The Money Expert: From $0 to Millions In 2 Years Without Any Hard Work!: Codie Sanchez | E258

why do you think most people don't ever reach Financial Freedom in their lives this is where people get it so wrong one of the secrets to success is Cody Sanchez he's an entrepreneur who's invested in over 100 companies turning over millions a year after spending 15 years on Wall Street he's now sharing her secrets to the World on how to make money I think that is the question everyone's asking themselves I think every human should understand the language of money it's not that complex we just make it sound complex because the less people speak our

language the more we can charge them for the first time in 25 years the richest 1% will control more than half of the world's wealth by next year the Gap is huge this is why only one in 10 people dies wealthy if you understand the language you can become an expert in it and expertise leads to a bunch of cash but what have you come to learn about what holds us back in that moment the people who love you they want what's best for them which is that you're safe you're secure everything's okay my loved

ones were super supportive but they were always saying things like is the grass Always Greener Cody and so we've become a generation of vitamin D deficient alternative milk drinking softies so I had a job I shouldn't have been at a guy I shouldn't have been with in a place I shouldn't live but I was too scared I'm not one of those entrepreneurs that just burn the bridges or sleep on the couch and so I needed something where I could stare step my way out of a corporate job and then I realized this could be way

bigger than what anybody else could pay me we zoom in on that moment what would you recommend my first step be Cody first you have to before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69% my goal is 50% so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger

the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode [Music] Cody who are you speaking to and what is the message that you're trying to send them I think that every man and woman maybe people like you and I when we were younger before we had any zeros or businesses and the meage the message is very simple it's that I think by and large and maybe they could feel this inside them too we've slowly gone from a nation of owners or a country of owners or a world of

owners to uh a nation of renters or surfs in another word and the idea is what if we could take that back and that's the whole premise of everything we do is getting people into the owner's chair into ownership as opposed to letting other people be the architects of their lives and it took me way too long to do that and so I'm hoping that it will take other people less time if we share give me the Persona then of someone that you believe will find Value in this conversation like where where are they are

they in their life what are they thinking day to day um what are their aspirations yeah I I think there's sort of three humans that I picture there's one that I call working John and um and he is basically or she but I just have a male Avatar for this one is sitting in a job right now that they don't really like doing things they don't want to do for people they don't like and building their dream and their castle and they're mad about it although your choice to be there but they're mad about that

decision and they want to they want a way out but they have either golden handcuffs or they make too much money or they have responsibility bills that have to be paid and so they don't really feel like they have a solution except going to find like the next best but kind of still worst company and then the second avatar is there's an there's an aging population that by and large in the workforce we say ah you're over 50 or 60 like you're not getting as many job looks as you were before but now we live

until we're 90 so what are they supposed to do for 30 40 years and I think their evolution can be also buying a business taking over something becoming an owner and maybe something not aggressive as aggressive as they were before and then I think the the third Avatar are humans who kind of got sold pipe dreams over the last couple years like if I buy 472 houses that pay me a hundred bucks a a month profit uh I'll finally become financially free well it takes a lot of cash to do that or you know if

I have nfts on the side or if I go into the stock market Market on the side all of which aren't rigged games exactly but are meant to just beat inflation and so that third group of people might like what they're doing they just need they need something else on the side that's a little bit of a safety net because I don't think our safety nets will be around by the time we need them and you've been through your own Journey from the corporate world to working in finance working as a journalist where you are

now which one of those avatars did you represent well I was definitely a working John so that would have been the first one when I was in finance I was doing well but I definitely felt trapped I mean I was all those things I was should have been happy and content with where I was but felt like the 60 hour work weeks were too much and I didn't really like the culture of the company that I was working for um I had a lot of respect for the CEO but I didn't really fit and uh

but I was too scared I'm like a little bit of a scaredy cat I'm not one of those entrepreneurs like our mutual friend Alex who just was like burn the bridg I'll sleep on the couch you know I I'll sell it all that's just not me it's too scary and so I needed something where I could have like a soft Landing I could ster step my way out of a corporate job so I started buying these small businesses with the idea that maybe one day they could just meet meet my costs and then I realized

oh God I'm thinking so small this could be way bigger than what anybody else could pay me but I was a working John for sure we zoom in on that moment cuz I think most people listening to this now can can relate to that moment of maybe hearing you speak and hearing your content online or hearing an Alex OSI or whatever hearing Gary veay whoever it might be talk about starting that business pursuing that side Hustle but there's this psychological barrier to overcome which most of us can't overcome we call it fear we say you

know that I'm waiting for the perfect time I don't have the confidence if you zoom in on that now you've started this new journey in your life where you're creating content and you're advising people on how they can pursue the paths that you've pursued it yourself what have you come to learn about what holds us back in that moment and the and the maybe the falseness of the stories we tell ourselves you you described it as being a scaredy cat yeah I at least for myself what I'll say is you know daughter of immigrants um

who thought that what I had achieved was the Pinnacle you know people that I love more than anybody in the world and maybe that's similar for a lot of people listening the people who love you they want what's best for them typically which is that you're safe you're secure everything's okay they don't really want what's quote unquote best for you because that's actually the scary thing real growth happens when you take huge risks and you potentially fail and you realize that you're not going to die and so I realized that my loved ones were some

of the reasons that were actually holding me back um super supportive but they were always saying things like is the grass Always Greener Cody you know what about this next thing is that really going to make you happy you know are you sure it's not you is it them and in some cases they're right I just have that that ridiculous urge to keep growing and doing more but that that made me jump from 1 two 3 four five five finance companies in like 10 years or something like that because I thought it was each it

was the individual company and I didn't realize oh no I'm just like unemployable I want to work for myself I'm not going to be great at being at somebody else's employee um but it was the stories that I heard again and again from my family because they wanted to keep me safe very kind but not right for me so in your life there comes a moment where you make this kind of peculiar decision I say peculiar because most people don't make the decision to um start off- ramping from the corporate world essentially yeah you you

buy your first business right so you're you're in a job yep and while you're in the job you decide to buy a business y did you have loads of cash when you did that no no no no in fact and why did you do it what was what was the thought process that made you go you know what that's a good idea I think it's usually triggered from from some sort of pain like at that time I was was fighting a little bit with the CEO of the company that I was working in and they

really wanted me to they wanted me to run this business that I had taken from zero to a couple billion in assets under management and they wanted me to continue running it but I started getting press and stuff started happening because we had had this growth and they wanted me to do it really quietly and um not as much the CEO but some of the other managing directors I was by far the youngest I was the only female and um you know that company was wild but they basically in many ways were like um you

need to do it our way and I was like well your way didn't get you to this couple billion dollars under management it works great for you guys over here but it didn't over there so no I'm going to run the business this way and uh and so we were kind of arguing little bit and I think I saw the writing on the wall that it wasn't my Casino they weren't my chips I was working for somebody else and at the end of the day they were writing the rules as is fair it was their

business and I knew that at some point I was either going to get pushed out or leave and so at that point I started buying these businesses on the side because I wasn't sure I wanted to work for somebody ever again I'm I'm fascinated by the first step people take because the first step seems to be the hardest that first step to buying that first business and your stepping out into uncertainty and the unknown there and that's really like the you know if I could give one thing to the audiences that have listened to me

for the last 10 years on social media and on this podcast it would just be the answer to taking that first step like out into like you did at 2930 to buy that first business talk me talk to me about specifically that first one what were you looking for y what was your thesis and um I guess how did you learn how did you learn about buying as you call them boring businesses yeah well I had a benefit which is as a journalist I sort of infiltrated Finance I'm not technically as intelligent uh you know

I'm not as I'm not a financial modeling Guru I'm not a lot of things that people are in finance but I'm pretty decent at asking questions and then figuring out who are the right people that could get me the answers and so what I realized pretty quickly is we were doing a bunch of deals you know I was doing deals that were tens of millions hundreds of millions and billion dollar deals and I don't know why it took me so long but I realized there's no difference like materially between a billion dollar a hundred million

doll A10 million doll deal and a $1 million deal and if that's the case then I bet if I have a couple hundred thousand or $10,000 I could do a much smaller deal wouldn't I be able to do the exact same thing so I saw behind the curtain uh you like at The Wizard of Oz and realized that the wizard was actually pretty short and because I saw that then I just said well now we just work backwards and just like you would buy you know a $100 million condo unit or you know Condo building

you could see how you could go all the way back and buy your first studio right it's the same thing with businesses it's just stair stepping real estate and so I at the time my biggest constraint was not knowledge I knew how to do deals it was time you know I was working 60 70 hours a week and so one of the first deals I did was a laundromat deal uh because I figured well you you don't need somebody to run it full-time and it was a 100K transaction and so that wouldn't bankrupt me and

you know I could buy a little business like this and that business could keep running even while I wasn't there and I could have an operator that could probably help me with anything that went sideways why did you find a laundry mat to buy for 100k was it a website did you know the guy or the woman no no the guy so basically what happened for my first deals I didn't have a framework so it was just hey I do these really big deals could I do a smaller deal and if I could do a

smaller deal what would be the easiest small deal to do that would be the least risk and so at the time I knew a guy that was running a couple of laundromats so I basically said to him hey if I find one for you will you help me operate it and he knew how to do that so the very first one we had was in California and that's one of the secrets to this is two things first you have to learn how to do deals which is not really that complex we just make it sound

complex in finance because Financial lingo is like the OTE around how we make money right the less people speak our language the more we can charge them which is the secret and then the second aspect was how to run a laundromat right like I don't know machine breaks what am I going to do and so then I had this guy who knew how to run these and I could just find the deal for him close the deal for him and be the cash for him why did they sell to you old you know these are

68-year-old owners of a business that have been running this laundr map plus a bunch of other small businesses in the vicinity for 20 30 years and so can can you imagine running your podcast for 30 years would probably be fun but by the end you might be open to selling now imagine you had a laundromat for 30 years you know you're dealing with broken machines or there's somebody who's homeless messing around with some stuff at a certain point you don't even want to continue with a profitable business and this is where people get it so

wrong all the time on the internet people love to tell me no way would anybody sell a business that business made $67,000 in profit so I bought it for 100k a year did 6 7,000 and people on the internet do one or two things to that they go no [ __ ] way it didn't happen and why would somebody sell and like did you give them a bad deal and the second uh group of people go that's a terrible deal I'd never do that deal because you don't have enough profit in that for that to

be a business not a job so those are the two two things and to the first one I'd say in the US right now there are tens of millions of small businesses for sale that will never sell and and I tell a story about my uncle EB who had a small business that was exactly that um that he closed down which by the way costs you money as opposed to selling because he had no idea his business was sellable um like many businesses that I had before I did this I shut down instead of selling

them I didn't even realize that even though I was in finance and then to the second group I'd say you start with a small business that probably isn't the greatest business for you to own long term but businesses are like real estate you can turn around and sell them after you get in the game but I think of these businesses I call them gateway drug businesses they're they're the once you learn how to do a deal you'll you'll never see the world the same again it will change your entire perspective on everything you will walk

in everywhere and you will realize that business is full of masochists like you and me who do this despite it being awful many times but we love it in some way but at some point we're going to want to sell our thing and move on to the next and so everywhere around you right now wherever you are somebody sitting next to you wants to sell their business and what if you could figure out how to buy that business put in an oper in it and then do it again and again and again and that's the

only difference between you and Warren Buffett or Blackstone or these big huge companies is it important to have competence in the area and the industry that you're trying to buy these small businesses in in your point of view not really no not at all but it helps right oh of course it helps um more important than anything is it's sort of like real estate it's really about the deal can you understand can you read a balance sheet can you understand profit and loss which is not that difficult to understand and then can you figure out

how to get to the person that can get you answers so for instance I didn't know anything about laundromats but I knew a guy who knew laundr mats um often what I tell people these days is I'm a I'm more old school like I would go knock on doors and I would Shake business owners hands but uh you could also go to Reddit where there are uh platforms with a 100,000 electricians on them and so if you wanted to buy an HVAC company which was which is like heating uh air conditioning and often electric electricity

um I would go on there and I would try to find electricians in my local area and I would ask them questions and I would pay them for an hour consult to figure out how to run this business I think we forget in this day and age how easy it is to get the information that we want and so we listen to the fear of the fact that we don't know what we're doing and I actually think that's irrational uh I think it's really easy for somebody to tell you why things won't work it's actually

quite hard to convince somebody that they're capable of doing something what if I don't have 100K you had 100K right yeah say I'm working a job I've saved up I know $5,000 yeah well I've bought a business for $3,000 I've bought a business for $8,000 and I've bought many many many businesses for Z and and I'm not saying this in a way that's click baity do will you go out right now talk to somebody tomorrow and be able to buy a business for zero like you're going to need to do a little work um just

on the structuring of the deal right just on the structuring of the deal so they get paid on performance exactly or they get paid on what's called seller financing so these you know you can go and most businesses most small businesses below $10 million in Revenue 60% of them sell with some component of seller financing which just means if let's say you know somebody manages your property here let's say that that property manager makes 100K a year profit they want to sell their business you're a terrible tenant they can't handle it anymore and they sell

that business they want to sell that business typically for for 2 to 5x profit that's what these small businesses go for and the the typically there aren't enough buyers like there's not a bunch of people run around trying to buy property management companies so what do they do instead well you would come to them and say all right I'll buy out your property management company but you're going to be my loan I'm going to pay you a percent interest rate plus uh I'm going to defer your tax burden so you pay less in taxes nobody

likes that and uh and I'm going to buy the business by giving you $300,000 with uh you know over 5 years right so I'm going to keep a percentage of the profits and I'm going to give the rest to you and it's not really that complex it's really what happened in real estate before we had Zillow and red fin and all of these sites that made it super normalized to sell real estate the as you said a second ago the real key here is knowing the art of the possible as it relates to Deals the

way you construct your deals so that um you win yeah 100% basically well and the I think the truth of deal making that people forget about is that it is one of the very few things where it's never a zero Sun game yeah so if I go to sell a stock I hope that when I sold the stock I sold at the right time and you bought at the wrong time right like that's what we hope in buying and selling small businesses that doesn't have to be the case you know I could buy I could

sell my property management company to you you could pay me 3x profits and I could say but if the company increases Revenue by x amount which I think it will with these tweaks and I kind of help you a little bit how about you pay me 400,000 instead of 300,000 and you would go great if you hit those metrics no problem that'd be an awesome deal for me so there's plenty of ways to make sure it's a win-win but to your point this is why people are poor because nobody teaches us the language of deals

and if somebody taught us not how to negotiate our salary that's fine but how to negotiate for equity and ownership the world would whole look a whole lot different but that's not in the big pictures incentive it's really good for the little guy not so good for the big guy the other thing when you're approaching a business and trying to get them to knowing this how to structure deal is one thing but then there's an element of persuasion and salesmanship yeah involved in this how important is is learning to sell and how how can we

bet be better salese in your view what is the key to being a great sales person because you must be to be buying businesses you must be able to figure out what someone wants and present it to them I truly believe that sales is a fallacy I don't think sales exists I think you find people who are already predisposed to want what you are quote unquote selling and I learned that very early on from one of my mentors actually a Goldman that you don't sell anybody on anything you're never going to change somebody's mind and

if you think I'm wrong go try to convince a republican to become a Democrat right or a Tory to become I don't know what's the other side okay and it doesn't really go very well usually and so um my belief is actually what you're looking for is just who are the people who are you're you're finding trigger moments like if I was to have a conversation with Stephen about selling your business I would try I would be asking questions like you know how's it going running wow 20 years that's a long time if if their

answer is [ __ ] love this business I am never selling this is amazing you're like cool awesome no problem so lovely meet meeting you but if you meet the person that's like yeah I'm ready I'm ready to retire I've got this vision of a ranch in my head out in the countryside and you know but my kid doesn't want to take over the business you're not you're not going to get them to think something different you're purely discovering what they truly feel and then you are going to be the person that enables them to

have a retirement in a way that no government can like you are the retirement plan and so that's maybe what you need to learn is just curiosity for another human and then you need to understand what a what a motivated seller looks like and a motivated seller looks like somebody who's ready for their next adventure whatever that may be and if you can find those two things then you find the people that actually yes they want what you're selling now what you actually do have to convince somebody of and I hope you're true about it

is that you are going to be a good shepherd if you are going to be their retirement plan you better not go broke right you better actually be able to take this business and run with it and so that is one part where you have to convince like why should I sell this business to you Stephen how are you going to take care of my business bu and that part really again comes down to curiosity making sure that you're setting yourself up and the seller for Success not rocket science if I I'm G to play

um I'm G to play the role of a 25y old okay I'm working in a job I'm I got a little bit of disposal income but not a ton yeah I'm listening to you Cody and I'm going I want some of that you've got a holding company right yeah you got a fund as well yeah how much roughly the revenue of the in company 70 million 70 million so your holding company does about 70 million Revenue you got a fund as well yep how big is the fund small 10 okay so 80 million combined um

I want to get to where you you are but I'm currently working in a job I'm 25 years old I've got I don't know $7,000 in the bank £7,000 in the bank whatever what would you recommend my first step be Cody how do I get out of this job yeah well the first step if you if you're going to like a pro I'd say this which is tell me what you do for a living I do content perfect so if you do content for living what I'd say is don't buy a laundromat I talk about

laundromats I actually need to change that I need to like tell somebody I bought a different first business because it's a terrible business to buy it just was my first one and it's very easy to understand so I'm like if you can't understand quarter machine clothes clean don't buy a business any business just forget you heard me talk about anything and so that's why I talk about laundr mats but if I was going to do it theway I would say you should use your unfair advantage and if you're in the content business don't buy a

boring business in the traditional sense look around you I it's something I call my personal p&l review so I would basically look at what do I spend money on already if you're in content you probably spend money on ad purchasing right you probably spend money on video production you probably spend money on maybe you rent a a set space um you have all these expenses around you and what if you could turn one or two of those expenses into an asset not a liability thing that makes you money not a thing that costs you money

and so you know I did a deal back when I was doing more video production in my last company where I bought a podcast and video production company and I did that deal basically for Zar I think I put $10,000 down for that deal that ended up doing about 300 $400,000 a year because I just said I know like five or six other people that could use your service I'm going to like double your Revenue by introducing you to these people and I pay you let's say $3,000 a month now what if we're just going

to wipe that out if I can hire these other people and you're going to give me 25% of the company or whatever percentage it was that's what I would do if I was you so if you're young and hungry look around you and see what you pay for and what you currently utilize already and then try to get a percentage of that business if not buying the whole thing and and that's sort of the pro way to do it as opposed to Car Wash need to go learn totally different Market you can do the second

it's just a little bit riskier so I'm I'm working in content 25 years old $7,000 in the bank um I realize what you've just said and I go you know I'm at a marketing agency we book a lot of Studios yeah so what I'm going to do is I'm going to approach a studio space try and do a deal with them and then I'm going to send clients their way yeah you could totally do that that'd be a Sweat Equity deal or a REV Equity deal Revenue Equity deal so for a studio space I mean

I think the the probably Pro way to do that um would be one you'd approach them and you'd kind of get an understanding for their business you'd be like how much revenue do you make like how big is this you'd figure out if you were material to their business so me doing 3K a year with my video production guy I was material to this business he was only doing I don't know you know $100,000 a year or something like that and so if my 3K went away that was you know that's like 20% of his

business right there over a yearly basis so if you go to a studio production company and they're like yeah we're doing $7 million a year and you're paying them 3K you're like all right cool anyway nice to chat with you or you could say you know who's the owner how long you've been doing this and you could dive into it and the other side of the coin is you might find out that the owner is 70 and you become buds with the owner and the owner loves when you come in because you're kind of like

young and you learn about what does and then you ask who's going to take over the business and then you might say Hey you know I do this other thing but I would love to sort of be an apprentice to you in a way and potentially buy your business using future profits and you can sort of like stay on and we can stare step our way into this but would you be open to that like leaving your legacy to somebody like me and so you could do it that way too but I think it is

learn it goes back to kind of the smart question you asked which is like the two avatars are who's listening to this right now and then that's the same question to the people listening that you're going to ask the owner what sort of Avatar is the owner and how can you become the solution to what that Avatar is looking for how can you become the son to the father you know how can you become the buyer to a really anxious seller um and then you can get your deal done why do you think most people

don't ever reach Financial Freedom in their lives do you think it's a psych psychology thing a mindset thing obviously let take you know the very practical elements out of the equation so you know severe hardship poverty all of those kinds of things but people that are in that sort of middle layer that are comfortable why do why do they never some of those people never really reach a point of Financial Freedom I think humans defer to the paths they've seen before them I think so often we follow in our fathers or our mother 's footsteps

and that's why I think the internet's really powerful is you have an opportunity to now choose the family footsteps you want to follow into um so one I I used to think it was just a knowledge Gap but then I I went to this event um and I was talking to my friend about it and she uh said that the facilitators did something really cool it was a group of women imagine like 40 women in a room right and they're there to talk about finances and in this room they said okay everybody close your eyes

and I want you to picture money picture money right now and then I want you to turn your body into the shape you feel when you hear the word money right and so 30 women all eyes closed they take whatever shape and she goes now open your eyes and look around and you know my friend was explaining to me how most people in the room were like fetal position they were like holding they were like really close somewhere on the ground you know some were covering their eyes so in a room of 30 relatively successful

women their reaction was like attack shame guilt for money she was like and you know she was standing there with her arms open wide like you know give me the money and when I think about my relationship with money it's the same thing I'm like if I think about money I'm like yeah it's over here like my hands are up like I am here for it but most people have this weird emotional attachment to money and so I used to think that people on the internet like not I like Tony Robbins but like Tony Robbins

or whatever who do a lot of the motivational stuff I kind of didn't get it I'm like just give me the tactics skip the skip the other thing and then I realize that most people have really bad stories that they tell themselves about money and you could tell I mean it be interesting your next speech you could try it I tried it at one of mine same thing men and women holding each other like they're being beaten when somebody talks about money the average human feels that way and so I think it it all comes

down to what we believe which is hard for somebody in finance like me to say you know typically I would think well if you knew what to do you could just do it but that's not the case it's you have to believe that you can do it and the only way I can figure out to get more people to believe that they can do it is to show more people who are super normal or in fact below average doing the damn thing but if I had the answer to that that'd be the million-dollar question I

I read a a stat in the US that only one in 10 people dies wealthy in the US that most people die broke uh and uh and Young and and I thought that was fascinating because we're at economic High Times Like lower poverty levels than ever before but still most people die uh at least without extra cash to pass on to the next Generation why do you you think people don't reach Financial Freedom or most people die without a lot of cash I think um obviously it's a very complex topic but I think I really

resonate with the emotional psych psychological side of things that you described you know it's the same reason why most people don't go to the gym or eat healthy money is inherently emotional when I was when I had no money I was Reckless with money right all the gambling shops are in the areas where people don't have money um there's something deeply psychological about money so I would if I when I was working in those call centers if I got paid £1,000 at the end of the month I would the same day go and buy a

TV or an Xbox like a PlayStation for about6 700 I would not pay my rent to go and buy that PlayStation and sometimes I'd buy the PlayStation without having a TV there was just something psychologically attached to the I don't know the dopamine rush or the sense of selfworth that I got from owning the shiny thing when I got money my relationship with money became amazing I I stopped buying designer things I stopped wasting it I didn't feel a need to to show off or buy you know Rolexes or whatever so I was able to

preserve wealth more there's a really interesting relationship with money on both ends of the spectrum when when you have less of it it's hard it's often because of certain psychological things and certain people I was one of them it's harder to hold on to when you have more of it it feels easier to hoard and people you know and more broadly on the on the subject of um why people don't reach Financial Freedom I think the modern world tells us that we can get rich quick yeah and when you think about how people build wealth

we think about the war and buffets of the world it's so boring and slow and no who's going to buy that book yeah you know get be a billionaire at 87 I [ __ ] what I'm not going to be able to you know dance in the Nightclub at 87 so why do I want a billion then that's why the nft thing and the crypto scam this whatever is all appealing to people yeah cuz it's quick yeah it's true well you know what's I actually um was reading somewhere a story about in South Africa in

the slums um they have the highest concentration of the largest televisions uh per square foot of the the houses so they you if you've been there and and I've actually never been so I can't validate but you will see very small little rooms with huge televisions and and I thought that was interesting um but it actually makes sense because maybe it comes down to a belief that people don't think they're ever going to get out and so they think the only chance of getting out is going into whatever the short-term pleasure is it's like if

you never think you're going to escape your everyday reality which is actually kind of miserable then you're going to buy the PlayStation because why wouldn't you why would you save and try to get out when you've never seen anybody else get out but what does the play the PlayStation means so much more to you in that moment than PlayStation it means it's your it's selfworth it's one tiny token that you are successful yeah that you can show your friends or that you can just even for your own self-esteem it's so much more than a PlayStation

the thing that invalidates you in this case money will be the thing that has the greatest chance of making you feel valid and so if if in my house the lack of money was always the thing that caused my shame so the minute I got any of it I Would overcompensate by trying to buy some [ __ ] to show people yeah um and then when I had loads of it he gave a [ __ ] like yeah that's true that void was almost filled so yeah it's true I also think it's hard I mean

I remember many times where uh you know I remember checking accounts always being overdrawn and uh and you know seeing the little negative pin on my you know email and and cell phone that you couldn't there there was nothing else in there you know when I was in college and trying to figure it out before I made any money I think I made like 37k in my first job at a college um so I definitely remember all that but I think if you can have this belief and you can get around other humans who have

have had success or are striving for succcess your aperture just opens in a different way and then maybe the commercials and the ads and the things that make you feel like you want to buy all the everyday stuff go away like I don't really like I kind of viscerally get mad when I see people who have wealth showing images of them in their Bentley's or rolls-royces or I mean I have a nice watch but like you don't see me show that [ __ ] anywhere I like when people are sh themselves in their private planes

or whatever I just think they're missing the whole boat and then what they're doing is is they're perpetuating the PlayStation situation they're doing it again and again and they're doing it because it doesn't make them happy anymore to have it that's not enough I have to show a bunch of people I got it and what they should actually be showing is man I just invested in my first stock that's [ __ ] cool look at I mean if you look at my stuff it's like I have laundromats and car washes behind me all the time

in them because that's the stuff that you should try to strive for you can actually pass it down it can pay you back you can buy as many PlayStations as you want but I think to your point the other thing is we are all you know have you ever felt um like when you're around other people and uh and they're sort of negative or they want to talk about people the whole time and like how that energy feels it's like it's draining right even if you kind of get caught up in and it's fun for

a second at the end you're like [ __ ] that was a I feel kind of gross for having that combo I think it's the same with ads and stuff that we take into us and so they're basically creating our stories for us in social media by showing all this fancy stuff and then we start to have this mimetic desire this external desire and belief that we actually that we want it that we need it but we don't we're just becoming a replica of the people that we're surrounding ourselves with which are now social media

there's no even growing up there's no laundry mats and 50 cents videos yeah you know what I mean should be it's all sports cars and mansions and stuff so that was my North Star as a young black man it was like how do I get a mansion and a sport in a sports car and in the first page of my diary 18 years old it says four things I want to achieve before I'm 25 bear in mind I was shoplifting pizzas at the time and I was um a university Dropout not speaking to my parents

with two ccjs which is like when the the court is coming for you for death I wrote um a Range Rover Sport will be my first car didn't have a driving license 12 23 um I'll make a million pounds I'll I work on my body image again because a very small kid uh and I'll get a girlfriend those were my four goals in life and they were totally influenced by the outside world that's why my book is called happy sexy millionaire because I thought if I became a sexy millionaire then I would become everything I

needed to be and I was so wrong I mean I don't regret the decisions I made because you can't really in hindsight but um I wish I had better influences to say the least yeah I mean I think that's why content's so important you know I think about I think about Warren Buffett's annual shareholders meeting right which you can go and attend if you if you own stock and you don't have to own much of it um and I think you know people made fun of me when I started creating content online cuz they were

like oh big successful private Equity person now you're taking your own money and if you really had companies that made $80 million in Revenue that means they're you know you're worth a couple hundred million bucks uh and if that's the case why would you be making Instagrams and Tik toks and that doesn't make much sense right and my reaction at the time was I think we should make it just as entertaining talking about stuff that makes us money as we do stuff that costs us money I think probably that'd be good and if we could

do that that'd be a Worthy Mission and also it'd be fun to try to do it I don't know if we could do it but um yeah maybe the next rap videos I mean and now now for honestly my favorite deals to break down are the celebrity deals because they're fascinating like the rock have you ever looked at the Rock's content from a uh product perspective brilliant so the rock if you look at his content so let's just talk Instagram if you go to The Rock's Instagram I want you to count how many pieces of

content he has that have product placement in them of companies he owns and the answer is close to 80% so almost every single post the rock does is an ad but what do we really see we see sexy tequila we see ABS we see him with his beautiful wife like we see these other things but we don't realize that every single one of them is an ad and so what if we could flip that around like wouldn't it be cool if the rock talked about the deals he did too and how he did that now

he goes back and he talks about how he stole stickers bars similars to you with with pizza um but I think even for celebrities they don't want to talk about the deals that they did they just want to talk about all the money that they have it almost seems like faux somehow to talk about the deals and how good at deal making they are like Reese Witherspoon billionaire now why because Reese Witherspoon little sweet suie sunshine in pink basically took a book club and said to authors I'll give you part of my platform for you

to talk about your book because I'm lovely it's free you're going to sell a bunch of books it's tiny insignificant detail I'd like the future rights to uh turn your book into a movie and I'll pay you some sum or I'll have a right of first refusal AK I have I get the right to buy it before anybody else and I'll pay you then for it the author goes amazing Reese of course perfect they come on Reese basically AB tests so tests out which books do best and depending on which books do best uh Rees

Reese buys their movie rights and makes movies that create you know tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in Revenue but Reese doesn't tell that story Reese tells the Suzy Sunshine story of her selling the books I think the other story is more interesting and more people can learn from it so when I hear these deals and when I see these big success stories we've got Kylie we've got the Rihanna of the world we've got Ryan Reynolds The Rock ree Witherspoon the question that we must always be asking ourselves I I certainly ask

it is was that them or did they just have a great advisor a financial adviser that came along at some point and went by the way you do like this and you'll make [ __ ] shitloads yeah well my question is who cares I still want to know the secret sauce yeah and so she's none of them are that dumb where they don't know what the deal was right like even if somebody was smarter than them which could be gree may have a genius behind her the rock to probably Danny Garcia his wife his manager

Kylie yeah the goat you know which is weird to say about the Kardashians but you know behind them the mom for sure but they're you know they're smart enough when you create that much wealth and you do it continuously multiple times like Reese's done with Draper James too you definitely know what's going on so I think like sharing those Secrets would be cool but that's usually where people go people go well they're famous so it's easy for them or you know who did the deal and I'm like yeah maybe it's scooter braa behind the scenes

but I'd like I'd like to know how they structured that the reason they don't tell you though is because it feels like it's the opposite of the authenticity that they're trying to maintain nailed it so if they came out and went listen the way we did you on that whiskey deal I got 50% my job was to post it with the abs every week and you guys [ __ ] bought it and now it's worth a billion dollars here's the how to they can't do that deal again because everything they touch I'm going to think

ah it's a deal well I think you could do it in a way that was real like you could be like we did this business and maybe you could give some of it away like you could be like you know if if the rock Mak a billion dollars off of teramana couldn't he then say we would never have done a billion dollar deal unless you guys bought it and because you bought it we're going to give you some Equity we're going to allow people to buy into Equity at the company at a lower valuation and

have access to it I mean that's kind of what venture capital and crowdfunding does right so I mean they can do whatever they want to do but I think there's so many ways to get around it and maybe there's nothing but downside because people these days get mad when people make money and so maybe people people would hate that but God I think it' make a lot more humans Rich for people to be honest about how they got there you know I reflect as you were speaking on a conversation I had with a cab driver

in the UK he said to me are you're that D of a CEO gu I listen to your podcast in the cabs and you know I'm I'm working three jobs this is one of them and I'm trying to what he was saying was I'm trying to find Financial Freedom yeah I'm working this cab job um I'm doing this other little thing on the side but I'm trying to find the way I'm trying to find the way to get out of this life into and he was scrambling around he was saying to me you know my

friend does some stuff in Africa and Ethiopia and he's got some there with property so I might go there and there's this other thing I might do those people those are the ones that I'm trying to speak to today those ones that like looking for the way out mhm well first of all cab drivers and Uber drivers are my people yeah I always love them yeah I always chat with them well and they always listen to my stuff because they know small business like they have a friend that owns a laundry mat or they have

a friend that works inside of a car wash or owns a car wash these are like bluecollar businesses right um but usually what I would say to them is something I actually said to one of the guys that's with me today I'd say try to break your frame entirely most people look for individual next tactics so they're like what could I do over the next one two three years to get here one thing I think is really helpful to do is say okay you have a three-year goal break the frame how could you achieve that

goal and 6 months what would be something so different so out of the box so big that the goal that was going to take you 3 to six years is now going to take you six months and I want you to spend some time on that spend a week spend a weekend deeply thinking about that idea because what you're going to do is you're going to come up with ideas for the person that could be the impetus for your Financial Freedom or for the business risk that's super smart but you haven't been wanting to take

it and I think most people they like they weighed in the shallows of life and you cannot have massive change by going shallow and so I like to say when people want an answer I like to answer ask them a question because I think they know I think they know deep down inside but they get scared just like I did and so they wait years to do the thing that they knew they should have done earlier and I don't think you need a guru or a podcast to tell you that I think you've got to

break your frame and say I'm super capable if I was going to do this crazy thing in six months if anything was POS if I really believed in myself what could I do who could I go to that could make an unfair Advantage for me and I do think that book who not how people usually read it as Leaders because it's a lot about hiring but I think it's actually about life and I think usually your answer to Freedom is a who not a how uh because often for Hustlers and people who are going to

work hard you know one or two people who are very wealthy or who run big businesses there are a few people in your eco EOS system that you could go to and become their Hustler for them and that can lead to Fantastic Financial reward because most people are not Relentless in the pursuit of the things that they want if you can be relentless you can accomplish way more than the average person and most of us you used a phrase earlier on in this conversation which really stuck with me because I've used this phrase with my

friends over and over again you said you got to see behind the curtain and I remember the first moment in my life where I really felt like I got to see behind a cur that I didn't even know was there for anyone listening to this podcast there's a curtain on my right for anyone watching you can see the curtain on my right behind that curtain there is actually a room in there and there's actually another studio in there where we record some content it's kind of like a standing up Studio we've got some backdrops and

stuff like that but the analogy that I'd give you is in life you never know how many other rooms there are behind the wall and there was a point in my life where I started understanding deals and the public markets and how certain High net worth individuals were playing what I call money games they were basically not doing much work but they understood the laws of money so they could buy things at an Arbitrage or flip things at an Arbitrage and make good put them on the public markets and all of these crazy money games

that no one had ever told me about in life I thought the way you build wealth is by working and these [ __ ] the richest people I know do very little working and they do a lot of money games Y and they live behind the curtain that I didn't even know was there um and I was thinking about the cab driver there there's so many what is behind the curtain the behind the curtain is a bunch of information that's essentially what it is you know a bunch of people that have a bunch of information

what I might say to that cab driver is like who can take you behind the curtain even if you have to go get a [ __ ] job for six months yep like you were alluding to it there like is there a guy or a woman that I could go just Shadow just make the [ __ ] tea and get behind the curtain and figure out how they do it yep like if you wanted to be the best pod in the world or you wanted to be a good podcaster you come go host your Rogan

if you can go clean the floors 100% you know what I mean a lot of people don't want to want to do that they want to work their way there but so much in life is about information right and the information you you don't even know that you don't have oh yeah when did you see behind the curtain you worked in finance that's unfair yeah I think I think it is a hack um I saw behind the curtain for the first time when I had managers and bosses who are making tens of millions of dollars

a year and I realized how little they worked like you said but also how average they were you know I saw these largely you know middle-aged dudes who um were no more impressive than I was and they were crushing it and instead of having Envy or hate for that I was super curious I'm like ah this guy can do it that means I can do it and I think that's a a huge unlock actually I was talking with another friend the other week and I think one of the secrets to success might be when you

see somebody who has more who is doing better who has more money realizing that means that you can get it as opposed to I hate them because they have it if you can flip that mindset on the other side of that lives nothing but opportunity and and it keeps I keep finding new rooms in the house new curtains behind it and I'm not sure that will ever stop I mean I was talking to my friend Bill Perkins the other day who's a a hedge fund manager and Bill um is very successful huge you know compound

house we're walking around at I'm like this place is pretty nice and uh and he said to me Cody um you know do you think that you because you've been around small business for so long small has infected your thinking and I was like oh God you know I I don't [ __ ] I don't know and and but then I realized to him it had because he's got way more zeros than I do and so like those zeros become unlocks to the curtain I mean the the other day I was flying home yesterday or

flying here yesterday and I sat next to Jeffrey Kent the CEO and founder of abber cromi and Kent and he built that business up to multiple billions of dollars before selling it he uh played polo with the king is quite close with King Charles and um you know uh also has traveled the world came from nothing in South Africa was in a town in South Africa where there are only 100 white people which is fascinating um like mostly was barefoot all throughout his childhood um and created the luxury travel Market essentially and I was just

sitting next to him on on the airplane and I kind of looked at his watch and I was like that's a nice watch and I sort of looked at his mannerisms and I was like I just have a feeling this guy is worth a lot of money and so I started chatting with him I just said you know hi like I'm Cody I'm you know why were you in town what were you doing in con and um he lives now in Monaco and what I thought was so interesting is when I talked to him I

said what do you think the secret is like you're a billionaire like what is that how how do you become that and he said there's really one ingredient to success and that ingredient is the thing that everybody has but everybody wastes time time he's like I ran my company for 61 years 61 years running one company he goes can you imagine what the compounding looks like in 61 years focused on one thing he goes this generation cannot imagine and and then we went a little deeper and I said you know what do you think is

the biggest difference between entrepreneurs today and entrepreneurs when you were really in the game because he's in his 80s now and he said well back then we we were explorers of the only Frontier that still existed which was business you know they were the the privateers asking money for the king and queen to buy a ship to go to the to the new land right except he was doing it in a business sense he went to China in 76 and was the first person to open up the Chinese market to travel you know he uh

broke so many bones uh playing Polo that he had to retire at a young age like they were hard men and I think about it with um with with us today I think that we've become a generation of vitamin D deficient uh all birds wearing uh computer programming alternative milk drinking softies in many ways and some of my most successful friends who are worth so much monetarily their health is not very strong they don't adventure and they don't have true difficulty and I think that's the difference between his generation and ours and between true success

and not is this idea that I'm sort of playing with like a third degree human somebody who has a strong mind a strong bank account a strong body those three things all together and where we don't just take other people's risk meaning take other people's money to run our business but we we take the risk ourselves and I think his generation really did many things wrong I don't want to glorify it but I think they did that right and how much more interesting is it to do these big huge things and maybe if you do

that you break the frame entirely um and I every time I meet with a billionaire my mind just kind of it expands a little bit more and I think it's the same way like the first time you met like my parents weren't millionaires when I was growing up so the first time I met a millionaire I thought whoa like this is what is this magic land you know this person has so much money they don't know what to do with it and then you meet the first decamillionaire and then you meet the first 100 millionaire

and at each level not that we want to worship money or that money is all there is but it is a scoreboard for a game that a lot of people are playing in this Society and I think it's interesting to try to get in those rooms and these days those rooms are open you know back when we were first doing our businesses a billionaire didn't write a book you know or do a podcast or do a podcast or tweet or go shake your hand at a conference that was unheard of and now they're all around

what have you noticed in billionaires what's the trend you know people I've met a quite a lot of billionaires now and there tends to be some similarities yeah they all get there in different by different routes and different paths but similarities in character and philosophy yeah one is I've found most billionaires I've met have a mission so big it dwarfs the pain that comes with building because I do think it's more comfortable by and large it's more it's like the low dull pain is being in a job you know that's like kind of like having

a little ache constantly being in a job being uh an owner an entrepreneur or trying to strive for billionaire status is a roller coaster ride of extreme pain at some points or maybe you'd say extreme pain at some points extreme pleasure and you you kind of go like this right you have to be able to Wade through that and so I find that most of them are the opposite of what I thought they'd be I thought they'd just be like Scrooge McDuck like swimming around in their riches they'd be kind of shallow maybe you know

maybe they'd be super self-interested they'd only be focused on their own thing they wouldn't be nice I wouldn't want to meet them and actually what I find they're Inc this is going to sound like a gross generalization but most of them really want to help you up when they realize that you're hungry like when they see the hunger paired with the ability and willingness to take action they want to help you it's so rare like if you're listening and you have that desire but you actually do the hard things you're rare you're actually really rare

because everybody says they want it but nobody really wants to do it I mean I knew I had to fire one of my employees back in the day which made me really sad the second that that person told me that they had a bunch of debt uh they were working in the business with me obviously they had a bunch of upside in the business but they decided to take some of their cash and they were going to invest in a date day trading uh thing in the stock market and I said I really don't think

you should do that I think if you want to take that cash and buy a business we should talk about that I can help you um if you want to focus more on a secondary business that increases your income but if you want to day trade what you're telling me is that you want to get rich fast and you want to speculate that you want to get lucky you don't want to earn it and anyway they kind of laughed and then they did the thing and that was in that Mo moment I knew you don't

have what it takes at this level maybe you could change but if you're going to make that decision now you're telling me you're a short-term player and long-term games with long-term people like nval rant said is the goal so that's what billionaires have they think longterm I was actually just talking with a member of my team on the taxi on the way over here and there's a close to a billionaire that I've become friends with here and I was like why do you think he's inviting us to do this stuff you know who this is

and um and I was like I'm not a big enough name for this like there are other people you know what's the Thought here and then what I think I realized is that this guy is taking a bet that I might keep growing my social platform and I might keep spending on it and in two to three to five years I might be a really big name and because he Associates with me now when he needs something in two to three to five years I'll be really big and he'll have like a remember win moment

here and he could go get a Damen JN right and pay to do something with the Damen JN but then he doesn't have the remember when moment because daman's already at the top right and so that billionaire almost billionaire is thinking three to five years out with a potential call option AKA a maybe possibility how often do we do that I don't even do that enough and so that's where I think they're different it's just this different scope because probably they see many curtains with that long-term view they want to water some seeds right I

I can totally relate to that I've often say been perplexed in my life by why extremely rich people wanted to give me a hand right especially when I was like 18 kid with an idea all the enthusiasm in the world you know but you know you almost don't trust it right it was so weird yeah i' I've described it asit being so unusual over and over again every year for the last years that when I was 18 19 years old and I stood on those stages and I went around again stealing the Chicago toan pizzas

in my spare time de feed myself but all of these really successful people wanted to give me a hand like wanted to introduce me to someone you know give invest in my business even though I had no credentials they just saw something in me that I never understood that would be an interesting thing to try to break down what is it that you see in another human I mean one of the things that comes to mind for me is how many people reach out to you every single day a DM you know I'd love to

meet you Stephen could you help me with this could you I would get guess a lot none I'm joking I was gonna say that seems like that doesn't track but okay so probably a lot but what I found is interesting is in the beginning and when I was starting to be a little public I would respond to almost all of them almost every single one I would respond but I would respond like this I would say happy to help read this book uh and then do XYZ thing for me something very small I'm like read

this book first do this small thing do you know how many people did that [ __ ] none [ __ ] that's a great saying I'm going to use that [ __ ] all not a single person actually did that and then if you compare that with I think I've hired five team members now who all reached out to me with value they gave right away one of them did this a deep analysis on my business another one basically wrote up this whole piece like she was me um and it was incredible and for those

individuals who actually asked nothing of me I gave them a job and opportunity and many of them make six figures plus and so there might be a secret there that just the humans who do are the ones who follow up the the DM tells me everything I need to know about the person yeah and I I can give you every example of every DM that I ever get and how I filter them how I know from the first DM whether they are someone that I should be connecting with let me give you the one side

of the spectrum the one side of the Spectrum which I often get is any jobs go in in that you've told me everything I need to know because not only could you have checked if we had jobs available on on our many websites where we list our vacancies you didn't even have enough effort to like go check out the job site um didn't say hello poorly structured message um you think that we hire over DM on the basis of no pitch at all that's the extreme example but it happens you wouldn't believe I will get

any jobs going once a day without fail on one of my inboxes and sometimes and I've never said this before on the very rare occasion I'm saying once a year I'll click on the person's profile and I'll care about them so much that I'll send them a voice note so because I I look I click on their profile I remember this one kid and he kind of looked like me oh yeah and he was a young kid and I remember thinking I really you know I could just ignore it it's easy thing to do the

hard thing to do was try and give him some feedback on like please don't do that to more people pleasee don't send them any jobs going question mark So I remember sending one particular kid like a voice note saying right listen buddy I'm on your side here here's some advice um and then on the extreme end the good end what happened with that what happened response was he he he was thankful oh that's good but when he responded I realized why he was the type of person that would send any jobs going maybe a bit

of a maturity issue there sure and then on the other end you have the perfect Reach Out where someone realizes that they can't give you what they're asking to take from you yeah so someone wants maybe an hour of your time they know they can't give you anything worth an hour they can't give me 50K they can't nothing nothing they can give me worth the hour of my time but they do two three things maybe the first is they realize that and so they realize that they should offer something of value even I'm not never

going to take it they but the gesture itself it's like someone pulling out their card to pay the gesture itself matters it does the third thing is they realize the world that I live in and that I have no time and they acknowledge that so they might say listen you get thousands of messages like this um I know how busy you are so just by them saying that I go okay you understand um could I could I just sit so I see it as an equation ask for as little as possible and give whatever you

can could I just sit in the room one day when you work means a lot to me the third point there is research the person because that's a huge show of care I know you're a big Manchester United fan I know your dog called Pablo in exchange I will I don't know [ __ ] I will I've made this jacket for Pablo I've sewn it myself if someone said that to me people are going to do this now Pablo does not need a jacket we're coming into summer he likes being naked um but just showing

you you made an effort oh my God it's the keys to my heart yeah it's true um and then ego is a great thing as well everyone has an ego so just acknowledging you've you've done your research on someone is another huge way yeah and I think the sneak too if you're listening is like skip the famous people they get enough like forget it EMA them like yeah just skip them all you know even like sort of famous people like skip all that and go to the people with money because often they're quiet people can't

find them they don't get a lot of reach out and so if I was young and hungry I would skip the flash skip the the Bentley skip the roxes skip the fame and I would go straight to like who's the richest sprinkler owner you know like who who's the guy on your block that has the biggest house that does something that sounds so boring to you because you also learn the most from like the level like closest to you and if you can kind of like level up a little bit you know if you go

from you right now to billionaire and billionaire goes the thing is you got to work hard kid you're like [ __ ] I don't know what that means you know but if if you go to the next person and you're like no the thing is you have to send this exact email which is what I sent to this person they're so much closer to your climb you know they remember the steps um and they want to they want someone to me Mentor they do yeah they'd be most flattered by you know that I have 300

sprinklers around London like they would be blown away by someone taking such amount of effort and care to research them exactly yeah and you know and they probably had to do really interesting things to create their wealth that weren't single events you know if you reach out to somebody who is now I know about the show on love Island like what are they going to teach you like yeah kid be charismatic kind of hot and get on a TV show he's application form yeah exactly like that's not okay and then have a bunch of money

and get famous uh but if you reach out to somebody who built a toilet business here like that's there's probably a lot they had to do continuously over time that you could learn from but it's not that sexy so people don't do it a quick word on hu as you know they're a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company and I have to say it's moments like this in my life where I'm extremely busy and I'm flying all over the place and I'm recording TV shows and I'm recording shows in America

and here in the UK that hu is a necessity in my life I'm someone that regardless of external circumstances or professional demands wants to stay healthy and nutritionally complete and that's exactly where heel fits in my life it's enabled me to get all of the vitamins and minerals and nutrients that I need in my diet to be aligned with my health goals while also not dropping the ball on my professional goals because it's convenient and because I can get it online in Tesco in supermarkets all over the country if you're one of those people that

hasn't yet tried H or you have before but for whatever reason you're not a Hu consumer right now I would highly recommend giving hu a go and Tesco have now increased their listings with hu so you can now get the RTD ready to drink in Tesco expresses all across the UK why is it important for you now the last two years you've started making content why is it why do you think everybody should make content what are all the upsides you've seen in your life some of the unexpected ones too please that have resulted from

you becoming a content creator hm what's the most unexpected one I wanted every single person that I wanted to reach out to to pick up my phone call like I don't ever want to be the person standing in line at the club I want to own the club I want to get the invite I'm actually another good example I was just with my friends in Conan and they were like let's try to get into this party or this party I'm like I was invited to this one I'm going to go to this one because I

don't like doing the hustling to try to get into the I don't like it I've never liked it it's probably a like I should get better at it I should get over myself who cares but I was like I'm not going to try to like finagle my way in that's the short-term game right right and it feels gross and it feels thirsty and I want to be thirsty and so creating content is a way for you to have unfair access in a world um you know these days how do I become friends with billionaires because

they watch my weird content on laundromats and car washes and they see something in it and so that if if we truly believe that money is power I think the way you get money is usually people which is like a theme we've kept coming back to most people on the internet I think try to explain how smart they are and what I hope to express is like I'm not that smart I just found people you know and and I think we can all do that so that was one I don't I don't want to be

standing in line in the club trying to like finagle my way in I want to find that what's the what's the back door that nobody's talking about where they invite you into it that's one you know the second is let's pause on that because I think that's it's that's not just a nightclub analogy that's that is a philosophy towards every facet of your life being the magnet or the peacock instead of the door-to-door sales person yeah like you know what I mean like totally all my companies have grown on this basis all of my companies

have grown on the basis this is maybe my biggest one of my least shared business Secrets is that all of my companies don't have outbound sales teams because we make content and we know I know that 99% of my competitors are going to go the door to-door sales rout they're going to go Network at events you will in the last 10 years you have never seen me swanning around a network event content is networking yeah I agree you will never catch me I I won't have a business card I'm not going to hand it to

you I won't even be there on stage out the back meet people hello hello hello out the back door same straight back onto LinkedIn yeah to start making content people don't realize that and it's much easier it's a much more sustainable more cost-efficient long-term strategy if you know how to do it yeah well I mean and if you actually want to see me like sweat it would be having to go Network small talk like oh God I want to die um and I had to do sales for so long in finance you know Finance is

just all sales we used to at Goldman we had like a spreadsheet that they would track every single day how many cold calls you made when we were trying to sell a deal and um it was awful you know I remember one time I was like pretending like I understood Golf and so I'm like ah that was great like how was how was the game yesterday did you did you get the goal and they were like what the [ __ ] you talking about you know I don't know anything about it miserable um it's like

a fishing rod versus a net isn't it like the fishing rod can only catch one fish yeah it's true but if I throw that [ __ ] net out which is making a banging video about the subject matter or the industry I could catch 300 fish that's exactly right take the same amount of time yeah I mean it's push vers pull yeah do you want to have do you want to pull people to you or do you want to have to push and you know scream and I I just am not interested in that that

so that's why I think content so so powerful the other thing about content is you find your humans I mean it can get it can get a little lonely you know having built a bunch of stuff and had some success and I've had many times where over the years the person that I've become is not the person that the people I love loved you know and so I had to I had to move past that [ __ ] yeah and it's it sounds you know everybody I I will often tweet things that are things to

myself it's like notes to me and that happens to be in a tweet form and one of them is like you know you get in a room with people who are smarter than you and then you leave when that's no longer the case and that's not saying that you get rid of friends but typically they'll get rid of you like when you're outgrowing people it's uncomfortable for the people that you've outgrown they don't like to see that you are moving forward at such a fast progression I wish I wish it wasn't that way but you

know I had a girlfriend that I was friends with for [ __ ] you know now I'm I'm feeling old but like you know almost 20 years like 18 years and when I started getting like kind of notoriety on the internet uh I didn't realize it bothered her you know but it did and so you know at one point she's like you're posting about all your other friends and not me and I was like oh I only post business stuff you know I didn't I didn't my parents aren't on there's no personal stuff on there

I keep that pretty private so I didn't realize that was important to you and this was a rift that just like never healed and so I think that happens continuously but I like content cuz then I find the humans who actually want you to win like get super inspired by that and when you find those people I think it's worth more than the winnings amen amen there is a shedding people don't talk about this enough that when you start putting yourself out there especially when you start becoming a quote unquote thought leader yeah the people

that knew you before look at you and think who the [ __ ] does he think he is you think you think he'll Gandy or Martin Luther King Steve yeah like come back down here with us right you know that must have happened to you in a big way yeah I think definitely I almost think of my life as being in school leaving to go to university dropping out of University being a being pretty much alone and having a chance to reinvent myself and then emerging as who I really was yeah and um I have

no current friends that from school still well no one that I speak to from my school days and I have no one really even from that University phase everybody has been since because you know this is what I'm into and so it's a new person to resonate with or not resonate with so it's it's I think that's actually very very true I think can't like if you had friends that were super excited for you still at this point and were curious and growing and they don't have to be monetarily growing it could be totally different

they could be obsessed with MMA and all they want to do is is do do Jitsu but that's that's their area of of expertise you would you would respect that and value that and you guys could stay friends but what typically happens is when you grow a lot it's this it's like holding a mirror in front of somebody else and saying all the time why aren't you doing the things that you can and the things that you could be capable of and when people see that mirror non-stop they start to look at you and think

I don't like what I'm looking at and so I've I've really had to come to terms with that too what my path is is not perfect it's not right I mean sometimes don't you wish you could just like actually Netflix and chill like you didn't want to achieve all the time I certainly do I'm addicted to achieving I love it I wish I could slow down times there's a big difference here actually because you said you started on this path at 30 yeah so maybe the reason I didn't experience it as much is I started

at 18 I hadn't built a career and I hadn't built social circles around me when I started to make content and started these businesses and started you know talking on the TV about business and whatever else so I didn't have as much to shed as much of a builtup identity to shed oh good point but I do I meet people all the time that are you know 40 50 that are thinking about making an identity pivot that are like trapped by the identity and Social Circle they've built yeah and the expectations that comes with that

it's a good point yeah it's harder the the bigger the walls you've built in terms of identity and the more established your identity is I think that's a really good point yeah I mean I think I had to get divorced quit a job move a city uh and change a lot of things that weren't who I felt like I was are you happier now way happier now yeah but you know it's a miserable thing leaving another human behind you know like um you know I don't I don't wish divorce on anybody I don't like whenever

I meet somebody who's divorce I always say I'm sorry and congratulations because it's kind of both um was your decision it was my decision yeah we just wanted different lives you know he he was very happy in a white picket fence Country Club life and uh wanted a couple kids and wanted to stay really locally based and kind of wanted me to not work and so when I thought about my life I was like I want to live all around the world and I want to build something so big that I can't sleep because I

need to create it and and I want to leave a legacy that is not um managing director at a private Equity Firm um and I'm not ready for kids and and I'm not sure I want to have kids with you and he really wanted me to change and I'm not sure that we should ever try to change somebody that we're with there's going to be thousands of people that have heard you say what you just said and think [ __ ] that's me yeah I'm in that job with that partner in that City and I

just know I'm unhappy I can just feel it there's this like sense of you know there's a signal inside me telling me that I shouldn't be here and I can I can hear it sometimes I I justify it away or I try and drown it out but I know what would you whisper to that person what did you what would have been words helpful words to this Cody at 36 to whisper to that Cody at 29 two words my dad said to me which is exit tax so uh when I left it was expensive uh

and both physically and and emotionally and and uh and I told my dad about it and he said there's always an exit tax to Freedom um and that stuck with me because I was like oh this is just this is just a toll it's just a payment but once it gets paid what's on the other side that word freedom and one thing that really helped me actually when I was going through this which all this is funny because I don't ever talk about this stuff but um but I got a little place like I had

like the big house all the stuff whatever before and I got this little tiny townhouse right afterwards actually at one point like I couldn't get into my bank accounts and stuff and so I I didn't have much but I got this tiny little townhouse that I rented and that uh tiny townhouse nesting in a place that was just my own that felt really safe was one of the weirdest unlocks that I've ever had I now think about it as the power of place if you can just have somewhere else that you go to that is

just yours that's my biggest recommendation for people that go through let's say a divorce or a really tumultuous you know change in partner is there's something about like a glass of you know I would have like a little glass of wine or a cup of tea in this tiny little townhouse but it was mine it was like nobody else's I didn't have to share it I didn't have to compromise I could just be me and from there I could sort of recreate again um and I've heard that now from many many many women at least

who have been divorced that like that next little tiny place is really important and I and I think if I could do it again i' I go back and buy that place and I'd like maybe I'll buy a few and I'd give it to women like or men right after they get out of their thing because it's almost like you need to stand on your own Feet Again you forget how to so I would just remember there's an exit tax to freedom and then on the other side don't you know I like to say like

you know I don't think you shouldn't strive for divorce you know I think marriage is tough and relationships are tough and there's a huge benefit to working through things with one human for life I take that very seriously but if you are in fact in something that is unhealthy and that you should not be in realizing that the other side is so much better than I ever could have imagined I mean I would not have the life that I live right now which is pretty [ __ ] great life if I had stayed on the

side of easy and now you know when I told my mom she like cried for days and you know questioned it and you know was like how are you going to do this and now now uh she's the opposite she's like you know yeah was such the right decision I'm so happy for you and we'll say things to me like you were so brave which is weird for me to say out loud but that you did that because most people would stay um so that's what I would say there's definitely freedom on the other side

do you set goals yeah definitely how did you set your goals and what goals do you have well one of the ways that I figured out uh how to get divorced was actually I set a date on my calendar so I was like I'm going to commit to fixing this and therapy and all of this stuff but if and here's what we're going to do and here's the plan and if we can't fix it and this is like my drop dead date because I was such a wuss I couldn't do it unless I put on

the calendar um so I'm a big calendar person I I really like having a deadline when I was started writing this book my due dates in like four weeks or something like that and it's not like I look at it frequently but it's just out there yeah it's just this it's this thing that gets put in your psyche and somehow you can work backwards so much easier from a date so it sounds so silly but most humans will say well in one year or three years or five years I'm like put it on your calendar

like whatever that actual timeline is and then try to work backwards and then for most goals I believe in short-term goals 100% maybe daily weekly monthly annually but three or 5e goals who knows I mean you wouldn't have thought you were doing this two years ago my [ __ ] chance I wouldn't have thought so so either so like I might have a really big vision for 10 years or 20 years but as I get closer I might realize oh God actually nope that's not what I want so allowing yourself that freedom to not want

to be the hot sexy Rich millionaire with Bentley and instead say oh no what I actually want to do is I want to talk about what I want to talk about with whom I want to talk about owning companies I want to and having no master that's what Rich looks like for me and if you had stuck with your original goals that wouldn't have been the case you got team members yeah employees yeah some of them are here listening probably and does it not feel like it's a bit of a contradictory message in some ways

where you're trying to get them to stay but part of their job is to get produce content with you to get other people to leave their jobs yeah so I have a really important differentiator between equity and ownership in a business and skin in the game I do not think everybody wants to be a founder of a business I don't think everybody wants to be an outright owner of a business I think everybody should have ownership always and so the way that looks in our business is basically every single person who works for me even

all the way down to my admin gets skin in the game so that means that if they do X and Y and Z they see how they can make more money directly if they come on to my team they can all Source us deals and get a percentage of the carry which means equity in the underlying companies I know you know that but for anybody listening um everybody on my teams always has had that and then you know the the other members of my team and businesses before like my last uh number two I then

left the business to her she became the CEO of the business so she has ownership of the business I don't like I should be really careful about the fact that if anybody on my team and they already know this we just sent a message yesterday somebody asked for like a testimonial from me about work that they had done but their work wasn't very good so I wasn't going to give them a testimonial and I said to the team any one of are high performers if you ever want to leave this company and you're great at

this company one of course I'll open every door for you and I'll write any testimonial or whatever you need and in fact if you want to start your own business I hope I'm the first phone call because I would like to invest in you I want to be that guy that saw that in you no doubt every single time but that's not for every human Some Humans want to be in a business like my number two my CMO Chris he doesn't want to run a business himself but he does want ownership so he has skin

in the game from both a revenue perspective and from a followership perspective same with my head of content same with Christian and our AdSense and our YouTube channel so I think it's really important that you make sure when you continue to work harder you make more no matter what so many people have philosophies towards money you know people will say oh you got to save more than you spend you got to [ __ ] not have the Starbucks Coffee that's how you'll get rich what is your overarching philosophy to Building Wealth and money do you

have something like a philosophy a mantra well uh first I think you should have the [ __ ] coffee I think that is terrible advice um so I I like Dave Ramsey I get where he's going with it but um I think you cannot save your way to wealth you can only earn your way to wealth but my Mantra overall is that I think every human on the planet should understand the language of money which is finance and if you understand the language then you can speak it flu and when you can speak it fluently

you can become an expert in it and expertise leads to a bunch of cash and so everything we do is to try to normalize deal making or the language of Finance we're like the DU lingo to Finance on the internet um and I think I mean we have a goal of we want to create 100,000 small business owners and 1 million financially free people and we track how many people tell us they bought a business and how much revenue and profit they earned and so my goal is before we're done with this however long that's

going to be I want to hit those two goals and I think we'll hit them in the next five years maybe seven um but that's that is that is the the gold star for me that and my new mantra which you might appreciate which is my 2023 Mantra is like no more B players oh my God because that was my 2021 Mantra my 2022 Mantra that was my that'll be my 2024 Mantra did you have you seen those stats where it shows about sitting next to B play oh this is so good my friend Vanessa

van Edwards showed this to me so there's this study done across hundreds of individuals might be hundreds of companies it's a big study um and essentially it shows if you sit next to an uh a high performer yeah so if you have your team sit next to a high performer you do you will outperform by 15% so a high performer just in your proximity will increase your performance by 15% if you sit next to a low performer or underperformer it will decrease your productivity by 30% so every B player you bring on board is not

just decreasing their productivity by 30% it is that energy transfer which is that everybody around them becomes a little bit less productive and I think one of the reasons people want to be owners of companies is because they feel that people want to stay at companies where there's a bunch of winners it's why I liked Goldman I was like these guys are so smart I'm learning so much I want to keep going when I was at Vanguard I was like oh my God these schs are just schlepping around the office not doing anything I'm not

learning anything and they're by you know design sort of pulling you back and down and so I I keep that number on a notepad next to my computer for me to one not be the underperformer and two it's not just about getting rid of underperformers for you as a CEO it's not good to do to your team so you know we've definitely have have had them in varing companies of mine but we push relentlessly to either make people better or help them find the thing that they can be in a performer at do you know

who's very sticky in companies who B players oh God I know C players will get fired B players will hang around that's exactly right and a players will probably leave yeah and well a players will leave if you keep being C players they're gone true they're not interested B players will hang and they will think that you owe them more is what I found yes they are the ones that ask for the most they're the most entitled and uh they're the most dangerous in a company it's like a cancer that you need to to cut

before it spreads which sounds like okay really um but it's actually true because your employees are choosing to spend their life and their time with you and so every B player that you associate next to them is actually decreasing their time and that's not a fair thing to do to somebody in the company doesn't make firing people easier it's never easy it's never easy but it's important yeah what's the most important thing you think we haven't talked about you know we talked at the start of this ation about who's listening and you gave me the

three personas and we talked about that person that's maybe in that job and they're trying to find their way out what is the most important thing for that person that we haven't maybe touched on maybe just one of my team members was saying this on the way over they're big fans of yours they listen to all your stuff uhhuh and um are they a players and looking for jobs yeah well actually one of them lives here and uh and is a um is freelance so he could work for you if you've touch my other one

I'm going have to it's going to be over which one's the a player they're both they're both a players okay no we were pretty good I definitely wouldn't travel around with B players no chance um so the um and he said something that I thought was really good which was um he was listening to your podcast and he liked one in particular where you talked about um like all the the failings of people who are successful and so the only thing that we haven't talked about is the fact that you know we say all this

stuff like don't keep be players around get rid of them you know do this get better and and and on the flip side of that like there are many mornings where I'm up at 8 or 9ine and not 5: in the morning and there are many mornings where um I'm stuck in a Tik Tock you know Instagram khole and I'm not doing the thing that I'm supposed to be doing and I think normalizing the fact that people who have achieved things also are awful [ __ ] up don't do the right thing every single day

is important to me because sometimes I get on these and like I don't want people to perceive that I'm on some high horse that's incredibly capable and productive that's not always the case at all I have many periods where I have not done the right thing where I've messed up on business deals where uh I am the worst in the room and and I think that's okay it's natural we're human we're going to mess up so just making sure people know that listening you don't have to be perfect to do any of this and in

fact I'm sure you would agree we're both so flawed that if I can figure this stuff out I think any working John can figure this stuff out too I'm no smarter than anybody else I went to a party school I didn't go to Harvard you know I probably did more beer bongs than I did you know honors classes in college and and I still figured it out and it took me until I was you know 29 or 30 but that's still pretty young um so we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last

guest leaves a question for the next guest I love this question they said when was the moment you were most afraid if they don't want to answer it who's your favorite member of One Direction that's great but you don't tell them who the person was that that's oh fine um one I couldn't even name that so I'm going to have to uh answer the question when was I most afraid actually um so funny they are a comedian I'm going to give it away oh okay so when was I last most afraid um or when was

I most afraid ever this is sort of silly but um I hiked a mountain called Mike Mount Baker and uh it is a technical climb so you use ice axes and crampons and it's freezing and I didn't really know what I was getting into and um I don't like the cold and I don't like heights and I don't like camping and so 3 days hiking a glacial Mountain um that's very high it was like probably not my best idea but I but I did it and um I hated it like for three days I was

with all these other women and they kind of like liked it and I to be fair I like kind of thought I was tougher than them you know and they know this so they can hear it but you know a lot of them I have this big career I I come off as tough I can you know get out there go do it and then here I was on this mountain I'm [ __ ] miserable I'm scared of the heights that I'm going to fall off and Tumble to my death I'm freezing I have to

sleep on top of a glacier I can't sleep you're carrying your your feces in a bag for 3 days which is another fun little side note and we get up on the second day it's so vertical that you have to be roped in to each other on the climb and I'm at the end of it too which is awful so I all I you know I'm the one that sees behind us the guides in front there's like six of us or four of us on a rope or something like that and we get up after

climbing for two days I'm so miserable and mad that I said yes to this and we're on this crater because there's a volcanic crater before we climb up what's called the wall which is an ice wall before you get to the top where you have to step like like this with your ice axe to get up the wall and I like I'm like I almost want to cry I can't think of anything I want to do less than this and everybody's preparing to go up and um and I'm just like I don't think I'm GNA

I'm not going to go up anymore and I had all these ideas in my head like but if you don't sum it like then you're not tough and you got to get up there cuz these other women are going to do it and then you're going to feel bad and whatever and as I sat there I was just like what am I trying to prove like I'm pretty happy Life's good like I don't have on my bucket list that I want to Summit Mount Baker I just kind of said yes to this trip and it

wasn't even the heights that was so scary or the cold it was like am I like a failure by not doing this tough thing that everybody else is going to do and am I going to be the one person that says like I'm out I'm going down I'm tapping out I'm done and I like had this whole dialogue with myself and then I told the guide and there were a few of them I was like yeah the thing is I'm going to go back down I'm going to chill at like base camp I'm not going

to Summit and my girlfriends came over and they were like let's talk about this let's get motivational and I'm like no totally fine I just realized up here that most of my life I've been trying to like please a bunch of people to goals I don't care about with things I don't really want in order to achieve some ridiculous thing and like I don't want to climb up there I'm gonna be pissed if I fall and break my neck doing this thing I don't even want to do and so I tell the guide he's like

cool I've never run faster down the side of a mountain I get down to the bottom I'm happy as a [ __ ] clam at that point I realize I have altitude sickness so I'm like tripping balls in the tent which is really good that I realized that cuz then when I was climbing the wall I might have gotten dizzy and that wouldn't have been good and I didn't realize when you got altitude sickness you it's it's hallucinogenic so the tent's like moving as I'm laying in it but I'm great because I'm back in the

tent on the the like a second Peak area and then on the way down like two of the women blew out their knees it was like a six-hour Evolution and I just remember thinking [ __ ] like what if I had done that thing I was so scared of just because everybody else told me that I should have done it and I felt like it took more courage for me to not do the thing then do the thing so many people are right now climbing a mountain where they don't even care about seeing the view

right you know right why do we do that so yeah I think sometimes you know they say everything you want is on the other side of fear and it's like if the thing that you want is the thing on the other side of fear it's not every fear we have to charge into and so I guess choose your Mountain wisely right amen thank you Cody thank you for your time your wisdom and your entertaining captivating storytelling and uh and insights it's really really valuable to our audience there's not many people like you out there so

it's so wonderful to to get to speak to someone and the mission that you're on is such an important one I love it for so many reasons I love it because you you glamorize the unglamorous and I often think in so many facets of our life the easiest way is in fact the boring way yeah it's the the way that isn't going to get the likes and the Applause on Instagram and there's not there's not a market for that right there's a market for the quick shiny six pack abs and three minutes all that stuff

there's the a market for that all the nfts the cryptos the get-rich quick schemes you present the important counter narrative and you do it as an incredibly powerful honest willing to be vulnerable woman in business and we need more of that because business and the the the creater world of the entrepreneurship Community is heavily dominated by men right now and that is that is not a bridge that um many people can relate to those stories and where they've come from and the battles that they face so you present the counter narrative and it's a very

important one so I also bet on you like our mutual friend does in a big way and I can't wait to see your Evolution as you climb that worthy Mountain over the next couple of years well thank you for having me this was a pleasure totally different podcast I can see why so many people listen to you so thank you for having me today you're very kind thank you Cody ladies and gentlemen as you know Zoe is now sponsoring this podcast and I'm a proud investor in the company and I've been going on the Zoe

Journey myself it all starts with this home testing kit you get sent in the post which measures your gut health your blood sugar and your blood fat I've had this little device this blood sugar glucose sensor on my arm which came in the home testing kit to understand how all of the different foods that I eat day today have an impact on my body and it's been pretty unbelievable a big thing for me is feeling tired after I've eaten something and not understanding why historically I didn't understand now I do understand I'd been eating I

think it was like a rice stir fry with a bit of chicken and some chili sauce in there and I saw on my blood glucose chart on my phone which is connected to the device that Zoe sent me this huge Spike and then later in the day I saw a huge dip when I started feeling that sort of post Lune slump and what will happen next is Tim tells me they'll take all of that data and give me my own personalized Zoe scores for any food so I can figure out what I should be eating

and what I should avoid if I want to avoid those afternoon slumps and if you want to get started on your Zoe Journey with me use the code we've got an exclusive code here ceo1 for 10% off and let me know how you get on when it arrives [Music] [Music] you got to the end of this podcast whenever someone gets to the end of this podcast I feel like I owe them a greater debt of gratitude because that means you listen to the whole thing and hopefully that suggests that you enjoyed it if you are

at the end and you enjoyed this podcast could you do me a little bit of a favor and hit that subscribe button that's one of the clearest indicators we have that this episode was a good episode and we look at that on all of the episodes to see which episodes generated the most subscribers thank you so much and I'll see you again next time