The Money Expert: How Wealth Is ACTUALLY Built (Money Secrets Nobody Talks About) | Codie Sanchez

70% of millionaires are self-made if you want to make money you got to follow the math people that have money have one thing entrepreneur investor she's bought over 26 businesses Cody Sanchez I have no money I don't really know too much about money where do I stop what do I do most often we're told things like follow our passion I think that's pretty bad advice if you don't have ownership you're probably never going to be free financially you're literally opening up a whole new doorway for people the number one Health and Wellness podcast J shett

J shett the one the only J shett hey everyone welcome back to onp purpose the place you come to become happier healthier and more healed I'm fascinated by our relationships with things that we grew up with how they've changed how they've evolved or how they've stayed the same I believe that our relationship with money is probably one of the most underestimated relationships that we have and it's probably one of the relationships that we pay the least attention to we don't treat it like a relationship we don't think of it like a relationship and therefore it

falls into the binary category of I'm either good at it or I'm bad at it today's guest has some incredible insights for each and every one of us wherever you are in your financial Journey this episode is for you today's guest is Cody Sanchez thank you I'm Blain I'm excited to be here I want to start with a question that I know you probably get a million times and I get all the time Jay I have no money I don't really know too much about money where do I st what do I do there's two

things in life that I wish we were told earlier and one is if you want to make money you got to follow the math and I think most often we're told things like follow our passion you know do what I did to make money I made real estate uh money you should make real estate money and I think that's pretty bad advice I think instead we should look to where are most people Rich what makes most people Rich so I kind of go to the data I came from really middle class kind of we didn't

have money all the time I remember what it was like to not have money I remember what it was like when my debit card you know I was a little worried stuff wouldn't go through at the grocery store and uh I didn't like that feeling and so I kind of started looking around I was like wait a second where do people have money and after being in finance for whatever it is 15 years I'm going to give away my age I realized people that have money have one thing ownership so the the data is really

clear on this 70% of millionaires are self-made which is interesting I used to think maybe you just inherit it did they just get lucky and then 68% of millionaires have some form of form of ownership they have actually bought a business or have equity in a business or built a business and so when I realized that I was like the problem is I don't have a brilliant idea like I don't know how to make money I don't have any money to make money but at least you have step one which is if you don't have

ownership you're probably never going to be free financially you got to get some skin in the game that doesn't mean that you have to become an entrepreneur it's really hard to do that it sucks many days you know this very well there's Fridays when you're never going to make payroll and that is like a deep terrible dark hurt actually but if you realize ownership is the name of the game then you should probably obsess on one thing more than anything else which is learn the language of money and uh back when I was young I

was a journalist originally made Z and uh and I realized that I had no idea why I had opportunities and ability to make some money and let's say the women I was covering at the time in Warz who were they call it la de right the city of death which is where uh women are mutilated and raped and brutalized and and uh found murdered all over the city every single day thousands of women a year there were many that had the last name Sanchez my H last name happens to be Sanchez I was like what's

the difference between us is it that I'm American no that's not it alone I think it's also that I had some Financial tools and like money is a push back against other people's architecture of your life and it makes people care about you one way or the other which is sad but the truth of the matter is if you are poor you have no power and anybody who's been poor before knows that is true you got to go where the game is played so the first thing I tell you is if you don't have any

cash you need to find a way to figure out how to speak the language of money and that probably means you maybe go work in finance like I did you get with a company that has smart leaders like Jay where you can actually go and learn from them and you obsess on can I become fluent in the thing that nobody talks about in the US because money is supposed to be the root of all evil yeah you shared a statistic with me that I thought was mind-blowing that 62% of Americans don't want to talk about

money yeah that is so scary but it's also not surprising because like you just said we've created this narrative that money is the root of all evil and it was so fascinating because someone actually said this to me where if you look up the actual reference it says love of money is the root of all evil I never knew that yeah how did we I mean I do wonder sometimes how do we get programmed these ways because if you think about it's like what are the three things you're not supposed to talk about politics religion

money now politics and religion maybe I could understand you could offend somebody I believe this religion you believe this polit political slant and if if we could Collide that could bad but when it comes to money who who's like no I wish you everybody was poor like why wouldn't we be able to talk about it and the only thing that I can determine from that is that every time we get a little bit more ownership a little bit more money we become harder to control and um when you're harder to control big institutions and largely

our governments they don't like that you know you want to controllable populace by and large and and I think that is a big reason why people don't talk about money it's actually that we have been programmed to be more malleable sheep in many ways not because people are evil at the top but because once we get power we humans are a little funny we don't like to give it up no matter who we are I would probably be the same and so that centralization of power we start to think I know better you poor person

let me give you some charity you can't figure it out and instead we should be saying you are just as capable as I am and I would probably be you if I lived your life and so instead why don't I transfer some knowledge because that's where money starts yeah what about people right now who are looking at the situation and just like the economy is in a bad place we're super worried paint us a picture of where America is right now well I mean let's talk first we'll talk about how it's tough and I'll be

honest and then we can talk about Solutions so I promise I won't leave you in a doom scroll but um here's the truth of what's happening in the world right now if you're young young people today are upset about what's happening in the world around them and I understand why you have wage stagnation so we basically have not made any money and in fact this generation gen Z is the first generation where at their same age as their parents they're making less money not more problem is their University degrees are 3 to fourx more expensive

oh by the way so is housing wait a second inflation is at a degree in which my dollar today is worth even substantially less than even five years ago on top of that yeah we have all these jobs open you know 7 million working age men supposedly are unemployed at this moment right now um even though the jobs report says that there's so many jobs are the jobs real well largely not they're private SE they're not private sector they're public sector they're government jobs and so young people are like wait a second I can't live

I can't eat you know groceries more expensive and that's real actually and so the people that are making fun of young people and Tik toks you know when they cry about their job being difficult I don't I don't really Vibe with that because the math says it's hard right now and not just for young people but I think it's important to talk about them and the trth truth of the matter is though that in any Market we can make money and so although it's really difficult out there there's like one silver lining that I've kind

of been screaming from the rooftops for the past three years and people I think are starting to see it which is that we are thankfully I think going to have a marriage between Baby Boomers and young people that would be very unexpected so right now and historically young people have said okay Boomer you messed our up up our economy Boomer you're not employing me Bo you don't understand my life you listen to the music that young people like they don't like that generation in a lot of ways then the Baby Boomers are like you guys

are quiet quitting you're not working very hard um get out of my basement uh and so these two generations have been at war in some ways like a quiet war and now I think with the transfer of ownership that we're seeing and we can talk about the the great wealth transfer I think we have an opportunity with the baby boomer generation the richest generation that we have ever seen in the us which has mimicked in all other countries around the world by the way that are developed countries um this generation is about to Sunset they're

getting ready to retire they're ready to move on but they own $68 trillion in wealth in just the US the interesting part is the young people think well that money must get transferred somehow right does that mean I get a house does that mean I get a car does that mean I get inheritance the problem is that money is not tied up in just assets it's not tied up in houses and bank accounts it by and large is tied up in small businesses because baby boomers own 60% of all small businesses and so I think

we got to find a way for the young people to take over these baby boomer businesses because otherwise then we're in a really bad spot then we're Japan yeah what are some of the mistakes that you think we think about what makes money like what what are we thinking makes money right now where we're being distracted where actually small businesses is where you're pointing to Spotlight yeah but but what are we distracted by I think a lot of young people today chase the shiny object right and and think about this for a second I remember

like many years ago I had an opportunity to invest in Robin Hood and I could kick myself financially because I didn't but at the time why I didn't is I was like day trading stocks as amateurs uh and then gamifying it so we get like adrenal response every time a balloon pops because we place to trade might be a bad idea like I don't think we should probably game ify our finances that way and I think that's what's happened to young people they're being told I mean put it in the stock market in day trade

they're being told nfts and playing with crypto monkeys they're being told price speculation on crypto or even Bitcoin they're taking margin calls out on their stock portfolios and with the little amount of money that they have they're trying for this getrich scheme speculation and the shitty part is that just never works you know the the one sure thing I know about money is that you're never going to make it if your solution is hey I'm going to win at money CU that guy's going to lose if you think that there is a lose win scenario

and you are the one that's going to win I hate to tell you you're the one holding the bag well said yeah and I wish people told us that more that actually making money doesn't have to be lose win it could be win-win and that is when you know you've actually found a good opportunity is when you go okay why would I make money on this deal oh because I am solving a paino that adds value to another human's life and I've properly valued what my own skill set is problem is most of us don't

even know what we're good at or how you'd value that skill and we could play around with some exercises so that any human could figure out okay I Cody know how to Market something how do I figure out how much is that is worth and how could I transfer some of that to get a percentage of equity in somebody's company just for the skill that I have and the last thing I want to say there is like more than anything I think one we think money's bad and then two money's scary like I don't really

know why but I think we're we're scared of it and we're scared that we might not be able to make it and we're scared what if we lose it and what if our selfworth is tied up in it and should we actually ask for it so we have all these fears surrounding money which is probably why we don't talk about it too and we got to kind of work through that because money is just a tool so it's just like if you want to build a house do you want to use uh you know a

bunch of tiny little nails and your own hammer or do you want to have a screw gun and like in this instance I want to have the bigger gun you don't die in your first job from it being really hard and challenging you die from the absolute monotony and the lowlevel tasks you have to do for basically Pennies on the dollar the average entrepreneur makes about $446,000 a year which is great but not when you've been making zero for 3 years a lot of terrible things can happen to you when you don't believe in yourself

and I think the universe like it it will tell you kind of what you need to do and then if you don't listen it'll ignore you for a while and then at some point it'll just kick you in the face I want to look at three scenarios of our audience and where they sit and look at what your advice would be for them at that point so let's say we have a listener who just graduated from college what should they be doing first what should they be thinking about right now yeah well here's how I

think about making money we have a four-step process that I think if you don't have money now here is how you make it consistently over time and you have your money go out and bring back friends with it the first is you've got to learn we've got to obsess in the beginning about one thing only it's not what your salary is it's how can I cram as much information as humanly possible in my brain in order for me to then do the next thing which is increase my skill stack after I learn can I increase

my skills so that my skills are more valuable today than they were yesterday and the third is how can I increase my income so before you go thinking about investing in things overall how can I just make more money currently with what I'm doing and then finally we can get to invest so after we do these three steps the final one is how do I take my money and make my money work for me but in the beginning you don't have money you know you don't really have skills you probably don't have a ton of

connections and so what you actually want to do is use your Sweat Equity and your experience and time as a really maybe hungry individual to get money to eventually be able to invest the money and I think that's the other thing young people were told that's a lie is that you can go out as a young person and you know you know fendy Gucci Prada Lamborghini on the internet make a bunch of fast cas Airbnb Arbitrage or whatever man I wish somebody had told me earlier on that's a terrible thing to do yeah and I

think what's really interesting though is when you're talking about improving of skills I think when we graduate college you think that that was the skill like that your degree was the investment in the skill but really what you're talking about are high value skills talents abilities that actually make an impact in a workplace and those are really different and so I've meet a lot of young people who sadly have spent so much money on their degree are really smart academically but then that skill doesn't translate into knowing how to make their company more money knowing

how to lead people really well knowing how to build function systems processes and therefore it's like well wait a minute I just studied all these years but it doesn't translate yeah I think you're exactly right I mean for a long time we employed people from the top universities and financial firms we would go out and we would hand select them because that would be an indicator of their grit perseverance and but potentially their their intellect their IQ Now by and large you're starting to see uh a lot of the top institutions bypass that you know

Google doesn't mandate that you have a college degree if you're going into an engineering degree actually and I think that should be really liberating for us it's basically breaking down this barrier that's a sixf figure barrier that allowed for the few the elites to stair step over everybody else and now it's actually saying how bad you want it and don't tell me what you learned show me what you can do or even better show me what you did and so I think the resume of the future is actually if somebody came to youj and they

were like I just graduated from Wharton I am very smart you know I also did my undergraduate degree at Harvard um I now want to come work for you you'd be like what do you know how to do do you know how to Market do you know how to grow a a beverage company um do you know how to increase our uh investment return oh you kind of like theoretically have looked about how to do that in a case study that's probably less interesting to you than somebody that goes you know what I was part

of the beverage team at aroan and Whole Foods and I figured out uh sort of across the country how they buy different pieces of uh inventory yeah you got my attention already right exactly and and maybe because I want to help you grow this individual business which I know you care about because I see it on your socials I put together this little spreadsheet for you here's the things they care about could I come work for you for free for three or six months and if that works out could we do something better and bigger

the the problem that people usually have on the internet when I throw out the word work for free is young people are like remember that part where you told us that we were broke and we don't have any money so I'm not trying to dismiss that at all but I do think we have to be honest about the fact that when we're young you're going to have to work harder than you think longer than you think doing stuff you don't like with people you probably don't like until eventually you get the right to do something

really interesting but like you don't die in your first job from it being really hard and challenging you die from the absolute monotony and the L tasks you have to do for basically Pennies on the dollar yeah definitely definitely absolutely I fully agree let's say someone's 30 years old yeah they've or 30 to 35 they worked 10 15 years after graduating they've been at the same company maybe they've moved once yeah I was actually talking to someone like this yesterday she's been at this one company for six years it's a great company great on her

resume but she's like I don't really want to be here I don't think this is where I see my future but I'm so scared of quitting I don't know how to invest probably didn't save that much anyway now I feel bad about it I'm probably feeling a bit of Shame and guilt that I didn't save that much over the last 10 years yeah what would I do Cody well one I would say these days you do not have to have money to make money which is incredibly powerful so when I think about it if I'm

30 and I am at a company like that what would I do today well I would actually probably sit down and figure out what am I actually skilled at that somebody else would pay me for once you know what somebody else would pay you for which is really just like do people ask for your opinion on this could you actually get jobs in this space if it was me because I'm kind of unemployable like you don't want me to work for you I like I got my own ideas I want to do things this way

if she's like that then what you want to do is you want to try to partner with somebody where you can be the solution to their problem and because you understand what I call Deal making which is really the language of money you can negotiate an ability for you to own part of a thing in order for you to have one of three outcomes if she can figure out if she can help a business grow its Revenue make more money if she can help a business cut its costs or if she can help decrease the

pain of a business owner you can negotiate your way into a business and have equity in it and upside and I wish somebody had taught me that earlier because this is what Consultants do this is what private Equity firms do this is what some of the largest institutions in the world do I call it expertise to equity but if I was her I'd say don't go find another job and if you don't have a brilliant idea that you're like I would would die for the want of creating this thing in the world if you have

that please go do it but if you're like I don't have that I just want to make money and I want to feel respected and I want to feel like my skills fit somewhere and I'm able to have an outsized income if that's you then I think you should try to value your skill set then you should try to negotiate for an upside deal with somebody and you should try your hand at this game called ownership which is where you say hey small business I know how to Market can I help you Market at the

side while I'm working on this company and because I help you grow your Revenue by 50% could I keep 10% of the 50% I grow do you think a small business owner would say yes to that of course they would because there's no downside and I think more often than not we think that the only risk you can take in making money in business is putting your own cash down that's a risk or starting a business AKA dedicating your life to something the last part I'll get a little statistic on us is 90% of startups

fail inside any rolling 10 period we know that statistic most startups make $0 for the first three years after that the average entrepreneur makes about $46,000 a year which is great but not when you've been making zero for three years and then on top of that we've got this nation of of people who have all these bills to pay and they are betting on hopes and dreams as opposed to realities and so my my commentary is can you figure out how to value your skills so you can negotiate a little bit more upside for that

day where you can't work anymore yeah definitely def itely a I I'm so happy to hear such like smart honest advice because I do think you're so right for so long we keep telling everyone like Follow Your Passion like just quit your job like jump over and you know it's it's hard because like you said that business may not work your skills may be better off here you might not be an entrepreneur you might be someone who's going to work with an entrepreneur and build I wanted to address something though I do find a lot

of leaders and a lot of founders of small businesses or up andom businesses to also be quite resistant to recognizing the value of sharing so I'll give an example of what I mean by this like when I was starting out I remember speaking to people who are who were much more established than I was and I said hey I've got a person I'm going to work with I'm going to split things 7525 and and they're going to get 25% of profits I'm going to keep 75 because they have a skill set I don't have and

it will be complimentary and I remember everyone telling me it was really bad idea because they're like Jay like no you you're building a platform you should ear 100% of it and I was like but no they're going to manage stress for me they're going to manage teams I want to see them grow I want them to feel like they've got skin in the game and now you know eight years later since that decision I'm so much happier and I have a great relationship with my one of my business partners we have a great relationship

he's as invested as he is as he was then things have grown really well and I'm like the people that were trying to hold on to that last 5 to 10% yeah actually haven't grown and so it was really interesting to me though that I see that again and again and again where even Founders and new leaders are actually scared of parting with something how would you encourage them to think about that differently well I actually would say be scared of Partnerships oh great because 50% of marriages and divorce but 100% of business marriages typically

end because no business lasts forever right and so at some point you're going to have a rift with your business part by and large and probably you'll have a few Rifts with them so I would actually say it's cool to be scared about that you should be the the thing that I I want people to think about it's like I want to make risk a non four-letter word because I think that the key to wealth is actually risk taking some of it the question is if you're like me I'm kind of a wuss like I

stayed in a corporate job for 12 years because I was too scared to do things by myself even though I was like pretty highly skilled I had a decent amount of cash I was like definitely not going to make it I don't think I'm I don't think I'm capable like it took me a long time to get there and so what I did is I'm all about risk mitigation which is like a fancy you know financy word to say how can I just make the outcome so in my favor that even if I'm not as

smart as I think I am it's almost like a a win-win no matter what and so in that instance I would probably say tell the make the founder a deal so good that they would feel dumb saying no to it and so if if I was coming to you Jay and Jay was just starting out I wouldn't do this to somebody who has a big platform they have way too much too many resources you need to go with somebody that's more accessible to you that doesn't have a lot of resources it's more on your level

but when you find that person you go hey win-win deal don't give me a scent unless I provide x value like literally nothing don't give me a percentage of the company right away I never give a percentage of my companies right away anymore I did once it cost me a million bucks I was pissed I didn't do it again so um you can do what's called an earnin or Milestone based which I know sounds like a little maybe boring if people are the right way to do it I'm so glad you're giv this advice it's

great yeah I mean what you want to do is say hey I love you you love me we're going to be together forever in the off chance that you see a hot little side piece and you run off with them I want an ability to get the business back right and so in that way I am going to instead say hey I'm taking all the risk in this business for the most part I'm putting in the capital unless you're going to put in money that is equal to me you only give the equity in the

business or the upside in the business if you it's either duration or it's execution so either you're here for one two three years which is called Cliff based investing or you're here for the first million that you help me get in and then the second second million and the third million and if you help me hit those Milestones you get the equity if you don't I wish you well you wish me well but we've already signed a prup and this is how it works and so I think we need to start thinking like that and

it's very non-american we're not not so used to negotiating um probably non-british too actually Indians incredible at negotiation same with a lot of people in the mid least but British and American people not so good at negotiating we think that it's um like a low-level signal on average so like when I was young my mom we call her the pit she's amazing and she would all always negotiate everything my dad's an incredible businessman like totally pull himself up by his own bootstraps but my mom would go negotiate and I don't know if you ever felt

like this but I remember some sometimes you know my mom would be like negotiating for a different price and i' be like Mom oh all the the time please stop you just pay it and she would look at me and she would say like once it's your money you pay it but it's my money so like get out of here if you don't want to deal with this and I used to think it was so embarrassing and now I realize oh that's very smart and it's actually the thing the wealthy do more than anything else

that the poor do not which is the wealthy negotiate everything and the poor take price while the rich set price wow I've never thought about it like that set price versus taking a price and and I love your mindful habits on mitigating risk in a business relationship both sides I think it's I'm glad that you laid it out that way because I completely agree with you the amount of business relationships that have challenges and issues and everything I want to go back a few moments to when you were saying you were stuck for 12 years

and the reason why I want to talk about that is because now when I see you and whether someone sees you online or writing your book or you know you're on all these awesome podcasts and you're talking so confidently and you're so clear but to hear that you had doubt and it took you a long time to get over it walk me through what was going on in your mind during that 24mon period 12-month period before you actually managed to quit what was going inside Cody's head oh yeah um I think I would have stayed

an employee forever Jay me too that's why I'm asking I like and and I also think if you're listening right now and you ever feel less than for being an employee you tell that person a pound sand because I guarantee you Cheryl Samberg is worth a lot more than many entrepreneurs and she was an entrepreneur she worked inside of a business and amassed massive wealth Prestige status and impact from it and so I I I don't like when people make employees feel less than you and I couldn't do what we do if we didn't have

people who also wanted to build a vision with a team as opposed to an individual so one you can make a ton of money whether you're an employee or whether you are the founder of the business you just got to get a little skin in the game an upside and you get skin in the game and upside when you have more value you don't just ask for it you've got to be able to earn it and so when I was when I was uh you know thinking those last two years in the business I was

uh running a business in Latin America I had taken the business from zero to a billion dollars in assets under management I had done it in a place that I had never lived Mexico chile Colombia Peru um I didn't have contacts there I'd like built something from nothing and I was really proud of that but I wasn't very good at doing deals back then and I maybe that's why I'm obsessed with it now cuz I did a shitty deal with a guy that I respect a lot but he was just better than me and he

ran the company and I built up this huge thing but basically I had no way to take the assets of the business with me the only thing that I could do is stay at that business and continue to get partnership until they eventually sold I was like gosh I don't want to be here for 30 years and at the time again I I respected the CEO a lot but we didn't believe in the same world like I believe in a world in which we can all get rich together he believed in a world in which

he told me we get rich quietly and he believed that if you told people that you were Rich they came after you which sometimes they do and because of that he wanted to protect himself and be quiet and I said I don't want to live in that world and so we fought about that I thought we should run the business this way he thought we should run the business that way and so for those last two years if he hadn't finally taken me on a beach for a walk him and I went he runs a

multi hundreds hundreds hundreds of billions of dollar company we're still friends this day but he essentially gave me an ultimatum he said listen I want to roll left you want to row right the problem is you need to get your own ships you got to get your own boat you're on my boat and you're trying to row this way and we're going this way so you got to make a decision and at the time I was so mad I was like I built this from nothing you guys can't even speak Spanish I'm down here do

it like I was mad I was super entitled then I realized Cody did you put any of the money on the table to to build this business no you know did did you take the risk no besides coming here like that was his and so he was right and um and I couldn't take anything with me I did put my old number two uh in charge of that business which is cool she still runs it to this day but I was really like mad at myself and sad and so um before I left there I

had done a lot of little Investments I called them throwing out my chips so you know once you start to make a little money I think it's really helpful to start investing in the things that you want to eventually earn from so I knew I wanted to get into some Venture Capital like things so I started investing in some Venture Capital firms and so when he finally gave me that ultimatum I jumped ship went to another company and I didn't even have the balls to do it by myself then I was partnered up with a

few other people and man like a lot of terrible things can happen to you when you don't believe in yourself and I think the universe like it it will tell you kind of what you need to do and then if you don't listen it'll you for a while and then at some point I'll just kick you in the face like that's my experience you probably have a nicer experience with the universe but it's kind of like come on we should do this we should do this and it just pushes you off the cliff and so

with me I raised a ton of money for this company I had these couple of Partners and at the end like it didn't work out between us and again unemployable I wanted to go left they wanted to go right and I didn't really do that good of a deal and so twice this happened but that last time I did a better deal and so I said you guys have to pay me out for what I did and I'm going to go do this new business and I want to take some of our investors and so

if somebody hadn't pushed me out of a company and if somebody else hadn't also said no we don't want to do this with you I never would have done it by myself and so I think it's it's okay if somebody's listening and you're stuck in a corporate job quote unquote stuck for a long time that's okay and it's also okay if it takes you a few tries and I don't think that the only way to make money is to go be a entrepreneur and founder and do it all by yourself and never work in corporate

Amer America I'm very grateful for the money that they spent on me for decades money is really attracted to the type of human that keeps asking questions you don't actually have to know the answers often to make money you need to ask the right questions most of the people who are really shiny on the internet uh don't actually make much money in fact a lot of celebrities make no money and you know this all too well being here there's a lot of show and it's actually quite hard to make money in the shiny things they're

not celebrities they're not singing songs they're not doing YouTube like we're not even touching the amount of wealth they have what do most of them have in common more than anything else what I'm hearing from you is it's getting skin in the game it's negotiating well it's being an owner right like that that's really what I'm hearing and I think if people take those three things away from what we've talked about so far that's what you want to put your attention to rather than this idea of oh I've got to start a business I've got

to become an entrepreneur I've got to learn how to invest it's like no no no this this is it this is what it is you're right yeah lots of people focus on the tactics they don't focus on the foundation Foundation is do you believe that you have ownership and responsibility for the things you spend more time doing than anything besides sleeping which is working and if you have what we call an owner's mindset so the type of human that's like I'm I'm putting like respect and dignity into what I do every day to the point

that I start to value my own worth and I understand why I'm valued then you will finally be able to negotiate for the only thing that nobody can take from you somebody can take a job somebody can take a salary nobody can take contractual ownersh sh in a business and I think that's really important in today's world because it really allows you then when somebody that you work for does something you don't like you just go yeah I'm not doing that you know and you become it's what I call my my Q Fund in my

ladylike fashion which is like hey I have a certain amount of money and because I have it I will never compromise on a few things um but the owner's mindset is kind of rare you know and so I think for young people today so often and I was one it's like my is bad my job sucks you know I don't have upward mobility and if I could tell young Cody one thing differently it would be like what would the opposite side of that story say and which one do you think would make you more money

and it would be like probably the one in which you're like hey this is all kind of in my control and if I make some serious changes in my life I bet I could be richer than I am today and I wish more people thought that way yeah how do you have that conversation with your boss I remember once uh I was at an event and um I was just listening in the crowd and it was actually a finance event for women so it was a bunch of like kind of well-off ladies and we were

in the audience and that the person in front asked everybody to close their eyes so we all close their eyes and then they said nobody's looking I want you to have your body have a physical representation of what you feel when you think of money so I was like this is weird hippie like what are we doing so I was like I don't know you know and you can't see me but like I was like throwing up my hands I'm like okay money I like it like give it to me keep it going you know

these are like my internal monologs right AES yeah like I I'll take some and uh so anyway I'm chilling I'm like this like nobody's looking and then they're like now don't move but open your eyes and when I looked out I was like whoa because the rest of the audience not the rest but let's call it 80% were like this they're like they were tight to the chest they were like kind of like maybe Small Arms to the side in some instances I was like it looked like they had been hit they had been harmed

and uh and I thought that was so fascinating and then they let us Shake It Off and I was like oh man if your representation of money that you feel in your body is closed off you know kind of scared whatever I don't know might be hard for you to earn it so I think for some reason being in finance helped me realize I mean you guys if you met some of the guys who were worth $100 million that I did in finance you'd go I could do that too like that guy did it really

and so I think once you meet a bunch of those people you go oh like this isn't this this isn't as impossible as people say it is and so I learn a lot from not seeing people achieve it and going how could they how could they it's instead going wow that guy didn't I think if he could do it I could do it too and that taught me to keep going okay he did it he did it and it's like arms would raise arms would raise arms would raise and so maybe that's what I would

try to tell people is like every time you see somebody that has a lot of money and you see the humanity in them just remember like we're all kind of the same yeah def you you can now don't get me wrong intelligence levels Network how you're born where you're born real things but if you're living in a first world country in today's day and age with the internet and what we have at our fingertips I think you're in a better position than you've ever been in order to make a lot of money today and I

promise you only one thing which is you'll make less money if you think you will yeah I I wanted you to talk about the difference between what you just said and how we cultivate that mindset because you're so right I know a lot of people a lot of friends as well they'll look at someone who's doing well for themselves they'll be like that guy's so dumb like I could do that I could do that with my eyes Clos but it's actually in a condescending way to that person rather than like that guy can do it

oh great okay well I've got this skill I went to I can do it you know and so what is that mindset shift because I think we we're good at looking at other people yeah but often we either fall prey to being envious yeah instead of studious of them like instead of Envy instead of studying them we Envy them or we end up being condescending of them of like oh well you know he's not even that SM or they're not even it's not even that great right we kind of justify that so how do you

shift that because I think that's at the core of what you're saying yeah and don't get me wrong I fall prey to all of these things too I still to this day play the game of comparison like ah they're doing that could I come on team where are we going you know I do it too me too yeah and I wish I didn't but I still do but um I do think cash loves curiosity if you remember anything else it's that money is really attractive to the type of human that keeps asking questions you don't

actually have to know the answers often to make money you need to ask the right questions so I kind of trained myself every time I saw somebody with money or I got to know somebody with money I didn't need to know anything else besides like can I just ask them a lot of questions continuously and it was funny because I was talking to I think another mutual friend of ours Jesse eer the other day and Jesse talks about how he used to go to a a hotel here and he would just ask questions in the

lobby or at the lunch table he was like living not in a nice place he had no cash whats ever but when he saw people that he thought looked rich or interesting he would just ask them questions and I think with the internet sometimes we we think that questions don't matter anymore and we go to the internet to get answers and if instead you can make a human connection and get curious about them they'll give things to you yeah and so one of my I played a game when I was really young which is I

kind of started collecting mentors who never knew they were my mentor and uh and I think this is a really clever thing to do and um I remember one in particular um Bob Kendall and BK is what we called him he was super high up at ah I don't know if it was Goldman or credit S at the time one of one of the companies and he was so like out of my range like you know when somebody else is in a company and I was basically the intern and he was the big dog um

but I got a couple chances to interact with him and I would just ask him questions like very simple ones like oh um you just took over this area of the business like why what did you see there as opposed to this other area where a lot of people are going I would just kind of be curious and then I would do a thing that I think probably helped me make more mentors than anything else which is I would get their contact information I would never ask them for anything I would largely just say hey

that piece of advice that you gave me the other day that was really useful and I applied it this way thank you for doing that or I'd see if he his name was written somewhere he had done a a research paper or something I might send it to him like with a couple highlighted things like these lines were incredible thank you for doing that then after I had done that a few times I might give them one question like hey um you know I'm thinking about going into um marketing or sales and I'm trying to

figure out how do you decide which career path is more interesting to you do you have just like a one sentence about it or do you have one book that you'd like to read like really short and I remember I sat down with BK years later and he was like you know the funny thing about you and I was like what you know and he was like you like somehow made me your Mentor but you never asked and then I started caring about what happened to your career but I kind of never meant to which

is like a very asbery Finance thing to do and he's like did you do that on purpose and I was like I you know I don't know I was young then so I don't know but maybe that tiny transfer of hey I have advice and somebody actually takes it uses it continuously wants nothing from me for it and then gives me a positive feedback loop that I'm making change on their life is so rare so smart right that's genius that's actually the best mentorship advice I think I've ever heard because I think so many of

us when we want someone to be our Mentor the first mistake is we ask them to be our Mentor don't do that that also makes me die on the inside if somebody asked me that I'm like that's such a huge responsibility what if I Fu you up EXA or what if I don't have time what if I can't respond like that's that's the natural reaction and same with me I've always had mentors that don't know they're my mentors it's the only way but what I love about your advice which I've never ever heard before is

also how you asked for advice I think the a second mistake so the first mistake we say is can you be my mentor yeah the second mistake we make is we send our whole life story with one like really big profound question so it's like I went from this then I did this then I dropped out then I did this then I did this how do I discover my purpose and it's like and it's like the person on the other side has no idea how to compute all of that algorithmically and give you a really

profound answer back that they genuinely believe will help you which means they probably won't respond or if they do respond it will be extremely short and then you'll feel disgruntled and upset that they didn't value your whole life story and then now you probably lose touch whereas your advice was just so perfect because the idea that you were sending them their own work with a couple of highlights one sentence question one piece of insight and then that person like you said becomes invested in your life that is such great advice Cody I really really mean

that I've never heard mentorship advice better than that yeah I think it worked for me and I I also think the other piece of advice that was useful I never went for like the top dog yeah you know I would never go to the president of Goldman Lloyd F back in the day and be like Lloyd the thing is talk to me can I have your email of course not I would go to like one or two levels past what was comfortable for me right so it was like I could still get to the person

and then you can use it as like a a a leap frog and the last thing I'll say is I totally disagree with the advice today that a lot of like kind of well-known people give which is um once you outgrow people leave them behind you you know and a lot of people say like well they were my mentor but I've superseded all my mentors oh no yeah and I hear that often from like the business Community you know it's like you're the average of The Five People You surround yourself with so make sure they're

awesome and it's like yeah but also don't forget how you got there because you never know mentorship has like multi layers to it you can get mentored from above but also below I mean your team was teaching us beforehand how to not sound like Boomers right so like there's that you know you can also have somebody that's a hire that like for instance I think a lot about the idea that like um Peter teal whether you like him or not really rich guy gives money to Mark Zuckerberg right whether you like him or not Mark

Zuckerberg then goes to become richer than Peter teal now is Peter mad because Mark made more money than him I highly doubt it because Mark made Peter a ton of money and at one point you know the imbalance was Peter was way up here and Mark was down here and now it's probably flipped and how cool is that that like somebody who used to be sort of below you you've helped in some way get above you yeah and then you get to like value trans the other way so I will say like maybe if I

gave one other piece of advice on mentorship it would be collect and keep with you the people even after you've superseded them it's beautifully nice yeah and and try to be their best Mentor absolutely like I mean mentee I always try to like have them I want them to be able to brag about me like no matter what you teach me I want to be the best mentee to the point that they're like hey look how smart I am because of that yes and I want to give them all the credit on it yeah and

when you do that then they introduce you to their really successful friends too so it's a twofer yeah definitely and I want to add what you were saying earlier as well this idea of you have to act on the advice and I think there's a lot of requesting of advice there's a lot of looking for answers but being a great mentee is taking the advice putting it into action and then reporting the result and saying hey I took your advice this is as you were saying and I think that's so core to what was different

about mentorship where like you're saying now in this Tik Tok Instagram world I think there's just so much advice everywhere that we're not really getting the opportunity to digest it put it into practice and then report on it as well and and I love your idea of gratitude I mean I I remember when I joined a company as an intern years ago and I was only there for like a summer internship but they put up the pictures of the founders of the company and then they were like yeah but we don't care about them they're

old guys anyway and I remember real like I was just like wow that's really ungrateful because none of us would be here right now if it wasn't for them and yes they're not alive anymore and yes that was a long time ago but I fully agree with you that and also you just don't know when you're on the way up when you're on the way down your mentors generally if they're older than you in the beginning even if you become more successful than them materially I believe they have so much more spiritual wisdom to give

you over time like I've got mentors same way who helped me out when I was in my late 20s and today there's so much more helpful when they talked to me about what it feels like being a dad like I'm not a dad right now but he's been a dad and his kids are in their mid 20s and he has a great relationship with them I'm like I'm not there at that level so mentorship also takes across not just Financial but relationships you know emotionally mentally there's so many other areas oh yeah so leaving someone

behind is terrible advice yeah I agree and you know it's one thing if somebody's negative or they're unhelpful um which I still believe very much so like Arthur Brooks who who I just think so highly of and I remember back before I knew him as a friend and I was just a fan last time I was in New York with him he I was having like you know when somebody's mean to you online does ever happen to you probably sometimes the time of course well there was one person that was like really mean and I

don't know why it got to me somehow it bothered me and you know this was a while ago and I remember telling him for some reason and often it only bothers me if I feel like there's a kernel of truth to it so if they like really nail my impostor syndrome or they really nail like you know is she as smart as she thinks she like something that I'm like that I worry about too if they get that I'm like dang it I'm paying attention now that's not good but I remember I said to him

like you know I'm just bothered and I want to do something about it and he was like are you going to listen to me and I was like maybe what are we what are you going to tell me to do and he's like I want you to picture this guy having all the success in the world I want you to wish him so much well it becomes like a bit bizarre and I want you to actually feel it and again I'm not that touchy feeling I'm pretty spreadsh sheety so when told me that I'm like

fine but like I don't think there's going to be an outcome here like that and he's a a wonky very smart guy so it's not anyway so I did it and I like really thought about it I was like walking in New York and I was like you know what I do wish this guy well because I bet it is sad if you are like if you're in a place where all you're doing is hating on somebody online all the time I bet you are kind of sad so I started like empathizing with him and

thinking about it anyway not two weeks later the guy does a public apology for like no and and does this long DM to me you know my husband has like a long memory so he's like no you know let's get that guy but I was like I just learned such a lesson and maybe it doesn't always work like that and maybe they're still me to you later but um I really think sometimes you learn just as much from your haters as you do from your mentors and so don't underestimate not only the same where we

kind of get all hot and bothered like you know if you don't got hate you're not doing anything maybe but also wow you can learn a lot from the type of feelings you get when people doubt you and I think that's just as important and I wouldn't be where I was today if I didn't have some big haters that I felt like I needed to prove wrong yeah well said I want to Dive Into the Heart of this book because what made it so unique for me is I don't think I've ever heard anyone really

talk about buying ordinary businesses and that's the Crux of so much of your work and why it's different and how you're getting people to think differently about ownership you had this video that remember watching that got like 11 million views talking about this vending machine business like what are some of the most unusual businesses you've seen people make money from because I think it goes back to what we were speaking about earlier we're all after this sexy shiny money and most people are making loads of money through really unsexy random things vending machines being a

case in point walk us through some of the most unusual businesses you've discovered people making money yes let's do it and also realize first like uh most of the people who are really shiny on the internet uh don't actually make much money in fact a lot of celebrities make no money and you know this all too well being here there's a lot of show and it's actually quite hard to make money in the shiny things the richest guy you know probably started a landscaping or sprinkler head company in fact that was a case for my

family when I was growing up I meant I interned for a woman who is uh my brother's friend's mom and they were worth what I thought was a bajillion dollars back then and it was from an equipment rental company so this guy was worth somewhere near $50 million from one idea I buy some like uh landscaping equipment some tractors Etc and not I don't sell them I don't flip them but I realized that construction companies only want to use them part-time so I actually rent them out and so this guy would make the cost of

a piece of equipment back inside of 90 days and so instead of getting whatever difference is between him buying the equipment and selling it for a little bit more he would make the entire purchase price over every 90-day cycle and I remember like thinking back in the day when I saw that you can make money doing anything and in fact you probably make it more often in the things that nobody thinks about because you have less competition because it also sounds really boring yeah and you know the Mark Zuckerberg and Brilliant Minds of the world

they don't want to mess around with equipment rental but people like me who are maybe like kind of smart but not that smart could make a lot of money doing it and so there are three types of businesses that I obsess about I call them overarchingly Main Street businesses so the idea is basically what if all the money is actually made in community businesses that we use every single day your roofing company your podcast production company you send outsourced editing Clips to you know the uh cobbler uh that actually cleans up shoes on the corner

store all of these businesses when you see that they've been in business for 30 years it's not because they were making money and or because they were losing money and it's not because they got Venture Capital because they didn't so these things actually are profitable which is kind of rare so Main Street businesses and then underneath it I call them three different types the first one is the gateway drug business which basically I use that as a little bit of a joke but it's like a vending machine well everybody understands how a vending machine works

right you get the machine you take the cash out you input the things it's a straightforward business it doesn't need a lot of people and I think it's a great place for like young people to start because you learn the game of business a similar one might be what I call a people light business which might be like a laundromat so a laundromat is like in some ways a slightly bigger vending machine right you put clothes in the clothes get washed you take the clothes out you put coins in and return right and that doesn't

have a lot of employees and they're not super super expensive on the scale of it and so you go okay we got gateway drug businesses we got uh as we've got people light businesses and then finally we get into what I call the trades businesses overall or uh boring businesses and these are things like we own a company called resi brands that has a window cleaning company called pinks um a roofing company a painting company called that one painter and what's Wild is with these businesses if you were to look right now Jay at like

the Forbes 100 list of the richest people in the world and you were to see what they made their money from they're not celebrities they're not singing songs they're not doing YouTube like we're not even touching the amount of wealth they have what do most of them have in common more than anything else finance and business ownership and the businesses they own are largely boring businesses richest woman in the world Kim Kardashian no Roofing magnet literally the richest woman in the world this was as of 2022 so we we should see if the numbers are

updated but um is a woman who started a very large roofing company and so you know I wish somebody told us this when we were younger because instead you know who knows this the private Equity guys and and I don't mean to villainize anybody I know I was in private Equity I know plenty of good people in that industry but again centralization of power private Equity companies in 2000 owned 4% of the companies in the US now they own 20% that's almost one out of every four companies in the US is owned by private Equity

you know what they're buying like crazy the trades the service businesses the boring businesses that print money that service our community and I think this is our chance to take those things back you're literally opening up a whole new doorway for people like I don't think I've ever even thought about it like it's it's so far off from what I think we were all trained to believe would make a successful safe stable wealthy like you're not you're not thinking about these areas and therefore like you said they're not very competitive there's there's not a lot

of uh new entrance in there when when I hear you say that the thing that comes to my mind is what skills and talents do people need to be able to run those businesses how much industry knowledge do they need need what business skills are core and important because I think the mistake is again with the kind of world we live in right now it's someone goes I love what Cody saying I get it I'm going to go buy vending machines and then all of a sudden you got a garage full of like 20 vending

machines and you don't know what to do with them because you don't understand business so what business Core Business skills are needed and what should we be developing in order to run any of these businesses uh how much industry knowledge do we need yeah it's a great question well first of all what I would think about is there's two different we need to know in uh buying businesses or growing businesses and the first thing is you've got to learn how to do deal making and how to actually speak the language of money which is what

we talk about in the book before you buy a business so please don't just hear me and go buy a business read the book or go to our free newsletter online um but spend a decent amount of upfront time learning I promise you'll make more money that way you know I kind of think about sometimes people go well why don't I use x amount of dollars I have instead of learning just buying the business and I go does that ever work out well where we like don't know what we're doing but we plow a bunch

of money into it because we want to just go do the thing it doesn't work out so spend your time learning how to execute first now that said I really think there's just three key skills that we need to learn to grow a business the first one is deal making we got to understand how to do a deal the the second one is really the mixture of grit and endurance so it's actually not tactics it's how hard am I willing to work what am I willing to sacrifice for the things that I want and for

how long am I willing to do that and so Angela Duckworth famously University of Pennsylvania popularized grit is the most important thing to measure success so it's basically like how much pain can you tolerate and if you can tolerate a lot of pain turns out you have a higher likelihood of making money business is really just like elongated periods of low-level pain sometimes you have like what's called an acute or like a big jump in pain but for the most part you know this it's like what is what is running a business or starting a

business it's like well you're looking at your statements pretty much often you're like messing around with marketing it's kind of like lowlevel pain and um and so that's the second point and the third point is actually maybe a little rare too which is just a lot of people obsess on how so what skills do I have to have exactly how do I start a business how do I tax structure structure the business how do I get my first customers all all important and good questions but the real pros know you don't ask how you ask

who who can I go to who already has 10,000 hours where I can steal their homework so now in business if I go hey um I don't know how to do our taxes I go find somebody else who has done taxes for us and it doesn't mean you have to pay for them it just means you have to talk to them and often people will help you and so I find my who uh Second and then the third tier is buy so the really really rich when they have a problem they don't think how do

I fix it they don't think who can fix it they think how do I buy the solution to my problem um because if I can buy the business if I can buy the solution then it's almost it's a higher guarantee of winning and so that last one is really about your connections and so I think if you understand deal making you you are honest with yourself about how much work you're willing to do one way or the other and you are willing to ask people for help I think just about anybody can run a business

now can anybody run Amazon no of course not could anybody run your businesses which are quite big no of course not it's really like the level of skill to the level you're at but we don't say to people you know well not anybody could buy a an individual apartment apartment and live in them we ask like what do you want and how are you willing to work in order to get it and so I think the same thing with businesses it's like okay we have what's called a dealbox which is a little slightly technical but

basically the idea is Oracle of Deli says know thyself right most important thing we can do and and uh in business you basically want to have your little dealbox of what you want so do you want income of x amount do you want it to be located in La do you want it to scratch an artistic itch and make you money and you sort of fill out this box you know what you want and then again you know the Universe I think a lot of times wants to help us out but we don't know what

we want so how is it going to help us because we can't tell it one way or the other and I think it's the same with business yeah you know cuz we could go 15 ways from sideways and like we have something called the nine P which are like the nine ways you scale a business to nine figures but I don't want to stop people I want them to start small and reasonable and know that the biggest thing in between you and the thing that you want is the knowledge on learning the language of money

on getting after it kind of intensely and then on asking for help like if you have those three things you can at least start and I don't want people to to stop because they don't have XYZ leadership skill like I believe in your ability to figure it out out yeah yeah and you might make some mistakes along the way you probably will sure yeah just don't make mistakes like the Only Rule that I really have is don't do a deal so big that it can wipe you out yeah make sure your first deal is reasonable

or you help other people bring on risk to level it out so like if I'm young and I have no cash should I go buy a million-dollar business of course not what would I do I might go and I might partner with a couple friends and I might say hey do you want to pull our Capital together let's buy this little business together if it doesn't work out it's not going to murder us it's going to hurt but we're going to learn a lot and we're going to diversify our risk amongst us and we're going

to do it together or maybe you partner with your dad or maybe you partner with your dad's friends or your mom's friends or whatever and so don't think that you have to do this game of Entrepreneurship and acquisition by yourself you don't the big boys in private Equity don't you don't have to either how do you find someone who wants to sell a business because yeah I feel like that would be my next question of like how do I even know someone how do I find someone because it must be going great for them why

would they sell it to me especially when I maybe know nothing about owning a hair salon or vending machines or whatever it may be right well you probably already know this how many people offer you businesses or stakes in businesses now yeah a lot I bet a lot a lot yeah why because you have a very high value skill stack that's very evident uh people can directly attribute if I partnered with Jay Shetty then he's probably going to Market my stuff he's going to give me brand recognition there's a high level of trust so there's

what's called a trust transference so the higher level of skill you have the easier it is for you to find businesses in fact they'll often come to you uh the thing is though when even when we have a higher level of skill we often don't really know what to do when it comes to us we don't know how to do zero risk deals to us and so I like learning deal making even if you have a ton of skills and a ton of money because you can do a deal that seems unfair but because you

recognize your value the deal is incredibly fair in fact the the Richer you are and the more audience you have uh money you have which I call Capital the more coding ability you have AKA like Tech Jeff Bezos engineering capability or labor you have access to so employees or people that work with you the better deals you can do yeah and that's like the 202 303 level and anybody who's listening who actually has access to money and capital you are crazy if you're not thinking about doing deals um and learning it because it is the

ultimate positive form of Leverage so um I wish that we learned this earlier this is how so many celebrities get screwed by the way and you know they get screwed because they do a deal they don't understand the terms they signed their agent understands the terms they signed their agent isn't actually Inc of aligned with them long term and so they end up getting screwed like it broke my heart when I watched that documentary with Val Kilmer like I haven't seen it oh God first of all you would love it it's beautiful the documentary is

beautiful he wrote it produced it and directed it and starred in it and it's just a beautiful piece of art um but also he lost everything I mean he has basically no money now no way uhhuh and the reason why is because of a series of deals that he did where other people made it and he didn't and so even if you have a ton of money you got to be really careful about how you structure things in order to keep it and the bigger that you get the bigger Target you have and so it's

important to think about that and like the Russian proverb trust but verify which is like trust nobody I'm sorry trust everybody but verify that they are actually on your your best terms which is why it always doesn't count unless you've signed on the line that is dotted in the words of Alec Baldwin so if you don't have deals coming at you because you don't have massive you know fame or money or whatever uh like a normal person then the easiest ways to find deals it's called origination in private Equity so in private Equity if you

think about what they do they go around and they cold call small businesses so they literally will cold call a plumbing company up all over the Midwest and ask like hey you guys want to sell or I get them all the time because I own these so our small business is hey can we buy your landscaping company so one one way you find deals is called on off-market Deal Searching so you basically turn on what I call your reticular activating system which is basically just a system inside of your brain that is trained from the

African Savannah to say if I keep repeating this thing brain it means it's important and I might die if I don't pay attention to it and so in real life what happens to you is once you play the game of business enough and once you like deals like have you ever gone into somebody else's podcast studio and because you probably are obsessed with podcasting you walk in and you're like hm that's an interesting way to do that setup I don't think I would do that oh I like that they did that let's steal that right

your reticular activating system is so turned on to podcast that you can't help but notice all around you things you would do differently or that you like the same thing happens with business and Deals so now I when I go into like a corner store or when I go into a restaurant I go or gym gyms get me for for some reason it's like you have me you have my credit card you have recurring Revenue I come in here every single day sell me more [ __ ] why don't you sell me more things you

definitely should and so one I will say as you learn deal making I can promise you only really one thing when it comes to you becoming a better dealmaker your reticular reticular activating system comes on so what's going to happen in Deal finding yes you could cold call just like private Equity but instead kind of steep yourself in the type of deal you are looking for Steep yourself in what skills you actually have and then you're going to see them all around you won't be able to turn it off it'll be like when you buy

a car all of a sudden the car is all over the place after you bought it you're like did everybody was it a was it a sale no your brain starts making you notice it and so the best way to find deals is you start just having conversations with guys because again cash loves curiosity every time you go into a small business you just go like oh amazing you go I mean La is full of them you walk into a cool retail shop oh that's cool man this is your store oh it is I mean

probably 50% of the time it's theirs and then you say to the guy like how long you been doing this a while do you want to keep uh you want to keep doing this like how's business going you guys make a lot of money how long you been around is a kid going to take over are you going to keep going oh this is so cool I love this maybe I buy a little something and then maybe I decide I want to own one of these businesses with them all of a sudden I get to

know the owner and I start getting into the curiosity where I get them to maybe consider that a young Hustler who is really aggressive might be good for their business absolutely absolutely yeah no I had a really interesting experience of this last maybe a couple of years ago I was in a store that curates beautiful sets of books and that's not what they do professionally they sell clothes but they also have books in the store and I walked in there and I was I love I really enjoy books and I enjoy collecting and so I

was looking around and these were all like new books they're all newly published they're beautiful and I bought a ton and they were just like and then one person at that store just said to me oh by the way like do you love books I was like yeah and I was like I'm reallying for vintage books though it be cool to own some like antique books and things like that and she said well oh there's this random store around the corner and it's like a printing press like a old school binding book but I've seen

books in there before why don't you go check it out so I literally go walk into this books and and basically actually first of all I walk outside it looks like no one operates it it looks completely run down uh you wouldn't walk past it and think oh cool shop you'd walk past it and not even you'd think no one no one's inside so I'm kinding around I'm like knocking the just to see I do see some books and this this lady opens the door and she's got like old school binding press in there an

old school you know all all the old school tools that how books were Bound in the past and then she's got this bookshelf and I said oh I heard you might sell books like could I take a look and she was like oh no I just have these books because I got divorced a few years back my husband owned a bookstore he left me with like 50,000 books or something crazy and she go because most of them at home but there's probably like I don't know a thousand here or whatever it is you can take

whatever you want and I was like I'm happy to pay you but sure so I spent like two three hours and I was like getting really you know I loved it it was like it was literally like being inside of a secret cave of books and I was like finding all this stuff so I got a stack of maybe like 20 books and I was like hey look I'd love to pay you for them like you know I'm good for it and I'm Greatful that you've even allowed me in and I forced her a little

bit she finally took some money and uh and then there was one book while she was going through and she's like I've been looking for this book for like 5 years and she goes I can't sell this one to you and I was like sure like I'm never gonna you know have it whatever anyway I come home and I started checking all these books out online they were all worth like at least $100 each I probably paid like5 to $10 each for them and it was just a really good example to me of like this

random place that and and I wanted the book so I kept them but it was just this random place that was like this treasure Trove of all of this great material and had someone wanted to go in and buy 50,000 books and sell them online or sell them anywhere there was a real business there and it was a small it was very simple example of just how easy it was to come across something that that I wouldn't even I wasn't even looking for it well yeah and you know it's a funny thing I do sometimes

one it's so lovely and also how happy was she probably at the value you found in it yeah like did you feel like you were taken advantage of her or did she feel like wow are you sure like I'm glad you're spending time with me absolutely absolutely she was so happy and I think this is something we don't realize because our generation is highly transactional we're a highly transactional generation with immediate feedback loops AKA social media um with a high uh status game that we play with a lot of attention on us because you get

a lot of attention when you're young and hungry and moving but as we get older I mean women will tell you this all the time they'll warn you that as you get older you become invisible like a middle-aged woman will say often nobody sees me and like one of our our copywriters she was so lovely she said a thing to me I was like oh she DED her head blue and I was like Marcel looks great like she's an older woman probably like mid-50s and I was like looks great like you know what was the

impetus and she's like you know as you get older I realized that like nobody would talk to me and I feel like they were looking through me and she's like so she's like so I was with my one of my little nieces and I we died our hair little strips of it pink together and she was like and I was walking across the street and this young man uh kind of yelled over to me and he's like hey Mom I like the hair and she's like I can't remember the last time a young man talked

to me she's like so I any time I now feel a little out of it I dye my hair blue and to be fair like in the past sometimes when I saw people do that I was like really what's going on here like what's what's the move and then I realized ah like just because we value something one way doesn't mean that everybody else values it the other way and so in order to break your frame and to see businesses all around you don't assume that the same things you value other people do it's like

I've never really believed in the Golden Rule which is treat others how you want to be treated it's like by and large treat them how they want to be treated unless that breaks how you want to be treated and I think that's the same with business owners I mean my uncle e which is one of the main reasons I started publicly about business talking about businesses online he had a business did a couple million dollars a year in revenue and you can it's called E Holmes Plumbing it was in Phoenix Arizona and um he got

sick with cancer and and um decided he wanted to shut the business down you know he's in his 70s and was like you know I'm I'm ready to be done and what he didn't know at the time is that a business that is doing a couple millions of dollars in revenue and a couple of millions of dollars in profit is worth millions of dollars and so this man who spent his life building up a plumbing company that probably would have thought honestly like if he was here he would say Cody I couldn't have sold that

thing like that that wasn't really you know it was it was sort of and and this is what most baby boomer business owners think they're like who's going to buy this because how many times have you had a business where you didn't want to be in it before have you ever had that before yeah absolutely of like if you're in a room sometimes I go out to speaking stages and just for shits and giggles because people will always go if a business was profitable and it was going to continue to be profitable nobody would sell

it and I go okay let's play a game business owners raise your hand everybody raises their hand that's a business owner I go cool keep them up if you would sell your business at the right price and the right terms if it came along keep your hand up what happens everybody's up not one if you go down and I go liars and I laugh uh because the truth of the matter is you haven't been in the game long enough if you put your hand down um but if you've been in the game long enough you

go absolutely now I wouldn't sell every one of my businesses course but there is at some point one business and if you call me on the right day maybe I would so I think we have to like change our programming to realize all around us every business has a value that book selling business that shut down I bet there was a value in the lease that they had it might have been in California sometimes they have leases that are locked in there could have been value in just the lease contract to transfer it there could

have been value in the assets the books there could have been value in the employees uh because you can do an aqua hire there could have been value in the website listing what about the Yelp and Google reviews there could have been value in the IP what about the logos and the brand and the name what if they had one of those old school original you know cody.com websites before like we now have to have websites that are like 452 words right and so every single business has some value and if you can find the

business where the value to the owner is not as much as the value is to you then you got a really good deal so well said Cody I'm just like you know I'm so happy that you're breaking this down for everyone because I think it's such a it's just not what I'm hearing it's not what people are talking about it's not the it's not the and and I'm glad glad cuz it's not the getrich quick solution either it's not the hey you can be really rich in 12 months and not worry about anything and that

kind of feeling yeah yeah you wish and I think I really appreciate you nailing it by just saying it's grit right that that's what's required that's that's deeply required what's a skill that you think you wish you'd known you had to develop at the beginning of this journey that you learned too late I wish that I didn't have stories to myself about me being bad at math and money I think most people have a story when they're younger about how bad they are at math I have one that I think really messed me up I

was in uh middle no no no it was high school I was at Arcadia High and uh I had a math teacher and I I wasn't very good at math like I I struggled I think I might have a little bit of Dyslexia I'm not sure but I just I couldn't get the numbers to stay in my head correctly and so I was sort of struggling and I remember one day the teacher was getting really frustrated with me and teaching is a hard job so I get it but he looked at me front of the

class and he said man I think Helen Keller would have a better shot at winning an archery contest than you would at winning in finance and at the time I was like heartbroken about this and like embarrassed you know and did did it in the way teenagers do which just like you I don't care whatever but I was like very sad about it and then I love my parents deeply but my parents always used to say to my brother you're so smart you're so smart you're so smart you're so smart and to me they would

always say you work so hard you work so hard you work so hard and at the time I was kind of mad like I'm also smart what about me and they would always be like well Cody's not very good at math in the same way that they would say I'm not very good at singing the singing is true I'm not good at that one but but that math thing stuck with me for a long time and so I always thought that it was big and hard and scary to be quote unquote good at math and

when it comes to making money the math is really simple guys and I'm bad at making math so bad that Helen Keller would be better at archery than I am and so if if any part of this skill is scaring you I think it often starts with like oh my God I look at a spreadsheet and I panic yeah you know I have to calculate something and I panic I look at a calculator and I panic and I would say just like lean into that slightly because I think in finance we do a very sneaky

thing which is I think we try to make it seem really scary and hard for the average person to become rich why because if it's scary and hard for you to do it guess what I get to do I get to charge a lot of money for it and so that's why most most of us take our money and like think about it for a second we take our money and we give it to other people to take care of now when you give your kids to other people to take care of 100% like there

are opinions about that people say no you got to you got to take care of your kids you got to grow your kids but with wealth we can just say no no I don't understand anything I just give it to this guy over here and he figures it out that's really not how we should treat money and so the main skill that I I think you should think about is one of my mentors said to me money is a a cruel mistress she'll leave you if you don't pay attention T and I think about that

a lot like just give the money a little attention give the math a little attention you're more capable than you think you are and it's really not possible to be bad at this type of math so if in your head you think I'm bad at math I'm bad at spreadsheets it's really not possible I'm bad at calculus but you can figure this stuff out Cody you are awesome and I love that advice and I think everyone who's listened and watch this episode now has a game plan of how to negotiate something at their workplace figure

out how to invest in a company or a small business recognize if you're at that place of I just want to get over the fear that I'm bad at math or that money is bad and I can't wait for everyone to dive into Main Street millionaire this is the book that Cody's got out right now I want you to go grab a copy if you've enjoyed today's discussion this is one of those books that I hope you read with your friends share insights maybe you'll invest in something together build something together it's a great book

to part on to a family member or friend who's been struggling with money thinking about it please do not hesitate with this because it's so easy to keep pushing money off and keep having it be a source of anxiety in your life and I think Cody's broken it down and make it really simple based on how to overcome your fears and go create something brilliant so Cody thank you for putting your heart and soul into this work and uh we we end every episode of on purpose with a final five these are a Fast Five

where you have to answer each question in one one word to one sentence maximum so Cody Sanchez these are your final five the first question is what is the best financial advice you've ever heard or received that other people's money is actually feasible people think that passive income is a lie that getting other people's money is a lie but they tell you that because they are usually the ones on the other side of the coin so if you want to see about other people's money look to private equity and mimic it let's let's uh go

off piece for a second on because I think we didn't touch on that if you want to raise investment for people who want to gain investment maybe you got a cool new idea maybe you've been tinkering someone got a deck what what what should you have if you're going to go and ask for someone's money oh that's yeah that's a really good point it's really simple couple tactical things one something called a tear sheet or a one sheet so this is basically like um think about it like a baseball card with all the stats on

the baseball card but for the deal that you're going to put so it's like here's why I think it's good here's why I think we'll make money here's what that's based off of here's what a summary it is here's why I'm good at it too and you should invest in me and here's why I think you should be the one to invest that's called a one sheet or a tear sheet um the second one is a pitch deck from Goldman I learned something called a three PS which is people process performance so I do that

in all my pitch decks which basically is like why us why should you bet on us because at the end of the day if you're asking for somebody's money it's about the opportunity for sure but it's really like do I want to invest in Jay do I believe in Jay and then second is process so like what is the opportunity what is the way we're structuring this what are we investing in what is the process by which you're going to take our money and go bring it back with friends and then lastly is performance so

if I give you this why do you think that I'm going to make money how much money am I going to make um and why should I invest in you instead of all these other things so if you have those two things that is the like typical oneon-one for raising money great answer no I think it's really important for people to know because I think so many times we just kind of turn up and hope 100% And I wish people would have told me that it's like sometimes when you have those little easy tactics you're

like okay now I feel good you know there's more to it than that but at least you know like hey if I want to drive a car I need the car and I need some gas and so now you guys got that yeah and I think sometimes we're so focused on convincing someone that we have the best idea and not focused on convincing someone we understand how to execute it and I think anyone who's looking to give you money is looking to whether they think you can execute it because I hear good ideas all the

time the best investors in the world hear Amazing Ideas all the time and ideas are just not the thing that works like you know you always talk about like Google was like the 21st search engine like they weren't the first search engine it wasn't a unique idea it was just that they had a great way of executing and why they've evolved into this mega mega mega business now yeah exactly best predictor of future behavior is past Behavior so if you can show them you have a history of winning yeah and even show them some instances

where you didn't win why and how you're never going to replicate that again people are going to bet on the Hustler who is on a winning streak you know often times right you know this if you go to gamble on a game in sports you don't gamble on the person that's have a losing streak why because it's actually quite hard to break and so I think also if you can show a history of winning and that's a narrative you can frame you're more likely to get cash too that's great uh second question what is the

worst Financial advice you've ever heard or received that money is is scarce and hard to get if you think money's hard and scarce then you're probably not going to get it and I think people want you to think that and that does not serve you at all question number three the best $500 investment you ever made o or 2,000 500 2,000 um I think this is a little cliche but um health and wealth are super tied and uh the best money I've ever spent are probably two things a sauna and a cold plunge and I

know that sounds like super tech bro Twitter uh but the truth of the matter is is that if I can get a little bit more energy in the beginning of the day it seems to carry through the rest of my day and make me more money so whatever your sauna and and cold plunges and I think I bought mine on Amazon for literally like a thousand bucks each uh then that's money well spent great uh question number four the biggest waste of money you've ever spent not the amount but like something that was complete waste

the biggest mistakes I've ever made are always not things I did or bought but people I chose it was it's always about the people the good things and the best things so be careful those you partner with spend time with and invest in and know that those will often be the things that give you the most heartache or make you the most money let's uh side note on that too how does we talked about about it before too but for someone who's like thinking about finding the right business partner knowing whether you can trust someone

obviously you never know anything we talked about it like how do you set yourself up for Success beyond the negotiation that we discussed I have a couple different rules one rule is um you don't get married on the first date don't do a deal or start a business on the first date which means I have a one-year rule I do not get into a long-term partnership with anybody that I haven't known for at least a year in business a lot of times there's this you know that Rosy phase you have when you're first dating with

somebody you're like the thing is we're in love and we are meant to be and then about 6 months later you're like also no and so same thing with business partners give yourself a nice 12-month window it's hard to hide who you are for a year the second thing uh when doing business deals is when you partner with somebody you don't actually want to partner with somebody that's just like you it's the same with marriage it's why dating apps are so tough I mean I was talking to Shawn rad about that the founded attender the

other day I was like the thing is you don't realize what you did but you allowed people to self- select for people that are just like them and it turns out the statistics all show that we do not last in marriages as long or relationships as long when our person is just like us they actually we actually have to have this like creative difference between the two of us there's a Ying to the Yang in everything in the universe and so the studies tell us you need two different types in order to succeed long term

and you can some overlap is necessary obviously but you don't actually want to date yourself it's the same with a partner make sure that if you're a great salesperson you're not pairing it with another salesperson you got a great operational person and a great salesperson maybe that works and the last thing about great Partnerships is everything else is figureoutable if there is enough drive and so my but my father says you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink and so I always over optimize on this idea of Desire like why

do you want to partner with me and do I believe that that why is so big that we can overcome any and if your why is like I kind of want to make a couple dollars on the side but I might do this but I might do this but I might do this I call you a toepper you're actually not all the way in you're not fully in with me and so at our company we just had one of these people the other day a young kid he's a stud but he came to us and

he was like yeah I want to do this job with you but I also have these other things and you know once you've interviewed I've interviewed thousands and thousands of people by now so you know I can kind of get to the heart of it and I remember Tanner was sitting in the interview with me and Tanner's face was just falling as he was listening to it because I was kind of faring out a few things and the young the young guy was like well I have this Channel and I want to grow this and

I want to do that and I was like why do you want to be here then like if you want to do all those other things like no no no I want to do this too and we can do it all together and I said the thing in life that I wish somebody had told me earlier is when you're starting out you can never be excellent at multiple things at once eventually you can have excellence in multiple things because you can attract top talent but in the beginning you're either Allin or you are a barely

concealed series of of distractions and so a partnership make sure they are all in and their why is super super big otherwise they should go find their why and it's not you yeah well said uh Fifth and final question if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be oh God that's a hard one just one one law in the world that everybody in the world had to follow take your time how would we we'd have to think legally about some of the caveats to this we want

to make sure we crafted the language correctly in order to not have perverse incentives second and third order effects but it would be something to the tune of like it would probably be it would probably be something about taxes it'd be like don't allow centralization of tax power above a certain amount and the reason why is kind of technical but but basically we want to give as much money as possible back to you the builders the only way that money and thus freedom is created is from Individual humans who build things governments cannot build build

things governments can take capital from somewhere else and they can allocate it to other things and equalize and that is great and wonderful and and necessary but I would be really careful about what I see as like core to our society today which is are we allowing too few of people to control too much of us and it starts with our money and I know there are lots of other things we could care about when it comes to politics and that's very important too but I was in Argentina when they closed my business and made

it illegal overnight because they nationalized it and I have seen countries Fall Apart at the floor of Taxation and nationalization and so I guess it would be a government is never allowed to nationalize and a government is never allowed to overly tax and every chance we get let's believe in the Builder and the individual and not the big huge entity like you guys can figure out you don't need them all the time I love it Cody Sanchez the book's called Main Street millionaire everyone make sure you follow Cody on social media if you don't already

subscribe on YouTube follow on Instagram Tik Tok get the book uh Cody I hope you'll come on many many more times uh it was amazing talking to you honestly you've opened my mind I'm sure you've blown everyone else's mind and uh I want to thank you for doing the work you do and really appreciate how practical tactical and accessible that you're making this world of money that's been so hidden and kept as side so thank you so much well thank you and maybe the only thing can I add one thing the audience of course you

can thing I would add is like um anybody who is out there building right now I hope you know how important you are you know it is it is so critical to have builders in this world and it is so hard and you're never alone and you are so necessary and without you the world literally stops and so 3% of Americans own a business 3% we need more of you Builders out there in the world and so everything we do is to try try to create more humans who have skin in the game who are

creting things with your beautiful brains and your hands and like I'm in awe of you so every time I meet like the laundromat owner the car wash owner the entrepreneur that's building something inside of a business like I just hope you know there's so much dignity in the world and it's because of the work you do and without you you know it's actually not good to go back to the Stone Age like we have all the things we have today because of each of you and that includes you and building this business so thank you

for having me I just want to say that I've appreciated you so deeply offline and your work online of course speaks for itself it's been so successful and congratulations and so to be able to dive into this theme with you that I think is so important for the world right now is a real blessing so thank you well thank you I think you know you meet a lot of people in real life that you kind of know online so at a certain point I think you can kind of tell when the human is going to

match the human and that's what I felt with you so it's cool for the people listening too you got to question everything and sometimes you meet people that you look up to and you're like dang it you know not quite what I thought it was going to be be and so um like real respect to you for that I love it thanks Cody yay that was awesome thank you so much for listening to this conversation if you enjoyed it you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the key to growth and the

strategies for unlocking your hidden potential if you know you want to be more and achieve more this year go check it out right now you set a goal today you achieve it in 6 months and then by the time it happens it's almost a relief there's no sense of meaning and purpose you sort of expected it and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen