The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Codie Sanchez: Why You’re Still Broke, The Rich Mindset & What You Need To Know About Success & Personal Finance Mastery

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

#782: Join us as we sit down with Codie Sanchez – Founder & CEO of Contrarian Thinking, one of the fastest-growing financial media businesses. After a decade on Wall Street & in private equity, Codie shifted her focus on building her own business portfolio. In this episode, Codie shares insights on reshaping to a rich mindset, highlights the connection between financial growth and calculated risk, delves into the challenges of navigating startups, and reveals strategies for creating extraordinary wealth through investing in everyday businesses!   To connect with Codie Sanchez click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)   This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   Give the gift of an upgraded routine this Holiday Season! Shop our biggest sale of the year at ShopSkinnyConfidential.com.   This episode is sponsored by Rhoback   If you haven’t already, it’s now time to try out some Rhoback. Use the code SKINNY on Rhoback.com for a generous 20% off your first order through the end of this week. Stay comfortable all-day with Rhoback.    This episode is sponsored by Armra    Go to tryarmra.com/SKINNY or enter SKINNY to get 30% off your first subscription order.   This episode is sponsored by Hiya Health   Go to hiyahealth.com/SKINNY and receive 50% off your first order.   This episode is sponsored by Caraway   Visit Carawayhome.com/himandher10 to take advantage of this limited-time offer for up to 20% off your next purchase.    This episode is sponsored by Primally Pure   Visit primallypure.com/skinny 15% off your order.   This episode is sponsored by Lightbox Jewelry   Discover Lightbox Jewelry’s lab-grown diamonds for yourself on lightboxjewelry.com. Plus, all new customers will get 10% off their first order on lightboxjewelry.com using the code SKINNY10. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Alert the press. 30% off everything. Everything on shopskinnyconfidential.com right now. It is our Black Friday Cyber Monday sale. We don't do sales a lot, but when we do, we blow it out of the water. Okay? This sale goes through December 2nd. The sale ends at 11.59 p.m. CST on the 2nd. Go shop everything and anything you need for your Christmas gifts. I would recommend that you get the ice roller, the mint roller. I also would recommend that you get the facial massager if you don't have it. I use it every morning for fascia facial manipulation. These all make beautiful, gorgeous gifts. And I feel like it's just a good time for you to stock up. 30% off everything, kits and newness. Go shop for

everyone. The subscriptions for the first month will be discounted 30% off. And then after the first month, they go back to 15% off. Now's the time. Shop SkinnyConfidential.com for our Black Friday Cyber Monday sale. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Unless you like being poor, it's really hard to be poor again when you understand deal making. Think about this for a second. You're a doctor. You get kicked out of the country. You need to move to a new place. You lose your medical license. Hard to transfer, right? Your skill set's not very transferable to make money. If you learn how to do deals, we can drop you in any country, in any industry, in any city. And the same thing exists as long as there are businesses

that are trading things. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today, we have Cody Sanchez on the show. Cody is the founder and CEO of Contrarian Thinking, one of the fastest growing financial media businesses around. After spending close to a decade on Wall Street and in private equity, Cody switched gears, started acquiring her own businesses and started educating people online on how to do the same for themselves. On this episode, we discuss insights on reshaping to a rich mindset. We highlight the connections between financial growth and risk. We delve into the challenges of navigating startups, and we reveal strategies to create extraordinary wealth for yourself and invest in everyday businesses. and risk. We delve into the challenges of navigating startups, and we reveal strategies

to create extraordinary wealth for yourself and invest in everyday businesses. This is for anyone that wants to understand money more, understand how to invest for their future, understand how to be financially free. Who better than Cody Sanchez to break it all down? With that, Cody, welcome to Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. You know who buys boring businesses? Who? Tony Soprano. Oh, that's also true.

He's my crush. Like literal crush? Like physical? That's your body type? All of it. Give it all to me. It gives me something to aspire to.

Yeah, it does. Gold chains. He does buy them. I just liked in that show how everything was boring that he bought i found it so interesting he was laundering money and killing people and like it's a little bit different than actually you know funny story i actually ended up like getting rid of my agent one time have you guys ever been on a terrible speaking gig like you didn't mean to sign up for it or been on a pot you're like whoops i shouldn't be here oh yes

like many times oh my god it's the worst thing ever uh so i accidentally got sent on one to detroit doing prepping for the book so i'll like go and do just about anything and i went out there and i swear to god i think i did like what i can only describe as a mafia bar mitzvah speech it was like 9 30 at night at a country club and i think it was full of tony sopranos because everybody in the audience was like i own a car wash i own a lauder mat like, bet you do. I bet you shouldn't have put me there. I would have been like, hey, Bob. First of all, it's definitely not Bob. It was like it was Tony. That's hot. I mean, I think that this is so important to talk about because what's happened with social media is everything has been so glamorized and so sparkly and people

are failing to look at the boring businesses. So how do you identify a boring business and how can someone who's listening even get into that realm? Yeah, well, I think the biggest thing about boring businesses people need to think about is they actually make money. And so these days, what do we do? We do a startup for like three to four years with a hopeful eventual maybe probability of making money. But what do we do the first couple years instead? We spend a bunch of it. So we like pay for the eventual privilege to potentially make money, except we know that only 90% of startups make it. And so it's a terrible trade, actually, if you're just at all into math, not great. Like you're not even playing poker with this. Your odds are terrible. The house is going to typically win. And I don't like a lot of risk. So when I started looking at this stuff, and I was kind of a scaredy cat. I didn't want to leave my corporate job. I was making good money. And so I was like, well, I don't want to do a startup because I don't want to go sleep on a floor. I like nice beauty products. So I'm not going to give up on that. I need to be able to

make some cash. And so I was like, I don't have a brilliant startup idea. My company would fire me if I just started something on the side and they knew about it. And so instead I'm like, where do people make money every single day? But it's not public. We don't have to publicize it. I don't have to be on social media about it at all. And I realized I'm like, huh, I'm in private equity. Like this is what we do. We take these big businesses. We use other rich people's money. We buy them. We don't use our own money. And then we cash flow off them and we eventually sell them. I was like, why couldn't I do the same thing myself? And then many employees because everything's an HR problem and doesn't cost that much money. Like, could I spend less than like, not, not more than six figures. And that for me was like really material then it was like a hundred K and that kind of mattered. And so I went around looking for it and I finally found a dude who knew a lot about laundromats and he was a real estate guy. So he had seen how laundromats work in his

units. And so he operated it. I financed it. And then I realized, wait a second, like he's already making money. He's been making money for 10 years. It's likely to continue making money. It's not that complicated. Why can't I just buy three of these? And so that's what we ended up doing.

And I wish I would have done that way before then because I had many a failed startup prior. So what happens as you start to buy three? Like what's the, what's the tumbleweed? I want to go back with you first to understand like how you even started to think about this. Like was your background always in finance? No, I was a journalist to start. So I, I did the exact opposite. I was, uh, I covered human trafficking and drug smuggling across the U S Mexico border. The light topics. Yeah, exactly. Just go right into that. Yeah. It was amazing. I lived in, in like Juarez, El Paso,

a little town called Agua Prieta, writing stories about border strife and struggle and what happens to those who don't have money, who get left behind and who have no options. And I remember like, you know, my last name's Sanchez. I have long brown hair at the time. I would have been like, I think I was like 21. It was my senior year of college. I graduated a year early from Harvard of the West, ASU really. Nice I said the Harvard of the desert U of A. Okay. There we go. Um, you know, yeah, it's basically Stanford these days. Um, so, so anyway, I graduated a year early and I was like down at the border and I remember there was like this moment, you know, you have like a moment in life where you're like, Oohof, I'm going to remember that forever. I was crossing the Rio Grande, which is the river that separates the U.S. and Mexico

from El Paso to Juarez. And I was driving to Juarez and there was this big pink cross. And the big pink cross is covered with little ribbons. And every ribbon is a representation of one of the women that's been murdered there. And they call it La Ciudad de Muerte, the city of death. And every year, tens of thousands of women are found mutilated and murdered along the U.S.-Mexico border. And I remember I knew that, but what stuck with me is they also put these posters up there of the women, and they were all like 15 to 35, long brown hair, brown eyes, last name Sanchez. And I remember just getting the chills and thinking, what's the difference between me and them? You know, it's not actually even that I'm American.

It's like, it's socioeconomic. It's that I have money. So I have power and people would care and would put resources if I disappeared. These women don't have that. And so that bothered me a lot and it stuck with me, but I didn't really have any skills to do anything about it and that's when I got into finance as I realized like so if the difference between powerlessness and non-freedom is actually money then I better figure out how this thing works because I have no money and I don't know how it works so when you think about money now because I think this is an interesting topic to discuss with you when I think about money personally I think about autonomy I think about options I think about money personally, I think about autonomy. I think

about options. I think about freedom to try different things. I don't think about it, at least nowadays, I mean, when I was younger, maybe in like a material way. And I think sometimes people look at people that put an emphasis on money as like, oh, you're materialistic or nothing. But I look at it as it gives me optionality. It gives me the room to kind of be creative. It gives me the room to kind of be creative. It gives me the flexibility to try different things in my life without the stress of being able to, you know, pay my next month's rent, right? And so like money is really important to me and I'm not afraid to say it because it gives me that freedom.

But I wonder how you think about it now, especially as someone who talks about money all the time. Yeah, well, I think for like, let's say for women in particular, it's not very normal for women to really feel comfortable talking about money and to be aggressive about getting it. That's not normalized, at least yet, really. I think I got a little lucky because I got to see firsthand somehow that like money actually means like safety and protection in some ways. And because I saw that so viscerally, I was like, well, I'm never not having this fucking thing again. Like, I'm going to have it. And so that changed my perspective a lot on it. I was like, I'm going to relentlessly pursue money to a certain

degree because I think it means I can protect myself and others. I think that's what money means to me. And most people, like you see it today, I'm sure you guys see it too. If you sell a product, if you wear nice things, if you even talk about money, and this is a great week to talk about it because the election people will be like, well, you know, it's rich people versus this. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. We want money and you should want money because you have been programmed poorly, in my opinion, to think that money is bad when what you're actually getting programmed is to not be powerful at all. Because if you don't have any money, you really don't have much power. Well, people hate that message because they just hate that message.

They hate the message. The fact of the matter is money is the currency of the world and it's what gives people access and optionality and resources and health care. It just is what it is. And my whole thing is, why fight against reality? I think you have to examine first why you have a scarcity mindset in the beginning. If you're pinning someone, me versus rich people, that right there is really not abundant thinking at all. No. And, and, but I, like, I get it. I do. I think, you know, in the beginning, when you think about money, when you see somebody who has it and you don't,

what do you think? It's like a negative mirror because we have a word about money that's weird, which is net worth. And so you're like, if my bank account is less than your bank account, is my worth, cumulative worth, net worth, less than you? Like we have a word that makes us feel less than if we have less money than somebody else. And so when you say to somebody, hey, it's possible for you to make money, what are you also saying to them? Why haven't you? That's your fault. And so even if the subliminal messaging is not the real messaging, I get why people are like, don't tell me I'm working hard. You don't understand my life. I totally get all of that. I just think that it probably allows us to make more money and to have more freedom if we have the belief set that we are capable of it than if we think

that we're not. It's kind of hard to attract a thing that you don't really like at all. And also if you look at it as a resource where there's an abundance of it, meaning there's no shortage of money in the world, right? There's just people that have not yet figured out how to go get more of it for themselves. Does that make sense? Thousand percent. And also those of us who have money, it doesn't mean we're actually smarter at all. I've met a lot of dumb, dumb rich people. I'm not the smartest guy in the world. Me neither. And now I do think I haven't met very many people who are wealthy, who have added no value or who have not worked really, really hard. Those are two different

things. It doesn't have to be IQ, but by and large, you don't get like, you don't luck your way into perpetual wealth. I wish that'd be sweet, but by and large, you don't luck your way into perpetual wealth. I wish, that'd be sweet, but I don't think that's true. But I wish somebody had told me all this when I was younger, because I had a lot of really limited beliefs. Isn't that weird if you think about it? If you were to go to an audience, sometimes I play this game and I go, money is the root of all evil, right? Everybody says that. Money is the root of all evil. Well, it's based on a biblical phrase, actually, but that's only a part of the biblical phrase, which is actually instead, the desire for money is the root of all evil. And so actually we've taken out of context this

thing that used to be biblical. And I think that's really important to realize. If your entire life, your entire focus is money, money, money, root of evil. But if instead you have money, that does not mean that you are evil. In fact, in this day's society, it means that you probably provided a lot of value for people because it's a value exchange. Yeah. I think there's a notion that some people, I think especially in this heated political season, it's like an us versus them. And many rich people or wealthy people are vilified. And there's a lack of like, I'll pick on someone like Elon, who's like, obviously he's like the richest guy in the world. And he's ridiculed by many people. Because of the money aspect, I think sometimes his contributions to the world are negated

or like not thought of. And it's arguable that he is making some of the greatest contributions to civil... Forget the political stuff, but just the things that he's putting out and making in the value he's putting into the world. Like, you know, dollars come to those who provide the most value. It's why you can have one person with the same amount of time as everybody else makes so much more. It's proportionate to the value you provide. It doesn't just come out of the sky. A thousand percent. Out of all the DMs and questions and everything that you get, what's the most common thing? What's the most common question?

What's the most common comment? Most common question is probably like similar to you guys, I would guess. It's how do I get where you are? You know, I think most people, we can't be what we can't see typically. And so when we see something we want, the first inclination is like, how come you have that and I don't have that? Is that the right question?

Wrong question. What's the right question? The right question is probably who did you have to become to be where you are today? Right. So what a lot of people want to do is they want to just lily pad to where you're at.

But that's not, they don't see the in-between, they don't see the sacrifice. Yeah, that's right. What did that in-between and sacrifice look like for you from when you left your finance job and you started investing and doing what you do now and acquiring businesses? Like what was that kind of nitty gritty in-between? Yeah, I don't always know how to get to a location, if I get to go fishing with a single line pole or if I get to go fishing with a huge trawler with a net, I'm probably going to be more likely to be successful with the latter than the former with no additional knowledge. Right. I just have a better tool because I have a way bigger surface area that I can collect a lot of fish. And so in life, often I think about like, I'll ask the team, like, what's the easy button? Like, if I want this thing, what's the easy button or the next step that's the easiest in order to get it? And usually I think it's just, it's contagion. It's like, how can you get around other people more frequently that have the thing

that you want? Because one, a lot of the data shows, first of all, that if you're around high performers, you have a higher likelihood of performance. In fact, just sitting next to high performers, you are more likely to outperform by 15% if you sit by one high performer. And if you sit by one underperformer, you are more likely to underperform by 30%. Was that you that, did you create a viral piece of content that I did? Yeah, I've seen that too. I feel like you might have sent that to me. I think I probably did. People sitting in it. Yeah, that's right. You like immediately fire a few employees. You hire a few good ones, you put the good ones in the middle. But it's true. And it's actually, we've all felt it. Like there's an idea in philosophy about, God, and I'm going to forget

who told me this, so I apologize. I'm not going to directly attribute it. But this idea of treadmill versus couch friends. And essentially, like we all have that friend where after we hang out with them, we're like, let's go. You know, I have so much energy. What are we going to do next? Man, you inspired me. And then you got that friend that afterwards you're like, I'm so exhausted and it's tough out right now. I'm like, I'm tired and I have a headache. And that amplified is your bank account and your life. So more than any how, like how did you buy a small business? It's much more important to the who. Who can you get around that already has the things that you want? I would also challenge everyone to say whose content you're consuming.

Everyone is so, they talk so much about the five people you hang around. If you're consuming shitty, gossipy, low vibrational content that's negative as shit all day, don't come crying to me. The first question I would ask anyone if they feel depressed or low or melancholy is, what are you watching and subjecting yourself to every day? Yeah, that's good. I mean, it's like, everyone's like, and also, how much of it are you consuming? Meaning if you're sitting scrolling all day long, no wonder you're depressed. Yeah, I agree. Well, especially like a good a good actually indicator for me is I think there's some there's like this like victimhood porn we're doing on the Internet right now, which is like in my stories today. I see so much of it like, oh, my God, I have to, you know, take a day to think about life because it's really hard, because I feel emotional about things. And we all have felt like that. Do we need to post that on the internet for other

people to tell us that they feel bad for us too? No, I don't think we do. And now maybe sometimes we do, but you follow those people that that is their entire life cycle. Oh, I'm really sad. I'm really depressed. I'm really sad. I'm really depressed. I'm really sad. I'm really depressed. I'm really sad. I'm really depressed. Now, why would you continuously post that way? Because you get a lot of engagement. I also think it's, yes, engagement. It's attention.

It's connection. It's almost some of its virtue signaling that I did the right thing and I didn't get rewarded for it. Right. It's low vibrational. Yeah, I mean, today's obviously the, it was the election, right? And so there's a lot going on. And I'm watching just like, I observe some of this stuff sometimes. I've been guilty of scrolling

today because today's a wild day, but normally like, but anyways, I'm always wondering like, what is the motivation of setting up a phone camera and filming yourself screaming and crying and then saying, okay, that was a good take. Now take it. That's a wild thing to do. Hey, but let me ask you this. What about the people that watch it? Because guess what? The people that watch it, we're all just as guilty. I don't know, Michael. I'm not watching that. Yeah. No, listen, it's not productive. But I would say- It's not productive. Period. What I would... No, but here's the thing. I'm just going to. Yeah. No, listen, it's not productive. But I would say- It's not productive. Period. But here's the thing. I'm just going to say this and it's going to sound arrogant. I am personally

where I am at, where I want to be at in my life. I'm happy with my life. I still have ambition and want to keep it, but I'm happy. If I was not personally content and happy with my life right now, I would not be exhibiting these behaviors where I'm scrolling, watching people cry in line. And I'm not rubbing that anyone's face. I'm just saying like, if you're in a space in your life where you're like, I'm not where I want to be, then it's probably not the most productive behavior to scroll endlessly on stuff that's going to make you feel worse. Right? For me, like it doesn't make me feel one way or the other. I'm just kind of observing it, being like, this is wild behavior. But for someone who's like, wow, I'm triggered by this, or I'm spiraling, I'm not happy, or it making me sad or depressed, it's probably not the right activity to participate

in. Yeah. I think as often as you can surrounding yourself with things that either, and it's not even make you feel better. It's that make you do better. So, you know, I think if we chased the feel better all the time, that is like a straight highway to only fans, you know, like that's not great. But if we chase and said things that made us do a little highway to OnlyFans, you know? Right. Like that's not great. But if we chase and said things that made us do a little bit better every single day, then we actually end up feeling better anyway and it's long-term better for us. And so I, and listen, do we all,

I spent way too much time. It was like, there's like a Sleeping Beauty meme where she's like, her eyes are wide open. She's staring at like a phone and that was just me on Twitter last night. I mean, I was just- That was everybody. I mean, that I was no, it was not everybody. It was she's healthy. I was in bed at 730 reading Ina Garner's, however you say her last name, biography. That's very healthy. You have a healthy wife. You and I are sick and twisted.

I was being so passive aggressive, though. I was like slamming the door a little louder. I was talking through my mouth tape, telling him to get the baby and put the baby to bed. Last night was an outlier. I also get it. I'm not judging. Listen, do what you want. Okay, so moving it along. When people reach out to you and say, Cody, I'm not where I want or I need it.

What is the Cody response to those people to either help point them in the them, help point them in the right direction or give them kind of some great advice? What do you tell them? I mean, the first one, I'm not the best if you want to be snuggled and cuddled. That's probably not me. There's plenty of people that are there for you. It's not me. I try to, I try to think that you want to come and watch my content. And I, I believe this deeply. If you really want to learn tactically things that you need to do in order to make your life better, if you tactically want to learn how to make more money, I'm probably your girl. If you want to feel better all the time, I'm probably not your girl. And there's somebody else. And that's great. Like marry the two. Sounds good.

But for me, we have a saying at Contrarian Thinking, which is like, choose your heart, choose your heart. And the idea is essentially this, that, you know, I remember seeing this a million years ago and I couldn't remember where originally, but this idea of like being fat is hard, being fit is hard, choose your heart, you know, being married hard, being single hard, choose your heart. And so I think in life often we have this, this feeling that one is harder than the other and they aren't. One is just better for you than the other. And like the data tells us, for instance, which one is better for us, which is being healthy. It is hard to be healthy. I mean, especially in this day and age, like, oh my God, I mean, you guys do a great job

of sharing all the ways that you can get rid of all the toxins in your body because they make it so hard to be healthy. But guess what is just as hard as being healthy, being fat, both really hard. And so I think my first thing is choose your heart. You get to every single day. And the second thing that I think is true for most of us is like we don't have unlimited willpower. And so, you know, I always go back to the Mark Twain ism, which is if you got to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning. If you got to eat to eat the big one first.

And my dad always said that to me. And so don't wake me up and say that tomorrow morning because I don't know what that means to me. I have my mouth tape on. Well, that's kind of a hard thing to do. You know, the first time I did mouth tape, that stressed me out. Oh, I thought you meant a blow job.

It's all hard. But you know what's harder? Is not giving one. Yeah, that's also true. That's going to have consequences too. Do you know what's harder is not giving one yeah that's also true that's gonna that's gonna have consequences too do you know what i mean yeah i'm not gonna let my husband listen to this podcast he's gonna be like i like them and you can go back on again that's so true to choose your heart though yeah i think it's right and you know the other thing is um like how do you choose hard a little bit less? You choose a really good person who pushes you to be a little bit better. My husband's, I'm a crazy person in business. I love it. It's my

favorite thing. I'm obsessed. I hate when people say work-life balance. I'm like, I don't want to talk about the weather, your PTA meeting. Like, I don't care. I want business. That's it. And if you want those other things, awesome. Just don't talk to me about it. But he is a crazy person with like fitness, health. And I'm not, I have to like work at that. And so he makes me better. And I think I make us better in a different way. I think business partners can do that too. I remember I was whining one time to a former business partner of mine and like, I was basically being like, it was super stressful. And I was like, oh, this is just like, it's so hard to do this. And I was like, oh, it's just like, I'm stressed.

And she's like, basically like without slapping me, it was like slap me verbally and was like, yeah, of course it's hard. Like, you expect? You're starting to try to create your own business on your own terms, set your own hours, make your own money. Why would it not be hard? Why would you ever think it would be easy? She's like, either do it or don't. And I was like, oh, you're right. That's how it is. And I think sometimes people need that dose of reality where it's like, it's not supposed to be comfortable. It's not supposed to be easy. You're not supposed to get the result right away. It's also a good indicator for friends. Like if your friends always tell you things that just make you feel good and don't make you do better, they're probably not great friends.

I'm a great friend then too, huh? Greatest friend ever. I think it's different for husbands. Okay. I'm going to remind you of that one. I said that you had a little pouch today. You know, she goes, we're trying my best. I go, what did we say about trying our best? We either did it or we didn't. He grew up with a Japanese mother. So he. Oh, yeah.

Well, my husband's an ex-Navy SEAL. So he's even worse. Oh, my God. He has a saying for the two of us that is so annoying. What? Tell me. He goes, are we a good white shark or are we a great white shark? And I want to murder him every time, except I'm not capable because he's way tougher than I am. What does he like bring to the table in the morning

as an ex Navy SEAL? Like, what does that wake up like? He's so awake every morning. I mean, he's just, he's up and out. I mean, we do all the annoying things that like people make fun of people who podcast now every morning, but he's done them for like ever. Like what's his morning? Oh, it's like up at five every morning. Okay. Straight into the cold plunge. Love it. The cold plunge is so cold at our house too. Like it's like unnecessarily cold. So we do that. Then the worst part is, is that he chuckles or he like laughs while he's like, I'm pissed. He's having a great time. So into the cold plunge, then it's immediately for him to the gym, maybe like a black coffee is

kind of a coffee snob. So like a particular type of coffee he makes immediately to the gym, you know, and then to work. And I'm like a little bit like I'm I now like the cold plunge, which is weird, but I get up, I like it. And then I like to immediately work. So we just kind of believe in like ripping the bandaid off. And a long time we worked on the West Coast and I kind of love the way they do life, which is like early. And then if you can have maybe a few hours during the day, that's fun for you. Like go hang out during the day a little bit, maybe surfing, maybe whatever. And then maybe work a little bit more that evening, but you know, don't get it twisted. I mean, if you want to, we have a lot of businesses. We're trying to grow something crazy big. I knew it wasn't going to be easy.

I hope it's worth it eventually, but we work a lot. I am very detailed when it comes to my workout clothes because I wear them every day. I like to set a goal to work out seven days a week. I usually hit six, but the point is I set seven, and I like to look cute while I'm doing it. There is this dress that I have been wearing from tennis to the gym. It's the demi active dress. I have it in navy and black. It's my favorite. It's super flattering, simple. It just holds everything in. You guys have seen it on my Instagram story. I've worn it multiple times, just like white or black shoes. It's so cute. And it's by Roback. If you've not checked out Roback,

everything is casual, comfortable, chic, simple. It's cozy. And I just like it because the fabric, everything is like next level. It's really buttery. It hits all the right places and it's comfortable. I want to be comfortable when I'm working out. This dress is so cute though. I've told all my friends to get it. It's a good one for a gift. I think it's like $78, but it's absolutely the best if you're going to like go to the gym and then you have to go do errands. It's perfect. It's really like very simple. Go look at it. But like I said, the most importantly, it's comfortable and flattering, which those are my points that I need to hit. They also have hoodies, jogger sets, all different kinds of fun like workout clothes. Go check them out. They're all clothes that you can also wear outside the

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to hayahealth.com slash skinny. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H-I-Y-A H-E-A-L-t-h.com slash skinny and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Again, incredible offer of 50% off at highhealth.com slash skinny. How do you continue to challenge yourself with all your success? I don't think this is talked about enough. When you get to be really successful and you feel very accomplished and you've done so many things that are on your list, how do you keep challenging yourself to get to the next level? I mean, playing in the game of business, I just think you're getting constantly kicked in the dick, don't you guys? Oh yeah. I

don't, if I don't, I don't have one, but if I did it'd be inverted. And so like, I think. Was not expecting you to say that, but I was like, yeah, that really makes sense. That's exactly how I feel. You know, the great thing about why I like business versus celebrities and, I think- Was not expecting you to say that, but I was like, yeah, that really makes sense. That's exactly how I feel. You know, the great thing about why I like business versus celebrities and why I think I like people who are in business versus celebrities is celebrities live in la-la land. They have no idea what it's actually like

to run their business enterprises. They have no idea what it's like to buy a banana. They think it's worth $42. And so, you know, celebrities are uninteresting to me because they don't live in the real world. They don't get a feedback loop that is horrific to them frequently. They kind of get coddled in a to touch reality. But if you're running a business, it's like, I even think a hundred million dollar business, you are still almost dying all the time. I think the challenge, I wish that I was like, oh, I'm struggling from, I need a few more. I don't feel

like an everyday. And then I don't even have kids yet. We want them at some point, but I do, to me, it's like, wow, how could I, how could I lay our kids onto this? You know, that seems a challenge. Nobody's going to feel sorry for anyone that has their own business and is, you know, controlling their kind of destiny with their own business. What I tell people like all the time, my dad used to tell me all the time, like you can't explain something until you go and do something, certain things, certain things in life, like you can't explain until you're doing it. So it's hard to get on the soapbox and with people on the outside, like, Oh, it must be easy for you to say, got your bit. But what I always tell people

being an entrepreneur and especially CEO is like one of the loneliest things you can do. There is nobody to cry up the chain to. It's all your fault all the time. There is nobody that's going to feel bad for you. If you fail, there's also nobody that's going to be super, like not a lot of people are super excited for you when you succeed either. And you are the person where your job is to deal with constant problems. Like whenever there's a problem in this business per se, it, at the end of the day, it's like, it's on me, which is fine. That's the, that's the role I play. And I'm sure there's, there's layers and there's people that, that help and manage the process. But like at the end of the day, if something goes wrong,

it's my fault. If something goes right, it's somebody else's success, right? You can't take all the credit. And so I just think for people that glamorize being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, there's no clocking in, there's no clocking out, there's no nine to five, there's no you have the weekends off or you're on vacation. You're on it all the time. People come to us and say, oh, how do you travel? I'm like, yeah, we travel, but I'm not traveling like a normal person where I'm like, oh, I have to do shit the whole time. Oh, a thousand percent. If something goes wrong, I got to stop whatever vacation I'm on and like dive in. So it always seems to go wrong on vacation, which is my favorite thing. I'm like, I'm not going to Europe anymore because

every fucking time somebody's suing me, somebody's something every time you're off limits. Not that I'm complaining either. Like I, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah, definitely chosen hard. One thing I think is true is like, if you're young, here's the truth and the numbers, which is the wages have stagnated. So for the first time ever, a 30 year old today is making less than their parents were at 30 years old. So we have productivity, meaning how much you've actually given back to the company, to society, how much money you make, your employer, let's say, has increased. So we've seen anywhere from like a 2% to 4% increase in productivity per year, but our wages have stayed the same. We're not earning more if you are an employee on average. What's interesting about that is we've had a 92% increase in CEO pay. And the CEO pay versus average employee pay

is there's a mountain, there's Kilimanjaro between the two. And that's for a series of reasons. But one of the reasons that I think more people need to understand is that your bank account is a direct reflection of basically two things. The first one is certainly, you know, the value that you have, the skills that you have, et cetera. But the real thing is the risk that you take. And so if you don't take any risk, you really will not have long-term reward or riches. And one of my favorite mentors said that. He goes, you can't spell rich without risk. It doesn't exist. And so what's fascinating about that is young people today as a generation are taking less risk than they ever have before. Yeah, because they crave certainty.

Right. And because they haven't really been rewarded for it. You know, if you think about our generation, even I graduated in 2008 from high school. That year we had the, I'm sorry, from college. That year, I wish, but that year we had the financial crisis, right? So we started going through the financial crisis. We had actually wages go down during that period. We had no bonuses.

We had actually like pretty high unemployment. And then for the period afterwards, so I'm 38, for the period afterwards, we now have pretty high employment numbers, like pretty incredibly high employment numbers, lots of jobs everywhere, but not very highly paid jobs. And what I think is interesting about this is if people feel left behind, like if you feel left behind today in a traditional job, you're probably not wrong, honestly. Like the data tells us you're not wrong, but the data also tells us that you're probably not taking enough risk. You're not negotiating salary. In fact, most women don't. We negotiate our salary 30% less than men. And when we do negotiate it, we're either not very good at it or people would say like patriarchically, it doesn't work. I'm not sure I believe that. I think we just don't do it as often. And so we don't actually make more in

salary even when we negotiate just as often as a man does. And so for a lot of reasons, I think people, they're feeling like they don't have a lot of room to wiggle. And one of the best solutions to that is to get ownership. If somebody is not going to increase your pay, that means you need to increase either your value and your skill stack or the risk that you're taking. And I think people are mistaking value and skill set with credentials today. Yeah. Well, I think a couple of things to clarify there. One first in regards to the CEO pay, this is mostly for publicly traded CEOs or hired CEOs, not founder CEOs. There's many founder CEOs that take no salary and make almost no money in those, especially in the early, to your point, many startups struggle and make no money for the first four or five, six years. And the CEOs are

kind of basically scraping by hoping that it works. And what happens to many of those CEOs, if it doesn't work, is they're out of a job, their company's gone, and then they got to go apply for a job and they're not going to get these huge CEO powers. Because I have some people, I employ people and they're like, well, I read on Google. I'm like, if you're reading about Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos or Elon and you're reading about these CEO pays for Gateway, that's not a good data set. You got to look at startup. Second thing, I think technology now has displaced a lot of the job market and has created a situation where you're able to outsource a lot of things that you just couldn't before. And so that's going to affect the wages.

And then the third thing is, I think a lot of these companies that got huge valuations and huge amounts of funding were creating a scenario where we have a ton of employment, but where many of those people now with those companies are starting to struggle are being let go. And it's going to take a few cycles for them to realize maybe the salaries they're being paid are not going to be able to be afforded by other companies now that have to operate a little bit more responsibly. I'll give you an example. We see people come to this company all the time, young people that are more entry entry positions and they're looking for exorbitant salaries that just don't exist. And they said, well, this is what I was getting paid at my last company. I said, I understand

that, but you're part of mass layoffs at a company that's going under. And like we as a business can't sustain that. So I think it's like, I empathize with people in that position that grew up in an environment where maybe there was undisciplined companies and all sorts of funny. And now these companies, now as operators, you're running a company that has to be more efficient. It's like, where's the give and take? Yep. But it's a really difficult time because I think the data that's coming through is not

understood from a macro. Like I used to have this HR person all the time. It's like, I'm reading all this stuff. I'm like, it's not a good set of data and it's not accurate because you can't account for all these layoffs. You can't account if these salaries

were justified. These companies can't afford it now. They're not being funded properly. A lot of them aren't making any money to your point earlier. Like there's a big shakeup happening right now. I agree with that.

I mean, well, a couple of things. One, yes, especially in your industries, which would be media, tech, startups. Technically, that's a very small percentage of total jobs in the US. True. So I don't think those numbers for even VC-backed companies are going to lift the overall aggregate of wages. I mean, getting kind of technical, but what I do think is true is that when you're young, you really don't know what your worth is. And so if you had a job before where you thought you were worth X because that's what you got paid, but you don't actually know

how you make money for a company, that's a great gap to fill. And nobody wants to hear that, by the way. But I wish I knew that when I was younger. That's how you make more money too. I think we hear it because we're actually around the same age. And I think when we got out of college, it was tough, right? I thought I was going into real estate. Terrible time to go into real estate. Everything was burning. We had to figure it out. And at that time, especially with the financial crisis, you were trying to scrap together any job that would pay you anything. And so our generation came up through that, like, okay, you're in the office. We were talking to somebody else about this, like getting paid, whatever. And now you've had a generation that's come in during flush times.

Like, listen, if you're 22 years old and you're getting paid $200,000 a year as an analyst, like maybe you're overpaid. And I don't say that to hurt anybody's feelings, but it's probably- Probably true. Probably true, right? And so there's a kind of a reckoning happening right now where people are like, well, what is my worth? I was being paid this, now I'm not, that job doesn't exist. It's very confusing. I actually feel worse for the people that came up in that environment than people that came up in ours because we at least had a real level setting right away, which was like, hey, the market's in shambles, jobs are gone,

scrap together what you can. Yeah, I think you're right. The dick kick, you know, happened early. Your toolbox or other people's toolbox, you've talked to a lot of successful people. What are the tools that you have seen over and over and that you have used in your toolbox to create success? Yeah, well, I think if you could do, think about this for a second. We wanna make more money, but we don't actually know what we're worth

as far as our skills are concerned. So if I was young and an employee, for instance, or actually scratch the young part, if I actually wanted to make more money today, you know what I would go and do? I would do a market comp of like, how much is my role worth versus everything else out there? Just like if I was going to sell my house, I'd want to go do a comp against all the other real estate on my street. We don't do that enough. And then the second thing I'd want to do is I'd want to actually understand, well, I'm not the one at risk. Let's say one day I want to start my own business. I don't understand why I'm working for

somebody else. How does my job make them more money? And in fact, does it? You know, back in the day, I remember when I was in finance, a guy, it was pretty crude, but I was in finance. And back then it was, you know, that was like the strip clubs grabbing butts sort of days. I was married to somebody in finance too. And I was another one of my girlfriends was not working, but married to another one of our guy friends. And we were both at this, this industry conference with our husbands together. And he kind of pointed at his wife and said, cost center pointed at me profit center. And his, he was joking with his wife saying, why does Cody get to go do X and Y and Z? Why can't we go on vacations like them?

And he's like, she's a profit center, you're a cost center. At the time I was like, Mike, that's like such a dick move. She's the mother of your children. What are you talking about? That's not the appropriate way to think about it. But when we think about it as an employee, that is the perfect way to think about it. Like what you do right now,

do you make your company money or do you cost them money? Let me give you an example. Compliance. So if you're in a compliance job, you are in a cost center, not a profit center. It's very hard to attribute more money based on rules and regulations. It's easy to attribute like, yes, you didn't lose me money. But if I was young, I'd want to figure out as often as possible, how could I make sure that I understood how I make somebody else money? Because that's how you negotiate for more. And it'll also make it easier. Like once you run your own business, you'll be able to tell people like, oh, well, that job is just not worth that. I mean, we had a guy who was

editing videos who wanted $272,000 for a short form editor and he was 23 years old. And I was like, this is a fascinating, like what's happening here? Where did you come up with that particular number? And I think he saw like Mr. Beast's short firm video editor makes $232,000 or something like that. Yeah, that's the problem. They're Googling like what is an Amazon executive make? But guys, this is what I'm trying to say. This is the equivalent of me Googling for myself. What does Tim Cook make per year? And then be like, why don't you, I think as an employer, anytime any of our team members come and say like, what is another way I can earn more money? And what can I add? Like, that's the conversation I get excited about. Do they do that to you? There's plenty of them that do. And then there's some cases where people will say like,

I want more money. I want more. And I say, well, listen, like we can have that conversation, but the business needs to be able to sustain. One of the hardest things about being an employer is your job is to create an environment where everybody has job security and the business also has the ability to keep growing. And so if you just raise people through the roof and then a year from now, you're doing 25% layoffs, which many companies do, have you really done a good job? It's like maybe you gave someone a little bit of short-term security, but then you fire them a year later. That's not good either. No, that's what most companies

do. Of course. That's what, I mean, especially in media, right? Like you see, I can't tell you how many of our competitors are just like getting nailed. But I always, I try to give the context to everybody at work. Like the question that I have to answer and that everybody else should be looking for is like, how do we all collectively add more value so that we can all collectively make more and do better? Absolutely. But that's a beautiful thing for you to do as a boss. Like what a cool move. I always think you're like, what's the number one reason people leave jobs? It's actually not the job. It's the shitty boss. And so if you get to be the CEO, you get to be the boss that you always wish that you had. And I think that's

really cool. And often what happens is when you get in that seat, it's probably the same as being a parent. You're like, whoops, I'm going to do a lot of things that I said I would never do when I'm a boss because I didn't actually realize what I was talking about when I was only an employee. And I'm still friends with one of the CEOs that, you know, he kind of pushed me out of a company, you know, at one time and kind of said, hey, you want to go this way? The business is going that way. If you're rowing left and I'm rowing right, get your own boat. It's not, this isn't your boat. And so if you want to go the other way, you got to go. And I remember being really mad at the time. I was like, I just built this huge business for you. We're bringing in all this money. This is the way to do it. But he was right. It wasn't my chips. I had to go get my own

chips if I was going to do this business. And thank God he pushed me out because I never would have been successful. I would have stayed there way longer building somebody else's dream. So like with our employees, I'm always like my job as your boss is not for you to like me. The job is actually that I want to make you better. I want you to leave here being like, I went to the Harvard MBA of media and finance companies. I learned everything humanly possible. She actually super cared that I became a better human by the end of it. And when I leave, I might even build a bigger company than she does because I'm that good now. And like, that's the cool part about being a CEO. But I wish somebody would have told me earlier on that CEO basically means like you get every single one of the worst problems that nobody else can solve. And often when you don't have enough money to pay people, you're the one

that doesn't get paid. Yeah. But it's also very rewarding. I tell her, as much as I hope everybody that works with me stays here forever and loves it or works with Lauren and I, I also get very excited. We've had plenty of people that have started and have gone and started their own businesses and are doing their own thing. Do you ever invest in them? No. It's a little bit dicey sometimes. There's maybe some that I would... Actually, you know what I did? I have in some. Hello, Matt. But I always try to kind of keep it church and state. I want to give as much support as possible. But at the same time, on the other side, if I have to let people go because they're not being realistic, that's hard. But I never get upset if someone comes and says, listen, I've learned so much and I'm so happy and I'm doing my own thing. I'm like, I'm the first one to be like, good for you. Great job. We've got a few people that have done that. Yeah, 100%. So what are your tools from a micro level? Like I want to know the daily tools, like the little details that you think have really made up the big success. And it could

be from you or from people that you know. A lot of success is the things that you don't do. So I have a not to do list, which is not that popular. It started with one of my mentors in business, Bill Perkins, and he wrote a book called Die With Zero. And I love him. He's brilliant. And he lives like this incredible life too. He lives over here, right? Yes. He lives like a super fun, ridiculous life and also makes a ton of money, which I think is a cool combination. And I aspire to be that. And he says every time I go and see him, he has a line that I thought was wild. He's like, one, he'll never invest in somebody that doesn't have an assistant. He's like, if you don't value your

time enough to have an assistant, why would I pay you at assistant level wages? And I was like, that's such a non-PC thing to say. I'm going to go hire an assistant. It was really useful. And now I have multiple. The second thing that he said to me is he's like, everybody tells you those time things like, hey, take your hourly rate, whatever it is, anything that's lower than the hourly rate, go do it. His take is more like this. He basically says, every single day, I only have so much willpower. The willpower that I have, I better use on my highest leverage activities. And so every day what I do is we start with the one thing list from Jay Papasan, which is if I get this one thing done today, how could I make everything else irrelevant? And so I ask myself

that question every single morning. And what I'm shocked by is how often there is one thing. And the bigger you get, the one thing's easier because it's like, I need to hire one person. But in the beginning, the one thing might be, I need to sell one thing today. I need to make a sale. And that's how I started my very first business. So let's talk, I want to talk about your businesses because I think about, I watch your content, like I told you, and you're big on talking about investing in and acquiring boring businesses, laundromats, car wash, all these things. One, I want to talk to you about that. And two, is this accessible by everyday people that maybe can't acquire the full business, but want to participate in portions of these businesses? Carson and I were talking today about investing and what to do and all that. And I'm hesitant to

give advice, but you're the perfect person. Yeah. Well, one, yes. I mean, here's what's happening in the world around us today. Especially, I want to think a little bit about women here too, in particular. So first of all, once you leave the workforce, which is common after having kids, obviously, Goldman used to have a program where they allowed women to come back into the workforce and they accelerated their development and they're re-entering the workforce. And what we found is you have a 60% higher likelihood of never entering the workforce again if you've left it for more than a year. So one year out, you are 60% more likely to never come back in. And that's because workplaces change quickly. It's scary to go back and interview all these things. What I think we should ponder, and with boring businesses, I think it's possible,

is why do you have to ask permission? After you've already been successful, you're a woman, you've raised kids, you've run a family, you've run a family P&L in many instances, why don't you actually take a little risk and bet on yourself? And especially if you have kids, I think boring businesses are interesting because they allow for more flexibility than a nine to five. I think it's a little hard. I think it's really important, I should say, that we have a nuclear family that takes care of their kids. And I think if you want an option to stay home with kids, one of the more interesting things for women is how can we own businesses just like we own property? So I call these gateway drug businesses. So the gateway drug businesses are businesses that have four things. They don't cost much money, so not a ton of overhead. They're simple to understand, so easy grandma understands what you're doing. The business is profitable, makes money today, and the business is something that is a low people business, so not too many employees inside of it, because that could be hard if you've never run a business before.

And so that's why I started with something like a laundromat. It's like a laundromat, a car wash, for instance, could be one. It might be a property management company, could be one. It could be oversight of a cleaning company. There are all these jobs, like businesses that we think of as jobs, that are actually businesses that are easy for entry. And how do people find these opportunities? What about storage? So I like storage. The problem with storage is that it's expensive. So if you think about, I call them real estate masquerading as businesses. It's just basically properties. Right. So it's, you know, it's a good business if you are okay with a large cost. So think about it this way. Everybody loves real estate. You don't think it's weird when somebody invests in a single family home and they rent it out and you have

a renter. Normal, right? That is a terrible business model. Let me tell you why. The average home in the US now is about $300,000 to $400,000. That means you have $300,000 to $400,000 in debt over your head for that small business. Okay, maybe that's not that big of a deal, except the average net income, so the money you're going to put in your pocket from the business, is about $140 a month. And you have to manage all the fucking property. Right. So do you, it's like, do you think that you could buy a small newsletter business on Deuce or you could buy a small website or you could buy a small cleaning company using future profits of the business to buy it for probably, you know, you can buy some businesses for less than 50 K. So talk about that concept. because I think that one, you know, we talked about this before,

stop if it gets technical. I think some people might understand, but buying businesses with future profits. So say there's a business that's going to make $100,000. Why would that person sell it? And then how can you buy it and finance it if they know, you know, if you don't have that much money? Yeah. Well, we had a freedom taken away from us as Americans that we don't realize, which was historically what happened in the U.S. We had businesses. And how did businesses get transferred from one generation to another? It was either familial, father to son, father to daughter, or it was apprenticeship based. So I ran a blacksmith company, the blacksmith company. I taught my young apprentice how to do it. The apprentice took over the blacksmith business. That's how it used to work, right? And then we created

intermediaries, aka banks and corporations. This corporation entity structure and the bank structure allowed for big entities to get bigger and bigger and gobble up these things that we used to transfer like we would a house, a will, you know, from one generation to the next. And so what I'm kind of proposing is that we go back, that we actually go backwards a bit nostalgically. Back then you would, if you were the apprentice, you would pay a percentage each year of the salary that you made or the money you made inside of the business to the business owner. Well, that's the same thing we're talking about today. It's called seller financing. And so it's even thought of kind of scammily in the US, which I think is fascinating because banks want you to get loans from them so that they can take your money to do more things

with it and you have to pay them interest. Which that's the scam. That's the scam, actually. As opposed to just if I was buying a business from you, I'm saying, listen, Cody, I'm going to run this. And in the future, like as it makes profits, I will pay you down the principal that I owe you. And we don't have to get the bank involved in it to be interesting. It's exactly right. Out of all your boring businesses, which has been the most successful? Monetarily?

Yeah. Which one's made the most money? Maybe a medley of both. Well, the businesses that have made us the most money probably are carley of both well the businesses that made us the most money probably are our car washes car washes yeah so a big portfolio of car washes car washes just like an old-fashioned punch a ticket car wash like if you saw my first ones they were so gnarly you know like gnarly like crazy big or like no no like gross like car washes that we bought seller financing from an old owner

that didn't want to run this thing anymore the things didn't really work remember you drove in i mean they still exist but you drive in you have the hose you put the dime in the hose and you you my daughter and i do it with michael all the time she loves it okay perfect you were my perfect client it's probably me thank you for your business. So they're called single bay car washes. And so and self-served, you could have double bay car washes, too. But single single bay is normal. Anyway, so those are interesting because they are they're kind of like a real estate land play. So you can hold these old they're usually in corners. Right. So they're typically good for build out of states like Texas, which have grown like crazy. And so we would have these land holds where we're getting

cashflow over time from people going in and using our car wash. And eventually there'll be what's called a better use. So a better use for the land than my car wash, and they'll probably get rid of it and they'll put up a big skyscraper or something else. But those over time are interesting because car washes, you can scale. So like laundromats are hard to scale. You know, my biggest laundromat made $3 million a year, which is a lot. That is a total outlier. And the reason it made $3 million a year is wash and fold. You know, like you put your clothes in the bag and somebody picks them up and drops them back off. And that's a lot of work. That's a lot of logistics, vans and people and pickup schedules. You need robots. Right. I didn't have any robots. Okay. No, no, no. I had Ted,

who was the man, and a few others. But that business was able to scale a little bit because of wash and fold. But car washes are interesting because you can have people on site, you can have subscription, recurring revenue, which we love. That's like porn to entrepreneurs. Like recurring revenue is the best thing ever. And you have a model where you have a lot of use capacity. Like very seldom do you see car washes totally slammed. So people pay to use the car wash. They don't use it as much as they think they might. You continue to have the revenue. It allows you for to have something called a lot of float in your business. Zaza and I baked the best brownies the other day. They were by Alana Stewart on Instagram. Her recipe is truly the best brownie recipe. Google it, I'm telling you.

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Shop now at lightboxjewelry.com. Say somebody has been squirreling away some dollars they've been saving and they've got Shop now at lightboxjewelry.com. Say somebody has been squirreling away some dollars they've been saving and they've got five, $10,000 and they're ready to invest and they want to get into it. Where can they go? How can they get access to these opportunities? Can they get access to these opportunities? Yeah. Because I think a lot of us are like, put it in the 401k and put it in the S&P, which is fine, but it's a little different than what you were talking about. Well, there's so many cool ways to learn how to finance a business. Let me give a caveat first.

If you do a bad first deal, you'll never do a deal again. You'll think buying businesses doesn't make sense, not that you are bad at buying businesses. And so one thing and why I obsess on building the education company we have is because I want you guys to learn how to become deal makers, not just go try to do one-off deal. That's how you mess up and you lose money. And this is a real game with risk where you can lose money. And so if you're going to do one-off deal. That's how you mess up and you lose money. And this is a real game with risk where you can lose money. And so if you're going to do anything, well, one, I have the book, so we can sling that. For 30 bucks, you should at least read this book, Main Street Millionaire, or go and watch our YouTubes for free or whatever. But spend a

decent amount of time learning. We call this the 90 day principle. I want you to spend at least 90 days, 20 minutes a day, sort of obsessing on how to do a deal. Here's the cool part about that. Unless you like being poor, it's really hard to be poor again when you understand deal making. Think about this for a second. You're a doctor. You get kicked out of the country. You need to move to a new place. You lose your medical license. Hard to transfer, right? Your skill set's not very transferable to make money. If you learn how to do deals, we can drop you in any country, in any industry, in any city. And the same thing exists as long as there are businesses that are trading things between people. It's like becoming a good seller. You can always sell.

A thousand percent. It is a next level of selling, right? Because in the beginning, when you're selling, you're saying, I want X for selling this one Y thing individually each time. We're saying, I want you to learn how when you sell something, you sell it once and you get paid forever. And that's what royalties, licensing and equity do. And I wish I knew that. Like, did you guys know? Do you know what the highest valued type of business is? The highest multiple businesses that exists. What do you think? I imagine there are businesses with recurring predictable revenue with low overhead. Maybe like, that's why there's some tech businesses get valued so high. I don't know if that's the right angle. You would think SaaS, right?

You'd think things like that. Yeah, exactly. But I'm thinking about it from an exit scenario perspective. No, you're right. That is right. Except one other, which is royalties. Royalties have a higher multiple than even SaaS because there's basically no fulfillment. They pay you forever and they're recurring on a monthly or quarterly basis.

And so I think when you learn money, you start to have some fun with the games that you play. And so, I mean, this is a perfect, this is a royalty business that we're sitting in right now. You guys are creating intellectual property. The intellectual property can be indexed at some point. You have a lot of people with intellectual property that could be licensed out to different countries, languages, universities, television stations. The property, that intellectual property that you have,

you could then charge a royalty fee on for somebody else to do X and Y and Z with. And the most interesting part, we have a friend here in Austin, actually. It's a fascinating business model. He's a former BlackRock or Blackstone guy, super smart in private equity. Sitting at a dinner with him, like, what do you do for a living? You know when you look at somebody and you're like, I can tell you're really rich. You don't even have to tell. I can just smell the money on you. So I'm like, what's your story? What's going on with you?

And he's like, I'm in the book industry. I'm like, that's not tracking. I have a book. These things make no money. This is a terrible way to make money. It's a business card. It's a business card. It's a resume.

And then I like it. I like writing. It's a value add. Yeah, totally. But this is like a terrible business to make money in. It's a value add. Yeah, totally. But this is like a terrible business to make money in. It's a credibility thing. Totally. But terrible for money. Like, just not good. Branding? Don't write a book if you want to make money. So I was like, huh, publishing? Like, explain that to me. That industry's kind of dying. Like, you guys aren't

making much money. You know, we're seeing people self-publish everywhere. You have like, your worst odds than venture capital. You know, I think they said that only 1% of books ever sell more than a thousand copies, which is fucking bananas if you think about that. And so anyway, bad odds. So I'm like, I'm sorry, that doesn't make sense. Like you just look like you've done well. What do you mean you're in book publishing? You go, actually what we do is we got a bunch of capital to buy up old archives of books, like not old enough where, because at some point they go into something, I can't remember what it's called, but it's like public domain, but like kind of like books that are 10 or 20 years old. And these books that they buy, they buy them in bulk. They do a bunch of licensing

deals with them and they accumulate a royalty portfolio. And he's like, and when he told me the returns on that, I was like, that's such a wild business. I imagine a lot of those books, like they get the media rights and they can turn them into television. That's exactly what they do. Yeah. Or they do a reprint and they do a reprint with a different artist and then, or a different author. And so I just thought that was fascinating, but it made me realize that there are levels to these games. And so if you don't have a lot of money, it's kind of fun to just figure out, okay, I don't know what I'm doing. Let's start with a tiny little business. Like, let's say somebody is listening and like, I don't know, they want to be Lauren. And so they're like, I wish I could start. I'm sure you get this all the time. It's like, how do you start

a skinny confidential today? And you're like, oh God, e-commerce. Are you sure you want to do that? That's a hard business, right? You would say like, that's hard. Are you sure? And they say, no, no, I really want to. You might be like, well, first, probably better if you had an audience. Because if you had an audience, you could sell things. Got a content market. To start, right? And so if they're like, I don't really know how to do that yet. You might say, okay, well, you could figure out first level of rich is how. So if I have a problem, what's the solution to my problem? How? Second level of rich is who? I don't know how to do it. Can I find somebody else to steal their 10,000 hours? I think the third level of rich is buy. How can I like with a higher likelihood

buy the solution to my problem? And in my case, I might be like, all right, if I wanted to start an e-commerce beauty company, I might go out and try to buy a bunch of podcast rights, for instance. And if I could buy the rights to a bunch of up-and-coming podcasters that don't know how to monetize yet, maybe I could sell things into their audience. Or if I go and I might buy up a tiny little Facebook group, like a Facebook group that has 10,000 people in it, they probably value that at 50 bucks and they don't realize that the engagement, because I have a product, I can monetize that group. And so what I want to get people to think about is like, I hate this idea that because we don't know how to value ourselves and businesses, that we have most businesses shut down. Like one,

there's about 11 million small businesses for sale in the US over the next five years. You mean they shut down because the people just get over running them or they retire or they die? Or they think they don't have a business, they have a job. They don't think there's any value in it. And I'm sure there's people listening right now. I mean, haven't you guys ever had a business you shut down? I've shut down a ton. Yeah. And I look back on it now and I'm like, that was so dumb because every business has assets in it. I should have sold my client list. I should have sold my inventory. I should have allowed one of my employees to take it over and asked for a percentage in perpetuity. Like I shouldn't have just shut things down that made

money. And like you buy a house, you don't like the house anymore. The house is termites. There's issues. You don't just go, yeah, fuck this thing. I'm out. I'm just like, not going to sell it. Like you would sell the house. Makes total sense what you're saying. In a weird way. And I think people are just, this is counterintuitive, but in some scenarios, and I just want to think about, I'm going to say this. You don't always have to start at the beginning. Like you can kind of cut some of the line. Right. Like you can just like, you can You can kind of cut some of the line. You can go and

kind of jump ahead in some scenarios without having to go and get your face pounded in over and over and over. That's something that I wish I knew earlier. I wish that... Listen, I don't want to dissuade people. You have to put in hard work and there's patience and there's all sorts of things that go into this. But there are so many things with books and courses and resources and things that exist where you just don't have to do everything the hard way. I've are so many things with books and courses and resources and things that exist where you just don't have to do everything the hard way yeah like i've done so many like i'd say the first 15 years of my career was just doing things the absolute hardest way a hundred percent i also think if you really want to create wealth and you're not using every fucking goddamn second

that you can to passively multitask to learn it's a a waste. I mean, any second that you can, if you're making the bed, put on a podcast. There's really no excuse. This is why I get frustrated sometimes when we get messages on like, how do you do this? Or can I pick your brain for coffee? I'm like, guys, all of this time scrolling and messaging and consuming could be spent learning and reading and going to places where people are already telling you exactly what to do. There is nothing that if you want, like if right now I decided I'd like to be one of the best video editors in the world, I'm not saying I have that talent, but I can go and spend a week online just going and figure out how do you do this?

There's YouTube. People just don't do that anymore. They don't, not enough people. I don't want to say people. I think there's maybe a lack of resourcefulness. Back in the day, if you wanted to be a blacksmith, the only way for you to learn how to be a blacksmith was probably by watching other blacksmiths and being taught. Now, if you want to go and be a developer or you want to get into finance, you want to start a podcast or you want whatever, these resources exist online and for free. Oh, yeah. I think what Cody said, too, about stealing someone's 10,000 hours is genius. You can steal someone's 10,000. The content that Gary Vee has put out is there's so much value. I mean, it's almost like it's almost too much information to say.

It's like in the beginning, people would say to him, like, why are you giving all this for free? It's like because 99 percent of the people won't actually go and do it. But it's so true. Well, you know what's super underrated this these days. Like if you want to go to the best MBA that exists out there in the world, like better than Harvard, it's go work for the smartest people you can find. And guess what? They're going to pay you to get an MBA. You get to steal their 10,000 hours while you work with them. And you probably get to do it with a bunch of other people who could travel through time. You were just saying this. I was saying maybe instead, and listen, I get shit for college and how you feel about

education is all personal. But my thing is like, is it a better idea to take on a bunch of debt in the hopes that one day you get hired by a really smart person? Or maybe you go and work for somebody for peanuts without taking on the debt, but you get all of that information and access, right? Like there was a girl and I'm not, she knows if she listens to this, she knows who she is. And she was in college and she said, okay, she started doing some, some graphic work for us. And she was like, okay, Michael, after I'm going to go and I'm going to move to New York and I'm going to try to work for this company and I'm going to go to school and to take on this debt. And I said, well, why don't you just like come work for me? And she's one of the people that

went off to start her own thing. And I was like, why just, why are you going to do it the hard way? Just like get access and then go on your own. I've never understood the concept of taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt so that one day you can hope to get a job. Just like maybe work cheaper earlier, get the access and then do your own thing. knobbery elitist situation like energy around college and i think there's there's like a there's like an undertone that if you didn't go to the right college that it's almost like ego but there's such a there's something to be said about just to your point getting acts like even even if you have to work for next to nothing if the education you can get being next to somebody like that and if your proposition is hey I just want to come work for you and I'll do whatever I can do and you don't have to pay me much, but I'm just going to get that education for a few years like that.

It's so valuable. Well, you're right. I mean, we can go to the data on this, which is very clear. The data says since the 1940s, we have had a steady single and sometimes double digit increase in the price of university in the U.S. And yet for the first time ever back in the 1990s, we saw that the value derived, meaning the salary that you make after going to college, is actually decreasing at a rate faster than the increased cost of college. So said differently, it is more expensive than ever

to attend college and you make less money than ever as a byproduct of going to college. So said differently, it is more expensive than ever to attend college and you make less money than ever as a byproduct of going to college. Now, not relative to those who never went to college, but comparing the cost to the relative value. So we have had a complete divorce by universities from actually delivering more money into our pockets. And I mean, bigger than that even is, you know, these days the average university endowment has a billion behind the number. I also have learned times a billion from podcasts and reading than I have learned in college. But, you know, I like, you know, one, we all have a bias for the thing that we've already done. And so, you know, if, for instance,

I went to Arizona State for pretty much free because that was the only college that I could go to for free. And that was where I was from. And I was scared about going away from my family. And then I went to a big corporate, you know, America to get another credential under my name because I didn't think that I was good enough by myself. I needed to have college. Yeah, I needed to have college. Then I needed to enough by myself. I needed to have college. Then I needed to have not one. I needed to have Vanguard, State Street, Goldman Sachs, all on my resume. And I needed an MBA from Georgetown. And then I also needed a PhD from Fundação de Estúdio Vargas. And I needed to do a thesis in Brazil. And why did I do all of that? Because I didn't think that I was valuable enough. And I think that is a lot of the problem with the youth today is they think that they're

not valuable enough and they can't figure out how to make themselves more valuable. I also think it's a forever student mentality where like I noticed like when I noticed this girl that I went to school with, she's so smart. She went to the four year school and then she went to business school. And meanwhile, she's going to business school. A bunch of people went off and built their own businesses. And to me, like that is business school is building your own business and throwing yourself in the deep end.

It's not just that. It's maybe a hard truth to face sometimes to hear that it's actually not a requirement. And what I mean by that is like, I think people think they're doing the right thing and you needed to go through all these steps so that you can one day do it and I cannot tell you how many times on this show I've heard people say he doesn't have a credential or who's he did it and I'm like yeah but I'm but I'm doing it without the credentials and without the things oh and that's my reality and I'm not saying that to be I I'm just, I think people, like if you want, if it's going to be valuable for you and you enjoy it and you can afford it and you have a path where it's needed,

fine. But I think if you're just telling yourself it's required when it's actually not, like that's a slippery slope. Or if you're telling yourself you have to take on the debt to do the thing you want and you don't, that's a slippery slope too. The best business school is being in business and you do not need anybody's permission to make a ton of money. And universities have indoctrinated us to think the opposite. And I think the world is waking up to that pretty quickly. And if you have already gone to university, awesome, use it all the way. But let me tell you what, I mean, we have 3000 students that we've taught to do M&A and I can always tell when a new one comes in. I remember one of my CEOs said this to me at the time.

It was my first private company. I'd worked a bunch of big public companies, fancy companies. And I went to this company and I was like, well, you know, here's how we do this and here's how I think we should grow this business. And he kind of smiles at me and he nods and he goes, it's going to take you a while to rub the corporate off you. And I was like, what do you mean by that?

And now when we have somebody come to one of my companies and they went to Harvard or they went Harvard in particular, but a few other schools too, like that, I always say it's going to take a while to rub the Harvard off you. Because the thing is Harvard teaches you that you are superior. And in many ways you are, you are, you are some of the top at getting into Harvard. But you know what you're not the top at? Being in business because you haven't done fucking business yet. And so I would take a callous hands, you know, former plumber who had run a plumbing team and a business and knew a P&L and wanted to buy another plumbing company over a Harvard, I'm doing a search fund and I'm going to buy a plumbing company

any day of the week. And my favorite thing is they come up to me sometimes. And like, I had a guy come up to me the other day and always makes me chuckle. He's like, you know, I'm like, what's your story? What are you doing? Who are you? And he's like, yeah, I'm doing acquisition, entrepreneurship through acquisition, which is like a fancy way of saying I'm trying to buy a business. And I always know if you're going to put a lot of valves into things, you know, it's probably not going well. Like you're over-complicating it. You're making yourself look more sophisticated than you need to. It's not that big of a deal. And so that's like an immediate sign of like, you know, you're peacocking. But anyway, I go, okay, let's give them benefit of the doubt.

Cool. What are you looking to buy? Yeah, I'm going to buy a, I can't remember what, manufacturing company, a service-based company in Tennessee. Okay, great. How's it going? Really good. You know, I've been doing the search for 14 months. Awesome. Cool. Me in response, hey, like we know a few things about that. So like, if I can ever help, you know, let me know. I'm happy to help. No, I've got it completely under control. And I just, because I was feeling snarky that day. I just look at him. I'm like, it's been 14 months. You haven't bought a business. You've never done it before. And I go like, do you know what we do? And he's like, yeah, I know what you guys do. I'm like, why would you not like, not even rudely. Like, I'm just curious. Like,

why would you not ask for help? And I think it's because higher institutions in higher education are a lot like finance. They teach you that you need to know and that you look better when you know, as opposed to I think what business teaches you is just give me the fucking right answer. What it also teaches you is that you don't ever really know. And the only way to know is to try a bunch of stuff and break a bunch of stuff and look stupid a lot of the time. You're going to lose money if you are not right. And so you have immediate feedback

loop you don't have i don't think there's one right way like sometimes with the university they make it seem like there's one right way there's lots of different ways to skin a cat so true before you go and you by the way you have to come back on because i have so many more questions on here and just in time broke mentality versus wealthy mentality leave our audience with that please broke mentality is somebody who thinks that it's everybody else's faults and you're not capable of doing it A rich mentality is somebody who realizes you just haven't met the right who and you haven't asked the right question yet And the second that you do that you will probably surprise yourself and everybody else around you And how do you when people how do you get people to make that switch? You stop telling yourself why you

can't do things and start asking yourself how you could. I mean, I always loved that Tony Robbinsism, I think, which is life happens not to you, but for you. And I think it's the same in my team. I'll say to them often, let's try this on for a second. I'll say, instead of telling me why we can't do something, tell me how we could do it. Like theoretically, no constraints. And I think that's really hard for us to do as humans, because originally we just go, that can't work. No, we can't. It's scary. What if we can't achieve it? And what if instead you just allow yourself a how question instead of a why not question? It doesn't mean you have to do it, but at least you train your brain to start thinking, oh, that's crazier. That's crazier. that's crazier. And if you get like the crazy opportunity to work for somebody who's totally irrational and thinks about

doing impossible things all the time, it also rubs off on you. And so maybe try to get around a few crazy people. By the way, if you start, if you get into a business and you create a culture where most of the time people are just asking how you can do things instead of why aren't you doing things, it completely changes the company. And if you're a contributor to a company and you start asking how you can do something as opposed to why you can't, you will quickly become one of the rising stars. Cody Sanchez, I have to go buy a car wash. Can you tell everyone where to find you? Cody Sanchez on all the socials and the book is at msmbook.com. Very, very cool. You guys go follow her on social media.

So much value. Thank you for coming on the show. Come back anytime. And your podcast. Tell us where to find you on your podcast. Oh, right. Big Deal Podcast. I'm a terrible marketer, pretty good investor,

but the Big Deal Podcast, it's really for people who want to talk about making money, but also making a little bit of a wave in the world. I love it. Thank you for coming on the show. November 28th through December 2nd, Black Friday, Cyber Monday on shopskinnyconfidential.com. You get 30% off. Go run. Stock up on all the things. Get all the gifts. Go to shopskinnyconfidential.com for 30% off everything.