your life. Like I actually don't prescribe. There's a lot of people on the internet that are like, you just work hard all the time. It sucks.

Life is suffering. There's no such thing as happiness. Nobody's ever happy. Like there is that genre of human. And I actually don't think that's true. I think categorically we know that if we laugh more often, we're happier. And if we're happier, we're actually more productive. And so I think

it's okay, actually, to have a little bit of joy every single day, even when you're on the struggle, when you're on the hustle, when you're on the grind. When I have a lot of joy every day. Yeah, I agree. I agree with both. More joy, the better. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Final question, Cody, what's your definition of greatness? Well, definition of greatness is, there's just not a better quote than Emma Baumbach, which is, again, can you squeeze every single inch of capability out of yourself, whatever that is? Can you leave it all on the table?

And what would life look like if you did that with more consistency? I think humans are meant to be productive. So it makes us happy. And that idea of just human being is okay and beautiful, but add a little production to it. And I think that's what greatness is. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you, and it helps us continue to make the

show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I wanna remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.