Changes EVERY Content Creator Must Make on YouTube w/ Codie Sanchez

if you want people to trust your advertising or marketing you need to show not tell Cody Sanchez I think she makes some of the best content on all social media as it comes to business she's brilliant you're going to take a ton of notes today it's a special treat Cody Sanchez in the house you saw Donald Trump go on places like Joe Rogan's podcast and that interview has been viewed more than 90 million times you right now are the newest version of capital with the most precious of all Commodities people's attention in a period like

we have right now we are going to be able to buy businesses even as content creators in a way we never had before you have the same thing as private Equity guys who have a lot of capital you have attention but the second that you figure out how to structure attention for Equity you'll never have to use your cash again there is a formula to making money and the formula goes like this how much risk are you willing to take how valuable are your skills and you need to have recurring income that is not tied

to your relevancy which is what a business does otherwise we all just have jobs as creators you did 26.5 million just on YouTube what's one thing you think you've done differently on YouTube that's really helped your channel take off especially recently with the numbers you're getting and hey heads up this podcast has some adult language in it so if you have any little ones around just want to give you notice as we get into this life changing content here we go so there are a lot of changes coming for content creator ERS as we prepare

for 2025 the rise of AI in automation short form video continues to dominate Ultra long form video is dominating influencer marketing continues to grow and is expected to reach 22 billion doll per year in 2025 and today I'm joined by social media influencer investor business owner investor in over 50 companies and author of Main Street millionaire Cody Sanchez to really talk about content creation strategy how to adapt and pivot in uncertain times and ultimately how to grow your influence in your business faster right now Cody welcome to the show thanks for having me I'm excited

to talk about all of that so how do you see the current economic climate whether that's inflation potential recession impacting business owners and also those that are making a living in a spiring content creators going into 2025 well let's just say this I think that Baron rosile said it perfectly he said buy when there's blood in the streets even and especially when the blood is your own and I think that's what we're coming into in my opinion we are going to be in a really hard economic cycle and with every hard economic cycle there becomes

a lot of opportunity so you know we know that before let's call it 2005 2004 influencers and people talking on social media were nowhere near as prevalent as they are now and now more often than not we hear people talk about there's too many of them they're everywhere it's noisy is it too hard to grow on YouTube lot now is it too late to have a podcast are there too many people and something actually wonderful happens during recessions which is the committed persevere and the uncommitted change paths and that's a gross oversimplification but I do

think that in any Market environment a recession is a period of cing to allow for more progress and so from an economic standpoint sort of interesting if you were to look at any economic boom and bust cycle or what's called an expansion or a recession uh cycle those that weather recessionary or downturn periods they end up making 9x more profit after they've weathered one of these recessionary storms and 3X more revenue and so I think there's a lot of reasons to be really positive about even a dark time you're an investor in over 50 companies

um do you think we're in a recession are you feeling a recession right now yeah I think we are um I think the way that we have out you know I think the way that we have historically looked at recessions is slightly outdated and so we have precise economic indicators which tell us if we have you know three quarters of you know X level of growth plus Unemployment uh claims go up plus uh GDP growth stagnates in some way shape or form then we have a recession um but the moral of the story today that

we're seeing is that I haven't talked to very many small business owners that don't say it's harder out there right now than it's been probably since 2010 or so and they might make as much money as they did last year but with a lot more effort and that especially in in an election year where we have a the costs for acquisition of clients goes way up because uh the politicians are spending billions to get your vote um feels tougher out there right now and I don't think that that's necessarily A Bad Thing to at least

be honest about yes it is tougher no that does not mean that we can't make more money than we want to this year what is the mindset that you have going into Q4 and q1 as a business owner and then also contextualizing that to content creators um they often say that because of holiday shopping of course there's that boom in the fourth quarter for different types of businesses and then there's this whole new year new you and a lot to leverage strategically during this season how are you talking to your team those businesses and business

owners you coach and how do you think about this particular time of the year a couple different things yes you always want to draft off what's happening in the cultural conversation around you whether that's Black Friday or the holidays for instance or even the election you can out kick your coverage by drafting on things that are already getting attention which you see a lot of uh influencers do I mean hell the daily wire was built entirely off of reaction videos to start with right so reacting to something that goes really really viral catching some of

that virality and growing um I think though that we should look at it from a different perspective obviously I acquire businesses for a living that's what I've done for a really really long time but I think in a period like we have right now we are going to be able to buy businesses even as content creators in a way we never had before content creators historically weren't the best at making money that's changed now we have a lot of very sophisticated content creators at making money where I don't think they're sophisticated yet is realizing that

your audience right now the people who watch you are your form of capital AKA investors so they are giving you money in the same way that investors do and then you get to use that money to do things like Acquisitions which is how the richest people in the world are made AKA private equity for instance all largely done through uh acquiring things that already exist I'm curious coming into a Q4 in which we might have some recessionary issues will there be more things for us to acquire out there you know can we acquire our podcast

vendors who do the production for us a boring business you know can we go out and acquire a competitor who's going to close up shop because they're kind of tired of being an influencer and we could buy their email list and this is how I am pushing content creators to think about acquisition today that word acquisition is typically paid ads right um but instead of giving all your money to Facebook meta etc for a potential lead uh what if you could actually buy the entire email list that people had to spend years building up instead

and that's what I'm curious about right now and to to be frank doesn't matter what time of year you're do it yeah I love this concept and you spoke at our event a few months ago and you were hinting at these ideas from your new book Main Street millionaire which there's a bunch of cool stuff that you're doing and we'll link to that in the show notes but I would love for you to go a little bit deeper because you threw out a concept that I'm hearing nobody else talking about that content creators could be

having a mindset of acquisition um and you're kind of famous for saying hey buy a local laundry mat you know get a boring business like that which certainly could be a move for a content creator listening to this but now you're kind of shining a light that that might not be exactly what you'd encourage maybe an influencer to do but can acquire the podcast production company can you unpack this that if a content creator is listening to this how they might be thinking and what some of the possibilities could be um using your contrarian point

of view sure so um Main Street millionaire the idea is simply this all around us are businesses for sale right now that we can't even see because it's sort of like the Matrix before you know it's there uh until you've taken the red pill you kind of go through life like everybody else does acquiring a client or a subscriber one at a time right and it's a grueling monotonous consistently long process we've all been there as content creators my point is I like to steal people's homework who have already done more of the work than

I have and so when I was in private equity and finance for 10 plus years I watched these guys and I watched how they didn't have any brilliant ideas they didn't have viral one-off videos you know they didn't have a crazy startup to pursue what did they have they had a knowledge of money and a knowledge of deal making or how to acquire things and for Content creators I want us to have the same thing because I think that we are the new version of capital you right now are the newest version of capital with

the most precious of all Commodities people's attention and because of that I think we need to think differently so for instance I needed a new video production team uh my videos weren't performing that well and uh I had two guys kind of running them so I was thinking like like a poor person thinks let me tell you the difference between how rich people think and poor people think poor people think I have a problem how do I solve it how do I solve x problem kind of wealthy people think I have a problem who do

I get to solve it so who's my who not my how really rich people think I have a problem how do I buy the solution that's almost guaranteed for it so it's how who buy and what I realized is with my video problem I was thinking like a poor person I was like hm how do I fix fix this I don't really know and I was like who could I have fix it so I hired a couple vendors had them you know go out on each other see which one performed the best then I was

like wait a second I'm going to actually do this whichever the is the vendor that is best I'm going to Aqua hire them so I'm going to buy that vendor's business because most of these businesses that do video editing are small and I am going to bring on all of those video editing people into my company through a quote unquote acquisition where the only way I buy them is by saying hey this is a rocket ship you want to get on my rocket ship I can be bigger than you can you can be bigger with

me and I can have a dream so big that it envelopes both of us and because of that come on with me and I'll pay your salary over the course of a year and I will pay you more than you made in your current role um but you will come on under under me and by the way you get to say that you had an exit because I bought your company that's called an aqua hire and so I think more content creators should be doing stuff like that and I did the exact same thing when

I um bought part of a company called viral Cuts so you guys could do the same way I bought viral Cuts uh a portion of it with my friend Sam par and viral Cuts is essentially short form video editing at scale I needed it for a bunch of my businesses they needed small uh short videos done my team couldn't handle it all and so I said to the founder Hunter hey I want to own X percentage of a company let's say 25% of the company I will own 25% through future Revenue I drive to you

by giving you additional leads and for that I will take 25% of the company plus a 25% distribution every single month above XYZ Revenue level and Off to the Races and now we have viral cuts and so because of that I don't actually have to fulfill the service so I don't have to edit all the videos and take care of it and run the business Hunter does because of that I don't have to figure out the how to my video problem that's Tanner who I acquired from that business those are just two examples of how

content creators can do un un untraditional Acquisitions so what would you say to the objection though that okay well Cody has um all this wisdom and experience and money to buy businesses and I'm maybe a mid to um you know I'm a solo Creator I have a few people helping me I might even be doing pretty well six figures a year multiple six but like buy a piece of a company or buy an entire company or even I'm mainly working with contractors pay someone's entire salary could it be possible to invest in this recessionary time

in other businesses without having a lot of capital it's a great question it's the number one question people ask first they say is this possible then I show them some examples and they say is it possible for not much money and then they ask is it possible for not much money and I've never done this before can I actually do it and so the idea in Main Street millionaire is let me break that down for for you 10 steps about how you can acquire any sort of business using 21 different methodologies in order to use

I hate to use this term too much but other people's money really what I call creative financing we always want to have a win-win I don't like the sticky guys that say buy this business for zero doar and no time and go on the four hour work week not going to happen it is going to take you some time and you're going to have to learn upfront but for a $3 book you can start doing transactions that formally only private Equity does and how do you do it without a lot of cash well viral Cuts

is a perfect example this is only really relevant to content creators I'm only coming on Sean's podcast and saying this particular aspect of it which is if you apply the Main Street millionaire methodology to audience instead of bank account you have the same thing you have the same thing as private Equity guys who have a lot of capital you have attention the problem is you might not know what your attention is worth and you don't know how to do a deal yet to structure attention for equity but the second that you figure out how to

structure attention for Equity you'll never have to use your cash again you think the Rock invests in companies let me tell you what no I'm with an agency right now UTA one of the biggest talent agencies in the world I've talked to CIA I've talked to them all and back when I used to run a private Equity Firm we had a bunch of what's called cpg products consumer package Goods these were a lot of them were in the hemp and cannabis space so we walked our little tootsies down to CIA uh this big huge uh

management company in order to talk to bad bunnies uh who's a Latino artist talk to his agent and team now Bad Bunny wanted his own cannabis string so we owned I don't know maybe 40 companies at the time or something like that and he wanted to own a piece of one of our companies in order to put his name on it and direct his audience to that brand now when we went in we gave this presentation here are the brands here's what you think they gave their presentation here's Bad Bunny here's all the attention he

would bring and at the end we said okay well how much do you want to invest and like at what valuation and they were like that's cute no no no we don't invest you pay us literally they wanted us to pay them for the right to have Bad Bunny and use his name and for the privilege of his distribution and we did one of those deals not with Bad Bunny but with somebody else and they happen again and again and again and in this day and age low-level content creators can do the same thing with

not huge businesses like we had our businesses were doing 20 100 $200 million do a year but if you don't realize the power of your audience I think you're missing out on deals left and right and all over the place and instead you're chasing gummy Bill gummy bear sponsorships ag1 sponsorships for you know $2.99 per post so is this kind of like you just mentioned if we're doing brand deals and sponsorships we're maybe getting the short end of the stick if they give us a couple thousand dollars or some kind of affiliate split and what

you're saying is think about actually leveraging your influence in looking for Equity looking for some kinds of deals that you could do um and there's so many crater economy startups it's a massive space Goldman Sachs research said that the crater economy is going to double in the next three years the next three years are going to be the best three years in the crater economy from about $250 billion a year to half a trillion dollar industry people are trying to get different SAS platforms off the ground there's um things like carrot with a k a

credit card for uh influencers based off their audience to solve their cash flow problems because they understand uh influencers and so there's all these different Creator economy startups are you saying we should be thinking about kind of partnering acquiring and thinking a lot bigger than just doing as you mentioned just a one-off deal with ag1 absolutely I mean if you think about it why would and I like H1 I'm friends with cat the CEO so I don't mean to pick them I think they're a great company but take any business take any supplement business for

instance in order for them to pay you a dollar they have to think that the LTV the lifetime value of the customer so what the customer is going to be worth for them is anywhere from 10 to 30X your dollar so every time they give you a dollar they are making 10 to 30X so inherently uh you are not taking home the biggest portion of the pie except here's the problem you as distribution are the most important piece of the pie and the difference between you and Facebook and um Instagram and you know Tik Tok

is that they understand their value and content creators on average don't you know I certainly didn't I had to go create an entire model uh and and we have it in the book where you can basically see what your value is how valuable are your skills in order to increase what I call your expertise to equity but bucket which this would fall into in order for you to get paid for deals without you to put money down and um you know if you don't have an audience at all there's ways to do it with your

time so Sweat Equity with your experience and knowledge so if you're an accountant to help somebody do an accounting acquisition um but if you're a Creator there's a way to do it with your audience and the smartest creators are doing this every single day and the problem is is that they gatekeep how like Logan Paul Lov the guy he would never tell you how he got that Prime deal done he would never tell you how much he paid for it and yet that is how they are making their money because they know at some point

one we will all no longer be relevant we included uh at another point at any given moment our audience could die down which scares me like every day all the time uh I want to like I want to keep hard charging but at some point you could just become a relevant or a Content platform could shut you off in which case you need to have recurring income that is not tied to your relevancy which is what a business does otherwise we all just have jobs as creators we don't actually have business and I want you

guys to have ownership that is lasting and continues to pay you even if you don't show up to your job well this is Shifting my thinking and think media podcast we're going to dive into some um of Cody's social media tactics and insights and lessons um but the book is Main Street millionaire and I think you could see that um this is needed to think different and if you want to check it out check out uh show notes um the link in the show notes U Cody here's a question for you um who do you

think obviously there's probably people we don't all know but there's kind of like the main entrepreneurs on YouTube specifically who do you think is getting the most views right now uh on on YouTube I mean I guess I would go towards uh Mr Beast and I mean entrepreneurs okay he's an entrepreneur so is Logan Paul and stuff I guess I mean the guys like you know Alex Heros or Gary ve and stuff and uh not to put you on the spot but I actually am teeing up your expertise because I did some research I'm just

ious like if you were to think in the last 30 days like uh yeah who do you think's up there I love that you know this and I don't that's so embarrassing shows you know more I know more about Acquisitions than anything else yeah I don't know I would guess Alex and Lea friends of both of ours um yeah Lela did two million uh views in the last 30 days Grant Cardone did uh right under four million I threw think media in there I don't think we'd be classified as that we're more YouTube we did

4 million Gary's at 5 million Dan Martell 7.2 come on and and I'm kind of separating out podcasts because some of these podcast impact Theory blown up 13 million Simon squib is crushing it right now 15 million and um and then modern wisdom and Diary of a CEO I'm kind of putting them as side they got pretty big numbers but Cody Sanchez Alex rosi did 23 million views in the last 30 days but you did 26.5 million views on YouTube in the last 30 days and I know those numbers are always changing and at any

given moment different people have viral videos um and Nod to Patrick P David who's definitely gone political so that's a whole different deal but they're over 107 million just on value tainment so that probably if we thought about the entrepreneur channel it's up there but I was kind of Blown Away you did 26.5 million just on YouTube you're on multiple platforms I think it's clear you've cracked the YouTube code what's one thing you think you've done differently on YouTube that's really helped your channel take off especially recently with the numbers you're getting let's be really

I'm going to tell you tactical and then I'm going to tell you um like gut feel so um why do I think that we do such big numbers on the channel I think that we one really only talk about the things that we actually think that we're experts in so what you'll find with our channel is it's a lot about buying businesses doing deals building big businesses I've been doing that for 15 years and so one differential one differentiator I think is like only talk about the things that you actually know and if you don't

know anything now that's okay because you can talk about your journey to knowing and you can get huge views for that I think Simon squib is a good example of that he's like not necessarily talking about all the stuff that he knows he's just showing you his journey of asking people questions that's real and I think in this day and age people are like I don't trust anybody I don't trust any out there and so they can kind of like sniff it out if you're not doing that um the second thing that gut feel on

me is people are tired of influencers and people online who stand for nothing I think that is why P Patrick uh Patrick B David has such big numbers right now too at least they know that he takes some hard stances and I don't know about you Sean we've talked about this before too but I am so tired of influencers online who seem to Waffle all over the place with what their stances are and they only talk about things that see seem to serve them and it's a lot of i i i me me me blah

blah blah I think what you can see with us on YouTube is like we put a little heart we put a little Mission into these things so we're talking about bringing back Main Street and doing Acquisitions not exactly atome entertainment and simultaneously we're talking about the fact that if you don't do this the big guys own everything and they they ask you to like it and so there's like this Mission behind it and we are starved I think for a society with people people who want more than money we like give me purpose in this

life and so I think that's a big reason why maybe me and Patrick and and Chris Williamson and and Simon too we're like it's not just about the views it's about do we stand for something bigger than that and I think that shines out and it's actually very scary to do and we lose followers all the time from taking stances that people don't like but I'm like it I didn't make all this money so that I could just become everybody's like Wallflower not interested hey we're going to get back into today episode in just a

second but if you haven't heard we are running a special sale on the complete package for growing a successful YouTube channel in 2025 for just $57 this special offer includes your ticket to our upcoming YouTube strategy event the updated YouTube starter kit our brand new AI prompts guide our video editing Basics course and our 5H hour YouTube Work Week system system all included in one bundle basically everything you need to start and grow your YouTube channel in 2025 valued at over $1,900 but for a limited time you could get a massive discount on our most

comprehensive YouTube training bundle yet for just $57 if you want to take advantage of this offer just click the link in the show notes or go to think Medias sal.com but I got to be real with you this bundle with these products at this price is truly Limited so just click the link in the show notes or go to think Medias sale.com all right let's jump back into the episode from a technical standpoint on YouTube the stuff that I think is really working right now is I don't think the clickbait works as well anymore um

in fact we test lots of different titles every single time all your audience knows this already um but what we found increasingly is people are more interested in the reasonable than the unrealistic and so they actually want to hear the stories that now we talk about a lot which is like I don't want to hear how to make a billion dollars I'm never going to make a billion dollar shut up they want to hear about I want to make my first thousand or $10,000 a month in a way that feels real to me not drop

shipping on Amazon and so um I think that real verse or rational vers unrealistic is really important and then on top of that I think it is a massive obsession with brand when they come to our Channel I hope they get exactly what they think they're going to get which is stories about Main Street millionaires which is ways to buy businesses which is ways to do deals which is ways to make more money in a way that feels a little bit heartfelt reasonable and Main streaty and you don't see on my channel a lot of

jumping around anymore into 452 other things than that they're like I want to come back for this show this is what I subscribed to I want to unpack some of these things do you think think for the Creator that's like man stand for something but what if I get cancelled number one number two um do I need to talk about what my parents or grandparents would say listen at the dinner table never talk about religion or politics do I need to bring this stuff into my content and are you saying that's you know more or

less essential to stand out in a 2025 world I think um I think people won trust you if you don't show them that you if you don't show them who you really are and so um I think it's so easy to peel back the layers I mean this is a funny short story Sean so I um I did a speech I'm doing a bunch of speeches right now for the book I typically don't do a ton of speeches I did yours because you supported the book and it was amazing and I did one for a

person that I was like shoot once I got there you know have you ever gotten into a speech I I kid you not there was a Ferrari in a conference room and like a Hilton I was like oh no I should not be here this is not a good idea I do the speech the guy's got planes on his Instagram he's got watches on his Instagram he's got checks and their numbers on his Instagram like he's getting mailbox money or something and this hasn't paid me like three months later you know whatever the amount was

that he was supposed to for the event in the books and so it's not so much that you have to take a hard stance it's that we have a a high problem with a low trust culture today and so you don't have to talk about politics or religion but if you're like I'm obsessed with raw milk I know it's more illegal than guns in Texas but I drink this bad boy like it's going out of style like tell the people that give them something real don't do the Bentley Lamborghini blah blah nonsense because that doesn't

signal trust anymore that actually signals that you have so little to say that you need a third party logo to back you up and so that I think is the between the two yeah there's a big Trend where people are using the word authenticity and transparency youv said that only 18% of consumers believe that social media influencers are truthful so it sounds like we need a new game plan going into 2025 hopefully it was always the same game plan but it's I mean you're saying less clickbait because I mean people are kind of burnt out

and maybe there's a maturing to social media they're looking for the reasonable your brand which also is going to be what people trust you to be you know uh there's this verse in the Book of Proverbs that says a good name is more desirable than great riches and what's a good name well a name is is Nordstrom a name is Ferrari a name is these different brand names and a name is Cody Sanchez what's your name mean and so if someone's wrestling with this maybe just a few final thoughts about how somebody could maybe rework

their brand or not that they need to rework it but like um sit down and get a a fresh perspective of maybe a few prompts of man okay I really want to lock in who am I what questions should I be asking for who am I what do I stand for and how might I might position myself and maybe even a video I should make is there a video idea or a topic I should hit or stories I should tell I don't know if that inspires anything but just anything for maybe getting my brand aligned

to this trust recession that we're living through yeah if you want people to trust your advertising or marketing you need to show not tell and so a good way to do this for instance is you could say hey uh my business will get you 300 new clients within 48 Hours sign up with us right here crazy stuff happening in the background Ferraris planes okay great that might be 2020 version of marketing but a great brand instead would go watch me try with this stranger I just met on the street to see if I can get

new leads for his business with my business 60 seconds let's do this you're going to show them live what you're doing it's why we go on site to Main Street millionaires businesses and we say okay this guy says that he made $30,000 this month with a trash truck let's see if that's true and if you think about some of the biggest business uh YouTubes online right now it's like uh Khloe Abrams right huge apostrophe if true it's not called huge there's like a little skepticism that she's inserting on the The People's behalf and so you

want to show not tell so for instance you know if you're like oh does Cody own businesses which ones are they I'd be like oh well right over here this is pink so you can see the little hat over here here's our window washing business it's literally right behind me you can't see it but over here is is that one painter that's our painting company that we own that I have right behind me um you know and then if you think about the brand that you show up with when was this weird era where everybody

had like uh light up like neon signs behind them like everybody and and a dark background and instead I was like who is who am I at a deep level well I'm from Arizona cactus cactus uh I I Believe In Justice and freedom this is my grandfather he was a federal magistrate I can't get my I don't know my right or left um this is my grandfather he was a f Federal magistrate he's right behind me I believe in America and individual citizens in your ability to be the producer of your life and so there's

the flag that my husband flew uh over his base uh when he was in the Middle East you know here's our logo over here with me and my that me and my dad branded because I'm from Arizona and it's on a tree that I planted with him uh at our very first house a billion years ago that we ended up having to cut down um and then planted our logo on top of it so it's like everything we do is a reminder of who we are and it doesn't mean I'm not going to up and

say things wrong and I have a terrible m Sean so like a lot of times I'll be like oh well last year and Chris will go my husband that was three years ago babe you know so you can still mess up but remind yourself who you are and so for listeners what Cody just did was this even this is such a practical tips you just gave your very background for this interview is brand is values is stories and is different and true to you it is really easy to maybe fall into the uh pattern of

just trying to look like everybody else sound like everybody else so these have been such powerful insights about how people are craving authenticity transparency we need to stand for something and this is going to be a huge key with all the changes happening for standing out in 2025 and Beyond quality versus quantity there's a lot of pressure to just create more and more and more and more uh especially for smaller creators they see a media company like you or even think media and there's quite a bit of volume coming out but do you think that

there actually on social now there could be value in creating less higher quality content and when does more just become a waste of time here's the problem with quality versus quantity in the beginning you don't know what quality is so how can you produce higher form less versions of things in order to overcome the quantity problem which is just more the only way you get quality is by a massive unreasonable amount of quality or quantity for a period longer than you can imagine and so I do believe for most people you have to start with

the quantity game this is The Game of Life and success which is difficulty for a long period of time however once you have figured out what quality means to you and you need to Define quality is quality number of views is quality uh conversions is quality something that you individually think is beautiful uh is quality something that your very particular subset of subscribers finds beautiful or useful and once you have defined quality and you have determined that you can hit that quality then you could do less but in the beginning I do believe it is

easier to do more than less for that reason um there are very many instances of this not being true I mean every time I I think about this conundrum I go back to like the Casey niat he did do massive quantity though a video a day for a very long time before he figured out what quality was and so I think I ER on the side of pain AKA mass production for a period of time it's also interesting Casey has expressed many times that he actually pushed himself to the very verge of burnout in depth

uh death death uh and that he also it was it was both because his even physical fitness and I would say mental Fitness he was editing shooting and editing sometimes eight hours every single vlog for a string of hundreds of days which I kind of maybe want to come back to that balance of hustle culture but you mentioned for a long period of time I know there's no magic number but if you were to give us a number if I'm going to commit to Something in fact if I'm around New Year's I'm starting a new

channel I'm I'm wanting to get into this content creation game I'm wanting to also get into this Main Street Millionaire game and even think about how much time it takes to really make something work but let's focus on content a year do I do I need to put my head down and grind and experience the pain in your words two years what do you think well they say that businesses are like a baby and I don't see why content is any different in the first year of life with your baby you're kind of figuring things

out and trying not to murder the thing in the second year of Life the thing is now a little bit more alive itself um but not totally independent in the third year of life that thing is trying to murder itself um and so I do think for the first couple of years in any business it's normal to expect some pain and massive Joy because there's nothing more wonderful than owning a business and being able to control your outcome if that is the game you like to play um so I do think it is multiple years

um of you learning your craft now you might say well Cody you came on the scene three years ago your business doesn't appear to be a little self- murdery three-year old and at that case I would say God depends on the day you guys it totally depends on the day every single one of us who has a business that looks really shiny on the outside I can promise you one thing we are a carefully held together series of narrowly missed disasters and that applies to even the big guys because we have all this overhead it

costs us a bunch of money to do this we're sitting in a studio and an office I own with a bunch of employees so the game only gets more complex actually um and I think if you see it like that then you kind of know what to expect and it doesn't have to be so miserable because you know what's coming but um if I hadn't spent you know 15 years in finance giving pitches and presentations and speeches to Big institutional investors would I be so good at YouTube I don't know um I think skills stack

on top of each other and it is going to take a while but it's okay you guys because guess what we're not curing cancer we're doing Tik toks we're okay like I chuckle my little titties off every time somebody says I'm so burnt out from doing Tik toks I'm like we don't have real jobs this is this is like a this is a fake job the only thing that sucks about this job is when you turn your life into content that to me is really tough like if you're like doing relationship content and then your

relationship's going sideways you know if if every single day of yours has to seem like an adventure in order for your content to work well woof but um if you don't love your business right now now I think the question is like can you pivot to something else that you love you're not trapped and the first video you make doesn't have to be the last video you make your words are like food to my soul like business is like a few narrowly missed disasters on a day-to-day basis and even I I'm a small town kid

call it Dropout and so we have like 31 W2s right now and I'm like and we've been running 1% profit margins and I'm like that I'm like at least we have profit and in the past and and especially in a digital business 30 40 5050 is very common we've also been on offense we've been hiring we're getting things in place we're being strategic but that's not low stress Cody Sanchez what's your advice for me in this exact moment it's not low stress I two thoughts that I have one if you're running a 1% business for

a period of time you either need to have a goal line at which point you model out that when we hit X we will get to 30 or 40% margins uh and you need to have a strong belief in that backed by data at least some some thoughtful data in order for you to not stay in the pain cave one% is pain cave yeah and um no business owner can run at 1% for a long a period of of a long time and enjoy the ride I've been there before too some of my businesses are

still there right now totally normal um but that is one so you know deadline data and a determined path to get to 30 or 40% if you keep going along and you hit that deadline and you're still at the 1% number then it's not that you need to do more you need to do different and this is where I think sometimes the hustle people get it wrong is they're like just keep going just keep going it's like no no no business model analysis time there's many games we could play you could be a pickle ball

player earning not a great salary no chicks just kidding I hate pickle ball but people love pickle ball so I like to pick on it so if you know if you're going to go be a professional pickle ball player you're not probably going to make the most salary you might like it you're not going to get hug Fame but maybe it's easier to become a pro uh than if you go and play baseball baseball is going to be extremely highly paid there's um however a lot of competition and so you have to pick the game

you're playing and if you're in a low margin long-term business you need to add a new Revenue stream and the revenue stream because you are an attention uh Creator too means you need to make sure that you are doing the most you possibly can to monetize your eyeballs to the level of your values so I don't believe in like turn like squeezing every dollar out of my audience it's never been our way um but I do believe that when I put something in front of our audience I want to make sure that my employees and

my business is getting funded fully through it at which point you might need to say okay well sponsorships they're not making us enough Revenue so I need to either increase our prices um or I need to add a revenue line that might be Equity plus distributions of a business uh and so that's what I would play around with great advice uh going a little deeper there's such an emphasis on just bigger bigger bigger more views viral when social media it's like viral like viral is the only thing as big of audience size as possible as

many views as possible do you think though that sometimes there's too much emphasis in that area and that creators of all sizes could be focusing more on depth with their Community but also other areas like maybe product or customer experience yeah here's why you shouldn't only care about views and how much attention you get because the number one websites that are visited in the world are porn sites so if you want to get the most attention out there straight path to porn and I don't think most of us want to do that and so if

you realize okay extreme level porn uh Other Extreme level poverty we need to pick somewhere in between and that is a unique mixture of uh what I call the left and right ore so in every business you typically have a quality metric and you have a quantity metric so the quality metric is the metric that kind of like it it pulls your business back from massive growth or maybe from massive views and that might be like Cody's gonna keep her shirt on when she's talking about business Acquisitions maybe if I took my shirt off we'd

get a lot less views or more views I don't know but we would probably go a little bit more viral but I'm not going to do that because my quality or says no the quantity or says okay we want want to get as much as possible and so these two have to argue between the two of them in order to have a healthy business every single business has this this is revenue versus expenses um this is views versus conversion for instance followers versus conversion and so I think we need to ask ourselves what are you

actually trying to accomplish most of the reasons why the really really rich are unhappy are because they haven't actually defined what would make them happy and so they chase money for a really long time and then they get there and they iiz oh God it wasn't just money I was after I actually wanted something else so I think for creators it's really important you know in investing we think about something called our dealbox which is I only want to buy the perfect business for me it has like 14 questions we ask uh people to determine

what type of business would make you happy would get you to your goals well how many creators sit down and go all right what is my Creator dealbox what what would make me happy if I saw my life in th to five years according to these set of questions and that's what I think you should do and it's it's how I make sure that even if we get 26 million views on YouTube um it's doing something that I like and so every single time we do a video and we're GNA film it I will say

um what is the easy uh percentage for this video so one through one through 10 can't use seven how easy is it to film then I'll say how what is the fun level of this video one through 10 can't use seven uh in order to film what is the conversion level of this business does it get us to our monetary problems 1 through 10 can't use seven and then lastly what is our brand alignment of this video one through 10 can't use seven so if we look at those four things and a video is really

easy to do really fun to do converts highly and is on brand bam we're doing that video if the business is if the video is really hard to do but hits all other three maybe we're still going to do it if the business hits the three but is like negative because where I'm at in life I'm probably not going to do it so a lot of times the team has crazy ideas like they ask me to do some of the Simon squib stuff we run around and ask people how much money they make and what

their dream is and I was like no that sounds awful no thank you thank God siment exists um but you get to ask yourself what your dealbox is and set it and then you won't have to have the daily fatigue of reasking yourself what I should film or not such great insights and questions to be thinking through I mentioned coming back to this idea of of hustle culture Casey neistat hundreds of Vlogs pushed himself though to that verge of of burnout and this is a massively divisive uh conversation because there's some people that are so

anti- hustle culture but then there's this fundamental principle that if you don't actually put in the work and outwork everybody else what do you think the tension is between this and is there a point for the person that is just grinding and grinding and grinding trying to win that way that it's hurting sustainability and business growth I mean I think that that there's a there's a formula to making money and the formula goes like this how much risk are you willing to take how valuable are your skills how good is your mouse trp so the

way in which you make money and how much pain are you willing to tolerate and I think those four things typically drive to your bank account and so your bank account is a direct reflection of the problem that you solve the uh pain you're willing to take the risk you're willing to take and the bigger problems you solve the more money you make in the bank the more risk you take potentially the more money you make in the bank and so that's how I think about it and I think we got to be honest about

that the cool part is is that when you're young pain and difficulty doesn't feel like pain and difficulty it feels like Adventure and so I do think Young creators have an advantage in a lot of the ways in that you know I worked at Goldman Sachs for like barely two years I hated it it was during the financial crisis and um and yet I was working like 708 80 hours a week and it didn't feel that hard and it didn't feel that hard because I was like learning so much it was like a fire hose

and I knew that after two years I really wanted to be out I was like I'm gonna do this job for two years I'm gonna learn a ton then I'm gonna go do something else and so I think you have to ask yourself what's your deadline there's always a light at the end of the tunnel and then on top of it um I think that a lot of times why It's a Grind is we really do you you know three things like if you're struggling in your business right now it's because one you haven't picked

a problem big enough to solve so you're never going to make enough money on it your problem is too small it's two you might have a team but you have a team of equals as opposed to weakness offsets so as you hire new people you shouldn't hire new people just for tasks that need to be done you should hire for tasks you don't want to do uh that they uniquely want to do that takes some of the misery off your plate and then the third thing is have I set an operating system in place in

order for me to actually achieve my goals consistently with processes and procedures and that part sounds super boring to people but the problem is most businesses are just a series of repetitions and check-ins continuously and so content's no different it's like is the video edited is the thumbnail there is the title right have we gone through the six iterations why didn't you do this last time we did it the next time you have a lot less suffering when you systematize everything because then you don't have low-level decision fatigue of all the things that should just

be like an airplane pilot he checks it off the list gets done every time there's zero stress so I think a lot of content creators are really stressed because they have no process and if you don't have any process then you're like like why am I giving feedback on this video for the 450 second time because you don't have process I have one final question for you but I want to make sure people can um take action if they want to go to the next step so um what right now do you want to shout

out and of course we will link all of this in the show notes um I think the most important thing is what I'm shouting from the rooftops which is MSM book.com like main streetm millionaire book.com my belief is that we do not have to do everything the hard way we have to spend time upfront learning how to steal other people's homework which is what you do through Acquisitions so if any point in your business you've one thought God I'd like to grow faster or you've thought I would like to have more clients in groups as

opposed to singles or you've thought my business is motoring but how could I take it to the next level I Want More Humans to learn Acquisitions I have never met somebody who learned to do deals and regretted it uh it is applicable to every sector of your life and I think there's a series of businesses out there where creators can become more powerful than the biggest private Equity firms and I think that's why like the Kim Kardashians of the world with Sky all are so scary to the big guys because they actually fear you creators

with attention a thing a bunch of middle-aged white dudes on Wall Street are never going to get they'll never be able to compete with you for that and you used to have to go through agents to do deals now you can do deals direct you used to have to go through Hollywood to do deals now you don't need them at all so the only next level of the game is once you get the attention are you schlepping gummy bears for hair growth at you know oneth the price that they're getting or do you own part

of your distribution the future is bright in the crater economy two final questions I'm curious who do you think is the greatest living entrepreneur greatest I mean God it's hard it's hard for me to not say Elon Musk I mean how can you see what Elon Musk has done and not be staggered which I know is not that popular online but think about some stats here for a second on my man Elon not that he needs to be pumped up lately 60% of all satellites in the sky right now starlink 80% of all rockets that

have taken off this year starlink he has beaten government contractors and the actual government in the space race and then oh by the way because he has the Max uh ownership of risk plus pain tolerance he has not only started a rocket company but now has Tesla and Twitter he's taking on freedom of speech he's taking on government entities he's taking on the mainstream media and he's taking on the automotive industrial complex and so um you know one of my life lessons is that I will always at least listen to those who have a bank

account that is bigger than I do because they probably have learned something I haven't yet we there's no such thing as a perfect human does not exist never met one actually one you would like this one of my pastors said to me he goes listen there's no such thing as a perfect church and if you find one don't go there because you'll it up he didn't say it up I added that but it's true and so it's the same with business people all of us are so flawed I am such a flawed bipedal monkey running

around trying to figure it out but um I learn from the greats and so I think elon's mine lots of insights and lessons from Elon an inspiring individual the plane is landing and we're going into to 2025 what's our mindset that you'd give to creators what advice would you give to creators considering this world of discontinuous change and economic uncertainty what's our game plan for moving forward you know one of my mentors told me something that has stuck with me for a long time whenever I'm really struggling with something and something is difficult I repeat

these words which is accept allow appreciate take action Let It Go and so as we're coming into 2025 when something happens to you that you don't like I accept Okay this is happening right now I allow that to be the actual reality as opposed to fighting it then I take some sort of action to see if I could I'm sorry then I appreciate I go thank you I I know there's something to learn from this I'm going to figure out what it is thank you for any difficulty that I have then I take action and

say okay given X I need to do y action and then I let go of anything else if there there's nothing else that I can do I just let it go and this idea has helped me through a lot of difficult times because I don't know about you but often I will worry and worry and worry about a thing that never comes and so if I can instead accept allow appreciate take a little action and Let It Go turns out I'm still breathing we're all okay Cody Sanchez appreciate you so much thankful for your influence

in my life and our community's life thanks again for adding value to our event Main Street millionaire is the book hit the show notes for all of her links and make sure to grab a pre-order or order it as the book is out soon and thank you for listening to today's episode of the thank media podcast