Codie Sanchez: “Just F***ing Start!” Why You Don’t Need to Be SMART to Be RICH!

I am not smarter than anybody else or richer than anybody else I just move faster than anybody else and by the time they've even pondered an idea I've made a move made three mistakes and found a better way just and start this is the stuff that I learned on Wall Street that I didn't realize is like why the people on Wall Street are so much richer than us it's because they understand how money actually works and we were never taught this stuff she's become a partner at a private Equity Firm and she's the founder of

contrarian thinking and unconventional Acquisitions ladies and gentlemen Cody Sanchez guys give it up one more time for Cody there is nothing wrong with being an employee being an employee is amazing it means that you do not carry all the risks so if you're a personality type that doesn't like Risk you shouldn't be a business owner I don't think you're going to want the call on a Friday night when you're going to run the cash if you don't have enough money right now that's actually not your problem you don't have enough knowledge about money and how

to get it and as soon as you fix that issue then this whole new world opens up to you of all the millionaires You Know M how many of them do you think are actually happy and fulfilled human beings I think that hey guys Louis here and I'm so excited for what you're about to experience with Cody Sanchez she talks about the three biggest skills to earn more money in this episode I took all these different notes she also says that your reputation is your biggest blocker to money and she talks about how to increase

the value of your reputation I thought that was very interesting she also talked about how money is everywhere and most people don't believe money is everywhere they feel like it's limited so I'm excited for you to dive into this interview make sure to comment like And subscribe on this channel and also get ready for an amazing interview with Cody Sanchez welcome back everyone to the school of greatness very excited about our guest we have the inspiring Cody Sanchez back in the house excited you're here and here's the thing that I think a lot of people

want to hear from you today we are about to start a brand new year 2025 is coming and most people said 2024 is my year to make money and yet most people weren't able to do that they are confused around you know their losses from the crypto Market some maybe made a lot but a lot lost a lot others tried Airbnb businesses and then started selling us off because they realized it's a lot of work some people tried the stock market and maybe they made money maybe they lost money some people thought about buying a

small business they realize it takes a 100 hours a week of all their time and they don't actually care about that business it's not that their passion so what do we do in 2025 moving forward around money what are the things that you've seen over the last year and where people can start to really build wealth 2025 and Beyond yeah well first of all my richest Mentor once told me a line that I go back to again and again which is that your bank account is a direct direct reflection of how fast you move and

that was kind of painful for me to hear that first Go Round the faster you move the more money you make because um that meant that my bank account was in my control at that time when I heard that I didn't like that very much you know it felt like you know I hadn't been given opportunities and all these different reasons and so if if you're going to move on anything what I would say is move as fast as possible and it's fascinating because you've met with many billionaires now doing this podcast I've met with

many of them in buying businesses building businesses Etc and if there's one thing they all have in common it's the same idea of speed so um you know when I was talking to Bill Perkins the other day who him and I have done a bunch of deals together he said the same thing he's like I am not smarter than anybody else or richer than anybody else I just move faster than anybody else and by the time they've even pondered an idea I've made a move made three mistakes and found a better way and so if

I could give anybody broad money advice it would be you're waiting too long and maybe be a little honest with yourself about are you thinking a lot is there a lot of mental masturbation going on on money or are you actually taking action and then doing like the scientific process trial air trial air trial air as quickly as possible with as little cash as possible so you can figure out what works for you and then the only other thing I would add is you know coming into this next year you have what I don't know

40 days left in the year something like that so January 1 can start on January 1 for you or it can start today you know it can start 30 40 days earlier than everybody else and because of that you've already got a head run you know I can't tell you how many people in fact I was just talking to uh another person this morning and they were saying well should I wait until 2025 you know because business financials at the end of the year they're wrapping up their financial it's actually a really reasonable question but

the answer to waiting is almost always no and so if you see people who are really successful so they just move faster than you could ever imagine and I remind myself that a lot and so I would start there whether you're going to start learning whether you're going to start doing whether you're going to start allocating just start uh because you'll make some mistakes but you'll learn a lot from it if someone is uh just doesn't have that much money to invest though and they're thinking I've already got college debt that I'm still trying to

pay down my expenses are already a lot I don't really have that much to risk to try either investing in something or uh buying a small business like what if I lose it all in the next six months and then that trial and error turns out into a big error yeah and I can't come back from that is owning a business for everyone yeah well two things one you never lack money which is a weird thing to think about you never actually lacked money because all you really lack is the knowledge of how to get

more money from other people and if you look at it right now where are we sitting today we are sitting at record high levels of what's called sideline institutional Capital we have more money sitting on the sidelines sitting in cash non-investor accounts or cash equivalents so that would be like short-term debt that might be actual cash accounts and what's fascinating about that is that means that they actually suffer not from enough money but not enough deals so if you're able to reframe your mind that way then what are people actually looking for from you they

don't want your last 10,000 or $100,000 and I don't think you should give it to them like protect the fact that you shouldn't go into bankruptcy and that you don't have to what do they want instead the really really rich they actually want to steal your time they do and instead they want you to do the hard thing and they pay you to do the hard thing and so if I was you know suffering from enough cap not enough capital I don't have enough money as I was before in many times in my life I

would just be looking for where is there somebody who has money that they need to allocate to do deals where is there somebody who's more well off than I am but they don't want to spend their time working I can get the money from them I can do the hard labor work until the trade offsets and then you become the person who trades somebody else's time for your money yes and so um I don't want anybody to go into bankruptcy doing this I don't want you to spend your last dollar I don't think it's necessary

and I wish somebody had told me that sooner nobody did and so in the beginning I lost lots of my own money trying all this trying to invest in things right and then you know a fasing thing happened to me I remember back in the day I was an intern for a wealthy family that was friends of my parents and I remember like not realizing that people had that much money like I didn't come from much I was like they have a BMW like that's crazy you know they have BMW and a it was like

an H2 Hummer remember those like back I thought it was the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life and uh and I was basically her like little intern I was running around I drove her cars I got them washed I picked up you know the kids I did whatever she needed for like seven bucks an hour or whatever it was and uh and anyway I remember watching them work and years and I worked as hard as I can for as long as I could with her and then I went into Finance I started to

learn a few things and then I remember I came home on Thanksgiving actually timely and I was talking to my parents and they had come over to my parents for like a glass of wine or something and my parents don't come from much money so like investing was never something we they have no debt they don't understand how to use debt this like very immigrant mentality when it comes to money and um and I remember saying yeah well I'm working on this thing in finance and we have this deal and the husband whose name was

Robert was like well I'd like to invest in that and I was like well I don't know like I don't want to take your money what if I fail what if I what if it doesn't work out it goes well that's the point like I wouldn't give you enough or it would really hurt me if you failed so I was like well how do that work you would give me the money he's like yeah I would give you the money you would take a cut of it and you would invest it in in that deal

and that was the first time when I started to understand oh like I'm doing him a favor by letting him into a deal that I have and he gives me money for it what is this witchcraft right well he has money he's trying to figure out how to invest it 100% need to put it in the bank or a money market fund until he feels like oh here's something I think could make me more than this safe investment yeah I mean if you look at returns why do people want like private deals well because the

highest return over any rolling 10-year period if you were to look at it like a bar chart uh the highest return is private assets predominantly private equity which which just means businesses that aren't listed on the public exchange small businesses but those businesses are also hidden like they're hard to find you can't just go e trade and buy right and so because of that the wealthy are always looking for these it's called an asymmetric risk like a way to invest a dollar and potentially get a hundred as opposed to invest a dollar and get a

doll10 with a money marketing town or putting your money in the bank and so if you can flip your mindset to start asking yourself instead of like how can I work with only what I have instead saying how do rich people think and how can I use their money to achieve both my goal and theirs and then we also don't have this class Warfare between the rich and the rest of us because we go oh I'm just that's like a conduit they're like a conduit to more money for me um and so that that is

how I would look at it if you don't have enough money right now that's actually not your problem you don't have enough knowledge about money and how to get it and as soon as you fix that issue then this whole new world opens up to you wow what would you say is the biggest mistake you've made around money that actually hurt you the most but became the best lesson for you I invested in a deal with a friend which is always a scary thing to do I think the best friends you get from business not

the best friends are because of a business like it's like you and I have a great friendship right and it's like I don't really need anything from you you don't really need anything from me but I get to like learn from you cuz you're in business and you get to learn from me and we get to have like fun conversations about it the second that I come to you and I'm like leis the thing is we're going to do this together we're going to sell it to your audience here's what's going to happen next slight

red flag and so I I would just go back and if I could have done it again we have a new rule which is that I never get into business with somebody that I haven't done and watched do business for a year so one year I have one year moratorium I wouldn't get married in less than a year and I wouldn't do a business deal in yes less than a year and I did that the first time and you know we lost several hundred thousand dollars but more important a friendship you lost a friendship totally

lost a friendship like you know it's hard to repair after like there's big money wounds that are hard to repair relationships from it's very true and a lot of times you think you like somebody but then watch what happens when times get tough you know you think you trust somebody but Watch What Happens when your incentives and theirs are not aligned and it's where you really get to see the kind of human that any of us are is when stuff goes bad with money it is like deep and and you know it's it's survival in

the modern day world that's how it feels right what would you say are three questions you should ask someone and get alignment on when starting a business partnership with a friend family member or a business colleague I would say one tell me about a time when everything really went wrong for you in business what happened happened uh and what you're looking for there is do they say it was this guy's fault this guy did this that happened blah blah blah or do they say I really got him you know I I did XYZ and I

got him and I showed him red flags If instead they say hey we failed in this endeavor but you know what we we recouped the assets we made the employees whole you know we learned this we moved on to the next one him and I are still friends green flag M second question I would ask is um what do you want out of this what is like the perfect scenario that happens from this in the future pay it play it forward for Me 3 to five years what happens from today to three to five years

with this deal and what you're looking for is do you guys have the same uh vision of the future and there should be no wrong answers how I would phrase this is like I want to make sure that I get everything out of this for you that you want tell me what your future looks like so that we can allot and what you're looking for for you is like oh he's saying that he just wants an extra $5,000 a month and to work passively red flag right if what he's saying is I want to build

something lasting forever and I'm going to work really hard at it and here's what I think it's going to take green flag and probably the third question uh I would ask is simply who else were you involved with before in your business dealings and then I would go talk to them because the best people can tell you things but what you're really looking for is show me don't tell me yes and you should ask yourself those same questions too and make sure that you're the type of human somebody should want to partner with before we

go judging others you know because it's going to be a lot of work in many years yeah you're GNA be spending all your time with this person a lot of your time oh yeah and that you know we talk about this a lot but the only thing you have at the end of the day that will be your blocker to money forever is your reputation and lots of people think about that like credit you know if I have bad credit or if I have a resume where I've only been places a year and a half

where I I have a bunch of failed startups and that is all true but it's more than that it's what happens when you lost money for somebody else it's what do other people say about you behind your back it's what happens the second that you got further past someone they were no longer useful for you uh what did you do with that person what do you treat the guy like that's in the valet line uh that you know asks you a question but can be of no use for you and that reputation protection I think

is is so important for people that just feel overwhelmed around money what would you say then are the three biggest skills to earn more money yeah well I think if you want to earn more money the right question is exactly what you said which is what skills do you have today that are worth more to somebody else um than they are to you because the first way you're going to earn money is uh you're going to be an employee by and large most people start out having their skills get compensated by somebody else's Vision that

needs that skill set % so you want to figure out how can I just increase my skill set and so that might be some of the easiest things to increase your skill set for is you want to be a profit Center not a cost center so what does that look like I want to know with my skills that I can easiest and fastest as possible track for me doing X I make the company y you know for me providing this service the client you know I can charge the client why and so in the beginning

some of those that are really easy are like sales incredibly important skills set always marketing incredibly important skill set um Finance because you understand the language of money incredibly important skill set leadership uh getting more out of each of your people that you work for uh or that you work with um incredibly important skill set I think those four if you can focus on those four skill sets up front you'll be pretty powerful and dangerous sales marketing finance and Leadership I think leadership is probably the most important thing it's more of like a soft skill

I guess right it's like if you can learn to to uh understand your own emotions and the emotions of others and you can respond in challenging situations when company morale is down or whatever and you can Empower people to move forward on the problem at hand and create the solutions faster that is a powerful skill set absolutely I mean world's strongest man can't lift a boat right but you get a group of people together they can lift a boat so what's more powerful world's strongest individual contributor or the person who can get a crowd of

humans to all move in the same direction it's just physics right and so I think a lot of people don't understand what real leadership is which is can you get a bunch of people a crowd of people to lift the boat together it's always why I kind of giggled with with um with David Goggins because lots of people look to him for leadership advice and he's a badass individual contributor but if you read his books and if you talk to people who are on the teams not a very good leader actually he's more of a

one man's a onean world's strongest F yeah inspiring very inspiring put a lot of wealth for himself with that but I would never employ that guy M you couldn't pay me enough money to employ David gogin he wouldn't want to work anywhere either probably he he also he's turned down all my offers um but yeah and the reason I wouldn't is because he wants to work individually and he is Relentless in his single-minded Pursuit what you need for a leader is somebody who actually wants a lot more collaboration you're like hey I want you you

and you to be incredibly successful and if one day you become more successful than me I win and that is that's hard for an indiv idual contributor to think he's like I want to win the race you're not going to win I want to win yes and if you're a leader you're like great you're better faster stronger than I am go Sprint because I still get to benefit from it so I wish I had understood that earlier but I I think you have to be good individually before you can be a good leader because you

have to earn people's respect through you're doing what do you think is the biggest thing that holds people back from being a better leader for their life and the people in their life I think you have to care about your people it's literally do you care about your people and if you don't care about them fake it because empathy is actually uh it's contagious so if you start asking question if I start asking questions about you your background your fiance you know your pets your cats your by the way what I'm building the ctio right

now oh my God this week it's been built I just we had a conversation the last episode about caos and I started doing research they're building it this morning nothing I swear to you I'm going to send you a photo after this full circle ctio delivery ctio life let's go wait guys you got the TR wife and you're here building the tra building the CIO life listen I was just trying to talk my husband into a mini Pony pony and he was talking about the lack of utility in there it doesn't matter a here he's

got mini ponies in the backyard running around Rose is it useful I love a rose they bring you Joy they bring me joy for those for those that don't know what we're talking about in the previous episode I did with Cody we'll have it linked up uh I don't know how we got to talking about caos we're talking about what we're watching on our Instagram feed and I said all my content is like cats and catios CU I want to find a way to get my cats outside hysterical so funny story one of my employees

Lindsay her boyfriend is a CAO maker for a living I swear toing God ask Tanner where in Austin or Austin Texas and yeah and I remember bank right now well I don't know I haven't asked him his financial so like can you pleas show that to me but I might but I was funny I told Lindsay I was like that's the worst business model of all time I'm like it's like custom every time it's local you know you can't replicate it like we got to get CAO man into like toys or like like like something

repeatable you know so if he's listening you're welcome for the B he's like can you please not I don't know where I was going with that but um leadership I'm I'm curious what is the biggest thing that blocks you from next level of abundance financially then what leadership skill and what tactical skill I was just talking you know I think as a you know what usually stops me so once you get to like let's say a business that does $10 million a year 20 30 40 50 if you want to go even bigger than that

what stops you is getting out of the way of your best people you have to do two things simultaneously you've got to attract the top talent in the world sell them the IDE my idea is that as a as a business owner your idea is you are building a pedestal and that pedestal is lifting up your team so that their dream is higher and bigger because of your pedestal because of what you've put them on and so I have to be able to sell them on this really big dream and then simultaneously I have to

trust them enough and be clear enough in my vision that I can get out of their way and so you know just last night I was sending a bunch of my leaders where am I in your way what is a roadblock that you have what do you need that you do not where am I annoying you right now because your business can only go as fast as the boss goes the boss isn't going fast the business isn't going fast and so it's actually the same with your bank account it's this idea of speed um and

so that is the biggest hurdle in most businesses that I've seen it's you know money is funny money is a mirror it's a self-reflection mirror of how highly skilled we are in today's economy how highly um how high our self-belief is and then simultaneously how much others believe we are skilled so it's like it is just this this mirror on multiple sides and if you want to attract a lot of money you got to believe that you're capable of it you have to get other people to believe that you're capable of it and then you

got to be able to deliver on it with your actual skill set and so uh no no trick mirrors you know no trick mirrors no skinny tall mirrors right no circus mirrors in your book if people want to learn how to build extraordinary wealth uh they can check out your book Main Street millionaire uh you say that sport is about how much we practice business is about who we hire a lot of people have tried building businesses and they failed miserably hiring people that have taken a lot of their time and energy the training and

then just not being the right fit or they didn't stay long it just felt like a drain to them how do we learn how to hire great people and really incentivize them to stay around long term so it's worth investing in them yeah your number one skill set if you want to make a massive amount of you money is hiring period end of story it is attracting humans and it's really hard why is it so hard because in your job you can go and spend 10 hours 20 hours a day working on graphic design working

on sales you can get so many reps in it's really hard to get a lot of hiring reps in because one it costs money every time you hire somebody two it's hard to find Talent so even to get enough interviews to see if you're good at them lot time three the feedback loops really long right so like the first 30 60 90 days people are ramping up you're like I don't even know if they're good or if he's just new and so hiring is really hard for those specific reasons not enough inputs not enough practice

not a fast enough feedback loop and so if I was to want to get really good at at growing in business I would obsess a lot more on hiring the other thing that's really good about obsessing on hiring is you can also then tell how to get hired a lot more easily and make more money and so if I could obsess with what type of person is the best tier that I have what are their characteristics that they have what are their skill sets that they have why would I be willing to pay them this

much or not pay them this much and once I have that broken down I'm like oh wait a second so this person's worth $250,000 a year this worth person's worth $50,000 a year what's the difference in their skill set huh I want to be even more like this person so if I didn't have the ability to hire I would probably War Games what a skill set looks like between the two more often so I could get in the 250 bucket and out of the 50 bucket you said money is a mirror skills plus self- belief

beliefs plus others believing in your skills and your ability to deliver when you look in the mirror what do you see in terms of your self-belief well I believe that money is everywhere I think it's literally just floating all around us and it was funny because I did a a podcast with Diary of a CEO and and I remember like a lot of the comments were like it's not this easy like you can't and um and I realized one there's cultural differences so Americans we're wildly optimistic we're a little Brash we're a little loud we

really believe in ourselves in Innovation britz less optimistic um quieter not so loud about their accomplishments so there's some cultural differences neither one is really good or bad but one is better for making more money which is why uh even Mrs Mississippi has a higher average income than most of the we'll call it uh you know counties in the US in Britain even Mississippi one of our poorer States and and I think a large part of the reason is because we are Relentless loud Brash and optimistic it's Americans those are really good characteristics for attracting

money so i w believe money is all around I think I can get it whenever I need it my husband has an incredible line which is he says Uh there's 100% Roi on fun so he's like I always spend on fun and he said it's just money we'll make more of it and so if you believe that then I think money is easier to get and simultaneously if you believe that then when you're going out and talking to people you're just coming at it with this like massive amount of abundance the problem is that's really

hard to do like when you're in debt when you're when you're scared about what's going to happen next I mean I remember back in the day I had multiple times like even um even last year we had like one business where um the C reached out to me last minute he's like hey we're having a couple issues in the business I'm like okay cool man what's going on he's like yeah we're about 8 weeks from running out of cash I'm like ex your your sales cycle is 12 weeks you're out of money right now we're

out of money what are we going to do and in those moments where you're almost out of cash where it's scary it is not just that you're going to run out of money it is an immediate failure feel like you are like oh no I'm failing at this I am a failure and so you know I've felt that so many times in business and it's hard when you're in that moment of what if we run out of money entirely what if I can't pay my employees what if I can't pay my mortgage it's really hard

to go yeah money's all around it's coming to me abundantly it's from and I just manifest you're like no I can't but simultaneously I know it's not going to help me if I believe that I'll never get money in that moment I'm probably not going to get out of it and so um in moments like that what I typically do is I sit down and I write my outlist which is like all right I have no money I'm struggling this feels really painful let's acknowledge that for a second now what are we going to do

about it when you want to have a 90 to 10 rule which is I think the best winners in life typ typically talk about the problems 10% focus on potential Solutions 90% And so then I would start writing my list opposed to 90% the problems 10% maybe there's a solution right which is what we're we're geared to do right we are we are geared as humans to look around for problems all the time because historically one problem could have eaten us right and so it wasn't like Solutions all the time it was just don't die

and so we have to work through that but in in my money case I might sit down and write a list like I did when this one company was going sideways and say okay can we what are all the things I could do to get money right now speed fast and so it was like well could we increase our prices so every dollar we make increases the mail we bring in could we go out could we tell our vendors that they actually need to pay uh us sooner so that's called changing your terms could we

actually not pay people could we extend our terms in this business there are all these levers that you can pull the problem is nobody ever teaches us about money and it's the same thing for us as individuals so if you're struggling and you have no money right now like did you know you can go to your bank and say I need an extension on my mortgage I want to extend it out can I get on a payment plan from my bank do you know your bank will do that with you nine times out of 10

why they don't want to take your house that's an asset they have to manage and asset they have to sell do you know it's the same thing often with rent you can go and negotiate your rent payments um and so I think often if we can think about all right how could I what are all the levers I could take to increase the amount of cash I have in front of me give myself a little breathing room and then I could think about really earning on the upside yeah what is the personality type do you

think that is for starting or buying a business versus a personality type that is not for owning a business yeah well I don't think you can spell rich without risk and so if you really want richness in your life like if you want to be very very rich you are not going to get there if you take no risk unfortunately I I've never seen it done that way maybe you guys could tell me if I'm wrong um so and if you want to get rich here's the here's the stats one thing that's cool stat 79%

of all millionaires in the US are self-made that number shocked me because if you heard in the news you'd think no no it's all handed down you know um but 60% of all millionaires own a business so you immediately know well I have a 60% higher likelihood of becoming a millionaire if I own a business and if I want to make crazy levels of money like 30 million plus 88% of people who are worth 30 million plus own a business so first you got to be honest with yourself what do I really want if I

want to be a millionaire and if I want to be worth 10 million plus hard to get there without having some version of ownership or equity and taking risk and working your butt off nonstop 100% like I I giggled cuz another YouTube video did a video of me and it was like make millions it's easy no work just some title passive God I was like I'm pretty sure I've never said that in my life how many hours do you think you work a week oh a lot um I mean when I was in finance I

was working 70 80 hours a week I remember one of my colleagues in wardo we were walking back from a uh we were in New York at the time and we were walking back from uh from work one day super late at night and he just passed out in the middle of the road and I was like holy hell Edwardo are you okay with you know what's going on and he just he was exhausted he it was like passing on from exhaustion so working 80h hour weeks for years probably yeah and he was young so

analyst program I was only there for like two years he would have been about the same but just that compounding plus you know a Work Hard Play Hard environment and that was an employee job was you're an employee you were making a lot of money as an employee but that was what it took to put in the time to have a skill set at the right business to be able to deliver results to get that type of income it took you 78 hours a week yeah for sure and I so you can't do it with

like 40 hours a week just kind of casually showing up and expectra like multiple six figures I don't think so do you know any business that's paying someone to just do the bare minimum no unless you are the capital that's where you start un you have money unless you got the money then I have many businesses that I do no work for now right right right but that's because I did risk I put money down you can lose it all and I could lose it all and the only way you get around that is you

work really hard as an employee for somebody else and you get a percentage of the company which is something that we do for our employees and I think really important but you got to become valuable enough to do it um how valuable do you need to to be um how much are you be earning for that business like bringing in for that business well there's two ways that you can actually get equity in businesses that that we learned in private Equity that I think are useful for people the first way is you can ask to

buy in so can say hey I don't have a lot of cash but like we're going to do this deal over here could I put $10,000 into this business deal you know hey you're going to do this partnership could I like buy into the partnership for 10K and we don't we're not taught how to do that as normal people and we should think that way because what is that telling me that's like hey you're willing to put a little risk on the table and also you're not trying to sell me that you should get XYZ

entitlement you're saying let put some skin in the game that's the worst right so that's and that's how most private Equity guys make their first dollars is they are just allowed to put some skin in the game which is great and then the second way is you become so valuable that the business can't see itself operating without you and this is typically how startups do so it's like hey you know you're so valuable you're going to do the first stage of XYZ of the company because that we're going to give you a percentage and every

single year year you'll get a little bit more of that percentage over like three to five years so two ways to get a percentage of a deal and we teach one um in the book called partial Acquisitions and so basically if right now you're working like let's say somebody's working for you or me right and if you're working for a company right now today and you love what you do and you want to stay there but you want to get some income on the side you have a skill set you're a photographer I don't know

you're a videographer then what could you do you could go to other companies that have that need your skill set and you could say hey if I can increase the revenue of your business if I could decrease the costs of your business or I could decrease your pain of the business could I get a percentage of the business and you could do that both for Distributing Equity that's where you cash flow or regular Equity this is what I'm teaching a lot more people to do because there's a stairstep way to buy a business maybe you're

not ready to go all in we'll learn how to get a small percentage instead yeah yeah so if you're not a personality type that doesn't like Risk yeah you shouldn't be a business owner not outright not outright I don't think you're going to want the the call on a Friday night when you're going to run out of cash how many hours do you put in a week on average as a business owner versus when you're an employee um well I like work so I just worked a lot both times I think you know I was

probably working from Seven until seven or eight or nine as an employee as an employee and now as an owner I'm probably working from 7 until 6 as an owner uh but a little bit on the weekends and maybe when I was an employee I wasn't working on the weekends and you know I think when you're an owner your schedule kind of looks more I think you know when your name's on the door it's easier to work more hours like let's be honest it's just easier it's yours it's yours and so uh but when you're

the owner it's also easier when you set the hours to work more of them and so you know for me I got no problem taking you know four weeks off and going to Europe and I'm checking on stuff every day a little bit but they're mainly running the business when I was an employee that wasn't an option um when I did go on on vacation as an employee wasn't checking you know I was like good luck fine so it really depends on how you want to run your life you know too but I think the

one thing that I do want to impress upon people is like there is nothing wrong with being an employee being an employee is amazing it means that you do not carry all the risk and you can actually become massively wealthy as an employee if you understand how to become so valuable that you get a piece of multiple uh games like for instance right now we we're hiring a president for one of our companies and he's from a huge company um so do we have a right like it's not really reasonable that he would come and

do this for one of my companies given what he's done in the past and you couldn't pay him the salary where he's making it a Bigg compan maybe one fifth of that and so why would he come work for me because I'm like listen you could go work for this one company and have one shot at goal if that company wins you're going to win big but the founders got to sell at the right time you guys got to hit these huge Milestones the investors got to get paid you've got one bet or with me

you can come into this company and you can take an equity bet on this company but also a bunch of these other little bites and so that's why I think private Equity is so interesting and why people stay as private Equity employees for decades I mean I have a friend let's call him Frank who's probably one of the richest guys I know and he has been an employee in a private Equity Firm for like 30 years he's like dating celebrities has a plane he's an employee but he gets little bites at the end apple and

so I'm trying to really explain this to my employees less risk no risk the only risk is getting fired right right you know and that you have to work a lot he's not he's not managing payroll he's not having to hire and fire people necessarily or maybe that's his job but he's not dealing with having to bring in all the money constantly to keep the business running right well and let's talk about the truth of the matter here is that 90% of startups fail uh in a 10year period most startups fail in the first 3

to four years and in those first three to four years you make Z in fact you've spend on average $30 to $50,000 a year attempting to make money oh man and then when you eventually do make money in year three or four the average entrepreneur pays themselves anywhere from4 to $60,000 a year in salary so you go five years making no money essentially exactly working more hours than as employee right and what's the benefit then if you spend a half a deck of your life or most likely you're going to fail I think that is

the question we have to ask ourselves it doesn't seem exciting NE no that's why I get excited about boring businesses because what are the two reasons that most businesses fail well 60% of businesses fail because they don't have product Market fit which means like I had an idea I wanted to sell these uh graphic mths these graphic months are amazing I asked all my buddies you going to buy one Louis like yeah of course great idea you should go be your own CEO everyone it's the best idea ever you're going to sell millions right then

you go and create the company and all of a sudden lisis is a little cheap nobody's nobody's buying my mugs right so the the market didn't actually want what you were selling and then second reason most businesses fail which is about 20% of the reason is lack of cash flow so you have this big idea nobody wants it you run out of cash before you get to figure it out and so I think we've been sold a total lie about business creation and startups which is that employment sucks and also uh we should go start

a business instead and what often happens and I hire a lot of these people as they go start their business they're like oh my God this is worse than employment and I'm not making any money and so so if you're going to play the odds if you're going to go gamble you can play the slots and know that you have the worst odds out there playing the slots and if you're going to gamble you at least are probably going to play Blackjack if you're good at it because you know that's where you have the best

odds business is very similar the best odds is somewhere where the business already has product Market fit and the business is already cash flowing it's already making money it's already profitable and it's been doing it for years so that's why I'm obsessed with this idea of boring businesses and buying them because sta statistically it has less risk and it has more ability for you to earn over time it's not no risk but it is less risk than a startup and nobody talks about that what are the main reason people are selling their profitable businesses then

if a a business has been profitable for five or 10 years and it's so hard to be successful why sell the business there is a huge gap in education between asset value in business owners and ability to sell your assets think about it this way if you owned a house anywhere in the country and that house was too small for you and it was still livable it's still a house maybe it's not the nicest house it's not really what you want you would never just go let's just light that fire and like walk away right

it would be that would be crazy you'd be like okay well let's sell it for whatever it's worth or let's put a renter in there or let's do something with that asset we think about a house like an asset in the US we do not think about our businesses as assets we do not think about our business lines and divisions as assets and so what do we do instead we just walk away from the house that somebody else could live in and so you know there was a who was I talking to was oh Shawn

rad uh founder of Tinder so him and I were chatting the other day yeah he's a buddy uh love him I got him connected to he's lost a lot of waiting last year because I got him set up with my trainers no way yeah so he's been you know just transforming his health he's been doing great oh good I God I didn't tell I'll have to tell him that we're buddies um so he was funny cuz I was explaining this to him and he's like you know it's interesting because I went into a uh oh

God I might mess this up slightly but let's say that he went into like an old um bookbinding shop and in this book binding Shop in La uh he looked over to the left and there were like these racks and racks and racks of books and he was like these are some cool vintage books um and so he was going through them and he was like Hey I want to buy a couple of these from you and she's like no I don't buy them you can just take them and he's like no no I'm going

to I want to pay you for them what's the deal with these why do you have thousands of books here and she's like oh well my husband had a bookstore and he died or they got divorce and so we shut down the bookstore so what are all of those books those are assets and if they had been thinking about their business as a house what would she have done she would she would have done an appraisal had somebody come out look at what the books are worth she might have had somebody come and look at

what the lease was worth for the business she might have sold the whole business or done an asset sale and so Sean ended up buying a bunch of oneoff books and then he was laughing he's like God I felt bad because I went and checked them later and I'm like totally underpaid for these things wow because they were worth something and so people sell their business because they don't understand the value of the business and they don't think it's sellable and like an example that I would probably give you is like you've done it like

you've had a business line before right let's say your education business and you're like this isn't serving the current business right now I'm going to shut it down reasonable you're like I'm the face you know it's not set up to sell you haven't prepped a business that you created to be a business you could sell because most business owners do not know how to do that and so you shut it down because you're like well reputational risk all of these things but let's say that she went through our program that we teach and we talk

about like prepping a business for a sale like a cake um you would have done all these tasks which meant that you would have removed yourself as keyman and you would have had a business that somebody else could take over and the benefit there is somebody else gets to steal your 10,000 hours and you don't have to close a 10year asset Bill sure that you have I did that with my friend business and the person that took it over it was kind of like all my online courses before I launched School of greatness and the

person that took it over ran it to the ground did you sell it yeah I sold it to him but then it was also a sale over like three years so he ran it to the ground after like four months did you get your cash out of it first few months and that was it okay me a lot so that was a challenging thing but it was a lesson you know yeah but I think this is a perfect example so why so I bet if third party people looked at that they'd be like why would

the wh sell this business he's making I'm going to make up making $100,000 a year from the business that's a great business nobody would sell $100,000 a year business but why would you sell it because you had a million dollar opportunity over here and so you have opportunity costs exactly so there's $900,000 that's waiting on Lewis to make a sale right well the big lesson was kind of what your biggest mistake was it sounds like was you know it was a it was a partnership that wasn't working out yeah and we weren't seeing ey to

eye for like many months probably six to n months and it was exhausting trying to be in partnership with someone where we just didn't have the same vision right I'm not blaming him or myself we just weren't aligned and we didn't ask those questions early on I didn't ask those questions he didn't ask those questions and so we didn't we had Clarity over like let's go make some money over the next year but we weren't thinking years in the future we were assuming yeah the other person wanted the same things yeah and that created a

lot of stress yeah well there's a whole chapter in there about Partnerships and how to not not them up it's not perfect but there's I have like 12 key lessons about Partnerships that are really important in selling it but I bet did you do that sale with seller financing was that like largely hey percent future profit so he he sounds like he actually got a pretty good deal out of you he got a great deal yeah because he was able to talk you into his vision of the future cuz I knew he couldn't pay me

up front right he wasn't able to do it and he was like I'm going to use this money to do the marketing and the ad spend and and he just ran it to the ground and you probably didn't do a real deal process to have multiple people come in and potentially V your business yeah exactly but why and also just like exhausted you know it's like a lot of people are exhausted running their business for years they might sell it on the cheap because they just want to get out that's exactly right that's the 7ds

which is you know death divorce distress um oh I always forget this you move uh God toed off death to force distress uh you move locations you um have disagreement so that would be like a Business Partnership um you have um debt yeah that's not the exact one but we could use that one we fill it in since I'm forgetting it and somebody on the internet will tell me what the seventh is but for most small business owners they um they're in the pain cave what they're looking to sell you know in this case largely

retirees 60% of all small businesses are owned by people 65 Plus in the US which is wild so a lot of them just want to retire and they've been running it for 10 20 30 years maybe some of these businesses right um but a lot of these business owners too just have the same thing you have which is opportunity costs like ah I'm running this landscaping business but this roofing business is really taking off exactly um so I I think that's I think that's a beautiful story to sh share because a lot of people don't

think it happens it happens all around us it can be exhausting and that's I mean not to be opportunistic but that could be the time where you could swoop in and find a business that is distressed yeah that's struggling or a partnership is falling apart and they need to sell yeah it's one of the seven3 and a halfs there you go ex I thought you were going to say like Duck dive Dodge from like dodgeball well we were laughing earlier because in the book we you come up with all these acronyms to try simplify things

and then I forget acon what are the 26 steps to Building Wealth okay step by step exactly yeah that's why you need Sops to exactly you do have a chapter or a section of the CH uh the book that talks about how to 10 extra profits in year one when someone's launching a business or looking to buy a business can they actually 10x their profits in their first year yes a th% however do not buy a business based on that expectation so I say you buy businesses based on realities and profits not dreams and potential

kind of like getting into a relationship too right exactly don't expect a lot of change yeah um but you can you can model it you can do a financial forward looking model on it so for instance in our businesses you buy a business based on the profits in the business so if the business is doing 100K typically that means you're going to buy the business for anywhere from 100K to 500k 1 to 5x is the profit multiple but what's interesting about these small businesses is a lot of these businesses are so under optimized and we

have lots of ways we talk about this um but in this instance this was a laundromat that we own and basically it shows how you could use seven different types of Acquisitions in order to grow the business Plus some things like price increases but you know for instance you might have a laundr mat and then you might buy a second laundromat so you have economies of scale plus you could use the equity of one laundr match to acquire the other laundromat you could add additional Revenue lines right so you could add gumball machines and soap

dispensers you know you could buy the real estate uh of where the laundr mat sitting and then th get the rental into income from your laundr M plus everybody else in there um you could also do some vertical integration so you could be thinking well what's my biggest cost soap you know could I white label a soap brand um and then could I sell that and so there are all these ways that you can think about using Acquisitions to grow your business and I think Acquisitions are the hack to fast growth like I have never

heard of a billion doll company that has acquired zero things I don't think it exists really no they're at least Aqua hiring Talent they're Aqua hiring competitions uh competitors uh different product lines but if you want to go fast you buy 100 clients at a time as organically acquire one at a time even even Facebook like Instagram perfect example WhatsApp perfect example the big boys play in the game of Acquisitions they got a lot of cash to spend on that what is that five billion or something yeah but if you think about it what's interesting

is they use cash because for them cash is their cheapest asset speed yeah well it's speed and it's cheap what should they have done if the WhatsApp guys are really smart and the Instagram guys are really smart they would have asked for a lot more equity in Facebook so it you know once you see this five bills all right you know like I mean it's like okay do I need more I think the Instagram guys said and they sold for a billion right yeah they said they regretted that transaction cuz how much was that worth

now oh God I mean they would have taken more stock than Facebook right yeah 100x so I think that again goes back to this it to me it feels like um kind of like you open like I don't know pans loud Labyrinth or Pandora's Box like once you look inside you're like oh wait a second we were taught for so long that money is is hard to get that it's impossible that it's not around us and once you start to play the game of ownership and deal making you realize money is often the cheapest thing

um and once that happens then your world can really change what about for people say okay but if I'm going to get an investor I have to give up so much of this business that I want to do a deal in okay and what if I only get 10 20 30% is it worth me buy in a business where someone else is just given cash to own 60 70 80% where I'm still doing all the work for 10 20% yeah well I would say why' you give them 60 70 80% whatever whatever the number is

you know what I mean though it's like and then the more you need to raise you have to dilute your Equity even more yeah you're you're right uh I have friends that started a business I won't say who they are uh you probably know them they're in your your town they're worth a few hundred million in their business right they've been around for for about a decade okay and they've had to raise money over and over and over again at scale for their business physical product good business they're in tons of retailers but they only

have like a few percent each now because they've just had to keep raising to be able to scale it and they put all this time and energy in for a decade maybe they get a sale where they make a few million I don't know but maybe not it's it's a great point so here's the beautiful part about deal making the smarter dealmaker that you are the less you give away over time I mean contrarian thinking is a perfect example We Own 100% of contrarian thinking I haven't taken a single investor but my first couple businesses

I did I took some investors because I didn't actually realize how to Value myself for my asset it kind of goes back to that house example we have to get more reps at understanding how to Value things and create deal structures that benefit us and so if I have a business that I know is going to need a lot of cash isn't it Wild that all we know how to do is go out and raise Venture funds why do you think that is well it's because that is the most lucrative Equity is the most lucrative

in a fast growing startup you can get so if you have a fast growing startup what should you do instead you should take a little bit more debt risk which is like tactical to understand you're not giving up Equity you're not giving up Equity you're giving up a percent that is set as opposed to a forever percent future upside you should give up Less in Trad to to talk people into your Sweat Equity being worth more you should you should think about structuring deals where you go hey I'm going to give you equity in the

business but I'm going to have the right to pay to buy you out at xterm at this time you should potentially maybe be giving them some smaller percentage of equity but distributions so they don't take a huge chunk of it so like this is the stuff that I learned on Wall Street that I didn't realize is like why the why the people on Wall Street are so much richer than us it's because they understand how money actually works and we would never taught this stuff what were we taught we were taught like budget don't buy

the Starbucks you know negotiate your salary once a year so that you get a 5% increase instead of a 3% increase we weren't taught about warrants and ratchets and options and you know none of that and yet if we learned how to do that your friends we could be doing way smarter deals than straight up equity and um and the thing that you negotiated in the beginning doesn't have to be the thing you up with I think as Americans too we have this funny thing we have this guy Kareem who's an investment analyst on our

team and uh he's the best negotiator of all time he's Egyptian and so I always oh man when I went to Egypt I was getting negotiated with everywhere I went yeah for we Americans were not that used to negotiating and so the other thing that's cool is you have to remember what do the rich never really want they don't ever want to do work once they've once they've given you cash for something they're saying I want you to deal with it Bill Perkin says that to me all the time he's like can I give you

more money I'm like no you want more of my life I know what you're trying to do here no and uh and so even for those guys you might push back and be like we're unhappy with the percent that we have right now we're working way too hard on this business we're your future growth we want you guys to take some money off the table and we want you guys to give us some additional Equity you know we'll distribute up to this point but as Americans we're not really taught to get comfortable negotiating it feels

like a retrade it feels bad maybe we feel cheap uh but we shouldn't we should just know that that is what Wall Street does all day what's interesting my fiance Martha she's really good at negotiating Mexican and she I mean anytime we're trying to buy anything or or build anything within our house she's always just negotiating negotiating negotiating and I love that about her because she's not just going to say okay they said it was this price and we're just going to pay it she's always trying to find a way to say okay what can

we do to make it less how can we make it half this price what would that look like and just constantly enrolling people in bringing it down and I think it's a beautiful skill set cuz you're saving money in that process that you can invest in other places that's a good woman right there a great woman about my wealth you know it's like like go save me some money you know well also some I mean do you think women are an asset or a liability in a relationship for men well they should be an asset

what makes women an asset for men versus a liability depends on what you want as a man but you know I think a good woman should be a a partner in life to carry the burdens through just about everything a burden might be that she is the negotiator and you are the earner you know a good woman might be that she takes care of the family and offsets a couple hundred, in potential third party costs uh instead of you know a cook a h a housekeeper a nanny a surrogate you got her um you know

or it might be somebody who also earns besides you or maybe do a mixture of both but um I do think that these days the only thing that I do not like about the man versus mail thing is like listen I'm happy to stay home I'm happy to cook and clean and take care about just of of everything uh if you're working and I'm not if we're both working and I am the one doing all of the cooking all of the cleaning and that's the expectation because I'm a woman and you're a man opt out

unsubscribed no thanks so I think that the idea of a traditional wife cool if she actually gets to be traditional # tradwife yes and it's back we're back uh but that's the only part that I get upset about gender Norms I mean my husband and I he loves cooking like I like stuff clean we both run the business together but like don't tell me that I because I'm a woman I got to do all this extra stuff just because of it if we're both getting up early grinding and working I don't like that what would

you say if a man is very entrepreneurial risk taker he's trying to build wealth for his life he gets in a relationship with a woman they get engaged they get married what are the three qualities he should be looking for in order to feel like she's really to help contribute to the long-term wealth versus take away from it maybe what are like the soft skills of those qualities I one I love what Jeff Bezos said which is um if I was in a third world prison I know my wife would help get me out like

you need to ride or die you know you want that person to be so aligned and so crazy that you could TR her you know you were like I I murdered somebody wears the body that's what we're looking for this is your partner for life it's going to be the mother of your children like she better be able to get done that would be one for me um kind of like resourcefulness 100% willing to do whatever it takes figuring it out yeah and super super loyal not feeling helpless like I have no clue no I

think that like victim mentality of a woman I mean real traditional women back in the day they were some hard mother you know oh yeah like so I think you can still be in your flowery dresses and hanging out sunflower field but feel like that woman's got your back and then the second thing is I do think you know I've seen it happen with my very wealthy guy friends let's say and they bring somebody on board into their relationship and that wealth ain't doing so hot in a moment and that woman's gone and I can

sense him a mile away I see it up front really oh my gosh course the women leave yeah 100% sad it well is it or did you choose a woman that you knew wasn't loyal wasn't going to be there for you just wanted your stuff and you know we all fall love and have made mistakes and I've certainly done that but like I think that loyalty plus resourcefulness is so because that's what you're going to pass on to your kids too if that's important to you 100% of all the millionaires you know how many of

them do you think are actually happy and fulfilled human beings I think that I think money kills misery a lot more than it helps happiness like it is a miserable existence to be on the poverty line not able to figure things out not able to take care of your family I mean we're seeing deaths of Despair all around this country from fenol usage um from anti-depressants uh divorce rates lack of people having sex and and getting married and so I think money helps a lot with decreasing our misery level when it comes to happiness though

the funny thing about money is it's an amplif to me you become a lot more of whoever you are so if you're a nasty gnarly unhappy human without money you're probably going to be a nasty gnarly unhappy human with money you're just going to be able to affect the world a little bit more in a negative way in a negative way and I think that's why like a lot of people have a hole inside of them and then they go and fill it with money and that's why I think you know the Bible says says

that the root of all evil is the desire for money not that money is the root of all evil important change and so if youire money above all else and you try to fill your black hole inside of you with money I don't think that makes you happy if you love producing helping people changing the world laboring um you know then and and the byproduct of that is money then I think you're a lot happier but no I've met very very many a miserable millionaire um but it wasn't because of money it was already there

and then money makes it wor it amplifies the do yeah can make it can make it feel even a heavier weight sometimes right yeah I mean you've met these people too how many people who are millionaires or billionaires that you know or have interviewed or been around yeah that you think have a lot of fulfillment in their life what's the percentage is it half is it 10% is it 90% or do you think a lot of them still struggle with finding peace fulfillment joying their lives even with all the money I don't meet a very

many peaceful billionaires I don't think I've ever met one you know billiona in order to get that level of wealth you have to do things that no normal human would do like is it worth it then is it worth being a billionaire they might just never have been the peaceful type of human you know that just might not be who they are and thank God they exist in the world for a lot of things that are better for all the rest of us actually The Innovation everything yeah 100% the job creation the lift I mean

the best thing that's ever happened to poverty levels in the in in the world is capitalism which is crazy people who are not peaceful at all pushing to make the world a little bit better um but I have met a lot of really joyful billionaires so they're not peaceful but they got a lot of Joy cuz man it's pretty fun being rich like you know it's not so much the one-off things it's just what you can do you're like I want to go build the school in Africa do it you know I want to take

my family and go on the best trip they've ever been on I want to buy 37 catios and go ctio for all and you get a ctio and you get a ctio that's your Oprah one day you know everybody in the audience is going to be like I don't want this leis C life but yeah I think many billionaires are joyful but not peaceful how many billionaires are unhappy I maybe met 30 or 40 billionaires like which is a lot because there's not that many of them in the world and um you know what a

lot of them are a lot of them are Asbergers which is hysterical to me I was talking to Joe lale about that founder of paler and I was like you know I've met all these Tech billionaires in um in Austin and uh a lot of them there yeah and man some of you guys are really hard to talk to you know and he's like yeah we are all most of us are neurode Divergent in some way we're a little like off and so if you came at us with like a normal hey how you doing

what's going on they're like no thanks I have no interest in that and when you're that rich you don't really have to play by other people's rules so you just don't engage how you don't want to engage I mean think about all the things you can cut out of your life if you're a billionaire you don't have to go to the DMV ever you know you're never at the airport cuz you're flying private I think the airport is a great equalizer for people um you know you're not taking the bus you know you're not going

to the grocery store like everything comes to you when you're at that level and so your ability to engage with humans like normal everyday humans like me and you I think really materially decreases because they you're just living in another world you're living in a bottle and you get to affect the outcome it's like when when uh who was it was Bill Gates they're like how much is this apple or this this ban and he's like 20 bucks like Jesus it's like he was so out of touch from reality cuz he has built his own

world that's one of the reasons why I'm not sure so much about living forever because I think I think what would happen is some of us would become so so wealthy that we would become completely disconnected from what everyday normal humans were we be an alien on Earth yeah I think so or or be like those science fiction shows where we're like floating in The Ether and everybody on down below is something different are you afraid to die no no I don't think about it much though uh I'm afraid to die if I don't feel

like I'm doing the things I want to do in life that scares me why because I want to felt like it mattered to live here which is interesting because theoretically it doesn't and you know I'm Christian I believe in God it doesn't matter to live here uh I don't I don't I don't think so I mean we're all like grains of sand at some point over time we can try to affect the outcome in in some way and I hope that I was able to impact people over time that's kind of a whole point of

being on the internet I think otherwise you could just get rich quietly like you and I if we want to get really really rich probably the best way to do it is not be on the Internet it's what I was saying before it's private Equity go buy a bunch of assets grow those assets get third party Capital put it in there I could become a billionaire there's a set path it's it's a high probability path but why not take that path H because I think that that leads to maybe less joyful Liv more misery I

think that leads to more misery I think that leads to um poor outcomes for communities poor outcomes for businesses like walking into a Starbucks the soul sucked out of it it's the soul sucked out of the employees too um walking into a corner coffee shop I love like a local one and so um I think it's soul sucking so I don't just care about money I want to have some impact on the world because it's fun but there was a point where I was scared to die and that was when I was doing something I

didn't like when I was I was an employee in finance at the time I saw all of the people ahead of me with like Lambos and Ferraris and second and third wives and bottle service at clubs this was kind of like old school Finance days you know every they would have like multiple wases and kind of like show off which watch and which bottle of wine was the most expensive steak houses every night and yeah and I remember one time we were flying in one of the the exec planes and you know those things can

get bumpy and it wasn't so bumpy where I had like some existential you know crisis but it was bumpy enough where I thought about it and thought God bless if I die right now as like an exec at a finance company that just makes more money for myself and these guys like I would be pretty pissed I would be mad at myself because I wanted life to be this like great adventure where it mattered and I did cool things and I learned and I loved and I adventured and I was not doing that and so

that is when I was scared to die how old are you now 38 have you had kind of a midlife crisis yet or like more of Awakening of like oh it's technically I mean maybe it's not halfway complete but it's close to halfway complete like we're going to the third quarter yeah yeah and what have I done for the last four decades I feel pretty good about the scoreboard thus far so I feel you know one of the best parts is like when you move fast continuously on life with a specific Vision aligned to your

ethics and moral compass it feels like not as scary to die pain maybe feels scary like being tortured to death sounds scary but just it ending I feel like I'm pretty proud of what we've put here thus far not done but I'm proud um but when I wasn't living my own life and I don't know if you've ever done that I I definitely had a period where I was not living my life I was a truck driver for 3 months oh yeah 6 hours a day driving in the corn fields back and forth in corn

Cincinnati every day interesting I didn't know that plus you're big it's like you got you don't have enough like free like Bluetooth and it was like you had a CD player and it was like there's only so much you could do and I couldn't call anyone and do anything like that so just like just driving through the corn fields on the highway flat no scenery driving truck auto parts in the back yeah and just transferring it over getting other our parts and bringing it back Napa yeah yeah for six hours a day yeah that those

in that moment you probably felt like but I needed money it paid 250 a week though cuz I needed time to train in the morning this is like when I was trying to go play professional football y so I was trying out for teams I would train in the morning and then train at night so I needed a job where I could do both and this was six hours from like the middle of the day and so I was able to get up work out uh drive a truck for six hours come back work out

sleep get up and do it again but I only made 250 bucks a week but did you feel purpose because you were working towards your bigger goal or it was was just like this is not the type of purpose that I want to be working towards interesting like how could I find a way to achieve my goal quicker yeah how can I you know Network more or or find another opportunity that pays me more and then what happened I was bouncing on the weekend also so I was making like I don't know 50 to 100

bucks a night like getting tips you know a security at a nightclub and I don't drink alcohol so it's kind of like whatever whatever I could do is like Thursday Friday Saturday nights just to try to have the time to be able to work on my dream yeah so it was a challenge but it was also like I think having that experience and multiple experiences like that made me realize like oh I need to overcome all of my insecurities and fears that are keeping me here because I have limited skills going back to the beginning

of this conversation I couldn't speak in public yeah I didn't have the confidence to like put myself out there in certain ways so I was like I need to join a public speaking class this is when I joined Toast Masters which I was tell about four so I went to a public speaking class every single week for this year so I was like I need skills I need skills and my fears are holding me back from having the confidence to relate to powerful individuals yeah I need mentors how do I find them I need to

go to events so I started going to events and that's when I got un Linked In I got un LinkedIn and I started reaching out to people even though I had no skills no college degree no confidence and I was trying to like do football stuff and it was all about SK acquisition during that time and that skill acquisition gave me courage and confidence to then go meet with the right people to create opportunities yeah that's what it was yeah you know I because it was that pain of like I don't want to be sitting

in a truck for six hours a day that pain made me realize okay I I don't want this pain so I'd rather be embarrassed and humiliated and experience that pain if it's going to give me the chance of making more money I I totally agree yeah I never had I always liked my blue collor jobs like I did like construction I did work on a construction site I wasn't the worker I was like in the little air condition voices and whatever um I always liked those jobs cuz there was so much movement like you could

be out you were talking to the person you were in the car you were going I always when I felt trapped was in my corporate job like I remember at Vanguard my very first job which is where I think dreams go to die still to this dayu oh God hopefully they're going to sponsor this video but they used to I would have to clock in in the morning with my little um time stamp time yeah and um and I would have to clock out every time I went to the bathroom and lunch man that school

and I was on in the call center so I was connected directly this would have been in 2008 so it was Crisis time I was connected directly to the phone lines the second that you got connected people would start calling you'd have to pick it up and it was chaos I mean it was oh my God you've stolen all my money because you know that was in their 401K they didn't realize what happened how could you do this crying people in the background and you you do whatever you could and then you'd hang up and

then the next one and then the next one and U that's a lot ah and that was I was 21 at the time when I did that and I remember the moment that I was like and it was you know fluorescent lights those drop ceilings right the padded W oh God it's still that actually that is where my hell is I I just it's making me uncomfortable just talking about it and I remember one of my colleagues and friends at the time and she was like she was having like many panic attacks from it it's

a lot for a 21-year-old to take on and then that feeling of being trapped in your chair like you can't get up and then I remember you had to ask to go to the bathroom yeah you had to CL and out um and I remember she came to me one day and she was like I feel better today I'm like great like what's going on would you what' you learn and she had started on anti-depressants oh my gosh and she started gaining weight from that time and said into it was just like the downward spiral

and so that was the one time where I was like I'm not doing this like I will not live this way and so I started doing the same thing that you did how can I acquire skills how can I Network how can I become more valuable to other people how can I work more on this miserable thing so I never have to do it again and that was when I was like nobody will ever be able to tell me again uh that I have to do a miserable job that I hate and that I have

to clock in and clock out without purpose yeah cuz you know I think you can handle a lot of I've had I worked that was a 40- hour work week at Vanguard that was a 40h hour clock in clock out no work home with you work week calling you at home nobody's no responsibility um no boss pushing you just just do kind of just that's it and then I went to Goldman where they were like on you and you're in early and where are you and you failed and we're you know firing these people and

I loved it because I was like they're making me better something every day and by the time I'm done with this I will be so good that my skill set will be so high um that nobody will be able to tell me that I have to do something I don't agree with anymore right and so and you were there for what two years three years I was there for like two years so you developed a lot of skills in that time you had invest a lot of your energy and time to deal with that stress

right it was like how do I manage this but then you were able to go do your thing yeah and I think I I wish I could get more people to see that like I tell my team a lot like you know what you really want you want a really hard boss you want a boss that pushes you nonstop to nice you are I'm too nice well actually I could see that for you then you got to be hard on them because let me tell you why that's how they get better yeah I mean you

know this you're an aete well I hold up I I have expectations but who are your best not like a jerk I'm not like screw you guys you know I'm not like no but that that doesn't help you know I don't think y yelling is a sign of weakness in a leader I think so yeah um except maybe in sports like I think in sports even that it's like you can yeah you can yell but it's got to be a if you're just yelling to create fear all the time then it's like if that's your

only tool you need to develop some other empathy or skill to actually like connect and see what each person needs to thrive that's a otherwise you're using one thing for everyone yeah you're just you're a scalpel yeah exactly and lots of things and it might work sometimes but it may not work all the time yeah and it's takes and again the number one skill to learn for anyone whether you're an employee or an owner is leadership yeah I think I think so too because when you have the ability to connect con with people and see

what they need in this moment and be of service to that individual for the betterment of your goals together you both win yeah you know what's fascinating though how about when you were younger like I did not understand why leadership mattered and I didn't either didn't make sense no and I kind of dismissed it yeah didn't yeah you hear about it in like high school you're like leadership like who cares yeah who cares I'm best at my job I'm doing this it's about me and I think as I've gotten older uh guys it's like you

know back in my day both you know walk both ways in the snow up uh uphill but um as I've gotten older I've realized man like your ability to talk other people in to coming on board to your vision is so powerful I mean think about it who's the most powerful world uh man in the world right now president of the United States arguably what is his one skill set aligning a bunch of people behind him yeah that's it getting votes yeah that's it it's getting a bunch of people into your vision and for for

them to think that their life will be better with you in charge um not Ben it's telling a story yeah that's really what it is yeah so it's some mixture of right it's like sales because you got to sell the story it's leadership and then it's like capability you need people to think that you're credible right based on results or based on your experience or whatever it might be yeah or that you're going to do a better job than what someone else is doing right yeah the other thing is people are hard to fool over

time I think so like the longer that's one of the best things for for h and partners too is just longevity because you you see a lot of shot you get to see a lot of shots on goal how do they react when it goes bad when it goes good and when they show you believe on 100% I want people to get your book Main Street millionaire by Cody Sanchez how to make extraordinary wealth buying ordinary businesses a lot of amazing strategies and stories and lessons in here that will give you a different mindset and

I think we're talking about these skills leadership is the key in order to be a great leader you need to change the way you think about things and approach things so if you guys want to develop more of a millionaire mindset make sure you get the copy of the book get it for a friend you go to Cody sanchez. comom flashbook or just it's right there on the homepage right there on the homepage go to Amazon buy a copy for a friend as well if you know someone struggling looking to grow lot of great strategies

in this make sure to check it out I have one final question for you but before we dive into that question we'll have linked up our previous interview as well I think it's done over a half a million views on YouTube so far if you want more from Cody check that out follow her on social media as well amazing content on her YouTube her podcast on all of her social media here's a question that I thought would be perfect for you I was actually getting a coffee last week and I went in this coffee shop

there was a couple people sitting there but no one was in line it was like at 3:00 right so after the kind of the the rush of the uh the afternoon and for whatever reason I like to talk to a lot of people when I meet them you know I like to say hi to people at stores I'm from the Midwest so I'm just kind of welcome me most of the time not every day but most of the time I like hey what are you grateful for I just kind of have these questions uhhuh and

I could tell this woman who was behind the desk making coffee was not having a good day the energy was low she's probably in her mid 20s maybe late 20s I'm not sure uh her name was Phoenix I don't know her last name and I won't say where she was working but um I was just asking her a few questions I was like what's going on and she goes I'm just tired I'm not you know I'm not enjoying the job the pay isn't that good you know things aren't going in my favor in life like

there's a lot of stress and it feels hard to to get out of it for someone like Phoenix who's listening or watching right now who is just at a job they're not enjoying they're not making the money they want and they don't feel like things are going their way what's one thing they could do to start shifting their energy and start seeing the world differently so they can have more of a positive experience rather than a soul sucking experience so good go make something a little bit better at the job you have right now like

step number one if that coffee shop isn't giving you what you want out of it you're not making enough money you don't love what you're doing how can you actually give more to the business which sounds counterintuitive but I would come up with every single day what's a little bit more that you can be doing can you be going around and seeing if anybody wants some additional orders try to take note how much the business is making each time that you're on shift and then how much it makes After you start making these changes create

a little list of the things you did to affect your will on the world show that hey you actually know how a business works and you want it to grow small little changes maybe you go outside you're starting to say hi you hand out a little coffee sample to people think like an owner have an ownership mindset because when you have an ownership mindset that transfers to ownership eventually then the second that you do that I want you to go to the owner of the business and I want you to tell them just a little

brief hey here's the stuff I've been doing at the business no ask I've been doing this little list of things it seems to be working here's some of the experiments I've been trying first of all they're going to be shocked nobody's going to ever have done something like that to them you are already now the 1% Second Step you do it for a few more weeks at the end of a few weeks you go hey I've been doing these extra things I'd love to make some additional money here is that possible can you show me

like what a career progression looks like here for me to move to the next step for me to make additional money here's the thing if they say nothing this is Starbucks we don't hire this way you're stuck here then that's a bad company and you need to start looking elsewhere and you need to as you're looking for your next thing not just have a resume but have some case studies here's what I did in my last business that they didn't ask me to do here's how I realized that I could provide positive value I can

promise you one thing only that capability is so rare and desire is even more rare and so if you can show those two things in the world you will go from having an owner's mindset to an owner one day hash CAO life there we go Cody Sanchez make sure you guys check out the books follow for more appreciate it Cody thanks thanks for having me your frequency my energy is what I frequently see you know and that was I was excited my boys came in here I wanted them to meet you because you're one of

those people where I'm like Lewis is such a good and positive like you need to feel that energy so it's I'm never surprised when I meet somebody successful that's positive because of course they are cuz look at the way they