The Startup Ideas Podcast - How to Get Rich Building Boring Businesses with Codie Sanchez

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Codie Sanchez is no stranger to thinking outside the box. The founder of Contrarian Thinking and Managing Partner at Entourage Effect Capital, she shares her path from traditional finance to founder and investor with more than 100,000 newsletter subscribers. In the last 12 years, she’s bought and sold more than 60 businesses and now runs a portfolio of 26 companies. On this episode of Where It Happens, Codie joins hosts Sahil Bloom (@sahilbloom) and Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg) to explore arbitrage business opportunities, the SBA loan “hack,” and the massive upside of scaling unsexy businesses.Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comTHIS EPISODECodie Sanchez: https://twitter.com/Codie_SanchezSahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloomGreg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergProduction & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/FIND US ON SOCIALTwitter: https://twitter.com/_trwihInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/_trwihTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_trwihWeb: https://trwih.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6aB0v6amo3a8hgTCjlTlvhApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-it-happens/id1593424985SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORThis episode is brought to you by Beam. We can’t get enough of their Dream Powder. We both personally take this before bed a few times a week and wake up refreshed in the morning. Their nano-CBD helps improve your body’s ability to absorb CBD, making their product the perfect supplement before you go to bed. And now Beam is offering $20 off any order of $75 or more with the code ROOM at beamorganics.com/room.

Every single time we get on, I'm obliged to make fun of Greg's headphones and headset. So let me just register that as something for today. I'm two whiskeys deep. I need to make fun of Greg's headphones. I'm actually not. I am one pre-workout drink and one and a half Dunkin' Donuts large, cold brews deep, though. Oh, my God. How are you not having a heart attack?

See, this is what I was saying, Cody. Before we started recording, you said, Oh, isn't sleeping on a bad, isn't sleeping on a soft bed bad for you? And I said, uh, maybe, but like, there's a lot of things I do that might be bad for me. And there you have it. There's one. Jeez. No, I don't.

I couldn't do that. Not to mention, like, weren't you a pro athlete? Isn't this what's going on here? Yeah, well, I mean, caffeine was a huge part of that, though. I mean, I, the reason that I have to drink this much caffeine is actually because of my athletic days because I, so I'd hurt my shoulder at the end of my career. And in order to go into a game pain free, I literally was, you know, taking, not to mention the things they would inject you with and whatever, like, you know,

anti-inflammatories, but I was taking four excedrons, which I think each have like a hundred milligrams of caffeine plus drinking a large rock star before going into a game. And that was at like, I was a late reliever. So it would be at like nine at night. I would pop four excreterens, chug a rock star and then go into the game. And there were a few times when I got on the mound and I literally couldn't fucking see. Like the catcher would be putting down signs, right? They're like doing the one, two, three, whatever. And I would have to tell them like, no, you have to do body signals because we had body signs that you could do because I cannot read your fingers because like my vision was sort of shaky.

That sounds like a good idea. Yeah. You should keep doing that. It was a blast. It was a blast. But that's why I have to drink so much caffeine now because I feel like I blew out the receptors. I don't know about you guys, but I've had a pretty bad relationship with sleep for most of my life. I never had much of a routine around it.

And honestly, my performance suffered. My ability to recall information, to think clearly, to think creatively, suffered because of my sleep. But now I've found something that changed the game for me. And that thing is Beam Dream, a functional sleep product that has really changed my life. I'm excited to get to share it with you all today and so that you can get a special discount to try it. 98% of people surveyed fall asleep faster when taking Beam Dream and 99% of people experience better sleep quality. The results are in the data. If you have an aura ring like me, you can actually track it and see the impact of when you're taking it and when you're not.

It's very real. And if you don't love it, there is a money back guarantee. Get your money back guaranteed if you don't love it. For a limited time, you can get $20 off when you go to beamorganics.com slash room and use code room at checkout. Again, that's B-E-A-Morganics.com slash room and use code room for $20 off at checkout. I guarantee you're going to love it. So welcome to the show. Welcome.

Thanks. I'm stoked to be here. No whiskey for me, just water. I'll be the healthy one on this podcast. Well, we're just so excited to have you because, first off, I have been an admirer from afar for a long time prior to us becoming friends of all of the content you put out, the different things you write about. And also how you're actually like a doer. Greg and I talk about this a lot. There's a lot of kind of idea people out there. And I probably bucket myself into this. You're actually a doer because you're going out and getting this shit done in a real world and then talking about it and teaching people along. the way. So kudos. Thank you. Sometimes, you know, best days, yes, for sure. Yeah, and it's new, right? Like, I feel like you're not just regurgitating other stuff on the internet and putting it out there. Like, you know, people like you, Nick Huber, people like that who are talking about, you know, boring, quote unquote boring businesses. and just like spreading the gospel there.

You know, we all thought, you know, at least I thought, like, okay, if I'm going to go into business, I got to go raise venture capital. I got to go do this whole thing. I got to move to San Francisco. And you're teaching people that that's not the case. And so it's really cool to see. Well, thank you. Yeah, it's been fun.

I was just talking to a bunch of investors today about it. Although I get why you guys all move to San Francisco. Francisco. I thought you were nutty back in the day. You couldn't have like paid me to live there during the heyday. But now that I'm in Austin, I do get it. I get the power of place and that when you walk out and you have investors and people everywhere, I get the, I get it. I get why San Francisco existed in its traditional form. Like right now, actually, I think San Francisco, I'm going to go short San Francisco. And it's like trendy to be short San Francisco. So it kind of pisses me off that I am. Like, you know, if you go listen to Keith Rabeau, who I think is awesome or, you know, some of these other Miami folk that are like very short San Francisco vocally or you go to the like VC crowd in San Francisco who is actively talking about how bad San Francisco is now. I just think the

previous allure of living there. I lived in the Bay Area for 12 years. So I lived there until from 2009 until summer of 2021 when we moved to New York now and we live in the suburbs outside New York. But the allure of San Francisco was exactly what you said. It was that you could walk outside and there was like venture capitalists here, amazing founder here, you know, you go. to the Equinox in Palo Alto. I met some of my like most amazing mentors at this random equinox and Pelotto because you were just in it and it felt that way. But that has just fundamentally changed about the place. And they haven't done anything to promote the cost of living being better. I mean, it's so fucking expensive to live there and you pay extraordinarily high taxes.

The weather in San Francisco is kind of trash. The Bay Area is super nice around it and really nice, but San Francisco is really cold. And people have left. I mean, now that you can work from wherever and you can live in Austin, all the tech companies have amazing campuses. in Austin, people have moved to Miami, people are moving to New York. You just have other options if you want to be a founder or you want to go build something. You don't have to be in the Bay Area in the way that you had to, I think, 10, 15 years ago. No, I totally agree. Although, you know what cracks me up about this being trendy now to say this about San Francisco. Like, I was listening to the All In pod, which I really like. But I was giggling because, you know, a bunch of them

were like, oh, it's terrible, Newsome, whatever. I'm like, I know that if I looked up the voting record of you guys. Most of the people in tech are the reason why it is where it is today, because I think we should just start off by like ticking off at least half of your listeners and that's probably good for your show. But like I find it really funny that now it's like, all this Silicon Valley people are leaving. Like it's a surprise what's happened there. So I don't think you're, you know, while it might be trendy to say it, I think, you know, a lot of us have probably been in the weeds kind of like doing the work, trying to make businesses more profitable and not simultaneously talking out of both sides of our mouth.

So I always, it always gives me a giggle. I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, I'd be curious, Greg,

for your perspective, because you, you lived there for a period. You can't, that was like the, that was the golden land for you, right? Like, you came from living in Canada,

and that was like where you had to be. That was the mecca. So like, what was your experience with it? And would you live there now? Like, would you start a business there? Yeah,

I mean, when I, I left Canada because I had to, you know, not because I, particularly want to, all my friends and family were there in Canada. But what happened was I knew that if I wanted to increase the probability of success, I needed to go there. So I went there, and when I was in my 20s, I was like, let's put it this way. You increased your odds of success

if you went to San Francisco, if you were in a third or fourth or fifth or even second to your city. So, it's like the surface area thing. We've talked about this, Greg. Like you expand your surface area for luck to happen if you're in those environments because you're on the street. There's random people that you see building. So you think that's changed. So like, for example, one of my first trips to San Francisco, you know, I was at a party

and I ended up meeting the CEO of a company called Stumble upon. And, you know, he was like, I want to buy your company basically at the party. like that only happened in San Francisco at that time. Now, you know, the center of gravity is the internet, in my opinion. And the most, like, if you want to be really efficient with your time, like, you know, bang out a bunch of Zoom meetings. Organize your date, you know, I just feel like travel time. And it's just, you know, it's just, it really, I believe, and this might be a hot take because I know everyone's like all about going back to the office, go to places like New York go to places like San Francisco. But I do believe that the most efficient

use of your time is to be internet native and internet first. Yeah, I do. So the thing with the, to just like connect to your point on the internet is now the new standard. Like I am short on two sides. Like I am short San Francisco. Like I think San Francisco is dead as a city. I just, I think San Francisco is super overrated as a place to live. And I get shit for this all the time. me, my sister-in-law lives there and she's amazing and awesome and enjoys it a lot. I think San Francisco is like a pretty crappy place to live nowadays. I'm also short the idea that you literally don't have to be anywhere in order to do amazing things. Like I still think that human connection and being in person and seeing people and being in it still matters to some extent.

So what I think is the future is going to be this like hybrid where you're either in a city where you can still, you know, kind of have some level of connection or you just spend more time. going to the places where you can do that. Because I still think human connection, like our bias is to be connected as humans and to actually experience touch of a physical human in a real way that you just can't replicate in the internet, metaverse, whatever people want to say. I don't think you can replicate it.

Okay, I want to respond to that real quick. And then, Cody, curious your perspective. So all I'm saying is if I had to pick a default, default being San Francisco in South of Market, like you're in it, spending, you know, spending 24-7 there, or my default being like anywhere else, basically, and spending, you know, meeting people maybe once a month in these like short, high-bursts kind of like, you know, if it's like ETH Denver, if you're in crypto, or, you know, there's just so many different, like, conferences and sort of South by Southwest, things like that where you just, like, come in and you're like, hey, I'm a real person, I swear.

I'm long that, that world. I actually totally agree. And I think it's going to be more like deal vacation at the same places. Like, I mean, I think it'll be like me running into Saw Hill in Miami like we did. I was there for something. He was there for something. We both ended up being at the same hotel. And we're like, oh, yeah, by the way, we should probably do a pod.

should do a thing. What are we like, oh yeah, I met you before at another conference. We don't live in the same state, but like I probably text you randomly more than I do a lot of friends that live here in Austin. So I think I'm wrong on that. I think in the future we're going to, we're going to live where we used to vacation and we're going to just go work where we used to live. And that will be the default mechanism.

I saw it massively. I was just in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, and the place is booming. Jack Dorsey's got a spot. We got Giselle and, you know. no, Brady's down there. There's dirt ropes. There's like no infrastructure. And we have this massive tech scene that's happening in Santa Teresa Costa Rica,

where the Wi-Fi is enabled by a bunch of tech dudes. And so I actually agree with you, I think. And then there's also this other thing. We split time between Austin and San Diego, unless you're the IRS, that I'm only ever in Austin. And the reason that we do with San Diego is because when you're in Austin, there's so much going on right now that I get FOMO, and then I actually miss the deep work.

And so it's nice to jet in and out as opposed, like, I couldn't operate like you guys do in New York. There's too much going on. Yeah, you hit on a bunch of interesting things there. First off, I think the infrastructure, like just from a business idea standpoint, the infrastructure that will enable that future that we're all kind of surrounding around as being the future is very interesting. First off, Starlink and what it's enabling in terms of being able to live wherever and have high speed internet is fucking amazing. And so, like, people can say whatever they want about Elon Musk and hate him, love him, whatever. but Starlink is fucking incredible and the ability to go get high-speed internet access

in the middle of nowhere in Costa Rica or the middle of nowhere in Nevada, you know, Iowa, wherever you want to go build a place and a ranch and have an escape, that's incredible and game changer. Developing world, it's going to be a total game changer. All of the things that are going to allow you to kind of do more short-term stays

cost-effectively and kind of convene these groups are going to be really interesting. I'm investing in that space a little bit, but it's hard to see like exactly what's going to work because right now short-term rental is still very expensive. It's hard to actually manage as a lifestyle for most people on most kind of living salaries and wages. A lot of interesting things, though, happening there. And then to your point on deep work, I've never really thought about that. I've never considered the fact that you need a place to be able to escape and do it. Greg, you have

your place in Montreal. I think that's probably a cool example that there's not as much going on there as there is in Miami. I mean, I really, so we were literally just texting about this right before where I'm an unhappy person unless I have big blocks of time devoted to like deep work. Like, you know, some people, you know, don't have caffeine and you can just like read it on their face and they're just grumpy. Me, it's like the deep work time. Was that a shot at me right there? Do I get grumpy on you when I don't have caffeine, Greg? No, you don't go.

Actually, you, it's funny. When I get texts from Sahel, it's either. he's highly caffeinated or he's one or two whiskeys deep. That's basically like 99% of my life, bro. And I love it. Catch me first thing in the morning or like, I don't know. I mean, by the way, I don't drink that fucking much. Like, I'm realizing my mom is like texting me, oh, like, are you drinking too much?

Because I'm doing these threads on Sunday night when I have a couple drinks and I write and it's free form and it's fun for me. I really enjoy it. But it's leading to this perception, I think, that I literally am just drunk all the time. And I need to figure out how to like balance. Like I do, I enjoy whiskey and I really like having whiskey. But I'm also, I work out every single day and like I eat very healthy. And so I don't know. I think I need to like drive a balance in the branding here.

I don't know. I think the Rock's proved that you could basically talk about your tequila brand ad nauseum and nobody thinks about you that way. So I think maybe it's just a whiskey brand's the next step. And then you can have an excuse for talking about it so much, you know. Can we, I want to just shift gear. because I have one thing on my list that I do want to talk about before we get into a bunch of stuff that we had for Cody. This OpenC hack, because I think we have an interesting group of people right on right now.

Like Greg is my Web 3 guy that I learn a lot from. I'm kind of like the, I don't know, curious observer trying to learn a lot, et cetera. And Cody, I feel like is more openly like questions all of these things from a first principle standpoint. So I feel like we need to talk about it. So OpenC, just to set the stage, like over this weekend, this past weekend before we filmed this, OpenC had a hack, was what was reported initially. And a hacker came in and stole hundreds of NFTs worth, you know, well into the seven figures from a bunch of its users. To his credit, OpenC CEO, co-founder Devin Finzer, who I think we know, Greg, I think you know him, really like took control of the situation, immediately came out and put together this great thread, kind of laying out what their investigation was showing.

And basically what it sounded like happened was that someone duplicated an email of OpenC that looked like an OpenC email and it was a fishing attack. So anyone that kind of clicked into it and connected their wallet thinking it was OpenC, actually these hackers had access. And the hackers were kind of smart in that they basically got access a few weeks ago and then did nothing. They just sat there and they had access but didn't do anything right away so that it wasn't immediately obvious. And then what they did was they went in and they stole a bunch of high value NFTs. and they sold them immediately at kind of like below market prices so that they would move quickly. Because my initial question with this shit, by the way, is like, how do you steal an NFT? Because now, like, it's an NFT.

So you can't display it because it's like, oh, that's the stolen NFT. And you also can't sell it because it's like, dude, that NFT is stolen. Like we all know that that's stolen. It's the one image. So I'm curious to get perspectives on this because I think it's interesting. It's interesting in the context of like decentralized versus centralized and the puts and takes on all of this. And also, like, what do you do with stolen funds on the blockchain?

Because it's all public. Like, I know where those funds are in the wallets that got the funds from these sales. So, Greg, maybe you go first and then I want Cody's take on this. Okay. Well, first and foremost, I want to say that when this happened, I think it was Saturday night. It ruined my whole night. My night was completely ruined.

So here I am having dinner, you know. some steak, a glass of Merlot. I'm like, kind of like relaxing, you know, at the end of a long week, you know, time off. All of a sudden, you know, I'm walking to the bathroom. I pull up Twitter while I'm walking there. And I see like, open sea hacked, open sea hacked. NFT's gone.

Like, Ethereum gone. And I'm like having heart palpitations, like going into the bathroom. room. So I end up, you know, try not to think about it, put my phone in my pocket, airplane mode, you know, aka panic mode. And I get back to my apartment and it was just like two to four hours of me just trying to figure out what is going on. And it was, it was tough.

I basically did not go to sleep that night because I didn't know of my wallet or set of wallets basically were compromised. I think, so that's how I felt. That's the first thing. The second thing is we're going to see more of this. This is just going to happen again and again and again until we figure out playbooks and, you know, yeah, playbooks for security, et cetera. So basically it wasn't a hack.

Everyone was saying, you know, OpenC was hacked. OpenC wasn't hacked. OpenC wasn't hacked. People were being fished. And the difference between a hack and a fish is you basically got this email that looked like an OpenC email. And they basically said, hey, connect your wallet. And when you connect your wallet to go do this like basically housekeeping thing. And when you connect your wallet, it basically like wiped out your, you know, or it's, yeah, basically had access to your wallet.

And then it wiped it out. So. Cody, what are you got? Yeah. Greg feels so stressed about this, man. I feel sad. Well, yeah. Well, I'm still recovering.

I'm recovering from it. You didn't get fished. You didn't get fish. I didn't get fish. But I did see that original email and I could tell that it was weird. So I think, like, for everyone listening, like, if it's weird, if it looks weird, like, don't click that link. Like, don't click links.

Honestly, like, don't click links. And crypto is not going to be mainstream until people. People could click links, period. Yeah, but that said, I mean, people get fished in their Bank of America bank account today. So, like, my take is, like, that will always exist no matter how intelligent the software gets. And in fact, I think it'll probably just get more and more difficult. I mean, you guys know this because your name's on the internet too, but the amount of text I get every single day that's like, Cody, you want me to invest in this crypto fishing or this crypto investment scheme?

And I'm like, no, that's the 332 fake profiles that are on Instagram that text you from my account that look like me. And so, you know, that happens, I think, all the time. And then imagine, like, what will happen once deep fakes start becoming real and somebody can pop up inside of, you know, Greg's Twitter DMs. And it looks like Sawhill's video. And he's like, dude, check this crazy thing out that I just got for this new shares. Like, you got to buy it right now on OpenC. And then you click on it. And Sawhill literally told you to do it because it's a video of him.

But it wasn't Sahel. It was a deep fake. And so I think it's just going to get even weirder. But then again, I also think you're like almost living in the metaverse right now. How wild is that? That OpenC could not even actually happen a hack to you, but you could have a visceral reaction to it from something that didn't happen in reality. The difference with mainstream that like with the traditional finance, I agree with you.

You can get fish in your Bank of America account, but you're going to get that money back. And if it happens, like you'll be either insured and they will recover the the money. I've had that happen actually. Like I've gotten like sent a wire to someone that, you know, did a like asked for a wire and it was the wrong wire and you get the money back and like the FBI gets involved and it's there's like real due process around it. With this, there's actually no way to get these NFT back. NFTs back in like a traditional way, right? And so that's the challenge is like it's not FDIC insured. It's the kind of the downside of decentralization in some context is that you are self-custodying all of this.

There is not a bank that's actually holding this for you. You are the bank, which is a plus and it's a feature and a bug, right? The bug is if you're not really strict and good with security, this kind of shit can happen. And it will continue to happen. I think there are going to be some like cool features and platforms and things that rise so that people are better about their own security and managing it. But it is a unique challenge. As an aside to this, I got scammed, which is a funny story with all of this.

It is like a watch out for it. I want to see if I can actually just share my screen to show you. guys this because I literally got scammed on an NFT scam where I connected my wallet to something for a friend and lost like one-eath or something like that. I actually don't. Here, let me see if I can, let me see if I can share my screen because it's actually pretty funny. So context of this is our friend Josh Fabian, Greg and I are texting on like a Saturday night. Josh is the founder of this really cool business, Metify. He's like, you know, it's a $100 million plus business. Amazing. And Josh hits me up. He's like, yo, there's this dope NFT drop of this

clone X thing. It's, you know, it was RTF, KT, which late, like a few days later got acquired by Nike, I think. It was super cool. And he's like, hey, you know, I want to buy one of these, but like the money hasn't transferred to my metamask yet. Like, can you just get me one? And I was like, yeah, sure, I got you. And so I buy him one and send it to him. And then a few hours later, I'm in bed and I get text from him being like, dude, they're doing a clone drop of the same thing, but much cheaper, we should get a few more of these. And he sends me a link to this, you know, to the website. And so I pulled it up on my phone and it looks kind of normal on my phone. And, you know, there's the normal like feature of connector wallet to buy one. And so I connect my

wallet and I, you know, buy three at point three each. At the time, I think Heath was like 4,000 or north of 4,000. And I click it and it goes through. And then suddenly it's like, hey, put in your seed phrase in order to access your NFTs. And I remember, being like, that's fucked up. That's definitely not right. And so I closed it out and deleted it and like disconnected my wallet. But the Eath was gone, right? Like I sent it to this thing and the Eath was gone. And the reason it happened, well, first off, I gave my buddy a bunch of shit and he had to pay me for my lost Eith. And it was hilarious. But the reason it happened was here, I'm going to share my screen if this works. I don't know if you can see this. But this was the original site. And it looked like

beautiful. It was beautiful design. I took a screenshot of it. It was like gorgeous. really nicely done. And then this was the, um, was the fake one. And it wasn't even like size enabled. Like it wouldn't shrink. It just was like really bad and shittily done. Um, and I fell for it. And it was like, I don't know if anyone could see that, um, on the thing when I was doing it. But it was like very obvious if you were on a computer, not obvious when you were on mobile. And so I fell for it and it became this, you know, I lost $4,000 sending money to a scam. Has anybody ever recovered any of this? stuff? Like, is there a cybercrimes unit that goes after these sort of things? And have they ever

won? Well, the BitFinex thing, the BitFinex thing just happened where, you know, that couple just got arrested like a couple weeks ago for like the $4 billion of stolen Bitcoin that they were trying to launder, which is fucking hilarious too. Because like it was 70 million and laundering 70 million feels doable. But all of a sudden it appreciated it. And laundering $5 billion is literally impossible. But they did recover a bunch of that from those wallets. And so I think that's going to either be returned or go through some process. But it's very difficult. The most famous example, I think, was in 2017 or 16 with the Dow. Have you heard what happened there with the Dow and Ethereum Hard Fork? Oh, yeah. Tell that story. That's an interesting story, actually. It's the original

Dow. It's the original Dow. It was like Dow number one. So these people had like the idea for the Dow basically, create the Dow, raised, like, I don't remember, $70 million, millions of dollars, end up getting millions, you know, I think it was like 40, 50, 60 million hacked. And Vitalik, and this is all in ETH, and Vitalik, the co-founder of Ethereum, basically was like, we're not going to let these hackers get away with it. So he basically forked Ethereum. So there is Ethereum classic, which is the original Ethereum, which is where the hackers,

the hackers owned some of that, ETH. And then the current Ethereum, which is Ethereum, ETH, you know, so he basically, Hack never happened. Yeah, exactly. Hack never happened. So he was able to, you know, that's the most famous example. I think it's so funny. And Cody, I want your take on this.

So I come from like a more traditional mindset on these things. And I think it's so hilarious that you literally can have a world where you're like I don't like the thing that happened in the actual universe that was happening. So I'm actually just going to be like, record scratch, like rewind. Actually, no, that didn't happen, that path. Like, that can keep happening. But now I just created this alternate universe where like, here's the shit that happened. And we're going to go down this different path.

Don't worry about over there. And the fact that you can do that programmatically and like create a world where those kind of things didn't happen is mind bending and also kind of hilarious to me. Also, I mean, it should maybe shows my naivity. but I'm not sure that I would want if what I want is decentralization and not having, you know, autocratic tendencies, an individual to be able to do that either. And I know there's this critique already about Ethereum and I don't know if it delved from this originally, but I also don't love that.

I might rather they get away with a hack. Yeah, the free market mindset would be get away with the hat. You got the hack. Like you kind of, in a capitalist sense, you like figured out and exposed some glitch. the thing and you got away with it and got out. But yeah, I mean, this is the big pushback. Like Bitcoiners, hardcore like Bitcoin Maxis. Think, like, point to this as a classic example of like, if it's possible that

Vitalik can literally just stand up and be like, no, this did not happen and move in the other direction with his like, you know, big whatever. I'm imagining him like putting down a saber or whatever those fucking things. A staff like, no, you shall not pass and we're going to like go in the other direction. If he can do that, what else can he do? I don't know. Interesting. Anyway, I feel like I went down this rabbit hole with Cody that was so far off coin laundromats that I wanted to talk about.

I want to circle back because that's way more interesting, by the way, Cody. Yeah, I don't know. Well, we can happily talk about. I'm sure that'll be out of. Actually, I was just looking at this ATM deal, totally random, investing in ATMs and there are funds that can do this and you can own a rabbit of them and whatever. But I had to actually take the model and put a negative assumption on it that like, in seven years, you know, this might not be necessary, you know, or in four years. Interesting.

What does that look like in 10 years? And because how these models work is you really make no money for the first three to four years, you basically break even. And then after it, you can start to have a pretty nice little return. But my thought was, wow, if we do it right, we probably won't still be printing coins and using them in that realm. Can we just like set the stage a little bit on you and your experience set? So like I first came across you. from a Twitter thread that you wrote about, you know, you started at, I was burned out in finance, working on someone else's schedule, tired of having my time tied to money. So I started investing in cash flowing businesses, not sexy startups, but boring businesses. One of my favorite small deals

netted $67,000 a year and $100,000 at close with quarters. And it is an amazing thread. I encourage people to check your Twitter out at Cody underscore Sanchez. But it's an amazing thread about laundromats that you invested in and how you were making money off. of it. Can you just like set the stage a little bit on who you are and how you came to be the like boring, the queen of boring businesses on Twitter, TikTok, all of the platforms that you're dominating now? So funny. Yeah, making my father proud one quarter investment at a time. So I, you know, I was similar to you. So I like we've talked about this before, but I was traditional investment finance background. You know, how do you know anybody who worked at Goldman?

they tell you immediately. So like I did that whole thing. And and basically for a long time, when this first happened, I was running an asset management business in Latin America. So that was actually kind of fun. We built up a business where we sold investments and structured investments for big government sovereign wealth funds, that type of thing. So I was a young gun flying all around Latin America and trying to talk them about different ways to invest. And to be frank, you know, if anybody's worked in finance, you know, it was really long hours nonstop and then really long plane flights, like 13-hour red eyes where then I go have like 10 road show meetings the next day about equity deals and whatever. And so I was really, I was really burned out. But the crazy

thing about finance, I think a lot of people connect with this these days with the great resignation and stuff you guys have talked about here before. I was like, man, I'm making really good money, but I am so tired. I don't even want to use it. I have more points than anybody could ever have, but I don't want to get on another plane. And so I started trying to think about my access strategy. And in finance, we don't really have that many skills. Like we can look at numbers and like, I guess we can sell people things at varying prices. But I was like, what could I go do? And at the time, I was investing in a few private equity deals.

And we did one deal that made a ton of money for the investors. And it was actually in the HVAC and plumbing health services space. And I remember like helping them finalize this deal. And I can't remember what the exact number was. But at the end of it, the guys who ended up closing this deal repackaging the stuff and then reselling it made tens of millions of dollars. And I made whatever I made at the time. Did well, but not tens of millions.

And I remember thinking, God, this business is so straightforward. And I bet there are other businesses like this for sale. And why am I like making money for all these other guys? Why couldn't I just go do this deal by myself? And so I started thinking about what would be like the laziest way to buy a business and have some ROI on it that didn't mean that I had to understand, heating and cooling units work because I didn't know how to do that or go clean somebody's house because I didn't want to do that. And so I stumbled upon literally by accident laundromats.

And we ended up buying one. That wasn't actually the first deal we did. I did a slew of them. And when I say we have had varying deal partners. Anytime I start on a new venture, I always try to partner with somebody else that's done something like it before so I don't lose a bunch of money. But laundromats, car washes, things like production services for like this. podcast, for instance. I just started saying, well, if I could do these big deals in finance private equity, why couldn't I do them by myself? And I started my own little mini cold co company back when I didn't really know what that meant. So I have so many questions here. First off, you're crushing it in terms of actually explaining these things to people

in a way that everyone can understand, which I'm just obsessed with. Like I often write about like Feynman and, you know, kind of abstracting complexity and being able to deliver things in a simple way. What you're doing is not simple and you make it feel like anybody can do it in a simple way. And honestly, you've probably empowered a lot of people to go and take control of their own lives this way, which is very cool and you should be, you should be very proud of. Can you talk about some of the, I don't, I hate saying hacks, but like the tricks and kind of things you've done along the way that have made it really attractive financially. I've seen you write a lot of. I've seen you right of about like QSBS as an example is something that everyone should understand.

Anything there or with the like holding company structure, you know, a la Warren Buffett and Bertrand Hathaway, like things that people that are listening to this should be thinking about if they're interested in going down a path of like acquiring and operating, these operating companies. Yeah. God, there's so many things. Well, first of all,

everybody talks about real estate and real estate's ability to create wealth and to offset taxation. And it's true. Except that if you think about it at a higher level, Where you make all the money is before the arbitrage happens, right? So like in the beginning of the stock market, people made a lot of money when they could invest in primary with individual stocks because there wasn't a market that was democratized.

It was really easy to trade access on. Same thing with crypto. People are making a lot of money while there's hacks and fail points and difficulties, right? And then over time, what happens is those arbitrage opportunities or the difficulty of doing something decreases, which means the return typically decreases. to do. And so this has happened in stocks. It's happened in real estate. It will happen in crypto, but I think we're very early stages. And it hasn't happened yet in private deals either. And so,

you know, when we think about buying businesses, my favorite part about it is that it's not normalized yet. It will be. But for right now, people still, when I say, well, I buy businesses for living, what do they say to me? Must be nice. How much did Dad give you? Right. Like, and there's also some sexism there, by the way. A lot of sexism. Yeah. But I think the real thing that people don't realize is you don't need millions to do this. To your point, if I was going to give like two quick hacks on how to buy a business, let me say to my car salesy voice, like how to buy a business of little no money down. But basically without a lot of money. This is the TikTok headline. Oh man, I know. But it's, you know, gets the people right about it. No, it works.

Anyway, so there's like two things that I think people should know about. One is SBA loans. And so If anybody takes anything off of this podcast, I think it should be go reach out to your local SBA loan office. They're all listed online and just take a meeting with them and say, can you explain to me how I could buy a business using the government's money without having to have great credit or a lot of capital on hand? And if you say that to somebody at the SBA, they'll explain to you the varying SBA loans. And that's the small business administration. Okay, yeah. So the SBA is the small business administration. You can go online and find, they're basically banks that are SBA bank.

that are SBA partners. And so they're kind of registered with SBA and can make these SBA loans. And you can go, anyone can go and apply to have an SBA loan. And they're extremely attractive terms for people that are going and taking them out, right? Like really long duration, low rates. Really attractive. They are personal recourse, though, right? Yes, which means that you have to put your name on the line.

Your money is on the line. But I would say, like the thing that surprised me and a lot of people is they think, well, I have to have millions or I have to have a really strong credit. And actually, that would be true when you buy a house, right? You buy a house based off their prediction of your future cash flow. That's what a mortgage is. But when you go and buy a business, they do it kind of the same way. They buy, you buy a business based off the future cash flow of the business or the assets

of the business, not you. This is the coolest thing about private deals. So you know this, Cody. I spent seven years working in private equity. And it wasn't a perfect fit for me. I always wanted to invest in like the future kind of venture businesses. But the coolest fucking thing about private equity, about private deals, like what you're doing. And it feels unfair.

And when I explained it to my dad, he thought it was ridiculous. He was like, wait, what? You're doing what? You're literally buying a business with the business, which is like the most absurd thing when you break it down in your own mind. But you are buying the business with the future cash flows of the business. So literally when you're going to buy a company, you go and take out a loan that is underwritten based on the future cash flows that come from the business. So you're getting money

up front in exchange for the future cash flows of the business. And you're taking that money that you just got up front and buying the business with that. So you can go in, I mean, in the context of some of the deals you're doing, you get an SBA loan. You can get seller financing. So the person who's selling you the business will actually finance part of it. Like you're going to pay them an annual kind of return on the money they're loaning you to buy it. So in a lot of cases, is you can go in with so little down. I saw a thread recently of someone that was like buying a business for $50,000 was like a million dollar business.

He was putting in $50,000 to buy a million dollar business. The return on that equity that you just put in can be exceptional if you run the business well and it continues to cash flow because you're literally buying a business with the business. That's exactly right. I mean, that's where you get crypto level returns. People joke. But I mean, you know, like that laundromat that I bought, the cash load $67,000, we bought it for $100,000.

and people are like, no way it doesn't exist. And I'm like, oh my God, guys, go to biz by sell, which is the worst place to buy a business, by the way. Like, you never want to go on to public marketplaces. Sorry if they're listening. It's always better to find the deals yourself. But these deals are everywhere. They're everywhere. It's totally normalized.

The average price when you buy a business is two to three X profits. And then go and look at the average, you know, multiples or earnings per share of some of the stocks that you see in the stock. There's nothing for two to three X profits, not revenue. And so, and to your point, Sahel, 60% of small businesses are sold with seller financing. That used to happen in real estate. It doesn't happen anymore, really. But in small businesses, it's very normal. I mean, I bought into a, a video production company with $10,000 that does $300,000 in

revenue a year and about $150,000 in profit. And I bought 40% of the business for $10,000. And the reason I did is, one, the business owner needed to get credit, didn't understand how to get financing and credit for the business overall. So I did help them that value add. And then two, I said, hey, I bet I could take your revenue and like double it with a few tweets or like a couple newsletters. So how about I give you 10K because, you know, we're buds. And if I don't bring you anything else, decrease me where 10K is like pro rat at like what I should actually earn for investing in you. but if I do increase the business, I want to have a percentage of equity tied to how much

I'm going to increase the business buy, which is how I got the 40K. The seller financing point, I do want to just reemphasize so that people really understand it. This is like, Cody, you want to buy my business for a million dollars. I tell you I will finance, or you pitch it to me, but I will finance half of that. And basically, for me, the benefit is, like, what am I going to do with that $500,000? Where am I going to put it? I don't know. Maybe I'm going to put it into S&P 500.

by the way, like selling it, maybe I'm not going to get, I'm going to have to pay taxes on it, so it's not going to be 500. So if I provide seller financing to you for half a million dollars, you tell me you're going to pay me an interest rate of 8% on that in cash. Now that $500,000, I'm, you know, now making what, like 40K per year in actual cash income interest on that I just made to you. And I probably have a more tax advantage situation on the fact that I just rolled that to loan it to you. So for a seller, it's actually pretty logical. Like, where was I going to go and get 8% in the market today, you know, as a stable kind of like dividend income type situation? Not in a lot of places. So it's a pretty cool thing that actually is logical for a lot of sellers to do.

Totally. Yeah. And I think, you know, I don't know what the average listener is for you guys, but you can scale this up or scale it down. So, like, if your wife, let's say, is coming back into a workforce, which is increasingly happening in large numbers, and, you know, can't find a job that allows for child care and the things that she wants to do. I talked to a lot of women about, okay, why don't we buy a business? You used to be a hairstylist. You don't want to go have to do that the whole time.

Why don't you buy the salon? Here's how it would work. You could buy a salon very cheap. You buy a salon for like 80K here in Austin that does more than 80K in profit because they're hard to sell. Not everybody wants to go run that type of business. And so I think you can do it at a low level and you could get all that seller finance. or you could do it at a high level, which is private equity guys like me and you back in the day

used to do $100 million billion-dollar deals, right? So it's very malleable. And then maybe the play for Greg is we overlay Web 3 on top of it somehow and we blockchain my laundromats is probably where this goes. Well, I think, you know, I have a question for you while I have your time, Cody.

So, Leccheca, which is our holding company, we've got an agency, a studio, and we've got a fund where we invest, now we want to do more M&A. So we want to buy community-based businesses. What advice do you have to someone like me who, you know, is seeing a lot of traditional businesses that could basically apply this, you know, this new world on top of it, be it community-based or Web3?

Yeah, just what advice do you have to me, to give to me? Well, first of all, I think it's brilliant. I was just on the phone with somebody talking about this. One of the guy's name is Alex Hormosey. I don't know if you guys know him. He'd be good to how on your pod. He's become a friend,

but he just sold like 40. This is public, but excuse me if I fuck up the numbers. He just sold like 40% of his company for something like either 40 or $60 million to a PE firm. And it was called gym launch. And what it was is education platforms to scale your gym up six figures.

And they did $85 million in revenue. And he just sold a portion of his business. And now he started something called acquisitions.com, where he's basically buying unsexy community businesses and then helping them scale. So the first thing you should do, Greg, is definitely should let me into all your deals. I'll definitely be value added, which is what I told Alex Hormosey too. But the second thing is I think it's brilliant. Like my play, I'm looking at one right now that's an accounting firm,

accounting business with 300 ultra high net worth clients. And I was like, wait, do you have educational products, like layered on top of this? It's an $8 million of your business. He's like, no. I'm like, oh, my God, here's the products we could do. That would definitely juice you up to another $4 million. So I guess my point to you would be, like, don't just look at the sexy community businesses because those people are going to overinflate the value and you might be buying into a hype cycle.

but I would say look at a lot of like the unsexy community. What about like the dentist, the accounting firm? You know, because there are those communities all over Facebook, all over everywhere, that you could apply really intelligent community marketing and upsell of product on and make a big difference. And then simultaneously for the sexy businesses, how do you get them into the more boring things? So we could like, case, like, do you have one that you've already invested in, like that you could talk about? I mean, there's not, not right now on this pod, but definitely want to bring you back to like go through it.

But I think, you know, there's, for what we're really interested in is community lives in a bunch of different ways. Like it doesn't need to be a crypto thing. It doesn't need to be like, you know, a Facebook group or a paid group. Like, to your point, like community could live in physical locations. It could be like, you know, we looked at buying like, as an example, like a tennis magazine slash physical event business. You know, it's like it's been around for 40 years. And it's, you know, this geography, this interest, these amounts of events. But like, what does that look like if you put, you know, NFTs on top of it or education or, or, you know, what is the intersection between digital and physical look like?

Totally. Well, one thing we're doing, too, is I've never taken sponsors. dollars before. And I actually called Sahel and asked his opinion on this stuff and you helped me out. So thank you. We just did our first sponsorships where we've just submitted them. We haven't put them out yet. And one of the things that I'm requiring from people that we do sponsorships is, one, I want to invest in like whatever it is that I'm doing. So I'm trying to get equity for every deal I do sponsorships with, if at all humanly possible so that my content creation community can actually create a simultaneous holdco, which will hold all the equity of the deals that we do inside of the sponsorship. aspect of it. And I don't think enough people are doing that. Like, think about, I talked to Sam Parr, like another mutual friend of all of ours from the hustle. And I was like, man, how many

you did sponsorships with X and Y and Z? And he was like, yeah, guess what? I even bought some of their stock at the time. And I was like, did it totally wrong. Totally wrong. You should have 100% asked for private shares in these deals or sell them access to buy or warrants or options on it so that you do a deal with them and that you even buy in or give them money in exchange and then you have this hold of other equity in businesses that you partner with. I should do that. So this is brilliant. So I have, you know, I have my newsletter.

My newsletter is smaller than yours, Cody. Mine goes to right now, I think, like 72,000 people. And I have a team that sells the sponsor slots. And they're all cash and it's great cash income. I should really, especially in the interesting companies, I should just be taking at least, I should be taking 50% equity and the 50% cash should just be to cover the taxes on that. So if my tax rate is 50%, which don't even get me started on, but I live in New York and it's absurd. And I haven't figured out all the Nick.

We haven't had Nick Huber on or someone to tell me how to stop paying so much in taxes. But if my tax rate is 50%, I could take 50% cash, 50% equity deals, use the 50% cash to pay the tax and then have equity in a bunch of interesting companies. It's sort of an interesting idea if they can find a way to do it. Well, I mean, think about how did Tim Ferriss make most of his money. He did like some really smart angel investments, right, into some early stage deals. And I don't think those were tied to sponsorship dollars, but now I would imagine that he has equity in most of the deals that he talks about. Joe Rogan did the same thing. It's really not that dissimilar to what private equity firms require to.

Hey, we'll give you some investments, some debts, and et cetera. But we're going to ask for a little icing on top. We're going to ask for warrants for some equity options in case you'd be really. well, we want the option to buy you. So what are the things that you most, like I'm, I feel like we're painting this great picture of doing this, you know, buying boring businesses, you know, the amazing financing, the tax arbitrage, all of these cool things. What are the like most common one or two or three things that people fuck up?

Like, I, because I can see myself doing this and then being like, oh my God, that was such a headache and I need to get out of this. And they're not super liquid, so it can kind of be a pain. Like, what do you, if you're going to go do this, what do you need to be sure of? What are the biggest screw-ups? Also, paint, like, the dreary picture of buying boring businesses. Like, where does this go wrong? Yeah, exactly.

Well, the first thing is, is our culture is a, you know, instant gratification culture. And deal-making and deal-finding couldn't be less of that. It is like massively long-term-ish pain for even longer long-term gain. Because, you know, yeah, Saw Hill and Greg, you could go buy a company tomorrow. Great. But like probably not the best company if you can close in 24 hours. So I think the hardest thing is really just the fact that you have to look for deals for a while. Everybody's like anybody who's bought a house recently who's had like an awesome experience in house buying.

Like, oh my God, they're so cheap. Greg. Portiful deals all around. No, right? Everybody's like, this is a nightmare. I'd rather have an actual colonoscopy. So that's what it feels like to do a deal, I think. It's brutal up front. You're like, Comey. I mean, I went to this, we almost bought this dental manufacturing company in Chicago. And so I fly out in Chicago in like, so they do like caps and like retainer thing. I think my friend Justin Ringo works for this company. Oh, Jesus. Sorry. I don't actually think he does, but he works for like a dental implant company that just made me think of that. Shout out. Okay.

Well, it might be him. I'm so sorry, Justin. On sexy businesses. Yeah, so we fly out. It's like negative 12 in Chicago. It's miserable. I asked for a salad for lunch. They take us to portillos or something.

And so it's like cakes and pizzas. Like, it's just my nightmare. I'm lactose intolerant. I'm like so mad that I'm spending my Saturday and Sunday there. And then we're like combing through, you've ever been to a dental manufacturing plant. Imagine the insulin. inside of an office, then imagine you take like a bomb of like dust and you explode it everywhere. And like that's what it looks like because they're like sawing these implants.

So there's just everything's like caked. It's just not a pretty situation. And then so I'm combing through financials like in the dust. And and I realized that the company, the financials that they gave us, I wasn't fraud necessarily, I don't think. But they basically were either fraudulent or. their books were so horrifically tracked that every single dollar amount that they told us was wrong to the tune of like $2 million.

And so they went from a company that was profitable to the tune of $2 million to barely break even at like $100,000. And so, you know, and I wasted three months on that deal in like $20K in legal costs. So that's the bad part. The bad part is it sucks to get deals done. It takes a lot of work and you have to realize that it's not like content where it like grows little by little. It's like it's miserable, miserable, miserable. And then you do a deal and you're like, oh, this is awesome. And one deal can offset an entire salary or make you independently wealthy.

There's also just got to be operating, you know, expertise to it, in my opinion. Like one of the things that I always saw in my PE days was like when you had a great team, you always felt like a genius and that you could just do this forever because they're just great. They figure out a way to win. They figure out a way to grow or just continue to kind of produce margins and stable cash flows. And when you find those teams, you really want to press it and like go roll other things up and build underneath them because they're great. But if you don't have a team or shit hits the fan, it's a headache, man, owning one of these things. Because like if you, if you buy a, you know, Dunkin' Donuts franchise, I love Duncan Donuts. Shout out. And you don't have an operating team. It's not easy to run one of these places.

A coin, like, you know, you're actually talking about one of the things that's beautiful about the things you're talking about is that they are actually not labor intensive. And you can run them without having some amazing expertise. Buying a restaurant franchise requires a lot of operating expertise. And you need people that really understand margins and food waste and, you know, all the labor, etc. And so you need to think, too, I think, as part of all this, about what businesses are not going to be an operating headache? Like, what are these businesses that are recession resistant, to your point that you make in the original threat about laundry? People need their laundry done. Car washes have always been one that people really liked for that reason.

You always get your car washed, even if there's a recession. They're also a great place to launder money, apparently, according to Breaking Bad. But that's the other side of this to me is, like, you need to make sure that you know what you're getting into from an operating perspective with all of these. Can I add to that as someone who's run a lot of businesses and as someone who's gotten slapped in the face so many times? because if you run a business, you're just like, it's going to hurt, you know? Like, we talked about the open sea hack and how I was in pain and nothing even happened to me. Like, imagine, like, you're running a car wash and all of a sudden everyone quits or, you know, so anything, you know, if you're going to buy a business, know that you're getting into business. And if you're getting into business, know that you're going to get punched in the face.

and if you're going to get punched in the face, know that it gets hurt to get punched in the face. So that's one thing I wanted to say. The second thing is you're on, you know, if you are going to do, let's say, SBA financing, you know, you're on the hook for that, right? So my advice would be for folks is, you know, if you're interested in buying businesses, start by buying small businesses and sort of grow from there. So, Cody, do you have, like, did you start? by buying smaller, like doing smaller deals and then grow to medium-sized deals and then larger deals?

Yeah, totally. I mean, I agree with you. Two things I'd say is like one, I think the best business to buy is the adjacent business to what you already do. So if you're an accountant, you like being an accountant. You want to keep doing the thing, but you'd like to own the company. That would be a good business for you to buy. You already kind of know how to run sort of, let's say, that ecosystem. Maybe there's an operator in it.

So you can just replace your job with ownership. So I think that's a good way to decrease risk. Two is certainly, for every deal, I'm always asking myself, if the worst possible thing happened to this business, what would we do? Do we have plans? And so, you know, if, I don't know, if my laundromat operator quit, do I have a backup? And the, when you start, you're not going to have a lot of layers because it won't make sense. Your deals won't be big enough. Eventually, you get to a level, you know, even definitely past me where you have multiple operators who run multiple businesses and if one goes sideways, you got a bench, right? You can tap in the next picture.

But I would say in the beginning, yeah, you don't want to, I don't, I've never done a deal that could bankrupt me. It's probably why I'm not like massively, massively wealthy. I just haven't been comfortable with those risks, but I've never done a deal that could kill me. And so I think starting smaller that way, even taking investor capital, because you can have multiple people on an SBA loan. It doesn't have to be one. They just have to disclose some stuff. So think of it. about how to decrease your risk. Simultaneously, you could buy a business with no recourse, no loans, and do it with equity, other people's money. Then if it goes sideways, not your problem. Or you could do revenue share and profit share, so you just take a percentage of the business

based on your ability to either increase sales or decrease costs. Those are a couple ideas. So I have like three takeaways from this. I know we're running up against the end of time. My three, and I'm curious for yours, my three would be number one, Zieg, one of other people are zagging, which I just think is like core to a lot of the things you're saying, which is like, this is an area that has opportunity because not many people are doing it, thinking about it or want to spend time on it. It's like super sexy to invest in venture, growth, crypto, whatever. So returns get squeezed.

Zig when other people zag and like do the thing that other people aren't thinking of. The second one would be running a business is getting punched in the face over and over again and figuring out a way to get back up. Kudos to Greg for that one because I think that's, that's a great. great overall point. And, you know, then for me, I guess the third one would be there's no such thing as a free lunch. So we're giving all these tips, seller financing, SBA loans. And to Greg's point, you're on the hook. And when you go do this, you have to be accountable and you have to own it when you're going and doing one of these things. And so like as a broad economic point,

there's no such thing as a free lunch. If something's too good to be true, it probably is. And you need to figure out how to actually go and deliver against these things. Because at the end of the day, you're on the hook and you have to be accountable for it. I like it. I like it. I think you nailed it. I've got my three. Number one, there's more financing than you think out there. Like, I feel like, you know, a lot of us, you know, work at companies and we're kind of just like, oh, I wish I can buy this thing.

I wish I can do this thing, but I can never do it. Well, actually, maybe you can. That's number one. Number two is, Cody, you kind of alluded that, you know, while there's opportunities, on marketplaces, public marketplaces. A lot of the deals are private, like straight up like calling, you know, knocking on doors

and pounding the pavement. So I would say my second takeaway is like a lot of action and private deals. Don't be afraid of pounding the pavement. And my last is probably just get started, you know? Small, it's okay to start

small too. You know? I think like you don't need to be you know, war in buffing and be buying massive companies from day one, like find something that, you know, is, feels, maybe makes you a little bit uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable, and just get started. Yeah, I mean, Berkshire Hathaway, right? The original thing was like a cotton mill, right? It wasn't it a, it was like a textile mill. So to your point, exactly, like Warren Buffett started out buying small, unsexy businesses. That's right. Yeah, I just had one thing,

which is I think about buying businesses like I think, a lot of people think about buying stocks. You know how you're like, oh, man, I'm drinking out of this Yeti cooler and I just paid $70 for it. And, oh, now it's publicly listed. This is a bad example. It's not public. But, you know, something we're like HubSpot. Oh, I use it as my CRM and it's publicly listed.

But, man, it's so much cooler than anybody's giving it credit for and you go and buy the stock. That's the best way to find deals. It's like, oh, man, I'm talking to my landscaper and he says his son doesn't want to take over the company. But he services like all the people in my neighborhood. Plus, his prices are really low. I wonder what he's going to do when he was. tires. That's the way to find the boring businesses. This is, did you read One Up on Wall Street, Peter Lynch? This was like one of the first

books I ever read on finance. I highly recommend it to people. It's short, easy read. Peter Lynch, who's like amazing, I think Fidelity, Mutual Fund Manager, but he writes in this amazing book, One Up on Wall Street. He talks about this exact thing, which is like, invest in what you know. And his example was Haynes in the very early days. This is like way back when, I don't know, 60s, 70s, 80s or something like that. And he, like, saw tons of people going in and buying these Haynes pantyhose. And his wife kept talking to him about it. And so he went and invested.

And it became, like, an 100 bagger for it, you know, 100x return on Haynes. But that whole book is about investing in things that you really deeply understand, that you see, that you know. So it's that exact thing. I totally agree with it. I think it's awesome. I could talk for hours, but I'm actually meeting a founder of a play to earn game. who we're talking to about, you know, maybe acquiring. So I'm going to use these lessons and hopefully it goes well.

We need to do an episode on Play to Earn with Cody because I need to get her hot takes on that too. Looking forward to it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Cody. Where can people find you? Twitter, Cody underscore Sanchez, Instagram, TikTok the same and country. Follow her on TikTok because that's like my feed is.

like 30% Cody and I wish it was 70% Cody. That's how good her like short, punchy videos are. So she needs to teach us her ways. We're enabbed on TikTok. We'll figure it out. No dancing. Thank you so much. No dancing.

Thank you so much. You're the best. Thank you. I don't know about you guys, but I've had a pretty bad relationship with sleep for most of my life. I never had much of a routine around it. And honestly, my performance suffered. My ability to recall information, to think clearly.

to think creatively suffered because of my sleep. But now I've found something that changed the game for me. And that thing is Beam Dream, a functional sleep product that has really changed my life. I'm excited to get to share it with you all today and so that you can get a special discount to try it. 98% of people surveyed fall asleep faster when taking Beam Dream and 99% of people experience better sleep quality. The results are in the data.

If you have an aura ring like me, you can actually try. track it and see the impact of when you're taking it and when you're not. It's very real. And if you don't love it, there is a money back guarantee. Get your money back guaranteed if you don't love it. For a limited time, you can get $20 off when you go to beamorganics.com slash room and use code room at checkout. Again, that's B-E-A-Morganics.com slash room and use code room for $20 off at checkout. I guarantee you're going to love it. Join our free community at TRWIH.com.