Speaker 1: Seventy percent of millionaires are self made. If you want
Speaker 1: to make money, you got to follow the math. People
Speaker 1: that have money have one thing.
Speaker 2: Entrepreneur, Investor. She's got over twenty six businesses. Cody Sanchez.
Speaker 2: I have no money. I don't really know too much
Speaker 2: about money. Where do I start? What do I do?
Speaker 1: Most often we're told things like follow our passion. I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty bad advice. If you don't have ownership,
Speaker 1: you're probably never going to be free financially.
Speaker 2: You're literally opening up a whole new doorway for people.
Speaker 2: The number one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 1: Jay Seti Jay Sheety only Set.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
Speaker 2: come to become a happier, healthier and more healed. I'm
Speaker 2: fascinated by our relationships with things that we grew up with,
Speaker 2: how they've changed, how they've evolved, or how they've stayed
Speaker 2: the same. I believe that our relationship with money is
Speaker 2: probably one of the most underestimated relationships that we have,
Speaker 2: and it's probably one of the relationships that we paid
Speaker 2: the least attention to. We don't treat it like a relationship,
Speaker 2: we don't think of it like a relationship. And therefore
Speaker 2: it falls into the binary category of I'm either good
Speaker 2: at it or I'm bad at it. Today's guest has
Speaker 2: some incredible insights for each and every one of us.
Speaker 2: Wherever you are in your financial journey, this episode is
Speaker 2: for you. Today's guest is Cody Sanchez.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm blushing. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2: I want to start with a question that I know
Speaker 2: you probably get a million times and I get all
Speaker 2: the time. Jay, I have no money. I don't really
Speaker 2: know too much about money. Where do I start? What
Speaker 2: do I do?
Speaker 1: There's two things in life that I wish we were
Speaker 1: told earlier, and one is if you want to make money,
Speaker 1: you got to follow the math. And I think most
Speaker 1: often we're told things like follow our passion, you know,
Speaker 1: do what I did to make money. I made real
Speaker 1: estate money. You should make real estate money. And I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty bad advice. I think instead we should
Speaker 1: look to where are most people rich? What makes most
Speaker 1: people rich? Kind of go to the data. I came
Speaker 1: from really middle class kind of we didn't have money
Speaker 1: all the time. I remember what it was like to
Speaker 1: not have money. I remember what it was like when
Speaker 1: my debit card. You know, I was a little worried
Speaker 1: stuff wouldn't go through at the grocery store, and I
Speaker 1: didn't like that feeling, and so I kind of started
Speaker 1: looking around and I was like, wait a second, where
Speaker 1: do people have money? And after being in finance for
Speaker 1: whatever it is, fifteen years, I'm going to give away
Speaker 1: my age. I realized people that have money have one
Speaker 1: thing ownership. So the data is really clear on this.
Speaker 1: Seventy percent of millionaires are self made, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: I used to think maybe you just inherit it did
Speaker 1: they just get lucky? And then sixty eight percent of
Speaker 1: millionaires have some form of ownership. They have actually bought
Speaker 1: a business, or have equity in a business, or built
Speaker 1: a business. And so when I realized that, I was like,
Speaker 1: the problem is I don't have a brilliant idea, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know how to make money. I don't have
Speaker 1: any money to make money. But at least you have
Speaker 1: step one, which is if you don't have ownership, you're
Speaker 1: probably never going to be free financially. You got to
Speaker 1: get some skin in the game. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you have to become an entrepreneur. It's really hard to
Speaker 1: do that. It sucks many days. You know this very well.
Speaker 1: There's fridays when you're never going to make payroll, and
Speaker 1: that is like a deep, terrible dark hurt. Actually, But
Speaker 1: if you realize ownership is the name of the game,
Speaker 1: then you should probably obsess on one thing more than
Speaker 1: anything else, which is learn the language of money. And
Speaker 1: back when I was young, I was a journalist, originally
Speaker 1: made zero dollars, and I realized that I had no
Speaker 1: idea why I had opportunities and ability to make some money.
Speaker 1: And let's say the women I was covering at the
Speaker 1: time in Warres, who are they call it Laciel de Mote, right,
Speaker 1: the city of death, which is where women are mutilated
Speaker 1: and raped and brutalized and found murdered all over the
Speaker 1: city every single day, thousands of women a year. There
Speaker 1: were many that had the last name Sanches. My last
Speaker 1: name happens to be Sanchez. I was like, what's the
Speaker 1: difference between us? Is it that I'm American? Now, that's
Speaker 1: not it alone. I think it's also that I had
Speaker 1: some financial tools, and like, money is a pushback against
Speaker 1: other people's architecture of your life, and it makes people
Speaker 1: care about you one way or the other, which is sad,
Speaker 1: But the truth of the matter is if you are poor,
Speaker 1: you have no power, and anybody who's been poor before
Speaker 1: knows that is true. You got to go where the
Speaker 1: game is played. So the first thing I tell you is,
Speaker 1: if you don't have any cash, you need to find
Speaker 1: a way to figure out how to speak the language
Speaker 1: of money. And that probably means you maybe go work
Speaker 1: in finance like I did. You get with a company
Speaker 1: that has smart leaders like Jay where you can actually
Speaker 1: go and learn from them, and you obsess on can
Speaker 1: I become fluent in the thing that nobody talks about
Speaker 1: in the US because money is supposed to be the
Speaker 1: root of all evil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you shared a statistic with me that I thought
Speaker 2: it was mind blowing that sixty two percent of Americans
Speaker 2: don't want to talk about money. Yeah, that is so scary,
Speaker 2: but it's also not surprising because, like you just said,
Speaker 2: we've created this narrative that money is the roof all evil.
Speaker 2: And it was so fascinating because someone actually said this
Speaker 2: to me where if you look up the actual reference,
Speaker 2: it says love of money is the root of all evil.
Speaker 1: I never knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how did we?
Speaker 1: I mean, I do wonder sometimes how do we get
Speaker 1: programmed these ways? Because if you think about it's like,
Speaker 1: what are the three things you're not supposed to talk about? Politics, religion?
Speaker 2: Money?
Speaker 1: Now, politics and religion. Maybe I could understand you could
Speaker 1: offend somebody. I believe this religion, you believe this political slant,
Speaker 1: and if we could go aide, that could be bad.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to money, who's like, nah, I
Speaker 1: wish everybody was poor, Like why wouldn't we be able
Speaker 1: to talk about it? Then the only thing that I
Speaker 1: can determine from that is that every time we get
Speaker 1: a little bit more ownership, a little bit more money,
Speaker 1: we become harder to control. And when you're harder to control,
Speaker 1: big institutions and largely are governments, they don't like that.
Speaker 1: You know, you want a controllable populace by and large,
Speaker 1: And I think that is a big reason why people
Speaker 1: don't talk about money, Actually, that we have been programmed
Speaker 1: to be more malleable sheep in many ways, not because
Speaker 1: people are evil at the top, but because once we
Speaker 1: get power, we humans are a little funny. We don't
Speaker 1: like to give it up no matter who we are.
Speaker 1: I would probably be the same, And so that centralization
Speaker 1: of power, we start to think I know better you
Speaker 1: poor person, let me give you some charity. You can't
Speaker 1: figure it out, And instead we should be saying you
Speaker 1: are just as capable as I am, and I would
Speaker 1: probably be you if I lived your life. And so instead,
Speaker 1: why don't I transfer some knowledge because that's where money starts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about people right now who look at the
Speaker 2: situation and just like the economy is in a bad place,
Speaker 2: we're super worried. Paint us a picture of where America
Speaker 2: is right now.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, well, let's talk. First, We'll talk about
Speaker 1: how it's tough, and I'll be honest, and then we
Speaker 1: can talk about solutions. So I promise I won't leave
Speaker 1: you in a doom scroll. But here's the truth of
Speaker 1: what's happening in the world right now. If you're young.
Speaker 1: Young people today are upset about what's happening in the
Speaker 1: world around them, and I understand why you have wage stagnation.
Speaker 1: So we basically have not made any more money. And
Speaker 1: in fact, this generation Gen Z is the first generation
Speaker 1: where at their same age as their parents, they're making
Speaker 1: less money, not more. Problem is their university degrees or
Speaker 1: three to four x more expensive. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: so is housing. Wait a second, inflation is at a
Speaker 1: degree in which my dollar today is worth even substantially
Speaker 1: less than even five years ago. On top of that, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have all these jobs open. You know, seven million
Speaker 1: working age men supposedly are unemployed at this moment right now,
Speaker 1: even though the jobs report says that there's so many jobs.
Speaker 1: Are the jobs real, well, largely not. They're private sector.
Speaker 1: They're not private sector, their public sector, their government jobs.
Speaker 1: And so young people are like, wait a second, I
Speaker 1: can't live, I can't eat. You know, grocery is more expensive,
Speaker 1: and that's real actually, And so the people that are
Speaker 1: making fun of young people in Tiktoks, you know, when
Speaker 1: they cry about their job being difficult, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't really vibe with that because the math says it's
Speaker 1: hard right now and not just for young people. But
Speaker 1: I think it's important to talk about them. And the
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is though that in any market,
Speaker 1: we can make money. And so although it's really difficult
Speaker 1: out there, there's like one silver lining that I've kind
Speaker 1: of been screaming from the rooftops for the past three years,
Speaker 1: and people, I think are starting to see it, which
Speaker 1: is that we are, thankfully, I think going to have
Speaker 1: a marriage between baby boomers and young people that would
Speaker 1: be very unexpected. So right now and historically young people
Speaker 1: have said, Okay, Boomer, you messed up our economy. Boomer,
Speaker 1: you're not employing me. Boomer, you don't understand my life.
Speaker 1: You listen to the music that young people like. They
Speaker 1: don't like that generation in a lot of ways. Then
Speaker 1: the baby boomers are like, you guys are quiet, quitting,
Speaker 1: you're not working very hard. Get out of my basement.
Speaker 1: And so these two generations have been at war in
Speaker 1: some ways, like a quiet war. And now I think
Speaker 1: with the transfer of ownership that we're seeing and we
Speaker 1: can talk about the great wealth transfer, I think we
Speaker 1: have an opportunity where the baby boomer generation, the richest
Speaker 1: generation that we have ever seen in the US, which
Speaker 1: has mimicked in all other countries around the world by
Speaker 1: the way that are developed countries. This generation is about
Speaker 1: to sunset, they're getting ready to retire, they're ready to
Speaker 1: move on, but they own sixty eight trillion dollars in
Speaker 1: wealth in just the US. The interesting part is the
Speaker 1: young people think, well, that money must get transferred somehow, right,
Speaker 1: does that mean I get a house. Does that mean
Speaker 1: I get a car? Does that mean I get inheritance?
Speaker 1: The problem is that money is not tied up in
Speaker 1: just assets. It's not tied up in houses and bank accounts.
Speaker 1: It by and large is tied up in small businesses
Speaker 1: because baby boomers owned sixty percent of all small businesses,
Speaker 1: and so I think we got to find a way
Speaker 1: for the young people to take over these baby boomer
Speaker 1: businesses because otherwise then we're in a really bad spot.
Speaker 1: Then we're Japan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are some of the mistakes that you think
Speaker 2: we think about what makes money? What are we thinking
Speaker 2: makes money right now? Where we're being distracted, we're actually
Speaker 2: small businesses is where you're pointing to spotlight? Yeah, but
Speaker 2: what are we distracted by?
Speaker 1: I think a lot of young people today chase the
Speaker 1: shiny object, right and think about this for a second.
Speaker 1: I remember, like many years ago, I had an opportunity
Speaker 1: to invest in robin Hood, and I could kick myself
Speaker 1: financially because I didn't. But at the time why I
Speaker 1: didn't is I was like day trading stocks as amateurs
Speaker 1: and then gamifying it. So we get like a drenal
Speaker 1: response every time a balloon pops because we placed a
Speaker 1: trade might be a bad idea, like I don't think
Speaker 1: we should probably gamify our finances that way. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what's happened to young people. They're being told,
Speaker 1: I mean put in the stock market day trade, They're
Speaker 1: being told NFTs and playing with crypto monkeys. They're being
Speaker 1: told price speculation on crypto or even bitcoin. They're taking
Speaker 1: margin calls out on their stock portfolios. Then with a
Speaker 1: little amount of money that they have, they're trying for
Speaker 1: this get rich scheme speculation. And the shitty part is
Speaker 1: that just never works. You know, the one sure thing
Speaker 1: I know about money is that you're never going to
Speaker 1: make it if your solution is, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: win at money, because that guy's going to lose. If
Speaker 1: you think that there is a lose win scenario and
Speaker 1: you are the one that's going to win, I hate
Speaker 1: to tell you you're the one hold in the bag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wish people told us that more, that actually
Speaker 1: making money doesn't have to be lose win, it could
Speaker 1: be win win. And that is when you know you've
Speaker 1: actually found a good opportunity is when you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: why would I make money on this deal, Oh, because
Speaker 1: I am solving a pain point that adds value to
Speaker 1: another human's life, and I've properly valued what my own
Speaker 1: skill set is. The problem is most of us don't
Speaker 1: even know what we're good at or how you'd value
Speaker 1: that skill. And we could play around with some exercises
Speaker 1: so that any human could figure out, Okay, I cody
Speaker 1: know how to market something, how do I figure out
Speaker 1: how much is that is worth? And how could I
Speaker 1: transfer some of that to get a percentage of equity
Speaker 1: in somebody's company just for the skill that I have.
Speaker 1: The last thing I want to say there is like
Speaker 1: more than anything. I think one, we think money's bad,
Speaker 1: and then two money's scary, Like I don't really know why,
Speaker 1: but I think we're scared of it, and we're scared
Speaker 1: that we might not be able to make it, and
Speaker 1: we're scared what if we lose it? And what if
Speaker 1: our self worth is tied.
Speaker 3: Up in it?
Speaker 1: And should we actually ask for it? So we have
Speaker 1: all these fears surrounding money, which is probably why we
Speaker 1: don't talk about it too. And we got to kind
Speaker 1: of work through that because money is just a tool.
Speaker 1: So it's just like if you want to build a house.
Speaker 1: Do you want to use a bunch of tiny little
Speaker 1: nails and your own hammer, or do you want to
Speaker 1: have a screw gun? And like in this instance, I
Speaker 1: want to have the bigger gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to look at three scenarios of our
Speaker 2: audience and where they sit, and look at what your
Speaker 2: advice would be for them at that point. So let's
Speaker 2: say we have a listener who just graduated from college.
Speaker 2: What should they be doing first? What should they be
Speaker 2: thinking about right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, here's how I think about making money. We
Speaker 1: have a four step process that I think if you
Speaker 1: don't have money, now, here's how you make it consistently
Speaker 1: over time, and you have your money, go out and
Speaker 1: bring back friends with it. The first is you've got
Speaker 1: to learn. We've got to obsess in the beginning about
Speaker 1: one thing. Only it's not what your salary is. It's
Speaker 1: how can I cram as much information as humanly possible
Speaker 1: in my brain in order for me to then do
Speaker 1: the next thing, which is increase my skill stack. After
Speaker 1: I learn, can I increase my skills so that my
Speaker 1: skills are more valuable today than they were yesterday? And
Speaker 1: the third is how can I increase my income, So
Speaker 1: before you go thinking about investing in things overall, how
Speaker 1: can I just make more money currently with what I'm doing?
Speaker 1: And then finally we can get to invest. So after
Speaker 1: we do these three steps, the final one is how
Speaker 1: do I take my money and make my money work
Speaker 1: for me? But in the beginning, you don't have money.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't really have skills, you probably don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of connections, and so what you actually
Speaker 1: want to do is use your sweat, equity and your
Speaker 1: experience and time as a really maybe hungry individual to
Speaker 1: get money to eventually be able to invest the money.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the other thing young people are
Speaker 1: told that's a lie, is that you can go out
Speaker 1: as a young person and you know, you know Fendi, Gucci, Prada, Lamborghini,
Speaker 1: on the internet, make a bunch of fast cash and Airbnb,
Speaker 1: arbitrage or whatever. Man, I wish somebody had told me
Speaker 1: earlier on that's a terrible thing to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think what's really interesting though, is when
Speaker 2: you're talking about improving of skills. I think when we
Speaker 2: graduate college, you think that that was the skill, like
Speaker 2: that your degree was the investment in the skill. But
Speaker 2: really what you're talking about our high value skills, talents,
Speaker 2: abilities that actually make an impact in a workplace, and
Speaker 2: those are really different. And so I'd meet a lot
Speaker 2: of young people who sadly have spent so much money
Speaker 2: on their degree, are really smart academically, but then that
Speaker 2: skill doesn't translate into knowing how to make their company
Speaker 2: more money, knowing how to lead people really well, knowing
Speaker 2: how to build function systems, processes. And therefore it's like, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, I just studied all these years, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't translate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I mean, for a
Speaker 1: long time, we employed people from the top universities and
Speaker 1: financial firms. We would go out and we would hand
Speaker 1: select them because that would be an indicator of their grit,
Speaker 1: perseverance and potentially their their intellect, their IQ. Now, by
Speaker 1: and large, you're starting to see a lot of the
Speaker 1: top institutions bypass that. You know, Google doesn't mandate that
Speaker 1: you have a college degree if you're going into an
Speaker 1: engineering degree, actually, and I think that should be really
Speaker 1: liberating for us. It's basically breaking down this barrier, that's
Speaker 1: a six figure barrier that allowed for the few, the
Speaker 1: elites to stare step over everybody else, And now it's
Speaker 1: actually saying how bad you want it, and don't tell
Speaker 1: me what you learned, show me what you can do,
Speaker 1: or even better, show me what you did. And so
Speaker 1: I think the resume of the future is actually if
Speaker 1: somebody came to you, Jay and they were like, I
Speaker 1: just graduated from Wharton. I am very smart. You know,
Speaker 1: I also did my undergraduate degree at Harvard. I now
Speaker 1: want to come work for you. You'd be like, what do
Speaker 1: you know how to do? Do you know how to market?
Speaker 1: Do you know how to grow a beverage company? Do
Speaker 1: you know how to increase our investment return?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: You kind of like theoretically have looked about how to
Speaker 1: do that in a case study. That's probably less interesting
Speaker 1: to you than somebody that goes you know what. I
Speaker 1: was part of the beverage team at Arowon and Whole Foods,
Speaker 1: and I figured out sort of across the country how
Speaker 1: they buy different pieces of inventory. Yeah, attend right exactly.
Speaker 1: And maybe because I want to help you grow this
Speaker 1: individual business, which I know you care about because I
Speaker 1: see it on your socials, I put together this little
Speaker 1: spreadsheet for you. Here's the things they care about. Could
Speaker 1: I come work for you for free for three or
Speaker 1: six months, and if that works out, could we do
Speaker 1: something better and bigger. The problem that people usually have
Speaker 1: on the Internet when I throw out the word work
Speaker 1: for free is young people are like, remember that part
Speaker 1: where you told us that we were broke and we
Speaker 1: don't have any money. So I'm not trying to dismiss
Speaker 1: that at all, but I do think we have to
Speaker 1: be honest about the fact that when we're young, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to work harder than you think, longer than
Speaker 1: you think, doing stuff you don't like with people you
Speaker 1: probably don't like, until eventually you get the right to
Speaker 1: do something really interesting. But like, you don't die in
Speaker 1: your first job from it being really hard and challenging.
Speaker 1: You die from the apps, monotony and the low level
Speaker 1: tasks you have to do for basically pennies on the dollar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely, absolutely, I fully agree. Let's say someone's
Speaker 2: thirty years old. Yeah, they've or thirty to thirty five,
Speaker 2: they worked ten fifteen years after graduating, They've been at
Speaker 2: the same company, maybe they've moved once.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was actually talking to someone like this yesterday. She's
Speaker 2: been at this one company for six years. It's a
Speaker 2: great company, great on her resume, but she's like, I
Speaker 2: don't really want to be here. I don't think this
Speaker 2: is where I see my future. But I'm so scared
Speaker 2: of quitting. I don't know how to invest. I probably
Speaker 2: didn't save that much anywhere. Now I feel bad about it.
Speaker 2: I'm probably feeling a bit of shame and guilt that
Speaker 2: I didn't save that much over the last ten years.
Speaker 2: What would I do, Cody?
Speaker 1: Well, one, I would say, these days, you do not
Speaker 1: have to have money to make money, which is incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1: So when I think about it, if I'm thirty and
Speaker 1: I am at a company like that, what would I
Speaker 1: do today? Well, I would actually probably sit down and
Speaker 1: figure out what am I actually skilled at that somebody
Speaker 1: else would pay me for? Once you know what somebody
Speaker 1: else would pay for, which is really just like do
Speaker 1: people ask for your opinion on this? Could you actually
Speaker 1: get jobs in this space if it was me, because
Speaker 1: I'm kind of unemployable, like you don't want me to
Speaker 1: work for you, Like I got my own ideas. I
Speaker 1: want to do things this way. If she's like that,
Speaker 1: then what you want to do is you want to
Speaker 1: try to partner with somebody where you can be the
Speaker 1: solution to their problem. And because you understand what I
Speaker 1: call deal making, which is really the language of money,
Speaker 1: you can negotiate an ability for you to own part
Speaker 1: of a thing in order for you to have one
Speaker 1: of three outcomes. If she can figure out if she
Speaker 1: can help a business grow its revenue, make more money,
Speaker 1: if she can help a business cut its costs, or
Speaker 1: if she can help decrease the pain of a business owner.
Speaker 1: You can negotiate your way into a business and have
Speaker 1: equity in it and upside. And I wish somebody had
Speaker 1: taught me that earlier, because this is what consultants do,
Speaker 1: this is what private equity firms do, this is what
Speaker 1: some of the largest institutions in the world do. I
Speaker 1: call it expertise to equity. But if I was her,
Speaker 1: I'd say, don't go find another job. And if you
Speaker 1: don't have a brilliant idea that you're like, I would
Speaker 1: die for the want of creating this thing in the world.
Speaker 1: If you have that, please go do it. But if
Speaker 1: you're like I don't have that. I just want to
Speaker 1: make money and I want to feel respected, and I
Speaker 1: want to feel like my skills fit somewhere and I'm
Speaker 1: able to have an outsized income. If that's you, then
Speaker 1: I think you should try to value your skill set.
Speaker 1: Then you should try to negotiate for an upside deal
Speaker 1: with somebody, and you should try your hand at this
Speaker 1: game called ownership, which is where you say, hey, small business,
Speaker 1: I know how to market. Can I help you market
Speaker 1: at the side while I'm working on this company? And
Speaker 1: because I help you grow your revenue by fifty percent?
Speaker 1: Could I keep ten percent of the fifty percent I grow?
Speaker 1: Do you think a small business owner would say yes
Speaker 1: to that? Of course they would, because there's no downside.
Speaker 1: And I think more often than not, we think that
Speaker 1: the only risk you can take and making money in
Speaker 1: business is putting your own cash down. That's a risk,
Speaker 1: or starting a business aka dedicating your life to something.
Speaker 1: The last part I'll get a little statistic on us
Speaker 1: is ninety percent of startups fail inside any rolling ten
Speaker 1: year period. We know that statistic. Most startups make zero
Speaker 1: dollars for the first three years. After that, the average
Speaker 1: entrepreneur makes about forty six thousand dollars a year, which
Speaker 1: is great, but not when you've been making zero for
Speaker 1: three years. And then on top of that, we've got
Speaker 1: this nation of people who have all these bills to pay,
Speaker 1: and they're betting on hopes and dreams as opposed to realities.
Speaker 1: And so my commentary is, can you figure out how
Speaker 1: to value your skills so you can negotiate a little
Speaker 1: bit more upside for that day where you can't work anymore.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty and I'm thrilled to announce
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Speaker 2: I wait to see you there. Tickets are on sell now.
Speaker 2: Head to Jayshetty dot me and get yours today. Yeah. Definitely, E.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to hear such like smart, honest advice
Speaker 2: because I do think you're so right. For so long
Speaker 2: we keep telling everyone like follow your passion, like just
Speaker 2: quit your job, like jump over, and you know it's
Speaker 2: it's hard because like you said that business may not work,
Speaker 2: your skills may be better off here. You might not
Speaker 2: be an entrepreneur, you might be someone who's gonna work
Speaker 2: with an entrepreneur and build. I wanted to address something though.
Speaker 2: I do find a lot of leaders and a lot
Speaker 2: of founders of small businesses or up and coming businesses
Speaker 2: to also be quite resistant to recognizing the value of sharing.
Speaker 2: So I'll give an example of what I mean by this. Like,
Speaker 2: when I was starting out, I remember speaking to people
Speaker 2: who are much more established than I was, and I said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I've got a person i'm going to work with. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna split things seventy five twenty five, and they're going
Speaker 2: to get twenty five percent of profits. I'm going to
Speaker 2: keep seventy five because they have a skill set I
Speaker 2: don't have, and it will be complementary. And I remember
Speaker 2: everyone telling me it was a really bad idea, because
Speaker 2: I'm like, Jay, like, no, you you're building a platform.
Speaker 2: You should earn one hundred percent of it. And I
Speaker 2: was like, but no, they're going to manage stress for me.
Speaker 2: They're going to manage teams. I want to see them grow.
Speaker 2: I want them to feel like they've got skin in
Speaker 2: the game. And now you know, eight years later since
Speaker 2: that decision, I'm so much happier and I have a
Speaker 2: great relationship with my one of my business partners. We
Speaker 2: have a great relationship. He's as invested as he is
Speaker 2: as he was then. Things have grown really well, and
Speaker 2: I'm like the people that were trying to hold on
Speaker 2: to that last five to ten percent, yeah, actually haven't grown.
Speaker 2: And so it was really interesting to me though that
Speaker 2: I see that again and again and again, where even
Speaker 2: founders and new leaders are actually scared of parting with something.
Speaker 2: How would you encourage them to think about that differently?
Speaker 3: Well, I actually would say, be scared of partnerships, Oh great,
Speaker 3: because fifty percent of marriage is and divorced, but one
Speaker 3: hundred of business marriages typically, and because no business lasts forever, right,
Speaker 3: and so at some point you're going to have a
Speaker 3: rift with your business partner by and large, and probably
Speaker 3: you'll have a few rifts with them.
Speaker 1: So I would actually say it's cool to be scared
Speaker 1: about that, you should be. The thing that I want
Speaker 1: people to think about is like, I want to make
Speaker 1: risk a non four letter word, because I think the
Speaker 1: key to wealth is actually risk taking some of it
Speaker 1: the question is if you're like me, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a wuss, Like I stayed in a corporate job for
Speaker 1: twelve years because I was too scared to do things
Speaker 1: by myself. Even though I was like pretty highly skilled,
Speaker 1: I had a decent amount of cash, I was like,
Speaker 1: definitely not going to make it. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm capable, like it took me a
Speaker 1: long time to get there. And so what I did is,
Speaker 1: I'm all about risk mitigation, which is like a fancy,
Speaker 1: you know, financy word to say, how can I just
Speaker 1: make the outcome so in my favor that even if
Speaker 1: I'm not as smart as I think I am, it's
Speaker 1: almost like a win win no matter what. And so
Speaker 1: in that instance, I would probably say tell the make
Speaker 1: the founder a deal so good that they would feel
Speaker 1: dumb saying no to it. And so if if I
Speaker 1: was coming to you Jay and Jay was just starting out,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do this to somebody who has a big platform.
Speaker 1: They have way too much, too many resources. You need
Speaker 1: to go with somebody that's more accessible to you, that
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of resources. It's more on your level.
Speaker 1: But when you find that person, you go hey, win
Speaker 1: win deal. Don't give me a cent unless I provide
Speaker 1: X value, like literally nothing. Don't give me a percentage
Speaker 1: of the company right away. I never give a percentage
Speaker 1: of my companies right away anymore. I did once cost
Speaker 1: me a million bucks. I was pissed. I didn't do
Speaker 1: it again. So you can do. It's called an urn
Speaker 1: in or milestone based deliverables, which I know sounds like
Speaker 1: a little maybe boring. If people are listening the.
Speaker 2: Right way to do it, I'm so glad you're giving
Speaker 2: this advice. It's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean what you want to do is say, hey,
Speaker 1: I love you, you love me, We're going to be
Speaker 1: together forever. In the off chance that you see a
Speaker 1: hot little side piece and you run off with them.
Speaker 1: I want an ability to get the business back right,
Speaker 1: and so in that way, I am going to instead say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm taking all the risk in business for the most part,
Speaker 1: I'm putting in the capitol. Unless you're going to put
Speaker 1: in money that is equal to me. You only get
Speaker 1: the equity in the business or the upside in the
Speaker 1: business if you it's either duration or it's execution. So
Speaker 1: either you're here for one, two, three years, which is
Speaker 1: called cliff based investing. Or you're here for the first
Speaker 1: million that you helped me get in, and then the second,
Speaker 1: second million, and then the third million, and if you
Speaker 1: help me hit those milestones, you get the equity. If
Speaker 1: you don't, I wish you well, you wish me well.
Speaker 1: But we've already signed a prenup and this is how
Speaker 1: it works. And so I think we need to start
Speaker 1: thinking like that. And it's very non American. We're not
Speaker 1: so used to negotiating. Probably non British too. Actually, Indians
Speaker 1: incredible at negotiation, same with a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the Middle East, but British and American people not so
Speaker 1: good at negotiating. We think that it's like a low
Speaker 1: level signal on average. So like when I was young,
Speaker 1: my mom, we call her the pipule. She's amazing and
Speaker 1: she would always negotiate everything. My dad's an incredible businessman,
Speaker 1: like totally pull himself up by his own bootstraps, but
Speaker 1: my mom would go negotiate. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you ever felt like this, but I remember sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: my mom would be like negotiating for a different price.
Speaker 1: I mom, oh all the time, like please stop, you
Speaker 1: just pay it. And she would look at me and
Speaker 1: she would say, like, once it's your money, you pay it,
Speaker 1: but it's my money, so like, get out of here
Speaker 1: if you don't want to deal with this. And I
Speaker 1: used to think it was so embarrassing, and now I realize, oh,
Speaker 1: that's very smart, and it's actually the thing the wealthy
Speaker 1: do more than anything else that the poor do not,
Speaker 1: which is the wealthy negotiate everything and the poor take
Speaker 1: price while the rich set price.
Speaker 2: Wow, I've never thought about it like that. Set price
Speaker 2: best is taking a price. And I love your mindful
Speaker 2: habits on mitigating risk in a business relationship both sides.
Speaker 2: I think it's I'm glad that you laid it out
Speaker 2: that way because I completely agree with you the amount
Speaker 2: of business relationships that have challenges and issues and everything.
Speaker 2: I want to go back a few moments to when
Speaker 2: you were saying you were stuck for twelve years. And
Speaker 2: the reason I want to talk about that is because
Speaker 2: now when I see you, and whether someone sees you
Speaker 2: online or writing your book or you know, you're on
Speaker 2: all these awesome podcasts and you're talking so confidently and
Speaker 2: you're so clear that to hear that you had doubt
Speaker 2: and it took your long time to get over it.
Speaker 2: Walk me through what was going on in your mind
Speaker 2: during that twenty four month period, twelve month period before
Speaker 2: you actually managed to quit. What was going inside Cody's head?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think I would have stayed an employee forever.
Speaker 2: Check me too. That's why I'm asking.
Speaker 1: I like, And I also think, if you're listening right
Speaker 1: now and you ever feel less, then for being an employee,
Speaker 1: you tell that person a pound sand because I guarantee
Speaker 1: you Cheryl Sandberg is worth a lot more than many entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: And she was an entrepreneur. She worked inside of a
Speaker 1: business and amassed massive wealth, prestige, status, and impact from it.
Speaker 1: And so I don't like when people make employees feel less.
Speaker 1: Then you and I couldn't do what we do if
Speaker 1: we didn't have people who also wanted to build a
Speaker 1: vision with a team as opposed to an end of it.
Speaker 1: So one you can make a ton of money, whether
Speaker 1: you're an employee or whether you are the founder of
Speaker 1: the business. You just got to get a little skin
Speaker 1: in the game and upside. And you get skin in
Speaker 1: the game and upside when you have more value. You
Speaker 1: don't just ask for it. You've got to be able
Speaker 1: to earn it. And so when I was thinking those
Speaker 1: last two years in the business, I was running a
Speaker 1: business in Latin America. I had taken the business from
Speaker 1: zero to a billion dollars in assets under management. I
Speaker 1: had done it for in a place that I had
Speaker 1: never lived, in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru. I didn't have
Speaker 1: contacts there. I'd like built something from nothing, and I
Speaker 1: was really proud of that. But I wasn't very good
Speaker 1: at doing deals back then, and maybe that's why I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with it now, because I did a shitty deal
Speaker 1: with a guy that I respect a lot, but he
Speaker 1: was just better than me, and he ran the company
Speaker 1: and I built up this huge thing. But basically I
Speaker 1: had no way to take the assets of the business
Speaker 1: with me. The only thing that I could do is
Speaker 1: stay at that business and continue to get partnership until
Speaker 1: they eventually sold. I was like, gosh, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be here for thirty years. And at the time,
Speaker 1: again I respected the CEO a lot, but we didn't
Speaker 1: believe in the same world. Like I believe in a
Speaker 1: world in which we can all get rich together. He
Speaker 1: believed in a world in which he told me, we
Speaker 1: get rich quietly, and he believed that if you told
Speaker 1: people that you were rich, they came after you, which
Speaker 1: sometimes they do. And because of that, he wanted to
Speaker 1: protect himself and be quiet. And I said, I don't
Speaker 1: want to live in that world. And so we thought
Speaker 1: about that. I thought we should run the business this way.
Speaker 1: He thought we should run the business that way. And
Speaker 1: so for those last two years, if he hadn't finally
Speaker 1: taken me on a beach for a walk, him and
Speaker 1: I went he runs a multi hundreds, hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: billions of dollar company. We're still friends this day. But
Speaker 1: he essentially gave me an ultimatum. He said, listen, I
Speaker 1: want to row left. You want to row right. The
Speaker 1: problem is you need to get your own chips. You
Speaker 1: got to get your own boat. You're on my boat
Speaker 1: and you're trying to row this way and we're going
Speaker 1: this way. So you got to make a decision. And
Speaker 1: at the time I was so mad. I was like,
Speaker 1: I built this from nothing. You guys can't even speak space.
Speaker 1: I'm down here, do it. Like I was mad, I
Speaker 1: was super entitled that I realized, Cody, did you put
Speaker 1: any of the money on the table to build this business. No,
Speaker 1: you know, did you take the risk?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Besides coming here like that was his and so he
Speaker 1: was right, and I couldn't take anything with me. I
Speaker 1: did put my old number two in charge of that business,
Speaker 1: which is cool, she still runs it to this day.
Speaker 1: But I was really like mad at myself and sad.
Speaker 1: And so before I left there, I had done a
Speaker 1: lot of little investments. I called him throwing out my chips. So,
Speaker 1: you know, once you start to make a little money,
Speaker 1: I think it's really helpful to start investing in the
Speaker 1: things that you want to eventually earn from. So I
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to get into some venture capital like things.
Speaker 1: So I started investing in some venture capital firms. And
Speaker 1: so when he finally gave me that ultimatum, I jumped
Speaker 1: ship went to another company, and I didn't even have
Speaker 1: the balls to do it by myself. Then I was
Speaker 1: partnered up with a few other people, and man, like
Speaker 1: a lot of terrible things can happen to you when
Speaker 1: you don't believe in yourself. And I think the universe
Speaker 1: like it will tell you kind of what you need
Speaker 1: to do. And then if you don't listen, I'll annoy
Speaker 1: you for a while and then at some point I'll
Speaker 1: just kick you in the face. I'd like, that's my experience.
Speaker 2: You probably have a nicer experience with the universe.
Speaker 1: But he's kind of like, come on, we should do this,
Speaker 1: we should do this, and it just pushes you off
Speaker 1: the cliff. And so with me, I raised a ton
Speaker 1: of money for this company. I had these couple of partners,
Speaker 1: and at the end, like it didn't work out between us,
Speaker 1: and again unemployable. I wanted to go left, they wanted
Speaker 1: to go right, and I didn't really do that good
Speaker 1: of a deal. And so twice this happened, but that
Speaker 1: last time I did a better deal. And so I said,
Speaker 1: you guys have to pay me out for what I did,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to go do this new business and
Speaker 1: I want to take some of our investors. And so
Speaker 1: if somebody hadn't pushed me out of a company, and
Speaker 1: if somebody else hadn't also said no, we don't want
Speaker 1: to do this with you, I never would have done
Speaker 1: it by myself. And so I think it's it's okay
Speaker 1: if somebody is listening and you're stuck in a corporate
Speaker 1: job quote unquote stuck for a long time, that's okay,
Speaker 1: and it's also okay if it takes you a few tries.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that the only way to make
Speaker 1: money is to go be an entrepreneur and founder and
Speaker 1: do it all by yourself and never work in corporate America.
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful for the money that they spent on
Speaker 1: me for decades.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think there's plenty of good examples,
Speaker 2: as you said, of entrepreneurs. And I think it's more
Speaker 2: a mindset thing. What I'm hearing from you is it's
Speaker 2: getting skin in the game, it's negotiating well, it's being
Speaker 2: an owner, right like that. That's really what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2: And I think if people take those three things away
Speaker 2: from what we've talked about so far, that's what you
Speaker 2: want to put your attention to, rather than this idea
Speaker 2: of oh, I've got to start a business, I've got
Speaker 2: to become an entrepreneur. I've got to learn how to invest.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, no, no, this is it. This is
Speaker 2: what it is.
Speaker 1: You're right, Yeah, lots of people focus on the tactics.
Speaker 1: They don't focus on the foundation. The foundation is do
Speaker 1: you believe that you have ownership and responsibility for the
Speaker 1: things you spend more time doing than anything besides sleeping,
Speaker 1: which is working. And if you have what we call
Speaker 1: an owner's mindset, so the type of human that's like
Speaker 1: I'm putting like respect and dignity into what I do
Speaker 1: every day to the point that I start to value
Speaker 1: my own worth and I understand why I'm valued, then
Speaker 1: you will finally be able to negotiate for the only
Speaker 1: thing that nobody can take from you. Somebody can take
Speaker 1: a job, somebody can take a salary, nobody can take
Speaker 1: contractual ownership in a business. And I think that's really
Speaker 1: important in today's world because it really allows you. Then
Speaker 1: when somebody that you work for does something you don't like,
Speaker 1: you just go, yeah, I'm not doing that, you know,
Speaker 1: and you become it's what I call my que fund
Speaker 1: and my lady like fashion, which is like, hey, I
Speaker 1: have a certain amount of money, and because I have it,
Speaker 1: I will never compromise on a few things. But the
Speaker 1: owner's mindset is kind of rare, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I think for young people today so often, and I
Speaker 1: was one, it's like my boss's bed, my job sucks,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have upward mobility, And if I
Speaker 1: could tell young Cody one thing differently, it would be like,
Speaker 1: what would the opposite side of that story say, and
Speaker 1: which one do you think would make you more money?
Speaker 1: And I'd be like, probably the one in which you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is all kind of in my and if I
Speaker 1: make some serious changes in my life, I bet I
Speaker 1: could be richer than I am today. And I wish
Speaker 1: more people thought that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you have that conversation with your boss?
Speaker 1: I remember once I was at an event and I
Speaker 1: was just listening in the crowd and it was actually
Speaker 1: a finance event for women. So it's a bunch of
Speaker 1: like kind of well off ladies and we're in the
Speaker 1: audience and that the person in front asked everybody to
Speaker 1: close their eyes. So we all close their eyes and
Speaker 1: then they said, nobody is looking. I want you to
Speaker 1: have your body have a physical representation of what you
Speaker 1: feel when you think of money. So I was like,
Speaker 1: this is weird, hippiece, Like what are we doing? So
Speaker 1: I was like I don't know, you know, and you
Speaker 1: can't see me, but like I was like throwing out
Speaker 1: my hands, I'm like, okay, money, I like it, Like
Speaker 1: give it to me, keep it going, you know. Those
Speaker 1: are like my internal monologue, right, yeah, like I'll take some.
Speaker 1: And so I'm chilling. I'm like this, like nobody's looking.
Speaker 1: And then they're like, now, don't move, but open your eyes.
Speaker 1: And when I looked out, I was like, whoa. Because
Speaker 1: the rest of the audience, not the rest, but let's
Speaker 1: call it eighty percent were like this. They're like they
Speaker 1: were tight to the chest, they were like kind of
Speaker 1: like maybe small arms to the side. In some instances,
Speaker 1: I was like, it looked like they had been hit,
Speaker 1: they had been harmed, and I thought that was so fascinating.
Speaker 1: And then they let us shake it off, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, man, if your representation of money that
Speaker 1: you feel in your body is closed off, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of scared whatever, I don't know, might be hard
Speaker 1: for you to earn it. So I think for some reason,
Speaker 1: being in finance helped me realize. You guys, if you
Speaker 1: met some of the guys who were worth a hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars that I did in finance, you go, I
Speaker 1: could do that too, Like that guy did it really,
Speaker 1: And so I think once you meet a bunch of
Speaker 1: those people, you go, oh, like this isn't this isn't
Speaker 1: as impossible as people say it is. And so I
Speaker 1: learn a lot from not seeing people achieve it and
Speaker 1: going how could they? How could they? It's instead going wow,
Speaker 1: that guy didn't want to think if you could do it,
Speaker 1: I could do it too, And that taught me to
Speaker 1: keep going Okay, he did it.
Speaker 2: He did it.
Speaker 1: And it's like arms, arms would raise, arms would raise.
Speaker 1: And so maybe that's what I would try to tell people.
Speaker 1: It's like every time you see somebody that has a
Speaker 1: lot of money and you see the humanity in them,
Speaker 1: just remember like we're all kind of the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you can, now, don't get me wrong, intelligence levels, network,
Speaker 1: how you're born, where you're born, real things. But if
Speaker 1: you're living in a first world country in today's day
Speaker 1: and age, with the Internet and what we have at
Speaker 1: our fingertips, I think you're in a better position than
Speaker 1: you've ever been in order to make a lot of
Speaker 1: money today. And I promise you only one thing, which
Speaker 1: is you'll make less money if you think you will.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wanted you to talk about the difference between
Speaker 2: what you just said and how we cultivate that mindset
Speaker 2: because you're so right I know a lot of people,
Speaker 2: a lot of friends as well. They'll look at someone
Speaker 2: who's doing well for themselves and they'll be like, that
Speaker 2: guy's so dumb le I could do that. I could
Speaker 2: do that with my clothes, but it's actually in a
Speaker 2: condescending way to that person, rather than oh that guy
Speaker 2: can do it, Oh great, okay, well I've got this
Speaker 2: sko I went, I can do it, you know. And
Speaker 2: so what is that mindset shift? Because I think we're
Speaker 2: good at looking at other people, but often we eat
Speaker 2: the full prey to being envious instead of studious of them,
Speaker 2: Like instead of envy, instead of studying them, we envy them,
Speaker 2: or we end up being condescending of them of like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, he's not even that small. Well they're not
Speaker 2: even it's not even that great, right, we kind of
Speaker 2: justify that. So how do you shift that? Because I
Speaker 2: think that's at the core of what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I fall pray to
Speaker 1: all of these things too. I still to this day
Speaker 1: play the game of comparison like they're doing that. Come on, team,
Speaker 1: where are we going?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I do it me too, sure, And I wish I didn't,
Speaker 1: but I still do. But I do think cash loves curiosity.
Speaker 1: If you remember anything else, it's that money is really
Speaker 1: attracted to the type of human that keeps asking questions.
Speaker 1: You don't actually have to know the answers. Often to
Speaker 1: make money, you need to ask the right questions. So
Speaker 1: I kind of trained myself every time I saw somebody
Speaker 1: with money, or I got to know somebody with money,
Speaker 1: I didn't need to know anything else besides, like, can
Speaker 1: I just ask them a lot of questions continuously? And
Speaker 1: it was funny because I was talking to I think
Speaker 1: another mutual friend of ours, Jesse Eisler, the other day,
Speaker 1: and Jesse talks about how he used to go to
Speaker 1: a hotel here and he would just ask questions in
Speaker 1: the lobby or at the lunch table. He was like
Speaker 1: living not in a nice place, he had no cash whatsoever,
Speaker 1: but when he saw people that he thought looked rich
Speaker 1: or interesting, he would just ask them questions. And I
Speaker 1: think with the Internet, sometimes we think that questions don't
Speaker 1: matter anymore, and we go to the internet to get answers,
Speaker 1: and if instead you can make a human connection and
Speaker 1: get curious about them, they'll give things to you. And
Speaker 1: so one of my I played a game when I
Speaker 1: was really young, which is I kind of started collecting
Speaker 1: mentors who never knew they were my mentor. And I
Speaker 1: think this is a really clever thing to do. And
Speaker 1: I remember one in particular, Bob Kendall, and BKA is
Speaker 1: what we call him. He was super high up at
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was gold Men or Credits
Speaker 1: Suite at the time, one of the companies, and he
Speaker 1: was so like out of my range, like you know
Speaker 1: when somebody else is in a company, and I was
Speaker 1: basically the intern and he was the big dog. But
Speaker 1: I got a couple of chances to interact with him,
Speaker 1: and I would just ask him questions, like very simple
Speaker 1: ones like oh, you just took over this area of
Speaker 1: the business, like why what did you see there as
Speaker 1: opposed to this other area where a lot of people
Speaker 1: are going. I would just kind of beque curious. And
Speaker 1: then I would do a thing that I think probably
Speaker 1: helped me make more mentors than anything else, which is
Speaker 1: I would get their contact information. I would never ask
Speaker 1: them for anything. I would largely just say, Hey, that
Speaker 1: piece of advice that you gave me the other day
Speaker 1: that was really useful and I applied it this way,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing that. Or i'd see if his
Speaker 1: name was written somewhere he had done a research paper
Speaker 1: or something. I might send it to him, like with
Speaker 1: a couple highlighted things like these lines were incredible, Thank
Speaker 1: you for doing that. Then after I had done that
Speaker 1: a few times, I might give them one question like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking about going into marketing or sales,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to figure out how do you decide
Speaker 1: which career path is more interesting to you? Do you
Speaker 1: have just like a one sentence about it, or do
Speaker 1: you have one book that you'd like to read, like
Speaker 1: really short? And I remember I sat down with BK
Speaker 1: years and he was like, you know the funny thing
Speaker 1: about you? And I was like, oh, what you know?
Speaker 1: And he was like, you like somehow made me your
Speaker 1: mentor but you never asked. And then I started caring
Speaker 1: about what happened to your career but I kind of
Speaker 1: never meant to, which is like a very aspergerzy finance
Speaker 1: thing to do. And he's like, did you do that
Speaker 1: on purpose? And I was like, I get, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was young then, so I don't know,
Speaker 1: but maybe that tiny transfer of Hey, I have advice
Speaker 1: and somebody actually takes it, uses it, continuously wants nothing
Speaker 1: from me for it, and then gives me a positive
Speaker 1: feedback loop that I'm making change on their life is
Speaker 1: so rare, so right.
Speaker 2: That's genius. That's actually the best mentorship advice I think
Speaker 2: I've ever heard, because I think so many of us
Speaker 2: when we want someone to be a mentor, the fast
Speaker 2: mistake is we asked them to be honest.
Speaker 1: I don't do that. That also makes me die on
Speaker 1: the inside. If somebody asked me that, I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: such a huge responsibility.
Speaker 2: What if I you up exactly? What if I don't
Speaker 2: have time? If I can't respond, like that's that's the
Speaker 2: natural reaction. And same with me. I've always had ment
Speaker 2: was that don't know their my mentors. It's the only way.
Speaker 2: But what I love about your advice, which I've never
Speaker 2: ever heard before, is also how you ask for advice.
Speaker 2: I think this is second mistake. So the first mistake
Speaker 2: we say is can you be my mentor?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: The second mistake we make is we send a whole
Speaker 2: life story with one like really big profound question. So
Speaker 2: it's like I went from this then I did this,
Speaker 2: then I dropped out, then I did this, then I
Speaker 2: did this. How do I discover my purpose? And it's
Speaker 2: like and it's like the person on the other side
Speaker 2: has no idea how to compute all of that algorithmically
Speaker 2: and give you a really profound answer back that they
Speaker 2: genuinely be will help you, which means they probably won't respond,
Speaker 2: or if they don't respond, it will be extremely short,
Speaker 2: and then you feel disgruntled and upset that they didn't
Speaker 2: value your whole life story, and then now you probably
Speaker 2: lose touch. Whereas your advice was just so perfect because
Speaker 2: the idea that you were sending them their own work
Speaker 2: with a couple of highlights, one sentence question, one piece
Speaker 2: of insight, and then that person, like you said, becomes
Speaker 2: invested in your life. Such great advice, Cody, I've really,
Speaker 2: really mean that. I've never had mentorship advice better than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it worked for me. And I also
Speaker 1: think the other piece of advice that was useful. I
Speaker 1: never went for like the top dog. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I would never go to the president of Goldman Lloyd
Speaker 1: blank Figon back in the day and be like LLRD,
Speaker 1: the thing is, talk to me, can I have your email,
Speaker 1: of course, not I would go to like one or
Speaker 1: two levels past what was comfortable for me. Right, So
Speaker 1: it was like I could still get to the person,
Speaker 1: and then you can use it as like a leap frog.
Speaker 1: And the last thing I'll say is I totally disagree
Speaker 1: with the advice today that a lot of like kind
Speaker 1: of well known people give, which is, once you outgrow people,
Speaker 1: leave them behind you, you know, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people say like, well they were my mentor, but I've
Speaker 1: superseded on my mentors. Oh no, yeah, And I hear
Speaker 1: that often from like the business community. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like you're the average of the five people you surround
Speaker 1: yourself with, so make sure there are awesome and it's
Speaker 1: like yeah, but also don't forget how you got there
Speaker 1: because you never know. Mentorship has like multi layers to it.
Speaker 1: You can get mentored from above but also below, I
Speaker 1: mean your team teaching us beforehand. How do not sound
Speaker 1: like boomers? Right? So, like there's that, you know, you
Speaker 1: can also have somebody that's a higher that like, for instance,
Speaker 1: I think a lot about the idea that like Peter Teal,
Speaker 1: whether you like him or not, really rich guy gives
Speaker 1: money to Mark Zuckerberg, right, whether you like him or not,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg then goes to become richer than Peter Teel.
Speaker 1: Now is Peter mad because Mark made more money than him?
Speaker 1: I highly doubt it, because Mark made Peter a ton
Speaker 1: of money. And at one point, you know, the imbalance
Speaker 1: was Peter was way up here and Mark was down here,
Speaker 1: and now it's probably flipped. And how cool is that that?
Speaker 1: Like somebody who used to be sort of below you,
Speaker 1: you've helped in some way get above you, and then
Speaker 1: you get to like value transitfer the other way. So
Speaker 1: I will say, like, maybe if I gave one other
Speaker 1: piece of advice on mentorship, it would be collect and
Speaker 1: keep with you the people even after you've superseded them,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, and try to be their best mentortely
Speaker 1: like I mean mentee, I always try to like them.
Speaker 1: I want them to be able to brag about me. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: no matter what you teach me, I want to be
Speaker 1: the best mentee to the point that they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: look how smart I am because of that, And I
Speaker 1: want to give them all the credit on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And when you do that, then they introduce you to
Speaker 1: their really successful friends too, So it's a two for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And I want to add what you were
Speaker 2: saying earlier as well, this idea of you have to
Speaker 2: act on the advice. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of requesting of advice, there's a lot of looking for answers,
Speaker 2: but being a great mentee is taking the advice, putting
Speaker 2: it into action, and then reporting the result and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I took your advice. This is as you were saying,
Speaker 2: And I think that's so core to what was different
Speaker 2: about mentorship, where like you're saying, now, in this TikTok
Speaker 2: Instagram world, I think there's just so much advice everywhere
Speaker 2: that we're not really getting the opportunity to digest it,
Speaker 2: put it into practice, and then report on it as well.
Speaker 2: And I love your idea of gratitude. I mean, I
Speaker 2: remember when I joined the company as an intern years ago,
Speaker 2: and I was only there for like a summer internship,
Speaker 2: but they put up the pictures of the founders of
Speaker 2: the company and then they were like, yeah, but we
Speaker 2: don't care about them, the old guys anyway, And I
Speaker 2: remember realized, like I was just like, wow, that's really
Speaker 2: ungrateful because none of us would be here right now
Speaker 2: if it wasn't for them. And yes, they're not alive anymore,
Speaker 2: and yes that was a long time ago, but I
Speaker 2: fully agree with you that. And also, you just don't
Speaker 2: know when you're on the way up when you're on
Speaker 2: the way down. Your mentors, generally, if they're older than
Speaker 2: you in the beginning, even if you become more successful
Speaker 2: than them materially, I believe they have so much more
Speaker 2: spiritual wisdom to give you over time. Like I've got
Speaker 2: mentors same way who helped me out when I was
Speaker 2: in my late twenties, and today there's so much more
Speaker 2: helpful when they talk to me about what it feels
Speaker 2: like being a dad, Like I'm not a dad right now,
Speaker 2: but he's been a dad and his kids are in
Speaker 2: their mid twenties and he has a great relationship with them.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm not there at that level. So mentorship
Speaker 2: also takes across not just financial, but relationships, you know, emotionally, mentally,
Speaker 2: there's so many other areas. Oh yeah, so leaving someone
Speaker 2: behind his terrible advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, And you know it's one thing if
Speaker 1: somebody's negative or they're unhelpful, which I still believe very much.
Speaker 1: So like Arthur Brooks, who I just think so highly of.
Speaker 1: And I remember back before I knew him as a
Speaker 1: friend and I was just a fan. Last time I
Speaker 1: was in New York with him, he I was having like,
Speaker 1: you know, what somebody's mean to you online? Does that
Speaker 1: ever happened to you? Probably sometimes, of course. Well there
Speaker 1: was one person that was like really mean and I
Speaker 1: don't know why it got to me. Somehow it bothered me.
Speaker 1: And you know, this was a while ago, and I
Speaker 1: remember telling him for some reason. And often it only
Speaker 1: bothers me if I feel like there's a kernel of
Speaker 1: truth to it. So if they like really nail my
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome, or they really nail like, you know, is
Speaker 1: she as smart as she thinks? She like something that
Speaker 1: I'm like that I worry about too. If they get that,
Speaker 1: I'm like, dang it, I'm paying attention now. That's not good.
Speaker 1: But I remember I said to him, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just bothered and I want to do something about it.
Speaker 1: And he was like, are you going to listen to me?
Speaker 1: And I was like, maybe, what what are you going
Speaker 1: to tell me to do? And he's like, I want
Speaker 1: you too, picture this guy having all the success in
Speaker 1: the world. I want you to wish him so much. Well,
Speaker 1: it becomes like a bit bizarre, and I want you
Speaker 1: to actually feel it. And again I'm not that touchy feeling.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty spreadsheety. So when he told me that, I'm like, fine,
Speaker 1: but like, I don't think there's going to be an
Speaker 1: outcome here like that. And he's a wonky, very smart guy,
Speaker 1: so it's not anyway. So I did it, and I
Speaker 1: like really thought about it. I was like walking in
Speaker 1: New York, and I was like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: do wish this guy well, because I bet it is
Speaker 1: sad if you are, like, if you're in a place
Speaker 1: where all you're doing is hating on somebody online all
Speaker 1: the time, I bet you are kind of sad. So
Speaker 1: I started like empathizing with him and thinking about it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Not two weeks later, the guy does a public apology
Speaker 1: for like and does this long dm to me. You know,
Speaker 1: my husband has like a long memory, so it's like, not,
Speaker 1: you know, let's get that guy. But I was like,
Speaker 1: I just learned such a lesson and maybe it doesn't
Speaker 1: always work like that, and maybe there's still me in you.
Speaker 1: Later but I really think sometimes you learn just as
Speaker 1: much from your haters as you do from your mentors,
Speaker 1: and so don't underestimate not only the same where we
Speaker 1: kind of get all hot and bothered, like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't got hate, you're not doing anything maybe,
Speaker 1: but also, wow, you can learn a lot from the
Speaker 1: type of feelings you get when people doubt you. And
Speaker 1: I think that's just as important. And I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: where I was today if I didn't have some big
Speaker 1: haters that I felt like I needed to prove wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, I want to dive into the heart
Speaker 2: of this book because what made it so unique for
Speaker 2: me is I don't think I've ever heard anyone really
Speaker 2: talk about buying ordinary businesses. And that's the crux of
Speaker 2: so much of your work and why it's different and
Speaker 2: how you're getting people to think differently about ownership. You
Speaker 2: had this video that I remember watching that got like
Speaker 2: eleven million views talking about this vending machine business, like,
Speaker 2: what are some of the most unusual businesses you've seen
Speaker 2: people make money from? Because I think it goes back
Speaker 2: to what we were speaking about earlier. We're all after this sexy,
Speaker 2: shiny money and most people are making loads of money
Speaker 2: through really un sexy random things, vending machines being a
Speaker 2: case in point. Walk us through some of us unusual businesses.
Speaker 2: You've discovered people making money.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's do it. And also realized first like most
Speaker 1: of the people who are really shiny on the internet
Speaker 1: don't actually make much money. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: celebrities make no money. And you know this all too
Speaker 1: well being here. There's a lot of show and it's
Speaker 1: actually quite hard to make money in the shiny things.
Speaker 1: The richest guy you know probably started a landscaping or
Speaker 1: sprinkler head company. In fact, that was the case for
Speaker 1: my family when I was growing up. I meant I
Speaker 1: interned for a woman who is my brother's friend's mom,
Speaker 1: and they were worth what I thought was a bajillion
Speaker 1: dollars back then, and it was from an equipment rental company,
Speaker 1: so this guy was worth somewhere near fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: From one idea, I buy some landscaping equipment, some tractors,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and I don't sell them, I don't flip them.
Speaker 1: But I realized that construction companies only want to use
Speaker 1: them part time, so I actually rent them out and
Speaker 1: so this guy would make the cost of a piece
Speaker 1: of equipment back inside of ninety days, and so instead
Speaker 1: of getting whatever difference is between him buying the equipment
Speaker 1: and selling it for a little bit more, he would
Speaker 1: make the entire purchase price over every ninety day cycle.
Speaker 1: And I remember, like thinking back the day when I
Speaker 1: saw that you can make money doing anything, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you probably make it more often in the things that
Speaker 1: nobody thinks about because you have less competition, because it
Speaker 1: also sounds really boring, and you know, the Mark zucker
Speaker 1: brote Bergs and brilliant minds of the world, they don't
Speaker 1: want to mess around with equipment rental. But people like
Speaker 1: me who are maybe like kind of smart but not
Speaker 1: that smart, could make a lot of money doing it.
Speaker 1: And so there are three types of businesses that I
Speaker 1: obsess about. I call them overarchingly mainStreet businesses. So the ideas, basically,
Speaker 1: what if all the money is actually made in community
Speaker 1: businesses that we use every single day. Your roofing company,
Speaker 1: your podcast production company, you send outsourced editing clips too.
Speaker 1: You know the cobbler that actually cleans up shoes on
Speaker 1: the corner store. All of these businesses. When you see
Speaker 1: that they've been in business for thirty years. It's not
Speaker 1: because they were making money or because they were losing money.
Speaker 1: And it's not because they got venture capital, because they didn't.
Speaker 1: So these things actually are profitable, which is kind of rare,
Speaker 1: so main street businesses. And then underneath it, I call
Speaker 1: them three different types. The first one is the gateway
Speaker 1: drug business, which basically I use that as a little
Speaker 1: bit of a joke, but it's like a vending machine. Well,
Speaker 1: everybody understands how a venue machine works, right, You get
Speaker 1: the machine, you take the cash out, you input the things.
Speaker 1: It's a straightforward business. It doesn't need a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a great place for like young
Speaker 1: people to start because you learn the game of business.
Speaker 1: A similar one might be what I call a people
Speaker 1: light business, which might be like a laundromat. So a
Speaker 1: laundromat is like, in some ways a slightly bigger venue machine. Right,
Speaker 1: you put clothes in, the clothes get washed, you take
Speaker 1: the clothes out, you put coins in and return, right.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't have a lot of employees, and they're
Speaker 1: not super super expensive on the scale of it, and
Speaker 1: so you go, okay, we got gateway drug businesses. We
Speaker 1: got asked, we've got people light businesses, and then finally
Speaker 1: we get into what I call the trades businesses overall
Speaker 1: or boring businesses. And these are things like we own
Speaker 1: a company called Resi Brands that has a window cleaning
Speaker 1: company called Pinks, a roofing company, a painting company called
Speaker 1: that One Painter. And what's wild is with these businesses.
Speaker 1: If you were to look right now jay At, like
Speaker 1: the Forbes one hundred list of the richest people in
Speaker 1: the world, and you were to see what they made
Speaker 1: their money from. They're not celebrities, they're not singing songs,
Speaker 1: they're not doing YouTube like, we're not even touching the
Speaker 1: amount of wealth they have. What do most of them
Speaker 1: have in common more than anything else, finance and business ownership,
Speaker 1: and the businesses they own are largely boring businesses. Richest
Speaker 1: woman in the World Kim Kardashian no roofing magnet, literally
Speaker 1: the richest woman in the world. This was as of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, so we should see if the numbers
Speaker 1: are updated. But is a woman who started a very
Speaker 1: large roofing company. And so, you know, I wish somebody
Speaker 1: told us this when we were younger because instead, you
Speaker 1: know who knows this, the private equity guys. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean to villainize anybody I was in private equity.
Speaker 1: I know plenty of good people in that industry, but again,
Speaker 1: centralization of power. Private equity companies in two thousand owned
Speaker 1: four percent of the companies in the US. Now they
Speaker 1: own twenty percent. It's almost one out of every four
Speaker 1: companies in the US is owned by private equity. You
Speaker 1: know what they're buying, like crazy, the trades, the service businesses,
Speaker 1: the boring businesses, the print money that service our community.
Speaker 1: And I think this is our chance to take those
Speaker 1: things back.
Speaker 2: You're literally opening up a whole new doorway for people,
Speaker 2: like I don't think I've ever even thought about it,
Speaker 2: Like it's so far off from what I think we
Speaker 2: were all trained to believe would make a successful, safe, stable, wealthy.
Speaker 2: You're not thinking about these areas, and therefore, like you said,
Speaker 2: they're not very competitive. There's not a lot of new
Speaker 2: entrants in there. When I hear you say that, the
Speaker 2: thing that comes to my mind is what skills and
Speaker 2: talents to people need to be able to run those businesses.
Speaker 2: How much industry knowledge do they need? What business skills
Speaker 2: are core and important, because I think the mistake is
Speaker 2: again with the kind of world we live in right now,
Speaker 2: someone goes, I love what Cody saying. I get it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go buy vending machines, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden you've got a garage full of like
Speaker 2: twenty vending machines and you don't what to do with
Speaker 2: them because you don't understand business. So what core business
Speaker 2: skills are needed and what should we be developing in
Speaker 2: order to run any of these businesses? How much industry
Speaker 2: knowledge do we need?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. Well, first of all, what
Speaker 1: I would think about is there's two different things we
Speaker 1: need to know in buying businesses or growing businesses. And
Speaker 1: the first thing is you've got to learn how to
Speaker 1: do deal making and how to actually speak the language
Speaker 1: of money, which is what we talk about in the
Speaker 1: book before you buy a business. So please don't just
Speaker 1: hear me and go buy a business. Read the book
Speaker 1: or go to a free newsletter online, spend a decent
Speaker 1: amount of up front time learning. I promise you'll make
Speaker 1: more money that way, you know. I kind of think
Speaker 1: about sometimes people go, well, why don't I use x
Speaker 1: amount of dollars I have instead of learning, just buying
Speaker 1: the business and I go, Does that ever work out well?
Speaker 1: Where we don't know what we're doing, but we plow
Speaker 1: a bunch of money into it because we want to
Speaker 1: just go do the thing, it doesn't work out, So
Speaker 1: spend your time learning how to execute first. Now that said,
Speaker 1: I really think there's just three key skills that we
Speaker 1: need to learn to grow a business. The first one
Speaker 1: is deal making. We got to understand how to do
Speaker 1: a deal. The second one is really a mixture of
Speaker 1: grit and endurance. So it's actually not tactics, it's how
Speaker 1: hard am I willing to work? What am I willing
Speaker 1: to sacrifice for the things that I want? And for
Speaker 1: how long am I willing to do that? And so
Speaker 1: Angela Duckworth famously University of Pennsylvania popularized grit is the
Speaker 1: most important thing to measure success. So it's basically like
Speaker 1: how much pain can you tolerate? And if you can
Speaker 1: tolerate a lot of pain, turns out you have a
Speaker 1: higher likelihood of making money. Business is really just like
Speaker 1: elongated periods of low level pain. Sometimes you have like
Speaker 1: what's called an acute or like a big jump in pain.
Speaker 1: But for the most part you know this. It's like
Speaker 1: what is what is running a business or starting a business.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, you're looking at your statements pretty much.
Speaker 1: Often you're like messing around with marketing. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like low level pain. And so that's the second point.
Speaker 1: And the third point is actually maybe a little rare too,
Speaker 1: which is just a lot of people obsess on how
Speaker 1: so what skills do I have to have? Exactly? How
Speaker 1: do I start a business? How do I tax? Structure,
Speaker 1: structure at the business? How do I get my first customers?
Speaker 1: All important and good questions, But the real pros know
Speaker 1: you don't ask how you ask who? Who can I
Speaker 1: go to who already has ten thousand hours where I
Speaker 1: can steal their homework. So now in business, if I go, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do our taxes, I go
Speaker 1: find somebody else who has done taxes for us. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you have to pay for them. It
Speaker 1: just means you have to talk to them, and often
Speaker 1: people will help you. And so I am I who second,
Speaker 1: and then the third tier is buy So the really
Speaker 1: really rich when they have a problem, they don't think,
Speaker 1: how do I fix it. They don't think who can
Speaker 1: fix it? They think, how do I buy the solution
Speaker 1: to my problem? Because if I can buy the business,
Speaker 1: if I can buy the solution, then it's almost it's
Speaker 1: a higher guarantee of winning. And so that last one
Speaker 1: is really about your connections. And so I think if
Speaker 1: you understand deal making, you are honest with yourself about
Speaker 1: how much work you're willing to do one where the other,
Speaker 1: and you are willing to ask people for help. I
Speaker 1: think just about anybody can run a business. Now. Can
Speaker 1: anybody run Amazon? No, of course not. Could anybody run
Speaker 1: your businesses which are quite big, No.
Speaker 2: Of course not.
Speaker 1: It's really like the level of skill to the level
Speaker 1: you're at. But we don't say to people, you know, well,
Speaker 1: not anybody could buy an individual apartment apartment and live
Speaker 1: in them. We ask like, what do you want and
Speaker 1: how are you willing to in order to get it?
Speaker 1: So I think the same thing with businesses. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: we have what's called the deal box, which is a
Speaker 1: little slightly technical, but basically the idea is oracle of
Speaker 1: DELFI says, know thyself, right, most important thing we can do?
Speaker 1: And in business you basically want to have your little
Speaker 1: deal box of what you want. So do you want
Speaker 1: income of x amount? Do you want it to be
Speaker 1: located in la? Do you want it to scratch an
Speaker 1: artistic itch and make you money? And you sort of
Speaker 1: fill out this box you know what you want, and
Speaker 1: then again you know the universe. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of times wants to help us out, but we don't
Speaker 1: know what we want. So how is it going to
Speaker 1: help us? Because we can't tell it one way or
Speaker 1: the other. And I think it's the same with business,
Speaker 1: you know, because we could go fifteen ways from sideways on,
Speaker 1: Like we have something called the nine p's, which are
Speaker 1: like the nine ways you scale a business to nine figures.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to stop people. I want them
Speaker 1: to start small and reasonable and know that the biggest
Speaker 1: thing in between you and the thing that you want
Speaker 1: is the knowledge on learning and the language of money,
Speaker 1: on getting after it kind of intensely, and then on
Speaker 1: asking for help. Like if you have those three things,
Speaker 1: you can at least start. And I don't want people
Speaker 1: to stop because they don't have XYZ leadership skill, Like
Speaker 1: I believe in your ability to figure it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you might make some mistakes along the way.
Speaker 1: You will, yeah, sure, yeah, just don't make mistakes. Like,
Speaker 1: the only rule that I really have is don't do
Speaker 1: a deal so big that it can wipe you out. Ye,
Speaker 1: make sure your first deal is reasonable, or you help
Speaker 1: other people bring on risk to level it out. So like,
Speaker 1: if I'm young and I have no cash, should I
Speaker 1: go buy a million dollar business? Of course not? What
Speaker 1: would I do? I might go and I might partner
Speaker 1: with a couple friends, and I might say, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to pool our capital together, Let's buy this
Speaker 1: little business together. If it doesn't work out, it's not
Speaker 1: going to murder us. It's gonna hurt, but we're going
Speaker 1: to learn a lot, and we're gonna diversify our risk
Speaker 1: amongst us, and we're going to do it together. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you partner with your dad, or maybe you partner
Speaker 1: with your dad's friends or your mom's friends or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so don't think that you have to do this
Speaker 1: game of entrepreneurship and acquisition by yourself. You don't. The
Speaker 1: big boys in private equity don't. You don't have to either.
Speaker 2: How do you find someone who wants to sell a business,
Speaker 2: because yeah, I feel like that would be My next
Speaker 2: question of like, how do I even know someone? How
Speaker 2: do I find someone? Because it must be going great
Speaker 2: for them, Why would they sell it to me, especially
Speaker 2: when I maybe know nothing about owning a hair salon
Speaker 2: or vending machines or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: Right, well, you probably already know this. How many people
Speaker 1: offer you businesses or stakes and businesses?
Speaker 2: Now? Yeah, I bet a lot a lot?
Speaker 1: Why Because you have a very high value skill stack.
Speaker 1: That's very evident. People can directly attribute. If I partnered
Speaker 1: with Jay Shetty, then he's probably going to market my stuff.
Speaker 1: He's going to give me brand recognition. There's a high
Speaker 1: level of trust. So there's what's called the trust transference.
Speaker 1: So the higher level of skill you have, the easier
Speaker 1: it is for you to find businesses. In fact, they'll
Speaker 1: often come to you. The thing is, though, when even
Speaker 1: when we have a higher level of skill, we often
Speaker 1: don't really know what to do when it comes to us.
Speaker 1: We don't know how to do zero risk deals to us.
Speaker 1: And so I like learning deal making even if you
Speaker 1: have a ton of skills and a ton of money,
Speaker 1: because you can do a deal that seems unfair, but
Speaker 1: because you recognize your value, the deal is incredibly fair.
Speaker 1: In fact, the richer you are and the more audience
Speaker 1: you have, money you have which I call capital, the
Speaker 1: more coding ability you have aka like tech Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 1: engineering capability or labor you have access to, so employees
Speaker 1: or people that will work with you, the better deals
Speaker 1: you can do. And that's like the two two three
Speaker 1: oh three level. And anybody who's listening who actually has
Speaker 1: access to money and capital, you are crazy if you're
Speaker 1: not thinking about doing deals and learning it because it
Speaker 1: is the ultimate positive form of leverage. So I wish
Speaker 1: that we learned this earlier. This is how so many
Speaker 1: celebrities get screwed by the way, and you know, they
Speaker 1: get screwed because they do a deal, they don't understand
Speaker 1: the terms they signed. Their agent understands the terms they signed,
Speaker 1: Their agent isn't actually insteentive aligned with them long term,
Speaker 1: and so they end up getting screwed. It broke my
Speaker 1: heart when I watch that documentary with Val Kilmer, like,
Speaker 1: oh God, first of all, you would love it. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: The documentary is beautiful. He wrote it, produced it and
Speaker 1: directed it and started it and it's just a beautiful
Speaker 1: piece of art. But also he lost everything. I mean
Speaker 1: he has basically no money now, no way, uh huh.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because of a series of
Speaker 1: deals that he did where other people made it and
Speaker 1: he didn't. And so even if you have a ton
Speaker 1: of money, you got to be really careful about how
Speaker 1: you structure things in order to keep it. And the
Speaker 1: bigger that you get, the bigger target you have. And
Speaker 1: so it's important to think about that. And like the
Speaker 1: Russian proverb trust but verify, which is like trust nobody.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, trust everybody, but verify that they are actually
Speaker 1: on your best terms, which is why I always doesn't
Speaker 1: count unless you've signed on the line that has dotted
Speaker 1: in the words of Alec Baldwin. So if you don't
Speaker 1: have deals coming at you because you don't have massive
Speaker 1: you know, fame or money or whatever like a normal person,
Speaker 1: and then the easiest way is to find deals. It's
Speaker 1: called a nation and private equity. So in private equity,
Speaker 1: if you think about what they do, they go around
Speaker 1: and they cold call small businesses. So they literally will
Speaker 1: cold call a plumbing company up all over the Midwest
Speaker 1: and ask like, hey, you guys want to sell or
Speaker 1: I get them all the time because I own these
Speaker 1: so our small businesses, Hey can we buy your landscaping company?
Speaker 1: So one one way you find deals is called on
Speaker 1: off market deal searching. So you basically turn on what
Speaker 1: I call your reticular activating system, which is basically just
Speaker 1: a system inside of your brain that is trained from
Speaker 1: the African Savannah to say, if I keep repeating this
Speaker 1: thing brain, it means it's important and I might die
Speaker 1: if I don't pay attention to it. And so in
Speaker 1: real life, what happens to you is once you play
Speaker 1: the game of business enough, then once you like deals,
Speaker 1: Like have you ever gone into somebody else's podcast studio?
Speaker 1: And because you probably are obsessed with podcasting, you walk
Speaker 1: in and you're like, hmm, that's an interesting way to
Speaker 1: do that set up. I don't think I would do that.
Speaker 1: Oh I like that they did that. Let's steal that, right.
Speaker 1: Your reticular activating system is so turned onto podcasts that
Speaker 1: you cant help. But notice all around you things you
Speaker 1: would do differently or that you like the same thing
Speaker 1: happens with business and deals. So now when I go
Speaker 1: into like a corner store, or when I go into
Speaker 1: a restaurant, I go or Jim Jim's get me for
Speaker 1: some reason. It's like you have me, you have my
Speaker 1: credit card, you have recurring revenue. I come in here
Speaker 1: every single day, sell me more shit? Why don't you
Speaker 1: sell me more things? You definitely should. And so one
Speaker 1: I will say, as you learn deal making, I can
Speaker 1: promise you only really one thing. When it comes to
Speaker 1: you becoming a better deal maker, your reticular activitying system
Speaker 1: comes on. So what's going to happen in deal finding? Yes,
Speaker 1: you could cold call, just like private equity, but instead
Speaker 1: kind of steep yourself in the type of deal you
Speaker 1: are looking for, steep yourself in what skills you actually have,
Speaker 1: and then you're going to see them all around. You
Speaker 1: won't be able to turn it off. It'll be like
Speaker 1: when you buy a car. All of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: car's all over the place. After you bought it, You're like,
Speaker 1: did everybody was it a sale? No? Your brain starts
Speaker 1: making you notice it. And so the best way to
Speaker 1: find deals is you start just having conversations with guys,
Speaker 1: because again cash Love's curiosity. Every time you go into
Speaker 1: a small business, you just go like, ah, amazing, you go,
Speaker 1: I mean, LA is full of them. You walk into
Speaker 1: a cool retail shop. Oh that's cool, man, this's your store.
Speaker 1: It is I mean probably fifty percent of the time
Speaker 1: it's theirs. And then you say to the guy like,
Speaker 1: how long you been doing this? A while? Do you
Speaker 1: want to keep you want to keep doing this?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How's business going? You guys make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: How long you've been around? Is a kid going to
Speaker 1: take over? Are you going to keep going?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: This is so cool. I love this. Maybe I buy
Speaker 1: a little something, and then maybe I decide I want
Speaker 1: to own one of these businesses with them. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I get to know the owner and I
Speaker 1: start getting into the curiosity where I get them to
Speaker 1: maybe consider that a young hustler who is really aggressive
Speaker 1: might be good for their business.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, No. I had a really interesting experience of
Speaker 2: this last maybe a couple of years ago. I was
Speaker 2: in a store that curates beautiful sets of books, and
Speaker 2: that's not what they do professionally. They sell clothes, but
Speaker 2: they also have books in the store. And I walked
Speaker 2: in there and I was I love, really enjoy books,
Speaker 2: and I enjoy collecting, and so I was looking around
Speaker 2: and these were all like new books. They're all newly
Speaker 2: published the Beautiful and I bought a ton and they
Speaker 2: were just like And then one person at that store
Speaker 2: just said to me, oh, by the way, like, do
Speaker 2: you love books. I was like yeah, And I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm really looking for vintage books though, be cool to
Speaker 2: own some like antique books and things like that. And
Speaker 2: she said, well, oh, there's this random store around the
Speaker 2: corner and it's like a printing press, like an old
Speaker 2: school binding book. But I've seen books in there before
Speaker 2: when you go check it out. So I literally go
Speaker 2: walk into this books and basically, actually, first of all,
Speaker 2: I walk outside. It looks like no one operates it.
Speaker 2: It looks completely run down. You wouldn't walk past it
Speaker 2: and think oh cool shop. You'd walk past it and
Speaker 2: not even you'd think no one, no one's inside it.
Speaker 2: So I'm kind of looking around. I'm like knocking on
Speaker 2: the door just to see I do see some books.
Speaker 2: And this lady opens the door and she's got like
Speaker 2: an old school binding press in there, and old school
Speaker 2: you know, all the old school tools that how books
Speaker 2: were bound in the past. And then she's got this
Speaker 2: bookshelf and I said, oh, I heard you might sell books,
Speaker 2: Like could I take a look, and she was like,
Speaker 2: oh no, I just have these books because I got
Speaker 2: divorced a few years back. My husband owned a bookstore.
Speaker 2: He left me with like fifty thousand books or something crazy,
Speaker 2: and she goes most of them at home, but there's
Speaker 2: probably like I don't know, a thousand yere or whatever
Speaker 2: it is. You can take whatever you want. And I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm happy to pay you, but sure. So
Speaker 2: I spent like two three hours and I was like
Speaker 2: getting really you know, I loved it. It was like it
Speaker 2: was literally like being inside of a secret cave of
Speaker 2: books and I was like finding all this stuff. So
Speaker 2: I got a stack of maybe like twenty books and
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, look, i'd love to pay you
Speaker 2: for them, Like you know, I'm good for it, and
Speaker 2: I'm grateful that you've even allowed me in. And I
Speaker 2: forced her a little bit. She finally took some money,
Speaker 2: and then there was one book while she was going
Speaker 2: through and she's like, I've been looking for this book
Speaker 2: for like five years, and she goes, I can't sell
Speaker 2: this one to you, and I was like sure, like
Speaker 2: I'm never gonna, you know, have it. Whatever. Anyway, I
Speaker 2: come home and I started checking all these books out online.
Speaker 2: They were all worth like at least one hundred dollars each.
Speaker 2: I probably paid like five to ten dollars each for them.
Speaker 2: And it was just a really good example to me
Speaker 2: of like this random place that and I wanted the book,
Speaker 2: so I kept them. But it was just this random
Speaker 2: place that was like this treasure trove of all of
Speaker 2: this great material and had someone wanted to go in
Speaker 2: and buy fifty thousand books and sell them online or
Speaker 2: sell them anywhere, there was a real business there and
Speaker 2: it was a smaller It was a very simple example
Speaker 2: of just how easy it was to come across something
Speaker 2: that that I wouldn't even I wasn't even looking for it.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and you know, it's a funny thing I
Speaker 1: do sometimes. One it's so lovely. And also how happy
Speaker 1: was she probably at the value you found in it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like did you feel like you were taking advantage of her?
Speaker 1: Or did she feel like, Wow, are you sure? Like
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're spending time with me?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely, she was so happy.
Speaker 1: And I think this is something we don't realize because
Speaker 1: our generation is highly transactional. We're a highly transactional generation
Speaker 1: with immediate feedback loops aka social media with a high
Speaker 1: UH status game that we play with a lot of
Speaker 1: attention on us because you get a lot of attention
Speaker 1: when you're young and hungry and moving, but as we
Speaker 1: get older, I mean, women will tell you this all
Speaker 1: the time. They'll warn you that as you get older,
Speaker 1: you become a visible Like a middle aged woman will say, often,
Speaker 1: nobody sees me. And like one of our copywriters, she
Speaker 1: was so lovely, she said a thing to me. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, she died or her blue And I
Speaker 1: was like, Marcella, looks great. Like she's an older woman,
Speaker 1: probably like mid fifties. And I was like, looks great,
Speaker 1: Like you know, what was the impetus? And she's like,
Speaker 1: you know, as you get older, I realized that, like
Speaker 1: nobody would talk to me, and I feel like they
Speaker 1: were looking through me. And she's like, so she's like,
Speaker 1: so I was with my one of my little nieces
Speaker 1: and I we dyed our hair little strips of it
Speaker 1: pink together, and she was like, And I was walking
Speaker 1: across the street and this young man kind of yelled
Speaker 1: over to me and he's like, hey, mama, like the hair.
Speaker 1: And she's like, I can't remember the last time a
Speaker 1: young man talk to me. She's like, so I anytime
Speaker 1: I now feel a little out of it, I die
Speaker 1: my hair blue. And to be fair, like in the past,
Speaker 1: sometimes when I saw people do that, I was like, really,
Speaker 1: what's going on here, Like, what's what's the move? And
Speaker 1: then I realized, oh, like, just because we value something
Speaker 1: one way doesn't mean that everybody else values it the
Speaker 1: other way. And so in order to break your frame
Speaker 1: and to see businesses all around, you don't assume that
Speaker 1: the same things you value other people do. It's like,
Speaker 1: I've never really believed in the Golden rule, which is
Speaker 1: treat others how you want to be treated. It's like
Speaker 1: buy and large, treat them how they want to be
Speaker 1: treated unless that breaks how you want to be treated.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the same with business owners. I
Speaker 1: mean my uncle Eb, which is one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons I started publicly about business talking about businesses online.
Speaker 1: He had a business did a couple million dollars a
Speaker 1: year in revenue and you can it's called eb Holmes Plumbing.
Speaker 1: It was in Phoenix, Arizona, and he got sick with
Speaker 1: cancer and decided he wanted to shut the business down.
Speaker 1: You know, he's in his seventies and was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to be done. And what he didn't know
Speaker 1: at the time is that a business that is doing
Speaker 1: a couple of millions of dollars in revenue and a
Speaker 1: couple of millions of dollars in profit is worth millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. And so this man who spent his life
Speaker 1: building up a plumbing company that probably would have thought, honestly,
Speaker 1: like if he was here, he would say, Cody, I
Speaker 1: couldn't have sold that thing like that. That wasn't really
Speaker 1: you know, it was sort of And this is what
Speaker 1: most baby boomer business owners think. They're like, who's going
Speaker 1: to buy this? Because how many times have you had
Speaker 1: a business where you didn't want to be in it before?
Speaker 1: Have you ever had that before?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Of course, like if you're in a room. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: go out to speaking stages and just for shits and giggles,
Speaker 1: cause people will always go if a business was profitable
Speaker 1: and it was going to continue to be profitable, nobody
Speaker 1: would sell it. And I go, okay, let's play a game.
Speaker 1: Business owners. Raise your hand. Everybody raises her hand, that's
Speaker 1: a business owner. I go, cool, keep them up. If
Speaker 1: you would sell your business at the right price and
Speaker 1: the right terms. If it came along, keep your hand up.
Speaker 1: What happens, everybody's up, not one. If you go down
Speaker 1: and I go liars, I laugh because the truth of
Speaker 1: the matter is, you haven't been in the game long
Speaker 1: enough if you put your hand down. But if you've
Speaker 1: been in the game long enough, you go absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't sell every one of my businesses, but there
Speaker 1: is at some point one business, and if you cove
Speaker 1: he here the right day, maybe I would. So I
Speaker 1: think we have to like change our programming to realize
Speaker 1: all around us, every business has a value. That book
Speaker 1: selling business that shut down. I bet there was a
Speaker 1: value in the lease that they had. It might have
Speaker 1: been in California. Sometimes they have leases that are locked in.
Speaker 1: There could have been value in just the lease contract
Speaker 1: to transfer it. There could have been value in the assets,
Speaker 1: the books. There could have been value in the employees
Speaker 1: because you can do an aqua hire. There could have
Speaker 1: been value in the website listing. What about the Yelp
Speaker 1: and Google reviews? There could have been value in the IP.
Speaker 1: What about the logos and the brand and the name.
Speaker 1: What if they had one of those old school original
Speaker 1: you know, Cody dot com websites before, like we now
Speaker 1: have to have websites that are like four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty two words, right, And so every single business has
Speaker 1: some value. And if you can find the business where
Speaker 1: the value to the owner is not as much as
Speaker 1: the value is to you, and then you got a
Speaker 1: really good deal.
Speaker 2: So I said, Cody, I'm just like, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: so happy that breaking this down for everyone, because I
Speaker 2: think it's such a It's just not what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2: It's not what people are talking about. It's not the
Speaker 2: it's not the and I'm glad because it's not the
Speaker 2: get rich quick solution either. It's not the Hey you
Speaker 2: can be really rich in twelve months and not worry
Speaker 2: about anything, and that kind of thing. I wish, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you wish. And I think I really appreciate you nailing
Speaker 2: it by just saying it's grit, right, that's what's required,
Speaker 2: that's deeply required. What's a skill that you think you
Speaker 2: wish you'd known you had to develop at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the journey, that you learned too late.
Speaker 1: I wish that I didn't have stories to myself about
Speaker 1: me being bad at math and money I think most
Speaker 1: people have a story when they're younger about how bad
Speaker 1: they are at math. I have one that I think
Speaker 1: really messed me up. I was in middle no, no, it
Speaker 1: was high school, was at Arkadia High and I had
Speaker 1: a math teacher, and I wasn't very good at math,
Speaker 1: Like I struggled. I think I might have a little
Speaker 1: bit of dyslexia. I'm not sure, but I just couldn't
Speaker 1: get the numbers to stay in my head correctly, and
Speaker 1: so I was sort of struggling. And I remember one
Speaker 1: day the teacher was getting really frustrated with me, And
Speaker 1: teaching is a hard job, so I get it. But
Speaker 1: he looked at me in front of the class and
Speaker 1: he said, man, I think Helen Keller would have a
Speaker 1: better shot at winning an archery contest than you would
Speaker 1: at winning in finance. And at the time, I was
Speaker 1: like heartbroken about this and like embarrassed, you know, and
Speaker 1: did it in the way teenagers do, just like I
Speaker 1: don't care whatever. But I was like very sad about it.
Speaker 1: And then I love my parents deeply. But my parents
Speaker 1: always used to say to my brother, you're so smart,
Speaker 1: You're so smart. You're so smart, You're so smart. And
Speaker 1: to me, they would always say, you work so hard,
Speaker 1: you work so hard, you work so hard, and at
Speaker 1: the time it was kind of mad, like I'm also smart,
Speaker 1: what about me? And they would always be like, well,
Speaker 1: Cody's not very good at math, in the same way
Speaker 1: that they would say I'm not very good at singing.
Speaker 1: The singing is true, I'm not good at that one.
Speaker 1: But that math thing stuck with me for a long time,
Speaker 1: and so I always thought that it was big and
Speaker 1: hard and scary to be quote unquote good at math.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to making money, the math is
Speaker 1: really simple, guys. And I'm bad at making math, so
Speaker 1: bad that Helen Keller would be better at archerie than
Speaker 1: I am. And so if any part of this skill
Speaker 1: is scaring you, I think it often starts with like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I look at a spreadsheet and I panic.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to calculate something, and I panic.
Speaker 1: I look at a calculator and I panic. And I
Speaker 1: would say, just like, lean into that slightly, because I
Speaker 1: think in finance we do a very sneaky thing, which is,
Speaker 1: I think we try to make it seem really scary
Speaker 1: and hard for the average person to become rich. Why
Speaker 1: Because if it's scary and hard for you to do it,
Speaker 1: guess what I get to do. I get to charge
Speaker 1: a lot of money for it. And so that's why
Speaker 1: most of us take our money, and like, think about
Speaker 1: it for a second. We take our money and we
Speaker 1: give it to other people to take care of. Now,
Speaker 1: when you give your kids to other people to take
Speaker 1: care of, one hundred percent like their opinions about that,
Speaker 1: people say, no, you got to take care of your kids,
Speaker 1: you got to grow your kids. But with wealth, we
Speaker 1: can just say no, no, I don't understand anything. I just
Speaker 1: give it to this guy or year he figures it out.
Speaker 1: That's really not how we should treat money. And so
Speaker 1: the main skill that I think you should think about
Speaker 1: is one of my mentors said to me, money is
Speaker 1: a cruel mistress. She'll leave you if you don't pay
Speaker 1: attention to her. And I think about that a lot, Like,
Speaker 1: just give the money a little attention, give the math
Speaker 1: a little attention. You're more capable than you think you are.
Speaker 1: And it's really not possible to be bad at this
Speaker 1: type of math. So if your head you think I'm
Speaker 1: bad at math, I'm bad at spreadsheets. It's really not possible.
Speaker 1: I'm bad at calculus, but you can figure this stuff out.
Speaker 2: Cody, you are awesome and I love that advice. And
Speaker 2: I think everyone who's listened in what's this episode now
Speaker 2: has a game plan of how to negotiate something at
Speaker 2: their workplace, figure out how to invest in a company
Speaker 2: or a small business, recognize if you're at that place.
Speaker 2: If I just want to get over the fear that
Speaker 2: I'm bad at math, well that money is bad and
Speaker 2: a calm way for everyone to dive into main street Millionaire.
Speaker 2: This is the book that Cody's got out right now.
Speaker 2: I want you to go grab a copy if you've
Speaker 2: enjoyed today's discussion. This is one of those books that
Speaker 2: I hope you read with your friends, share insights. Maybe
Speaker 2: you'll invest in something together, build something together. It's a
Speaker 2: great book to pass on to a family member or
Speaker 2: a friend who's been struggling with money thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Please do not hesitate with this because it's so easy
Speaker 2: to keep pushing money off and keep having it be
Speaker 2: a source of anxiety in your life. And I think
Speaker 2: Cody's broken it down and make it really simple based
Speaker 2: on how to overcome your fears and go create something brilliant.
Speaker 2: So Cody, thank you for putting your heart and soul
Speaker 2: into this work. And we end every episode of On
Speaker 2: Purpose with a final five. These are a fast five
Speaker 2: where you have to answer each question in one word
Speaker 2: to one sentence maximum. So, Cody Sanchez, these are your
Speaker 2: final five. The first question is what is the best
Speaker 2: financial advice you've ever heard or received.
Speaker 1: That other people's money is actually feasible. People think that
Speaker 1: passive income is a lie, that getting other people's money
Speaker 1: is a lie, but they tell you that because they
Speaker 1: are usually the ones on the other side of the coin.
Speaker 1: So if you want to see about other people's money,
Speaker 1: look to private equity and mimic it.
Speaker 2: Let's go off piece for a second on that, because
Speaker 2: I think we didn't touch on that. If you want
Speaker 2: to raise investment for people who want to gain investment,
Speaker 2: maybe you've got a cool new idea, Maybe you've been
Speaker 2: tinkering something, got a deck. What should you have if
Speaker 2: you're going to go and ask for someone's money.
Speaker 1: Oh that's yeah, that's a really good point. It's really simple.
Speaker 1: A couple tactical things. One something called a tear sheet
Speaker 1: or a one sheet. So this is basically like think
Speaker 1: about it like a baseball card with all the stats
Speaker 1: on the baseball card, but for the deal that you're
Speaker 1: going to put So it's like, here's why I think
Speaker 1: it's good. Here's why I think we'll make money. Here's
Speaker 1: what that's based off of. Here's what a summary it is.
Speaker 1: Here's why I'm good at it too, and you should
Speaker 1: invest in me. And here's why I think you should
Speaker 1: be the one to invest. That's called a one sheet
Speaker 1: or a tear sheet. The second one is a pitch deck.
Speaker 1: From Golden I learned something called a three piece, which
Speaker 1: is people process performance, So I do that in all
Speaker 1: my pitch deck, which basically is like why us, Why
Speaker 1: should you bet on us? Because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, if you're asking for somebody's money, it's about
Speaker 1: the opportunity for sure, but it's really like, do I
Speaker 1: want to invest in Jay? Do I believe in Jay?
Speaker 1: And then second is process, so like what is the opportunity,
Speaker 1: what is the way we're structuring this, what are we
Speaker 1: investing in? What is the process by which you're going
Speaker 1: to take our money and go bring it back with friends?
Speaker 1: And then lastly is performance. So if I give you this,
Speaker 1: why do you think that I'm going to make money?
Speaker 1: How much money am I going to make? And why
Speaker 1: should I invest in you instead of all these other things.
Speaker 1: So if you have those two things, that is the
Speaker 1: like typical one on one for raising money.
Speaker 2: Great answer. Now, I think it's really important for people
Speaker 2: to know because I think so many times we just
Speaker 2: kind of turn up and hope.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And I wish people would have told
Speaker 1: me that. It's like sometimes when you have those little
Speaker 1: easy tactics, you're like, Okay, now I feel good. You
Speaker 1: know there's more to it than that, but at least
Speaker 1: you know, like, hey, if I want to drive a car,
Speaker 1: I need the car and I need some gas. So
Speaker 1: now you guys got that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think sometimes were so focused on convincing
Speaker 2: someone that we have the best idea and not focused
Speaker 2: on convincing someone we understand how to execute it. And
Speaker 2: I think anyone who's looking to give you money is
Speaker 2: looking to whether they think you can execute it. Because
Speaker 2: I hear good ideas all the time. The best investors
Speaker 2: in the world hear amazing ideas all the time, and
Speaker 2: ideas are just not the thing that works. Like you know,
Speaker 2: you were talking about like Google was like the twenty
Speaker 2: first search engine, Like they weren't the first search engine.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a unique idea. It was just that they
Speaker 2: had a great way of executing and why they've evolved
Speaker 2: into this mega, mega megabusiness now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Best predictor of future behavior's past behavior. So
Speaker 1: if you can show them you have a history of winning, yeah,
Speaker 1: and even show them some instances where you didn't win,
Speaker 1: why and how, you're never going to replicate that again.
Speaker 1: People are going to bet on the hustler who is
Speaker 1: on a winning streak, you know oftentimes right, You know this,
Speaker 1: if you go to gamble on a game in sports,
Speaker 1: you don't gamble on the person that's have a losing streak.
Speaker 1: Why Because it's actually quite hard to break. And so
Speaker 1: I think also if you can show a history of winning,
Speaker 1: and that's a narrative you can frame, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to get cash to that's great.
Speaker 2: Second question, what is the worst financial advice you've ever
Speaker 2: heard or received?
Speaker 1: That money is scarce and hard to get. If you
Speaker 1: think money is hard and scarce, then you're probably not
Speaker 1: going to get it. And I think people want you
Speaker 1: to think that, and that does not serve you at all.
Speaker 2: Question number three, the best five hundred dollars investment you
Speaker 2: ever made or two.
Speaker 1: Mm. I think this is a little cliche, but health
Speaker 1: and wealth are super tired. And the best money I've
Speaker 1: ever spent are probably two things, a saana and a
Speaker 1: cold plunge. And I know that sounds like super tech
Speaker 1: bro Twitter, but the truth of the matter is is
Speaker 1: that if I can get a little bit more energy
Speaker 1: in the beginning of the day, it seems to carry
Speaker 1: through the rest of my day and make me more money.
Speaker 1: So what your sauna and cold plunges? And I think
Speaker 1: I bought mine on Amazon for literally like a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks each, Then that's money well spent.
Speaker 2: Great question before the biggest waste of money you've ever spent?
Speaker 2: Not the amount, but like something that was all complete waste.
Speaker 1: The biggest mistakes I've ever made are always not things
Speaker 1: I did or bought, but people I chose. It was.
Speaker 1: It's always about the people, the good things, and the
Speaker 1: best things. So be careful those you partner with, spend
Speaker 1: time with, and invest in, and know that those will
Speaker 1: often be the things that give you the most heartache
Speaker 1: or make you the most money.
Speaker 2: Let's side note on that too. How does We talked
Speaker 2: a bit about it before too, But for someone who's
Speaker 2: like thinking about finding the right business partner, knowing whether
Speaker 2: you can trust someone, obviously you never know anything. We
Speaker 2: talked about it, like, how do you set yourself up
Speaker 2: for success? Bey on the negotiation that we discussed.
Speaker 1: I have a couple different rules. One rule is you
Speaker 1: don't get married on the first date. Don't do a
Speaker 1: deal or start a business on the first date, which
Speaker 1: means I have a one year rule. I do not
Speaker 1: get into a long term partnership with anybody that I
Speaker 1: haven't known for at least a year. In business, a
Speaker 1: lot of times there's this, you know, that rosy phase
Speaker 1: you have on your first dating with somebody. You're like,
Speaker 1: the thing is, we're in love and we're meant to be,
Speaker 1: and that about six months later you're like, also, no,
Speaker 1: and so same thing with business partners. Give yourself a
Speaker 1: nice twelve month window. It's hard to hide who you
Speaker 1: are for a year. The second thing when doing business
Speaker 1: deals is when you partner with somebody, you don't actually
Speaker 1: want to partner with somebody that's just like you. It's
Speaker 1: the same with marriage. It's why dating apps are so tough.
Speaker 1: I mean I was talking to Sean rad about that,
Speaker 1: the founder to Tender of the other day. I was like,
Speaker 1: the thing is, you don't realize what you did, but
Speaker 1: you allowed people to self select for people that are
Speaker 1: just like them. And it turns out the statistics all
Speaker 1: show that we do not last in marriages as long
Speaker 1: or relationships as long when our person is just like us.
Speaker 1: They actually we actually have to have this like creative
Speaker 1: difference between the two of us. There's a ying to
Speaker 1: the yang in everything in the universe, and so the
Speaker 1: studies tell us you need two different types in order
Speaker 1: to succeed long term. You can some overlap is necessary, obviously,
Speaker 1: but you don't actually want to date yourself. It's the
Speaker 1: same with a partner. Make sure that if you're a
Speaker 1: great salesperson and a parent with another salesperson, you've got
Speaker 1: a great operational person and a great salesperson. Maybe that works.
Speaker 1: And the last thing about great partnerships is everything else
Speaker 1: is figure outable if there is enough drive. And so,
Speaker 1: but my father says, you can lead a horse to water,
Speaker 1: but you can't make them drink, And so I always
Speaker 1: overoptimize on this idea of desire, like why do you
Speaker 1: want to partner with me? And do I believe that
Speaker 1: that why is so big that we can overcome anyhow?
Speaker 1: And if your why is like I kind of want
Speaker 1: to make a couple dollars on the side, but I
Speaker 1: might do this, but I might do this, but I
Speaker 1: might do this, I call you a tow tepper. You're
Speaker 1: actually not all the way in. You're not fully in
Speaker 1: with me. And so at our company, we just had
Speaker 1: one of these people the other day, a young kid's
Speaker 1: a stud but he came to us and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to do this job with you, but I
Speaker 1: also have these other things. And you know, once you've
Speaker 1: interviewed I've interviewed thousands and thousands of people by now,
Speaker 1: so you know I can kind of get to the
Speaker 1: heart of it. And I remember Tanner was sitting in
Speaker 1: the interview with me, and Tanner's face was just falling
Speaker 1: as he was listening to it because I was kind
Speaker 1: of faireading out a few things, and the young guy
Speaker 1: was like, well, I have this channel and I want
Speaker 1: to grow this and I want to do that. And
Speaker 1: I was like, why do you want to be here? Then? Like,
Speaker 1: if you want to do all those other things like no, no,
Speaker 1: I want to do this too, and we can do
Speaker 1: it all together. And I said, the thing in life
Speaker 1: that I wish somebody had told me earlier is when
Speaker 1: you're starting out, you can never be excellent at multiple
Speaker 1: things at once. Eventually you can have excellence in multiple
Speaker 1: things because you can attract top talent. But in the beginning,
Speaker 1: you're either all in or you are a barely concealed
Speaker 1: series of distractions. And so a partnership make sure they
Speaker 1: are all in and their why is super super big.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they should go find their why and it's not you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, said fifth and final question. If you could
Speaker 2: create one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
Speaker 2: what would it be.
Speaker 1: Oh, God, that's a hard one. Just one one law
Speaker 1: in the world everybody in the world had to follow up.
Speaker 1: How would we We'd have to think legally about some
Speaker 1: of the caveats to this. We want to make sure
Speaker 1: we crafted the language correctly in order to not have
Speaker 1: perverse incentives or second and third order effects. But it
Speaker 1: would be something to the tune of like probably something
Speaker 1: about taxes. It'd be like, don't allow centralization of tax
Speaker 1: power above a certain amount, and the reason why is
Speaker 1: kind of technical, but basically, we want to give as
Speaker 1: much money as possible back to you, the builders. The
Speaker 1: only way that money and thus freedom is created is
Speaker 1: from individual humans who build things. Governments cannot build things.
Speaker 1: Governments can take capital from somewhere else and they can
Speaker 1: allocate it to other things and equalize. And that is
Speaker 1: great and wonderful and necessary. But I would be really
Speaker 1: careful about what I see as core to our society today,
Speaker 1: which is, are we allowing too few of people to
Speaker 1: control two money much of us? And it starts with
Speaker 1: our money. And I know there are lots of other
Speaker 1: things we could care about when it comes to politics,
Speaker 1: and that's very important too. But I was in Argentina
Speaker 1: when they closed my business and made it illegal overnight
Speaker 1: because they nationalized it. And I have seen countries fall
Speaker 1: apart at the floor of tax station and nationalization, and
Speaker 1: so I guess it would be a government is never
Speaker 1: allowed to nationalize, and a government is never allowed to
Speaker 1: overly tax, and every chance we get, let's believe in
Speaker 1: the builder and the individual and not the big huge
Speaker 1: entity like you guys can figure out you don't need
Speaker 1: them all the time.
Speaker 2: I love it. Cody Sanjez the books called Main Street Millionaire.
Speaker 2: Everyone make sure you follow Cody on social media if
Speaker 2: you don't already, subscribe on YouTube, follow on Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker 2: get the book, Cody. I hope you'll come on many,
Speaker 2: many more times. It was amazing talking to you. Honestly,
Speaker 2: You've opened my mind. I'm sure you've blown everyone else's mind.
Speaker 2: And I want to thank you for doing the work
Speaker 2: you do and really appreciate how practical, tactical and access
Speaker 2: that you're making this world of money that's been so
Speaker 2: hidden and kept aside. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, And maybe the only thing can I
Speaker 1: add one thing, audience, of course, the only thing I
Speaker 1: would add is, like anybody who is out there building
Speaker 1: right now, I hope you know how important you are.
Speaker 1: You know it is. It is so critical to have
Speaker 1: builders in this world, and it is so hard, and
Speaker 1: you're never alone, and you are so necessary and without you,
Speaker 1: the world literally stops. And so three percent of Americans
Speaker 1: own a business, three percent. We need more of you
Speaker 1: builders out there in the world, and so everything we
Speaker 1: do is to try to create more humans who have
Speaker 1: skin in the game, who are creating things with your
Speaker 1: beautiful brains and your hands, and like, I'm an awe
Speaker 1: of you. So every time I meet like the laundromat owner,
Speaker 1: the car wash owner, the entrepreneur that's building something inside
Speaker 1: of a business, like I just hope you know there's
Speaker 1: so much dignity in the world and it's because of
Speaker 1: the work you do, and without you, you know, it's
Speaker 1: actually not good to go back to the stone. Like
Speaker 1: we have all the things we have today because of
Speaker 1: each of you, and that includes you and building this business.
Speaker 1: So thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: I just want to say that I've appreciated you so
Speaker 2: deeply offline, and your work online of course speaks for itself.
Speaker 2: It's been so successful in congratulations, and so to be
Speaker 2: able to dive into this theme with you that I
Speaker 2: think is so important for the world right now is
Speaker 2: a real blessing.
Speaker 1: So thank you, well, thank you. I think you know,
Speaker 1: you meet a lot of people in real life that
Speaker 1: you kind of know online and so at a certain point,
Speaker 1: I think you can kind of tell when the human
Speaker 1: is going to match the human and that's what I
Speaker 1: felt with you. So it's cool for the people listening too.
Speaker 1: You got a question everything, and sometimes you meet people
Speaker 1: that you look up to, and you're like, dang it,
Speaker 1: you know, not quite what I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be, and so like real respect to you for that.
Speaker 2: I love it. Thanks Cody. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort
Speaker 2: is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking
Speaker 2: your hidden potential. If you know you want to be
Speaker 2: more and achieve more this year, go check it out
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: You set a goal today, you achieve it in six months,
Speaker 1: and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief.
Speaker 2: There's no sense of meaning and purpose.
Speaker 1: You sort of expected it, and you would have been
Speaker 1: disappointed if it didn't happen.