Unlock Financial Freedom: Secrets From A $50 Million Portfolio - Codie Sanchez

Codie Sanchez 0:00 If you wanna know what the key to happiness is, it's struggle

Ali Abdaal 0:03 This is the thing that I'm not sure about. Hey, friends, and welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where it's my immense pleasure to sit down with authors, entrepreneurs, creators, academics, and other inspiring people, and we find out how they got to where they are and what strategies and tools we can learn from them to help build a life that we love. What you're about to hear is an interview between me and the wonderful Codie Sanchez. Now, Codie has an incredibly inspiring story. She started her career as a journalist covering human trafficking, and she was confronted with extreme violence and the worst of humanity on a daily basis. And then after a few years of that, she made a hard pivot into the world of finance.

Codie Sanchez 0:33 I saw things that, that I don't think most people in the UK or the, the US see. I wanted to understand money. I didn't come from it, but I thought maybe if I understand money, then I could understand this thing called power, and I could help more people have it, but I could also protect myself, too.

Ali Abdaal 0:47 And since entering the world of finance, she's become a partner at a private equity firm, and she's the founder of Contrarian Thinking and Unconventional Acquisitions.

Codie Sanchez 0:54 I buy boring businesses, and what I mean by that is that I buy mom-and-pop businesses all around the US, and then I talk about it on the internet.

Ali Abdaal 1:01 In the conversation, we talk about how most of us, including Codie, don't really have linear career paths, and actually trying different things early on and skill stacking will get you into the best position to be successful, however you define that, further on in life. We talk a lot about hustle culture and this idea between sort of working hard and working smart, and Codie shares her advice for women in the workplace as well.

Codie Sanchez 1:19 I've found it to be a huge benefit that I'm a woman in the workplace. One of my mentors told me something that I thought was kind of true. He's like, "The men that work with you typically either want to father you, friend you, or they wanna fuck you."

Ali Abdaal 1:33 Codie, welcome to the show.

Codie Sanchez 1:35 Thank you.

Ali Abdaal 1:36 How would you describe what you do to people who might not know you?

Codie Sanchez 1:40 I buy boring businesses is usually what I say, unless I'm sitting next to somebody on an airplane, then I just tell them I'm, like, a salesperson so that they... You know, nobody wants to talk on airplanes, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:49 So, so that's, that would be my go-to there. But otherwise, I say I buy boring businesses, and, um, and what I mean by that is that I buy mom-and-pop businesses all around the US, uh, and then I talk about it on the internet, and apparently people find that interesting these days. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:04 Nice. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 2:05 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:05 How, how, how did you, how did you get here? How did, how did you end up wi- winding from starting out as a journalist, is my understanding, to ending up buying boring businesses?

Codie Sanchez 2:14 I don't believe that humans have linear paths, ever. Anyone who has had an interesting career, in my opinion, has had a complete divergent set of experiences. Um, like, I was sitting next to yesterday, so recency bias, this guy Jeffrey Kent, who started Abercrombie & Kent, and he was telling me about, you know, his first business. He ran a safari, and then he sold shoes, and he did all of these unique things that end up skill stacking you to some position where nobody else can be better at it than you. And so thankfully, that was mine. I started off as a journalist, human trafficking coverage along the US-Mexico border. So the cool part about that is it really teaches you context. You know, I saw things that, that I don't think most people in the UK or the, the US see, right? Like, real death and despair and horror and struggle. And I did that for a year when I was still in college, and, and that taught me, one, that I didn't wanna live in that world, that I have a lot of empathy for journalists now because when you are confronted with extreme violence and the worst of humanity, what do you end up doing often? Believe that humans can do the worst. And so I wanted a little bit more of a light instead of to live in the darkness. And, um, and so I moved, as one naturally would, to finance, but really that came because I was going to go into law and politics, similar to you. You were gonna do the doctor thing. Immigrant, of course. My family is immigrants as well, so a lawyer could be reputable. Um, but I realized very quickly that I didn't wanna fight for a living either, and so I was starting to think, "What are the second- and third-order effects of choosing a job?"

Ali Abdaal 3:46 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 3:47 And, uh, I had an incredible professor, international torts, and we sat down one night, and he said, "You know, why do you think that these people you're covering along the US border live such a different life than you?" And the immediate reaction is, "Well, I'm American, and they're Mexican." He's like, "Well, let's stress test that." He's like, "Do you know Mexicans who live incredible and better lives than you?" Of course. Yeah. Sure, I do. So what's the difference? Your last name is Sanchez. Their last name is Sanchez. You have brown hair. They do too. And what we came to is that the difference between humans who have a lot of power and have incredible lives and those who don't is really one thing. It's green, and it's money. And so I wanted to understand money. I didn't come from it. I didn't have a lot of it. I didn't know anything about it, but I thought maybe if I understand money, then I could understand this thing called power, and I could help more people have it, but I could also protect myself too.

Ali Abdaal 4:35 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 4:35 So that's when I started climbing up the rings of finance. But I think without journalism to ask a lot of questions, without the difficulty of seeing real struggle, I wouldn't have wanted to work, you know, 70-hour weeks at Goldman, and so without all of those things, I couldn't have gotten here.

Ali Abdaal 4:51 Was there one specific moment that made you realize that the journalism thing wasn't for you?

Codie Sanchez 4:54 Yeah. Um, there's this woman, uh, her name was Carmelita. She's since passed. But, um, I covered her in a project called, um, Los Abandonados, The Abandoned, and, um, she was elderly and was left behind on the border, which is a very normal happening in the US because they cross as families. They get separated. The coyotes separate them. And so she had been by herself for, like, 10 years. And Ali, if you could imagine, like, the most derelict, you know, multi-story flat in London, just awful location, um, old, neglected, sort of, like, frumpy beds that she was laying in, bedsores, and it's full with, like, hundreds of these elderly people. And so I wrote this story on Carmelita, and she was so cute. She had, like, three teeth. She always wore this little pink beanie. She had a bear. I can't remember what the bear's name was now. A little teddy bear that she kept with her that was from her grandson. And, um, we covered her story, and she got all this press. We won the Howard F. Buffett Award for print journalism. I got a bunch of job offers, and I went back to go give her... We won some prize money, so I gave the prize money to the clinic. She, she wasn't really in her right mind enough to take the money direct. And, uh, and I showed her the prizes, and she was like, "Cariño," which means, like, dear, like, "I-" Now that America knows, this is amazing. Like, you're gonna connect us with our families. You're gonna fix it. And I was like, "Oh, shit. No." Like, America doesn't care, you know?

Ali Abdaal 6:18 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 6:18 Like, Kim Kardashian did something, Britney Spears shaved her head, and you're forgotten. And so that's when I realized, oh, man, I don't wanna just tell people stories. Uh, I wanna try to help people write different ones. And I don't think journalism is always the best way to do that.

Ali Abdaal 6:32 Hmm. Nice.

Ali Abdaal 6:34 So then the switch to finance, how did that, how did that go?

Codie Sanchez 6:36 Well, that really came from a late-night conversation with my professor where, you know, I realized that I wanted to have some impact. It was like my little quarter-life crisis, you know?

Ali Abdaal 6:46 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 6:46 At 21, I'm feeling high and mighty, like one person could change the world. And, uh, and I'm sitting down to speak with him, uh, after we had taken one of our tests, and he was one of those rare teachers, you know, that actually sit down with their students, really wanna know you. I went to Arizona State University, huge school. You know, my classes were 300, 500 people. But this one was small. It was in the honors college. And, um, and I told him, "Well, I think I should go into politics because politics will change things." And he was like, "Who do you think, uh, pays the politicians?" You know? "Who do you think... If you can go down to the basis level, who is the string puller?" And, and his belief, and I think mine was too over, you know, many of these conversations, is that the people with money rule the world. And you can see it. I mean, even if you wanna get crazy conspiracy theorists on either side of the, the aisle, you can see that the big backers are the ones that put candidates in office. And so I thought maybe we just need to get as much money as possible and help other people get money as possible, because then if you, if you have money, you're a lot harder to kill. You're a lot harder to do things to. You're a lot harder to push around, um, because you have options. Uh, and so that's what brought me to finance. And I thought, "Well, well, first I just have to go understand it."

Ali Abdaal 7:57 Hmm. So what was the finance journey, and how did that culminate in, I guess, leaving finance to be a entrepreneur/investor?

Codie Sanchez 8:04 Yeah. Well, I knew nothing about finance, so getting into finance was kind of hard. Um, but I have a theory called get in the game, and basically, I think if you wanna go play a game, you need to, to go where it's played. Like, it's not that confusing or difficult. Most people say they wanna make a career change, and then they send out their resume to a bunch of different sites, and they hope that they get a job. And the best way to do it, in my opinion, is go where people who are experts in the field are playing. So, uh, what I did is I ended up going to a bunch of events and conferences. I went to every finance and money and wealth and investing conference and event I could find. And as a student, there are a bunch that are free, right? So I don't know, I must have gone to 30 of them, 40 of them, and most of them, nothing really happened, but I learned a few things. I got the right words, right? Because every industry has the vernacular. You know that in medicine. And, um, and then one day, I went to an event that I really didn't wanna go to. It was like I had a long day of classes, and I was late, and then I s- I ended up going no matter what. Um, my mom has, has a saying which is, um, "Always show up and then look for the exit." So you can go, note the exit. At any time you can leave, but just step your foot in the door because that's when magic happens, kind of like that line in Tolkien, right? You know? It's a, it's an amazing thing what happens, or it's a dangerous thing what happens when you step one foot outside your door.

Ali Abdaal 9:20 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 9:20 Uh, that was from The Hobbit for you nerds like me who like that. Ali and I were talking Harry Potter, so I was gonna see if I could be cool like him. Um, so, so I went and I listened to this event, and I didn't know anything about anything, but I was curious as a journalist, so I asked a lot of questions. And the woman who sat next to me ended up being a recruiter for a company called Vanguard, which is one of the largest investors, investment firms in the world. And so she, because of all my pestering her, I guess, thought that was unique.

Ali Abdaal 9:49 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 9:49 Everybody loves to hear their own voice. And, uh, and so asked me to interview for their rotational development program. And if you're young, these days everybody tells you to go be an entrepreneur. I actually think you should do the opposite. I think you should go learn on somebody else's dime because Vanguard puts in on average $100,000 worth of training into every new hire. I would never stay at Vanguard. I didn't like the place. Uh, but I loved starting there because they train you. I got licensed, and I got to learn on somebody else's dime. When you come out of college, typically, and especially if you don't go to college, I feel like you have a lot of rough edges. You know, you, you make faux pas constantly in business. You don't know the language or the context, and going to a corporation, I think, actually teaches you a ton. So I'm a big advocate for starting and then go do your own thing. But these days, I feel like everybody wants to be a YouTube star right away, and you've met a lot of young YouTube stars too. Half the time I'm like, "You guys couldn't fucking exist out in the real world for four seconds because, um, you don't have a lot of context for, for what else works in this world of ours."

Ali Abdaal 10:48 Hmm. On that note, so the whole, um, what to do with your career when you're, when you're young, um, one view is y- if you wanna be an entrepreneur, just go straight into it.

Codie Sanchez 10:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 10:57 Where another view is if you wanna be an entrepreneur, you can learn on someone else's dime. Um, I was interviewing someone else on the pod, Dan Priestley, and, and his view was if you wanna be an entrepreneur, uh, learn on someone else's dime, but try and get a job in a company that has fewer than 10 people.

Codie Sanchez 11:10 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 11:10 Because if you work for a big corporate, the, uh, you, you just learn a lot less about the whole business than you would if you were working in, like, a eight-man whatever team where you actually have visibility over revenues, profits, all that kind of stuff.

Codie Sanchez 11:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 11:26 What's your, what's your take on that?

Codie Sanchez 11:27 I, I think I'm of, of two minds. One, I don't think there's only one right path. Do either. I think the smart thing, though, is if you can learn on other people's dime, that's really helpful because you'll never bankrupt yourself while working a salary, right? And so, um, that is a really big safeguard 'cause what I like to, to make sure people don't do is there's a lot of, like, um, hustle porn out there, right?

Ali Abdaal 11:49 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 11:49 Like, sleep on your couch for 47 years and, you know, only eat ramen noodles, and that's okay, but I'm not sure it's necessary. And I also think it's a dangerous road to think that way because, you know, in America, for instance, uh, people on average have less than two weeks of cash on hand. So if we're out there telling people all the time to go risk it all, not everybody makes it. So let's give them, like, a little buffer, you know? And, and it's okay to have a little buffer. Don't let anybody tell you that you have to hustle and focus on the one thing and Gary your V- Gary V your way to success. I don't think you have to, even though I like the guy. Um, so I think you can do either. The one thing I liked about the corporate structure ... is they, they spend, they have so much extra capital that they can spend a lot on you.

Ali Abdaal 12:32 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 12:32 You know in startups, me too. I have like three dimes to rub together.

Ali Abdaal 12:35 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 12:35 You know? Like, I don't, I, training? Are you g- like when somebody asks me do I get training if I come on board, I'm like

Ali Abdaal 12:40 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 12:41 Next company.

Ali Abdaal 12:42 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 12:42 There's no training here. Um, we're too young, we're too small, we don't have time. It's like get in, do whatever you can do. The other thing about startups that's dangerous is they grow so fast if you're at a good one, that if you are not a self-grower, you will be quickly outgrown in a startup. And so I'm sure you've experienced it too. In most of my startups, we've, you know, 3X'd every year. And so if somebody cannot 3X themself in a year, they can't stay in the startup 'cause we're moving too fast. And so you have to be careful, I think, if you go to a startup and you think, "Well, I'm just gonna like learn a little bit as I go." Uh-uh, this is like death by fire hose. And so yes, you can do the eight to 10 company, but if you're the type of person where you need a little bit more time and you wanna, wanna give yourself a bigger barrier between, um, you know, your ability to have to level up immediately in a startup, then I, I like the corporate route. And I'm not saying it's fun. It's awful. I hated working in corporations. It's not fun. But just because it's not fun doesn't mean it's not good.

Ali Abdaal 13:38 Hmm. What were some of the lessons that you took away from those early days at Vanguard?

Codie Sanchez 13:43 Well, Vanguard, I h- I mean, I mean, here goes any chance they ever sponsor us or anything. But Vanguard was the worst. [laughs] I hated that place. But the reason why is it just wasn't a good culture fit for me. Um, I like meritocracies. I wanna be somewhere where, um, the cream rises to the top. If I am working harder than everybody, I can make more money, I can progress. And Vanguard's a little bit like the military. It's like every three years you can move, you can be an individual contributor or you can be a leader. There's not a lot of cross-pollination. They're super rigid. And so for some people, that's amazing. It was awful for me. But the lesson I learned there is, uh, there was this one time, uh, I was brand new to the job, so I was like a year in, and I was right out of college, and I was killing myself for this job because I didn't know anything about finance. And so every day I went in there thinking they're gonna find out that I don't know what I'm doing, and then they're gonna kick me out of this place. And everybody else i- that was part of the program had these fancy degrees. I went to a party school, basically. And so, um, I had this idea, Ali. I, I, I, I really believe in whatever you're bringing, you know, you talked about the fact that you're Pakistani and a doctor, and now you do this stuff online as well, you have this unique amalgamation of skills, right? That not very many other people have. And so I had that at the time in a different way. I was in finance, and I also spoke Spanish and, and was Latino. And they were trying to break into Latin America, and I had this idea for them on how to do that. And so I went and pitched it to my boss, because at the end of our rotational program, um, you got put in different spots. So I was trying to come up with my own job, basically, which is a great way to make more money and do what you like to do, is make your j- boss's job easy. Come up with a solution that you can solve. And, uh, and I came up with this idea, and he was like, "This is actually pretty good. Let me pitch it up the ra- ladder." So he did. They were like, "Great, we're gonna do it. Would you be able to move to do this job?" "Yes, I'm in. I'm breaking my lease. I'm telling my parents. I'm doing all this stuff." Three hours later, he calls me back to his office, and he sits me down kinda like this in a little room, and little one of the little glass rooms, and he's like, um, I'm all excited. I think I'm fucking moving to Latin America. This is gonna be amazing. And he's like, uh, "What do you think your peers think about you?" And I was like, "Uh, no idea. I thought we were talk-- I don't know. What do you mean?" And he's like, uh, "Well, you know, your peers think you would leave dead bodies behind you to get ahead."

Ali Abdaal 16:01 Wow.

Codie Sanchez 16:01 And I was like... And I'm, you know, 21, so I'm like trying not to cry on the, you know, I'm, I don't even know what emotions are going through me. And I'm like, "You're gonna... I, I, I need you to explain a little bit more, Ron. I don't understand what you're saying." And he's like, "You know, we went to run you up the ladder, and this is the feedback, you know, from your peers." And so I just kind of, I was like, "Can you explain to me why? Like, do they mean physically? I'm kinda little. Like, I don't think I could be murdering anybody anytime soon, but okay." And he's like, "Well, for instance, you know, when you're at work, you don't plan any of the lunch parties or the outings like some of the other people do. When they come to your desk, you're very focused. You're not talkative. Like, you don't help them solve their problems." And basically, you know, that duck, how they show the duck, like gliding, but underneath, he's like this, you know, that was me. And so I was just trying to keep up, but what they saw was closed, selfish, self-interested, focused, when what it really was is I was just, I was barely treading water. And that taught me that I never wanna be at a place again where somebody else's perception of me could be the thing that holds me back.

Ali Abdaal 17:03 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 17:03 It had to be my performance. Um, and, and he said that line to me, which is, what is that line everybody always says? It's like, "Perception is reality." And I remember he looked at me and said that, and I said, "That's so ridiculous."

Ali Abdaal 17:17 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 17:17 "It's absolutely not reality." And, uh, but that is true. And so if you're in a big corporation, perception is reality. It is politics gamified. And so you have to play the game, which is something I always was bad at doing.

Ali Abdaal 17:29 Hmm. So what happened next?

Codie Sanchez 17:31 So then, uh, he gave the job actually to somebody. So he took my idea, and he gave it to somebody else in the program, which was crippling for me at the time. And I continued to work for Vanguard, but I immediately put my resume out, you know? I was like, "Nope, not doing this again." And I looked for the opposite of Vanguard, which was Goldman Sachs. [laughs] It's like, where is there a place that couldn't be more of a meritocracy, uh, anywhere else in the world than it was Goldman? And that was right pre-crisis. So I didn't know the world was about to end, and I was gonna go to the place that everybody hated, but that's what I ended up doing.

Ali Abdaal 18:01 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 18:02 And I did, I don't know, 12 or 15 interviews to get into Goldman, and then ended up becoming one of their youngest analysts, which was cool. Female analysts. And, um, and I went and moved there. The interesting part is, like, maybe seven years or eight years later, I ended up, the woman who took that job, uh, that I created, ended up coming to work for me, was my COO at my company two companies ago. And, uh, and then when I exited that company, she became the CEO.

Ali Abdaal 18:28 Oh. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 18:30 So yeah, so it worked out great.

Ali Abdaal 18:31 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 18:31 And, uh, and then I, you know... And, and I had some, like, vengeful feelings for the manager for some time. Um- But then I realized, man, the, the reason that I am where I am at in the world and he is where he's at in the world, which are very different places, are because of your ability to lean in and do the right thing. Like, what he should have done as a manager is, like, coached me through that and explained how we could get the job and figure it out, whatever, and instead he crippled to other people's pressure-

Ali Abdaal 18:57 Mm

Codie Sanchez 18:57 ... which is what happens at corporations. So now he's still a middle manager at Vanguard, and I'm wherever I am now, and I think that's because you have to make the hard choices. And, um, and thankfully he gave me an opportunity to do that.

Ali Abdaal 19:10 One of the things that we've been, we've been talking a lot about recently

Ali Abdaal 19:14 internally within our team is kind of women in the workplace.

Codie Sanchez 19:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 19:18 And unconscious biases and all, and all this stuff.

Codie Sanchez 19:21 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 19:21 Uh, and I recently read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, which I thought was really good.

Codie Sanchez 19:24 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 19:24 Um, how... L- I- if someone is listening to this who either is a woman in the workplace or is working with women in the workpl- workplace, what advice would you, would you share based on your experiences?

Codie Sanchez 19:37 Well, um, a couple things. First and foremost, choose being the victor over being the victim always. And I've found it to be a huge benefit that I'm a woman in the workplace, huge, because I look different than everybody else, especially in finance. Um, I'm much more memorable. Um, you know, I have a different way to engage with people. And so I liked Sheryl's book a lot, too, and I like this idea of, like, you know, I don't know, what if you change the story? What if your story is not the man's out to get me and men are X, Y, Z and we have this conflict in the workforce? What if it- the story is instead I'm incredibly powerful as a woman. Uh, I look a little different than everybody else, and because of that I'm gonna have massive success. And what if all these men could be my advocates? One of my mentors told me something that I thought was kind of, kind of true. He's like, "The men that work with you typically either want to, they want to father you, they want to friend you, or they want to fuck you," right? There's like three types, and you gotta figure out pretty quickly which one of those three they fall into, and then you use that to your advantage. And you know, I did that pretty specifically. If there's a guy who wants to father you, that's amazing. That's a mentor figure, right? And you can lean into that, you know, feeling of like, "Oh, my daughter," or, you know, "I wanna help un- a young woman get along." Great. If they want to be friends with you, then great. You know, you work that angle. And the third are the ones you have to be careful of, but there's also power in that, too. And I think a lot of people today, we want to, like, kill our sexuality in the workforce, and I don't really think that's necessary actually. I think you can be... You can flirt, you know? You can use the natural chemistry that happens between men and women to your advantage, and you can do it in a way that's ethical, and you can do it in a way that's moral, and you can do it within your own personal code and the code of the company. Um, but don't wrap up your power. I mean, I remember when I first started at Vanguard, I cut my hair really short. I have a lot of hair, so I just looked like a mushroom. You know, it was not good for anybody involved. And I barely wore any makeup, and I wore these, like, awful boxy suits, and I thought that I had to, like, become a man to get into the workforce. And it couldn't have been more opposite, you know? I could have been exactly who I wanted to be, um, and that probably would've been more powerful, but it was a lesson I had to learn.

Ali Abdaal 21:52 Hmm. Now that I guess you're,

Ali Abdaal 21:56 you're, you know, running all these companies, investing in all these businesses-

Codie Sanchez 21:59 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 21:59 ... how does being a woman feed into that, if at all? Does it change your approach compared to if you were, let's say, Hormozi, for example?

Codie Sanchez 22:07 Uh, yeah. I mean, I think, I think as a woman there are some truisms, like I try to smile a little bit more. It... You know, I can come off as a little aggressive or too intimidating as a woman. So for instance, we have this sign in my studio which is kind of funny that just says, "Smile, bitch," really big-

Ali Abdaal 22:25 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 22:25 ... like, right in front of the camera, because I get serious. And I think about it, and then I realize, oh my God, in all my videos it's like I'm yelling at everybody all the time. And so, um, I do think that we have to be honest about where we came from as men and women and our natural evolution, which is we were often thought of as nurturing. It's not as normalized for women to be aggressive and, you know, whatever. We-- And so lean into that as opposed to be pissed off about it-

Ali Abdaal 22:49 Hmm

Codie Sanchez 22:49 ... because the world doesn't care either way. And so why would you be mad about something that, uh, will have no effect? Um, and so now I think, you know, for instance, if I was gonna buy your business, Ali, and I was a man, I might buddy up to you. You know, we'd go to the 19th hole and play some golf. We might smoke a cigar. We'd hang out and do Harry Pottery things. Like, you would have, like, a natural thing you're comfortable doing with men. And when I'm a woman, I have to come at it from a little bit different of an angle. So instead of doing that, I might, I might, I might reach out to you and do something in, like, the safe zone, right? So, like, coffee or lunch, but I would be fun about it. I'd be like, "Tell me about you. Like, what's going on? That's cool. What are you wearing?" Like, I'd make jokes. I'd, um, I kind of feel more familiar than I think at Alex Hormozi. If you've met Alex, he's kind of like, "Yes, great."

Ali Abdaal 23:36 Yeah. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 23:37 "Brr, brr, brr." You know, and he's big. And he's actually got a great sense of humor, but his... That would not be great coming from me. You would be like, "She doesn't really like me. What's happening there?" That would be a weird interaction.

Ali Abdaal 23:48 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 23:49 And so recognizing that, it's not flirting, but it's, it's, like, familial, right?

Ali Abdaal 23:53 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 23:54 Um, and so I find with owners especially, most owners are 65-plus years old, so they're of a different generation, right? And so my conversations with them end up falling often into the father category. So it's like, you know, "Tell me about your history. Like, who-- Just how many years have you been running this? 40? That's incredible. Like, what was the moment like when you opened it up? When was the last time that you almost felt like you had to give up on this business because it was so miserable? Did you ever go bankrupt?" Like, and so being really curious with them I think as a woman you can do. And if you did that as a man often, it's almost hard.

Ali Abdaal 24:30 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 24:30 They're like, "No, I never got bankrupt. You got bankrupt?"

Ali Abdaal 24:32 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 24:32 You know? So, like, use your ability as a female to, to be more empathetic.

Ali Abdaal 24:36 Nice. Love it. Those are great advice. Um, so you joined Goldman.

Codie Sanchez 24:40 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 24:40 What was the story at Goldman Sachs?

Codie Sanchez 24:43 Go- I actually loved Goldman in a lot of ways. Um, Goldman has an incredible culture because they know who they are, and they attract the people that they should, and they... What's the opposite of attract? They repel-

Ali Abdaal 24:53 [laughs] Yeah

Codie Sanchez 24:53 ... those that should not be there. And I think that is a hack in business. I'm sure you've found it, uh, with employees, too. You kind of know an archetype of, it's... I don't mean gender or race or any of that. I mean the thinking of a human that will fit well in Ali Abdaal.

Ali Abdaal 25:09 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 25:09 Um, you know, you need somebody that you can trust in your home, right? You need somebody that has, like, a, kind of a kindness to them. You probably couldn't have somebody that was really sharp elbows in here-

Ali Abdaal 25:20 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 25:20 ... bowling everybody around, right? If they only wanted to wear suits, they're not gonna fit for you. And so you have to actually repel the people that would be miserable at your job.

Ali Abdaal 25:27 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 25:28 And, uh, and Goldman's great at that, and so I really liked Goldman for that reason. They cut 20% of the workforce every year, so that's-

Ali Abdaal 25:35 Oh, okay

Codie Sanchez 25:36 ... that's hard.

Ali Abdaal 25:36 [laughs] Wow, okay.

Codie Sanchez 25:37 Yeah. Um, so every year you would... I mean, every day at that place. I think I didn't see the sun for, like, seven months because, uh, I started in Chicago, and so you would get in the office at 7:00. You'd stay. You'd work out at the office. You'd eat at the office. Um, and it was an incredibly intense culture. Um, but I learned so much from it. One of my fa- favorite frameworks from Goldman that I took is, you know, basically, uh, they have a couple different levels of humans at Goldman. But when you're an analyst, you're, you're doing everything, right? There's no... No is not in your vocabulary at that level. And, um, and I had a, a boss, uh, James Yount, who, um, was very intense, former military, and he came in one day and, uh, gave, gave me a few minutes, you know, when he was walking into the office, 'cause I was one of the first people in, and he doesn't usually give anybody a few minutes. That's very rare. And so I said to him, "Hey, I'm new. You know, 30 seconds, can I walk you to your office?" "Yeah, sure, great." Said, "Uh, I'm new. Uh, I don't have a crazy background. I didn't go to Cambridge or whatever. You're sort of similar. You seem like you really pulled up yourself by your bootstraps. Like, two or three things that you think I could do in the first 30 days to differentiate myself. Anything." And he was like, "No, it's one thing." I'm like, "Okay, great." He's like, "Be here earlier, stay later. That's it." And I was like, "Really? Okay." So I just did that for a year. I was just in before anybody else, and I stayed later than anybody else, and I got promoted faster than anybody else.

Ali Abdaal 27:04 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 27:04 And I made more money faster than anybody else. And so, um, what I liked about Goldman is they told you, and it was just like, how much pain can you tolerate? And that tolerating pain for a period up front led to a lifetime of now I don't have to tolerate much pain at all. Like, we get to do this during the day.

Ali Abdaal 27:19 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 27:19 I have a full staff. You know, I get to hang out a lot. You know, we make YouTubes. Like, what a, what a-

Ali Abdaal 27:24 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 27:25 It's, it's unbelievable that we make money doing this, and that was because I, I took, I took a lot of pain early.

Ali Abdaal 27:31 This episode is very kindly brought to you by Huel. I've been using Huel, I've been a paying customer of Huel since 2017 and since my fifth year of medical school when I first discovered it. And basically what it is, if you haven't heard of it, is that it is a meal in a shake. It's got the perfect balance of carbs and fiber and proteins and fat, and it contains 26 different vitamins and minerals. All you do is add water or milk to the powder. Usually I use water. You can shake it up or you can blend it. I prefer to blend. And then it becomes a fantastic option if you're like me and you're kind of busy, and so you don't really have time for breakfast or lunch. My favorite version is the Huel Black Edition. It's absolutely sick. 400 calories. 40 grams of protein for 400 calories. I'm trying to get hench, and it's actually pretty hard to find something that has such a high protein content for such a low-calorie trade-off. 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Anyway, if you're interested in trying out Huel, then head over to huel.com/deepdive. And if you use that URL, A, it really helps me out, but B, you also get a free T-shirt and also a free shaker that comes with your order. So go to huel.com/deepdive. That'll also be linked down in the video description or the show notes, and thank you so much, Huel, for sponsoring this episode. This episode is very kindly brought to you by Trading 212. Now, people ask me all the time for advice about investing, 'cause I've made a bunch of videos about it on the YouTube channel, and my advice for most people is generally invest in broad stock market index funds, which is exactly what you can do completely for free with Trading 212. It's a great app that lets you trade stocks and funds and ETFs and foreign exchange if you really want to. And one of the great things about the app is that if you're new to the world of investing, you can actually invest with fake money. 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And if you use the coupon code ALI, A-L-I, that will give you a totally free share worth up to £100. It's available on iPhone and Android, and you can check it out by typing in Trading 212 into your respective app store. So thank you so much, Trading 212, for sponsoring this episode Do you think it's, uh,

Ali Abdaal 30:58 necessary to take that pain early? Or if in a, in an alternative or in an alternate universe, could you have enjoyed that process while also getting all the benefits from it?

Codie Sanchez 31:10 That's a good question. Like, uh, I, I think I did enjoy the process.

Ali Abdaal 31:13 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 31:13 I think I learned to love pain and struggle.

Ali Abdaal 31:16 Okay.

Codie Sanchez 31:17 And, uh, and there were da- the only thing that was the hard for me is being really, really tired.

Ali Abdaal 31:22 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 31:22 I can see that, why that's a torture tactic because there were days where you had to focus, and I would be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," you know? [laughs] I'm like, "I'm barely here right now." Um, that was really tough. But actually, the long hours working on an interesting problem set is, is not a problem. But I think it is a... And I was just thinking about this this week. I had a tough week this week, stuff going on in the companies, lots of work, no sleeping, and, um, and I was writing about reminding myself, "Why do I keep doing this?"

Ali Abdaal 31:49 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 31:50 I don't technically need to keep doing this. You probably don't technically need to keep doing this. So why? And the reason is because I think that the struggle is a bit of an honor, and I think if you wanna know what the key to happiness is, it's struggle. If you wanna know what the key to wealth is, it's struggle. If you wanna know what the, the key to making a lot of money is, it's struggle. And the more that you can realize that iron actually does sharpen iron, and the more sort of difficult things you can champion and do, the more likely you are to have a successful life. Um, I, I think it's a life hack. It's a secret that these days we don't wanna hear. Now everybody wants, you know, "I wanna do the least and make the most."

Ali Abdaal 32:29 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 32:29 "I wanna hire the least amount of people and have the biggest company. I'm a solo entrepreneur that will never employ anybody, that makes millions on the Internet, and you can do it, too, without any work and four hours a week." Like, that's the thing that we've said we want. And then I think about it for a second, I stand back, and I'm like, "Is that really all we want?" Like, what happened to building empires? What happened to leaving legacies? What are you gonna do in the other 52 hours of your week? And so I don't think you have to struggle forever, but I think periods of struggle make the periods of relaxation really poignant, and with one without the other is like a day without a night. Nobody wants to live in complete pleasure and happiness always-

Ali Abdaal 33:09 Hmm

Codie Sanchez 33:09 ... because it diminishes. And so I do think you need it. I mean, what do you think? Because you went through worse sleep deprivation in medical school than I did.

Ali Abdaal 33:18 Yeah, this is the thing that I'm not sure about. Like, um, I've, I've been looking a lot into this in the process of writing my book, um, where, you know, there's that quote from Muhammad Ali, which is, um, you know, "I thought about quitting, but I said, you know, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a, as a champion.'" And this whole thing of like, "I suffered for 10 years, and then it was worth it at the end of it because I held up a trophy" kind of vibe.

Codie Sanchez 33:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:43 And that has never really sit right with me.

Codie Sanchez 33:46 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 33:46 Because if... You know, it's, when, when I w- when I was, when I was talking to, to Alex Hormozi, he, he s- he said something which I, I, I think about quite a lot, which is that, you know, "When I, when I was, when I was 20, I would've given everything to be a millionaire, and when I was a millionaire, well, I would've given everything to be 20 again." And so usually the, I feel like these periods of struggle when we're young in particular, like, like if we look at the regrets of the dying on the, on the deathbed, basically everyone says, "I wish I hadn't worked so hard." And I think for people who are very driven, there is kind of a default tendency to over-invest in work-

Codie Sanchez 34:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 34:26 ... and under-invest in relationships and health.

Codie Sanchez 34:28 Uh-huh.

Ali Abdaal 34:29 And I know a few people for whom that has screwed them up because they've gotten to their, let's say, mid-30s, 40s, whatever. They've chased the corporate ladder or success in entrepreneurship or whatever they might think that thing might be their whole life, and then they look around and they're like, "Oh, crap, all my friends are married with kids, and I, and I've just been chasing, chasing the green dollars."

Codie Sanchez 34:48 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 34:48 And I wo- I wonder if... Like, the way I've always tried to approach it is, you know, when I was going through med school, building YouTube channel, working as a doctor, it was always around, how can I make this process enjoyable and energizing for myself?

Codie Sanchez 35:01 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 35:01 So that it doesn't feel as if I am struggling or grinding and stuff.

Codie Sanchez 35:05 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:05 And maybe that's that kind of millennial, like, wanting to have their cake and eat it too kind of situation. But when you said ha- ha- whe- when, when you said struggle is happiness, that w- that's where I was like, "Ooh, I'm not sure." I w- I would venture that balance is happiness, and there are periods of struggle certainly because growth comes from struggle almost certainly.

Codie Sanchez 35:27 Uh-huh.

Ali Abdaal 35:27 But then there's the other side of it, which is happiness comes from, you know, having friends to hang out with and taking care of your health and all the, all those things as well. So-

Codie Sanchez 35:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 35:37 ... yeah, I've, I've, yeah. What do you, what do you think?

Codie Sanchez 35:39 Well, I, I think you're right. I think it's important not to assume that struggle can only be in work.

Ali Abdaal 35:44 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 35:44 So I think you're right about that. We talk about something called a th- a third degree human, basically like a third degree black belt, and so we have a, a triadic Contrarian Thinking that's civilize the mind, make savage the body, build the bank account.

Ali Abdaal 35:56 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 35:56 And so the idea is the civilize the mind, make savage the body is an ancient Chinese proverb translated, but basically that, yeah, you want to... How do you civilize the mind? You read incredible things, right? You have interesting conversations. You question things.

Ali Abdaal 36:13 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 36:14 You struggle with that voice inside of your head that's always telling you n- negative perceptions.

Ali Abdaal 36:20 Sure.

Codie Sanchez 36:20 Right? And you try to not tame the beast, but understand it, and that's like one type of struggle, right? And then you have make savage the body, which is a different type of struggle. It's like the struggle to, um, eat well, you know?

Ali Abdaal 36:33 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 36:33 The, the gy- like, I don't know. Like, do you find joy? I find a, a lot of joy in an incredibly hard workout, like a yoga session where you're just dripping sweat, but the music's incredibly difficult. And I, so maybe there are different types of humans too, but I find that when I kind of take it to the edge, that there's this, there's beauty in it. There's, like, beauty in How far can you push your body?

Ali Abdaal 36:58 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 36:58 You know? How far can you push your mind? How much can you create?

Ali Abdaal 37:01 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 37:02 And then maybe that is where happiness kind of strides. The, the bigger issue I, I think I see today is that so many people, [lips smack] so many people seem like they don't have a purpose anymore. And, like, we're a nation of people who w- their deathbed, they say that because they chose a job because of outside me- me- memetic reasons that they stuck with for 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years, or they looked for fast cash and fast rewards and never found it, as opposed to, I don't know about you, but I get so lost in the moments where I'm doing the thing I should be doing.

Ali Abdaal 37:37 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 37:37 You know, when I'm writing really deeply, when I'm thinking really deeply, when I'm having an engaging conversation. But I'm st- like, even right now, I'm like, I'm struggling to think of, how do I say this exactly? But there's like, I'm finding it very interesting.

Ali Abdaal 37:49 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 37:50 You know what would not be interesting? Us talking about the weather, which would be super easy, us watching a mindless TV show. That is so uninteresting to me.

Ali Abdaal 37:57 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 37:57 So maybe we need a better, better definition of struggle.

Ali Abdaal 37:59 Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it because, uh, yeah, as you, as you were describing that, um, the whole sh- you know, sharpening the mind and the body thing, I think, [sighs] it's a... One, one example I often think of is, you, you know, uh, d- during lockdown, I got a PS5. I started to play Horizon Zero Dawn, and I switched it to very hard difficulty. It wasn't quite ultra hard, which is just a bit torturous, but very hard was, like, a good sweet spot-

Codie Sanchez 38:25 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 38:25 ... where my housemate would see me just, like, trying to clear the same bandit camp for about three hours because it was on very hard difficulty and you had to get, get the right, like, headshots to make sure that they don't notice you and all this kind of stuff. And at the end of it, it would be like, "Oh, yes, I'm glad I spent the last three hours on very hard difficulty."

Codie Sanchez 38:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 38:43 I could have breezed through it in five seconds on story mode difficulty, but, like, what, what would be the point of that? Like-

Codie Sanchez 38:48 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 38:49 ... that there is joy to be found in the challenge itself. But at the same time, if... Uh, that's, I think, where the, where the, where, where I think about this idea of balance. You know, that's three hours from, like, I don't know, 8:00 to 11:00 PM while it's lockdown. But, you know, if that was four hours, five hours, six hours, seven hours and the rest of my life is suffering, now I might be struggling on very hard difficulty on Hor- Horizon Zero Dawn or even ultra hard, but I'm unlikely to be particularly happy because the rest of life is not quite in balance.

Codie Sanchez 39:20 Totally.

Ali Abdaal 39:20 And so I kind of think of it as these moments of, moments of challenge. You know, in the, in the, in the book, we've, we, we've got a chapter around play.

Codie Sanchez 39:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 39:28 Like, if you can find a way to approach your work in the spirit of play-

Codie Sanchez 39:30 Yep

Ali Abdaal 39:30 ... which is often with a sense of wonder and curiosity, but a decent sprinkle of challenge as well.

Codie Sanchez 39:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 39:36 That's what makes it fun. And-

Codie Sanchez 39:39 Totally

Ali Abdaal 39:39 ... that's kind of been my approach for, well, since medical school. How do I take this challenge and find a way to make it fun? Or if I'm doing something really boring, how do I apply a challenge to it to make it more fun than it currently is?

Codie Sanchez 39:48 Totally, yeah. I totally agree. I mean, I think, I think we forget sometimes that most humans, if you, if you go to ask, it's one of my favorite games. I do it a lot to Uber drivers. Like, uh, I'll say something like, "You know, what, what was your day like today? Like, what did you..." I just wanna see a different perspective.

Ali Abdaal 40:02 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 40:02 So here in London, I think that's interesting. Like, how many hours you've been driving? What's going on? And then I like to ask them, "When was the last time that you did something so hard you could barely stand it?" And the reason I like to ask that is because, uh, every time I ask myself that, I realize, oh, shoot, it's been a little bit har- longer than I anticipate.

Ali Abdaal 40:19 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 40:20 You know, when was the last time you stayed up all night working on something because you couldn't help but do it, right?

Ali Abdaal 40:25 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 40:25 And when you ask yourself that question, then it makes you push yourself slightly to find those things. And in moments where I haven't done that in six months, let's say, I'll realize, ugh, I have been grinding.

Ali Abdaal 40:36 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 40:36 I've not been struggling. I've just been sort of on a low-level grind-

Ali Abdaal 40:41 Mm

Codie Sanchez 40:41 ... uh, which I think is soul-killing. And oftentimes they'll tell me something really interesting, like, "I just had a baby, you know, three months ago, and I, I never thought I could survive in that moment what was happening." And that was, that was really cool. There's actually this great book called The Men, the Mission, and Me.

Ali Abdaal 40:56 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 40:57 It's about a, a Green Beret, so a Special Forces in the US, and, and, um, he has a line in there that basically says, um, "There is nothing more motivating than a mission you're unsure you can solve." And, uh, I think, I think that's why we're put here as humans.

Ali Abdaal 41:11 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 41:12 Um, but who knows at the end of the day? Might just make me feel better on long nights.

Ali Abdaal 41:16 So you, you said one of the, well, one of the problems might be that people don't, don't have a purpose.

Codie Sanchez 41:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 41:22 Um, what's, what's your

Ali Abdaal 41:25 purpose? What's the thing that's driving you to do all this stuff?

Codie Sanchez 41:27 Yeah. A, a couple things. One time... You know, I think it's really useful if you're wondering what your purpose is, if you're struggling with, am I doing the right thing day in and day out, I like to think about a tombstone and mine. And I remember one time I had a crazy dream, and in the dream I basically walked in the cemetery, as one does, and th- my tombstone came up in front of me. And at the time I was in private equity, and it just said, like, "Managing Director Codie Sanchez." And I was like, "Ugh, gross."

Ali Abdaal 41:54 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 41:54 "What? That's gonna be the legacy? I'm, like, a managing director at a private equity firm? Kill me." And so I think sort of looking at your tombstone, and it doesn't have to be work-related. It could be, you know, father. That might be an incredible thing to have on your tombstone, right? And so, uh, that made me change my perspective. And now I hope the legacy is that we bring more humans into ownership. That's the second I'm d- deal I'm play- idea I'm playing around with, which is I think more humans need skin in the game, uh, in some way, shape, or form. It's the only way to feel like you have, you have ownership in this world. You have something that you are striving for and building. And most people rent their apartments these days or their houses. Most people work at jobs where they don't have equity in it. Only 15% of humans actually own stocks, which would be equity in companies. By and large, we're becoming a nation or a world of renters. When we started, you know, over the last century f- Just finally becoming owners after years of serfdom. And so, um, that is my mission, is I want more human beings to have their little, their little plot of land figuratively or physically, uh, because I think that that changes the way we look at the world. Then we start to become stewards of it, then we start become stewards of our country. You don't burn down the building that you own, right? You fix it. You renovate it. You build on it. So that's what I hope our mission is. I hope at the-- when I'm dead, I hope there's a bunch of people that would never have owned anything and now own something, and they get to pass that on to the next generation. 'Cause otherwise, just the guys at the top own everything. I mean, one out of four houses last year got bought by three companies in the US. Single-family houses. We don't even own our homes anymore, and so that I think needs to change.

Ali Abdaal 43:38 So how much is that the thing that drives you versus, um, you know, I'm-- I s- I struggle with this myself figuring out is it purpose or is it actually money or status or power that are the other, you know-

Codie Sanchez 43:48 Or likes on the Instagrams?

Ali Abdaal 43:49 Yeah, which, you know, s- status. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 43:51 Um-

Ali Abdaal 43:52 And I can convince myself that, yeah, you know, there's likes on Instagram. It's, it's important for my parasocial relationship with my audience, which translates to bottom-line profit. But, like, you know, [laughs] who, who am I kidding? I sometimes ask myself.

Codie Sanchez 44:01 Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy to-- KPIs are just, you know, they're the, the milestones on a map, right, that get you to a final destination. And so a KPI would be something like likes on your Instagram or social media followers. It's very easy for me to get caught up in the daily or weekly numbers 'cause I'm a numbers person. And so I have to be really, really careful that I zoom out. We do something every week at my company called the Weekly What's Up, and basically I zoom out for a 10-minute segment of our, our company meeting where I will talk about something really high level. So I'll share a quote from, like, a, a book like Jocko Willink's about the honor of leadership and how it sucks to be a leader, but it's also incredible. Um, and then I'll talk about a testimonial from somebody who, who we helped. Uh, and so we'll highlight that, and maybe that testimonial is about, like, somebody specifically on the team. So I try to zoom out once a week. But for sure, I think, you know, at the end of the day, we're selfish, self-interested beings that are try- trying to continue to survive. Um, you know, if you look at evolution like that, we, we need to procreate, and we need to survive a certain amount of time. So I think you have to rewire your brain a little bit to not just only focus on you. Um, but there's no doubt about it. I mean, I like the ego of it. Uh, I think it's super fun seeing our videos go viral. I think it's super fun making money. It's a giant scoreboard, and I think that's what money is at the end of the day. The rich I don't think continue to do things for the money. The rich do things because it's a game, and they wanna win on the scoreboard. Um, that's my take for now.

Ali Abdaal 45:32 There's a, there's a book I've been reading, uh, or s- s- started reading called... I think it's called "The Road to Character."

Codie Sanchez 45:38 Oh.

Ali Abdaal 45:38 Um, where-- by David Brooks, I think, where he talks about-

Codie Sanchez 45:41 Ah, I like David

Ali Abdaal 45:42 ... um, like there are resume virtues-

Codie Sanchez 45:46 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 45:46 ... and then there are eulogy virtues.

Codie Sanchez 45:47 Ooh.

Ali Abdaal 45:47 There are the things that you would write on your resume, and then there are the things that people would say at your, uh, at, would, would say at your funeral. And his argument in the book seems to be that the money stuff tends to be not the thing that people would say at your funeral. Um-

Codie Sanchez 46:01 That's true

Ali Abdaal 46:01 ... so how do you think about this bal- Like, a- again, I'm, I'm, I'm asking 'cause this is something that I genuinely think about every day, like this-

Codie Sanchez 46:06 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 46:06 ... this balance between striving for the numbers to go up versus, I don't know, the other things that make up a, a holistic and well-lived life.

Codie Sanchez 46:15 Yeah. Well, my husband and I do, um, we do biannual bucket list trips, and those are typically something difficult. So we're going to, for instance, um, go to Mongolia, uh, on horseback, uh, for 12 days, and we wanna meet with this one tribe, a friend of ours. Um, it's one of the last tribes that rides reindeers, like caribous in Mongolia. And so we're gonna do a thing that's perceivably hard. Um, we're gonna do it together-

Ali Abdaal 46:42 Mm

Codie Sanchez 46:42 ... which I think is really important. And, um, and I think once-- when we do like one or two of those kind of things a year, so I hiked, you know, Mount Baker. We're also gonna go do this exploration with whale sharks with a friend of mine who does National Geographic whale shark tagging.

Ali Abdaal 46:57 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 46:57 And I imagine, uh, that if somebody was to give a eulogy of us at some point, there will be hopefully that we're 70, 80 years old-

Ali Abdaal 47:06 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 47:07 ... doing bizarre things like that.

Ali Abdaal 47:09 Nice.

Codie Sanchez 47:09 Um, and so I think I don't know how to live a really sporadic, spontaneous life. Like, I get so wrapped up in work and doing the daily grind-

Ali Abdaal 47:18 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 47:18 ... maybe like a lot of people do.

Ali Abdaal 47:19 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 47:20 It's hard for me to go do the, the wild things continuously. So there's a very simple thing that seems to work for me, which is just I sort of schedule the ridiculous.

Ali Abdaal 47:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 47:29 And it-- that sounds like you shouldn't do it, but you know, some of my favorite stories to write or, or read about are like Ernest Shackleton, right? Like best-- oh, so good. He wrote the best job description of all time, which was-- you've, you've definitely seen it. It's a little paper cutout, and it basically says, um, [sniffs] uh, "Men needed for a dangerous mission." And it says things like, uh, "Survival unlikely," uh, "Return questionable," you know, "Pain absolute." Um, and he received thousands of people that applied for this job, and I think the reason is because we want that crazy mission, right?

Ali Abdaal 48:08 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 48:08 Like we want to be the Indiana Jones in the next film in some way, shape, or form. And so, um, I don't know how to live a big, huge life-

Ali Abdaal 48:17 Mm

Codie Sanchez 48:17 ... except to have experiences. And so, so I don't know. Do you do anything like that where you try to go on one or two wild adventures a year?

Ali Abdaal 48:25 Less so wild adventures, but more-- So I'm, I'm also a big fan of scheduling the bucket list items.

Codie Sanchez 48:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 48:30 Uh, but my version of a, of a wild adventure was I was like, "Oh, it's on the bucket list to go on a fishing trip."

Codie Sanchez 48:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 48:34 So I went on a fishing trip two weeks ago, and that was very nice. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 48:36 Yeah, I love that.

Ali Abdaal 48:37 Um, but it's not, it's not been as wild.

Codie Sanchez 48:39 What do you want on your eulogy?

Ali Abdaal 48:42 I think, uh, I also, I also thought about the gr- the, the, the tombstone thing a couple years ago, and I landed on good father, good husband, and inspirational teacher.

Codie Sanchez 48:51 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 48:51 And I realized that for me, if I could teach people, that's a thing that I think I would, I would love for people to say at my funeral. Like, yeah, he was a nice guy and all that, nice to his family and friends, blah, blah, blah, but like Yeah, helped. You know, i- if, if I could have the sort of impact on someone that Tim Ferriss had on me through his stuff-

Codie Sanchez 49:10 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 49:11 ... where it nudged me on a completely different kind of life path that I would've been otherwise, then I think that would be pretty sick.

Codie Sanchez 49:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 49:17 Like, if someone leaves their job to start a business because they vibed with my stuff, or someone starts a YouTube channel that takes off because they vibed with my stuff. Like, you know, things like that. Or even someone, you know, does better in their exams because they vibed with my stuff and that helps them kind of live their dreams. That to me is, like, the thing that I wanna do for now.

Codie Sanchez 49:32 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 49:32 So.

Codie Sanchez 49:33 Wait, I have two questions. One, do you care if people perceive you as a nice guy? Is that important to you?

Ali Abdaal 49:39 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 49:40 Why?

Ali Abdaal 49:41 Oh, good question. Why? Why is it important that people perceive me as a nice guy? Probably because I have a fundamental need to be liked [laughs] and admired and appreciated and stuff.

Codie Sanchez 49:56 Yeah, understood.

Ali Abdaal 49:57 And yeah.

Codie Sanchez 49:58 Yeah, I always, I l- I like to double tap on the nice thing-

Ali Abdaal 50:01 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 50:01 ... because I think, I think it's lovely to want to be nice because a world full of assholes doesn't sound good for anybody.

Ali Abdaal 50:08 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 50:08 Nobody wants that. But I've always rather been, I would rather be respected than liked. I would rather, um, my best teachers-

Ali Abdaal 50:18 Mm

Codie Sanchez 50:18 ... weren't just nice, right? They, like, push you a little bit, which maybe you could do in a nice way. So I'm always curious if people... Now, it's hard to not always be perceived as nice because you get a lot of-

Ali Abdaal 50:30 Hmm

Codie Sanchez 50:30 ... pushback on it, and maybe it's a story I'm telling myself too, but I'm always curious on that idea of nice, and does it really matter?

Ali Abdaal 50:37 Hmm. Yeah, 'cause-

Codie Sanchez 50:38 Um, maybe you could be kind, but-

Ali Abdaal 50:41 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 50:41 ... do you have to be nice?

Ali Abdaal 50:42 Yeah, but I think by nice I mean-

Codie Sanchez 50:44 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:44 ... I, I mean kind rather than... Like-

Codie Sanchez 50:46 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:46 ... n- nice has a lot of, like, other things brought up in, like being a doormat and all that kind of stuff-

Codie Sanchez 50:49 Right

Ali Abdaal 50:50 ... is associated with nice.

Codie Sanchez 50:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 50:52 But yeah, when I say nice, I mean it as like a, just a sum of, like, kind, good person-

Codie Sanchez 50:56 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:56 ... thoughtful-

Codie Sanchez 50:57 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:57 ... considerate kinda stuff.

Codie Sanchez 50:59 Yeah. I could-

Ali Abdaal 50:59 Um-

Codie Sanchez 50:59 I mean, I could work on, on all of those things more for sure. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 51:01 I don't know. I think you come across as pretty nice. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 51:04 Um-

Ali Abdaal 51:05 Um

Codie Sanchez 51:05 ... I also was hugely influenced by Tim Ferriss. We're actually in the same group chat with him, and I remember when u- when, you know, our mutual friend Sri put, put us into that, put me into that group chat and I saw that Tim was in it. I was like [gasps] went and texted him. I'm like, "I'm, I'm not gonna do anything weird, but I am so excited," because Tim Ferriss was, I think, one of the first people for a lot of us that made us feel like we could actually architect our lives.

Ali Abdaal 51:28 Mm. Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 51:29 You know, nobody told me that before Tim.

Ali Abdaal 51:30 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 51:31 Uh, everybody was like, "No, no, here's how you do it, and you wear the suit and you do the thing." And then I think he was the first one. It wasn't necessarily that I only wanted to work four hours. It was like, "Oh wait, but I could choose?"

Ali Abdaal 51:39 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 51:40 Uh, so I think that's incredible. And so I, I think the other thing to ponder too, which I think about too, is what do you wanna become known for? And also does it matter, because at the end of the day we'll be dust, completely unremembered-

Ali Abdaal 51:52 Mm

Codie Sanchez 51:52 ... just like the greatest emperors of all time.

Ali Abdaal 51:55 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 51:55 And so I mean, you can't even remember the last name of most of the greatest people who ever ruled the planet. Um, and so at some point I think perhaps none of it matters, uh, but do it anyway.

Ali Abdaal 52:07 Yeah. Nice. [laughs] Finding, yeah. I, I, I kinda think, um, you know, finding, finding joy in the journey.

Codie Sanchez 52:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:15 Um, and having a destination in mind, sure, but recognizing that, like, you know, from all of the people I've spoken to, all the stuff I've read, it's just like no one ever finds happiness at the end of the journey. They find it en route. And so great. Let's try and, you know, coming back to that point of enjoy the, enjoy the present day while we're working towards that destination.

Codie Sanchez 52:34 Agree. Totally.

Ali Abdaal 52:35 Um, so we're in Goldman

Ali Abdaal 52:37 Sachs right now.

Codie Sanchez 52:37 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:38 What, what happened next in, in the career? [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 52:40 Yeah, so after Goldman, um, well basically, so I was, I'm d- I'm divorced and remarried. Uh, but at that time I was dating somebody at Goldman and he was leaving to go to a job in Dallas. So I wanted to really continue the investment banking thing and go to New York and go international. Um, but he was moving and so I ended up moving with him-

Ali Abdaal 53:01 Mm

Codie Sanchez 53:02 ... which maybe is one of the things I regret at some point, but it ended up working out. So I was leaving Goldman. The only option at Goldman was-

Ali Abdaal 53:08 And I'm sorry, can I just double tap on that?

Codie Sanchez 53:09 Please, tell me.

Ali Abdaal 53:10 Uprooting your life for the sake of a relationship.

Codie Sanchez 53:12 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 53:13 What are your thoughts? [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 53:14 Well, I have a bias there, right? Because it didn't work out great.

Ali Abdaal 53:17 Yep.

Codie Sanchez 53:17 Um, so take that with a grain of salt, but I think more important, if you uproot your life for somebody into another life that you want to live, incredible. But I think be really careful about uprooting yourself for another into a life you don't want to live. And so in this instance I had always wanted to work internationally and I had wanted to build big businesses and instead I moved to Dallas, Texas. I get a huge house with a white picket fence and a country club membership. You know, poor guy didn't stand a chance, right?

Ali Abdaal 53:47 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 53:47 Like, that was just not part of the vision of my future-

Ali Abdaal 53:50 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 53:50 ... that I wanted and I think he thought I would change and I thought that he was okay with who I was and, um, and the disconnect lay in there. So, um, now when I think about a relationship like with my husband now, we're very big on, um, what is the vision we both want out of life? It's not just are we compatible as humans and do we like each other, but do we want the same big things?

Ali Abdaal 54:15 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 54:15 Because if you, Ali, really want kids and to live in London and to do XYZ and your person is tied to Bangladesh and wants no children, then it kind of doesn't matter how in love the two of you are because the lives that you want will continue to pull at the seams.

Ali Abdaal 54:29 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 54:30 Um, and so I think be really cautious about this idea of, you know, I'm just really compatible and I'll drop everything for this other human which leads to resentment. At least it did for me.

Ali Abdaal 54:39 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 54:40 So I wouldn't do that again.

Ali Abdaal 54:42 Okay.

Codie Sanchez 54:42 And yet I've moved many times for my husband and we go through cycles, so we'll talk about them. Like for this, for the three-year period we're in right now, this is my cycle. You know, I'm building this business that requires a lot of travel. He travels with me often and we're building it together. For the three-year cycle prior he was in the military and so we had to be based wherever he was based. Um, and so we had this vision of the future that was combined, and even now we work a lot and we s- we try to not use the word sacrifice ever. We say like we make decisions or we prioritize. Um, and we prioritize for the ultimate vision, which is we wanna live this big life and leave this big empire behind us, and we wanna build something so big that our kids can come into it. I'm hiring my father now, I hire a bunch of my friends into the business, and I want to fold our work and our life into one.

Ali Abdaal 55:31 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 55:31 So we're willing to do things to achieve that.

Ali Abdaal 55:34 So you moved to Dallas.

Codie Sanchez 55:36 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 55:36 What happened next?

Codie Sanchez 55:38 So I moved to Dallas, and then if you are listening, for instance, and you want a job really bad, maybe this is a case study for you. So at that time I was at Goldman, and, um, I wasn't that high up. I think I was an associate at the time. And so I wanted to go and run a bigger company, and I wanted to do it, um, inside in the investment realm, and largely I wanted to do it in what's called institutional. So I wanted to sell to big companies, pensions, sovereign wealth funds, whatever. And to get that job, basically, uh, I had to, I had to fly to three different continents

Codie Sanchez 56:14 to interview on my own dime. Um, I got to know every single hiring manager at this company called State Street. Um, I sent like a custom ball signed because I figured out that the manager really liked this one baseball player. I basically, I like smothered them. I just smothered them to a point which the guy finally was just like, "Jesus Christ," like-

Ali Abdaal 56:33 Yeah. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 56:33 "... okay, fine. We'll hire you for something. It's not exactly what you wanted, but we'll hire you." But I got turned down something like four or five times by this company for a, a ton of different roles. But I think what people don't realize is relentless persistence is so rare that if you really want a particular job in a particular company, if you can relentlessly pursue it in a way that feels a little uncomfortable-

Ali Abdaal 56:58 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 56:58 ... um, that would be inappropriate and borderline stalking if you were to do it to a significant other, uh, you can largely get it. And so I got this job at State Street where I headed up, um, one segment of the country and I was selling investments, cash investments to big companies. And then, uh, I left there to go to a company called First... Oh, no, no, no. I wanted to leave there to go to Credit Suisse, which these days maybe not so much, but [laughs] back then it was good. And, uh, and I did the same thing. I basically applied for this job flying to New York, and I flew to London to meet with them. I flew, flew to San Francisco, and I got turned down twice for the job. I got really, really close, and then they said no. And then I got really, really close again, and they said no and gave it to another woman. But the third time they came back to me and they offered me the job.

Ali Abdaal 57:44 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 57:44 And at that point I was like, "Nope," because I got another one at this company called First Trust. But I have never just been given or offered the job or just given or offered the opportunity.

Ali Abdaal 57:54 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 57:54 It's always been, it's always been relatively painful. And so I think if a lot of people could take more permission in the fact that we think that that's okay in entrepreneurship these days, like, yes, just keep going for the clients, keep getting after it. But if you want a traditional job too, you will be in s- I mean, I was making millions of dollars a year, uh, with no risk because I was doing it on a company dime, traveling around the world, learning and engaging with presidents of countries. Um, and, and I was able to do it because nobody else was that relentless in their pursuit. I was much too young to have that job.

Ali Abdaal 58:27 Yeah. Nice. Yeah, this, this is something that, um, you know, in, in Lean In he calls it something about like, uh, tiara complex or something like that where, um, in particular apparently women

Ali Abdaal 58:40 in the workplace feel like if I just put my head down and do a good job, someone will put a tiara on my head and will give me a promotion. And what she says in the book is that like it would be amazing if that were to happen. In, in the real world no one has any time, and everyone is like just doing a zillion different things, so you have to, you have to put yourself out there. Um, and it sounds like that's like sort of to [laughs] an, an insane degree, that's what you did.

Codie Sanchez 59:02 Yes. I like the idea of the tiara complex. I think it's a fine line. You know, these days, uh, people will say things like, "Always ask for what you want." You need to temper the always asking.

Ali Abdaal 59:13 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 59:13 The way that I asked, uh, made it a win-win for everybody, right? I would find problems within the companies and say, "I think I can solve this for you. You know, what are you paying somebody right now? Pay me half." Like, I was always trying to give them such a win that a no would feel wrong.

Ali Abdaal 59:29 Yeah, like a grand slam offer. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 59:30 Right.

Ali Abdaal 59:31 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 59:31 And, uh, and that I think is what is missing from a lot of the asks today. You must get them too. I get DMs constantly. "Can I learn from you?"

Ali Abdaal 59:38 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 59:38 "Can I do this?" And they're very sweet, but they're very selfish actually.

Ali Abdaal 59:42 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 59:42 And so if you wanted to do a good ask, it would have to be something where you have obsessed on that person so much, you know so much about them, that the thing you're gonna offer is so valuable that they would be crazy not to take you up on it.

Ali Abdaal 59:55 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 59:56 Um, and we actually, we have a YouTube video that's coming out. I wonder if it'll be out by then. Maybe Christian's back there. Um, and it's about, it's about this. We basically came up with this idea of we think that, you know, you're one degree away from basically almost any mentor you want in the world, and that they are much easier to get than you could ever imagine, just everybody does it wrong. Because they take a shotgun approach, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:00:18 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:18 So it's DM, DM, DM, DM, DM, DM. Low level, unspecific, non-tailored, non-value added outreach, and they wonder why it doesn't work. When you wanna get a high value target, what do you do? Do you ever shoot at them with a shotgun? No. You have a sniper rifle. You pa- spend a ton of time on the preparation for it. It's called prepping the environment. And you would wanna make sure that the wind direction is correct. You'd wanna make sure the sun is correct. And it's the same thing, I think, when you want something out of life, including mentorship. And so, uh, in this instance, we basically showed three different ways that we take an idea to get in front of somebody, and we make it a reality. And we actually got Christian in front of like somebody that he looks up to, a big podcaster. And, um, and we did it without money, and we did it without networks, and they had to reach out independently. So it is much easier than ever to get a mentor. You just have to treat it like a sniper rifle, never like a shotgun.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:13 Hmm. What do you mean by mentor?

Codie Sanchez 1:01:15 Yeah, that's a good question. I don't like that word that much. But- I think most of the mentors in your life come from, like, one small engagement, right? You sit next to somebody on a plane by accident. I meet you somewhere randomly. We started engaging in DMs on the internet, right? And now I learn from you, actually, on many different things.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:34 Yeah. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:01:34 And so ... Right. And so, and how did it start? It was really low level. So I think it's, it's a bit like, um, it's like a Tinder swipe, right? Or a Bumble swipe. You start by just, like, "Oh, yep, I'm gonna swipe left on you. I'm gonna make a very small engagement."

Ali Abdaal 1:01:48 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:01:48 That might be at a conference. I'm gonna walk up to Ali Abdaal, I'm gonna introduce myself, and I'm gonna say, "Hi, I'm Codie Sanchez. I love your stuff. I'm gonna DM you. I think something might be interesting for you later." And you'd go, "Okay, whatever. Cool. Thanks. Nice to meet you." That's your Tinder swipe. You've shown engagement. Then your second level is going to be when you reach out to them, it should be something really value added with no ask. "Hey, Ali, uh, I saw that you have these videos coming up. I pulled the top 10 best, uh, performing videos for small accounts, but huge viral videos, and I just sent it to you. Here, I hope it's interesting." You'd be like, "Oh, great. Thanks." And then you have a tiny opening. And then you basically are, like, opening the window, opening the window, opening the window-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:27 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 1:02:27 ... until finally you have a relationship, and then the relationship can become a mentorship. But it starts with actually you giving something to that person. Um, and I think there's very easy ways to do that, but people don't wanna spend that much time on one person 'cause they're scared. What if Ali, who I look up to so much, and I try to do this thing, and then it doesn't work?

Ali Abdaal 1:02:44 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:02:44 Uh, but that's a terrible way to think about it. It's what if I could give Ali some value, and wouldn't that be incredible for all the value he gave for me? And if you do that a couple different times, one of them will eventually return it, but you don't have the expectation.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:55 Hmm. Yeah, why do you think people get this so wrong?

Codie Sanchez 1:02:58 Oh, it's easy. You know? It's

Codie Sanchez 1:03:01 so easy to do the little DM outreach, and it's scary. I really give people credit for that. You know, sometimes I like to ask when I meet, like, famous people, um, and, and I know they know another famous person that I actually really look up to, I'll say, like, "What do you think? Do you really like this person? Are they a good, good person?" And the reason why is 'cause if they're not, I don't really wanna meet them.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:19 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:03:19 I don't wanna have that hero fall from high.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:21 Yep.

Codie Sanchez 1:03:22 Right? I would rather just read the book, learn the stuff, great. Um, like, if I met Tim Ferriss, and now I've engaged with him. He's a very nice guy. But if, if I met him and he was terrible-

Ali Abdaal 1:03:32 Mm

Codie Sanchez 1:03:32 ... oh, that'd be so sad-

Ali Abdaal 1:03:33 Yeah. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:03:33 ... wouldn't it? And I think that's how they feel about a lot of us.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:36 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:03:36 They're like, "What if I get this thing and I don't, didn't really, you know, and it doesn't make me happy?"

Ali Abdaal 1:03:41 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:03:41 Uh, "What if I reach out to Ali and he's awful to me?" And so I think it's scary and people are lazy. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:03:46 Mm, nice. So we were, um, so you got this job with First... Was it First?

Codie Sanchez 1:03:52 First Trust.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:52 First Trust. And how did that end up transitioning into what you're, what you're now doing?

Codie Sanchez 1:03:55 That was incredible. So the, the CEO of that company, he hates being on the internet, so he's not gonna like me talking about this, but he's a, he's a billionaire multiple times over. Uh, it's an incredible company. It with a cult-like, uh, atmosphere. I actually don't like the, um, environment very much. It's very bro-y, finance, you know, strippers and whatever. But, uh, he, he himself is probably the best public speaker I've ever seen, and he did a great thing with me. So I met him early on, and I was running a company at the time that was much bigger, like billions and billions of dollars in revenue, my, my division at State Street. And, um, he was just starting in Latin America. He wanted to grow the Latin America business. And I met him, and he's like, "I really would like you to come work for me." And I was like, "How, like, how big is it? What's happening?" He's like, "No, there's nothing there." And I was like, "Jim, you know, no. I run this huge thing. I don't wanna come over here and build this little thing for you. Who are you guys anyways? You're only based in the US. No, thanks." And he was like, "I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen." And I was like, "Okay." He was like, "You're gonna say no, you're gonna say no, you're gonna say no, then you're finally gonna say yes, and it's gonna be the best decision of your life." And I was like, "That's confident."

Ali Abdaal 1:05:02 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:05:03 And then we started engaging, but I'll never forget that. "You're gonna say no, you're gonna say no, you're gonna say no, you're gonna say yes." And he was right. And so he basically taught me the power of building a culture, which I'm sure you've felt it too. Before I ran a business, I thought cul- like, I would never have read a book about culture.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:20 Yeah, no, absolutely not. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:05:21 I would never actually have read a book about leadership-

Ali Abdaal 1:05:23 Mm

Codie Sanchez 1:05:23 ... to be honest. I thought, like, I don't know, I'm over here.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:26 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:05:26 I don't, I don't know. And the more money I've made, the more I realize if you can lead and if you can create culture, you are limitless. If you cannot do those two things, you are very limited. And so actually, we should spend all the time on culture and leadership. There's a, there's a great quote that says, "If you want to te- if you need to build a boat, do not teach your men to go and, um, build planks and build rope. Teach them instead to yearn for the vast and endless sea," right? And it's so true. If you wanna be a successful leader, you actually need to teach your people to yearn for the thing that you want.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:02 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:06:02 You need to teach them that the mission of getting 3 million followers on social and the lives you're gonna change is so big that they should be thinking about it nonstop. Because the difference between an individual contributor who does okay things in life and a leader is really, can you sell a dream so big you replace somebody else's?

Ali Abdaal 1:06:20 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:06:21 That's what it means for somebody to come work for you, a dream so big that it replaces somebody else's. And, uh, and so that's what Jim did to me at First Trust. He sold me a dream so big, even though at that moment it was not big, it was nothing, that he replaced my current reality, actually. And I went to work for him, and I'll never regret that because despite me not really liking the culture and a lot of the managers there, I respect the hell out of him because I learned a lot about, um... There's this line in Dune. Have you read Dune? Oh, Ali, you have to read it.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:53 I g- I've, I think I'm about three hours into the audiobook at the moment. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:06:56 Oh, yeah. The audiobook. Yeah, well.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:58 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:06:59 So, um, there's a line in there that says something about, um, like, "The day is so sweet, um, when the sound of your bees hum." And it, it's one of the dictators, and he's basically talking about at this moment he has his team of people out searching for this guy.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:15 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:07:16 Uh, but I always liked that line because it makes you realize the full power of having a hive of people who are out spreading your gospel or your sermon or your dream. If you actually wanna leave this legacy of leadership, it's not gonna be very big if you just do it by yourself.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:31 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:07:31 You have to have these bees surrounding you out buzzing. And so he taught me that at First Trust, and I stayed there for The longest I've ever stayed at a company, five years, before I started my own private equity firm

Ali Abdaal 1:07:42 One thing that I was intrigued by was a tweet thread that you did, um, in, at the end of 2022. You said, "After 13 years in finance and managing hundreds of millions, here are 21 truths that will make you more money than any business degree." And I wonder if I can just feed you some of these things, and if you can just riff on them, and we'll just see, see where that takes us. Um, so number one, if no one thinks you're crazy, you're too late.

Codie Sanchez 1:08:03 That's... Yes, true. Um, actually, I have a, a guy who's become a mentor of mine. His name is Bill Perkins, and he's a sort of a well-know- he wrote Die with Zero.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:12 Yeah, quite a bit. Love it. Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:08:14 Right. He's a great guy, and, uh, he actually reached out to me, uh, a few times on the internet, and then we invested in a company together. And so I went to his house, and he has this huge compound, it's beautiful, in Austin. And, uh, we're walking along the lake, and he sat down with me and he was like, um, you know, "I really respect everything you're doing. The small business stuff is super interesting." He's like, "But do you think that you have been around small for so long that small has infected your thinking?" And I was like, "Oof, Bill," [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:08:45 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:08:45 "Like, that was tough." And, and he said, you know, "With the amount of views that you guys have and the mission that you guy- guys have, you should be investing in building... You should be bigger than Blackstone. That should be how big your dream is." And he literally texted me. I was in, I was in France yesterday, and I was working on a bunch of different stuff, and he texted me. He'll text me randomly these little things, but basically it was, um, exactly that. It was, um, if you're sharing what you're doing and somebody doesn't roll their eyes or think you're crazy, you're doing it wrong. And, uh, this was obviously way after I did that tweet thread, but I think he's right. Something shifts when you hang out with billionaires. They just have more zeros, and so their aperture is bigger. They realize that a lot more is possible than you do because they've bended the, the world to their will in a lot of ways.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:40 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:09:40 And so I try to live by that, even though sometimes it's painful. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:09:45 [laughs] Nice. Um, the market isn't saturated, your business just sucks.

Codie Sanchez 1:09:51 A lot of these are lessons to myself. Um, and that one's true. I've had multiple businesses. Actually, we had a product at Contrarian Thinking called Cash Flow, and, um, it just wasn't a good product. It was trying to be something to everybody, which makes it nothing to, to no one. And, uh, so if you're struggling in your business, often we say we need more sales. We need more X. If only I had attention. But I try to ask myself, what if it was easy? What would the product look like then? And when I do that, I typically realize, oh, I just have the wrong product, or I have the wrong person, or I have the wrong team.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:24 Hmm. The right relationships are better leverage than money.

Codie Sanchez 1:10:30 True, especially in this day and age. I was, um, [lips smack] I was with one of my friends who is a general partner at, at Andreessen Horowitz, and, um, I was asking him, because we both invest in startups, I was saying, "Well, what should we do with, uh, our investments? We wanna go this way, we wanna go that way," and we were going back and forth. And I said, you know, "Could we invest a little bit in Andreessen Horowitz so we could learn about it?" And, and he said something funny to me. He's like, um, "Money is such a commodity, you couldn't pay me to take yours." And I was like, "Pfft, really?" And I'm like, "What does that mean?" He's like, "Do you know Sequoia only takes nonprofit dollars now? One of the biggest venture capital funds in the world will only take nonprofit money." They literally limit the amount of capital that they have. And instead, what matters to them is access, which is really what people mean. Access and ideas, those are the things that actually move the world.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:20 What do you mean?

Codie Sanchez 1:11:21 Access-- So you can have a lot of money, right? And I know a lot of people that do. But I would rather trade... Once you've hit a base level of cash, I would spend as much as possible investing in growing your skill set and getting access. Because if you can get in a room with, if you can get in a room with, well, people like, like you and some of the people we were talking about before. If you can get in a room with a bunch of creators and you become friends with them, and you, Ali Abdaal, talk about my product, Belu Water, on your podcast, that is worth how many millions of dollars in ad spend that I probably wouldn't have. But my access to you turns into millions of dollars because the economy of today is eyeballs. It's actually not capital.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:04 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:12:04 Increasingly, money is going to become more commoditized, and attention will be the commodity.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:08 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:12:08 And so that's what I mean by access.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:11 Yeah. I was, I was sp- I was, I was, I was having dinner with a friend who's, um, a very successful author. Uh, and we were talking about, like, book sales strategies and all that kind of stuff. And he said, "You know, the single biggest thing that has ever moved the needle for my book sales is random relationships I made, like, five years ago." And it's just like someone you meet at a conference, someone you strike up a friendship with, and because you've had that conversation, you now know the person. Turns out that person happens to grow into a massive YouTuber, a massive podcaster, and now when you message them saying, "Hey, I've got a new book out," they are delighted to make a video about your book. And it just completely, it's, uh, that's the, that's the sort of thing that you can't actually buy with cash. You buy it with, I guess, relationship equity and just, just being generally pleasant to hang out with and taking the time to, like, fly places to meet people and all, and all that stuff.

Codie Sanchez 1:12:56 Yeah. Well, I think in this day and age, we have a declining trust with institutions.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:01 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:13:01 We don't trust institutions by and large, and we have an increasing trust with individuals. We've become more tribal than ever, and we've become less institutional than ever.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:09 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:13:09 And because of that, our relationships with individual humans are worth more. And if you actually look at the International Trust Index, which is a real thing, you can do it by varying countries. You see overall countries are declining on their trust indices. And so I think the ability for you to connect one-on-one with a human will be one of the few things that differentiates the fact that AI can now create an Ali Abdaal or can, can create a Codie Sanchez, and we are going to really have to question the things that we see with our eyes and only be able to believe the things we can feel with our hands.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:39 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:13:40 At least that's where I could imagine it goes.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:43 Hmm. Nice. Growth is the small things magnified

Codie Sanchez 1:13:47 [chuckles] Uh, I went to another one of my friend's headquarters who runs a very big company, um, and, uh, and I went to the bathroom. Went to go wash my hands, and as I was washing my hands in the bathroom, a, an employee came up and she washed her hands and then took the paper towel, cleaned the inside of the sink, cleaned the countertop. And I thought, "What a nice employee. That's super nice." I was putting on lipstick or something, another person came in, grabbed a paper towel, cleaned the inside of the sink, cleaned the countertop. So I stopped this, like, low-level marketing person and, uh, and I was like, "What are you doing?" Like, "What, what's going on there? Why are you cleaning that all up that way?" And she was like, "How you do anything is how you do everything, right?" And just kind of like looks at me like, "Don't you know that?"

Ali Abdaal 1:14:27 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:14:27 And then walks out. [laughs] And I thought, wow, I just got schooled by a low-level marketer, and now my team is so tired of me saying that, I'm sure. But the small details really do turn into the big things, and so often in our life we let them swift, slip. It doesn't mean you have to be obsessed with every detail. Um, but to create a culture where your employees, who maybe even make minimum wage, actually clean up the sink around them, clean up messes that are not their own, that are not part of their job description, is a superpower. And so we're working on, how do we get everybody to wanna clean up the kitchen sink?

Ali Abdaal 1:15:01 How do you square that with, uh, 80/20? We, there are an infinite number of things to do. Let's focus on the few needle-moving things. Cleaning the sinks is probably not needle moving, so yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:15:13 What if it is, though?

Ali Abdaal 1:15:14 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:15:14 And so I think, um, you think about Disney CEO, right? Bob Iger. Famously, what did he do every time he walked into a park? He stopped and he picked up a piece of trash somewhere.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:26 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:15:27 He went out of his way. He would pick up a piece of trash, and then he would go throw it in the trash can. Now, why would Bob Iger do that? His time for doing that is worth infinitely more than mine because it's a signal in a world of noise to say, "We clean up around here. We have such, um, respect for this place that we do the small things and we make sure that we clean up messes that aren't ours." So you know, it, it goes down to, for instance, I had to let somebody go a couple weeks ago, and the reason why I let that person go is because they sent out an email to, uh, people who engage with us, and inside of that e- the email was done so sloppily and, um, with a lot of stuff that would be helpful for us but not the individual-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:07 Mm

Codie Sanchez 1:16:07 ... that I realized, oh, you don't, you haven't accepted our culture, which is that we help humans. We don't get helped by humans. And that was a very small thing theoretically, but every time somebody from my team engages with people in the real world, they're, they're one of my tentacles, right? They're a representation of me.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:25 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:16:25 And so I have to make sure that when I send out a, the email, it's lovely. It's helpful for another person. We're giving before we're taking, and hopefully you've felt that in our engagements.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:34 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:16:34 And that's what I want my team to represent too. And so I do think those little things actually matter. Now, the real question is you don't have to do everything, so that's the difference. So you don't have to do it all, but the things that you do you should do well. Um, and that's another thing Bill Perkins taught me is he was like, "If you are focusing on all the small things, you'll never do the big things." And so how does that relate to the two? That seems like that would conflict. But what it really means is hire somebody incredibly well to take care of your travel planning and to take care of your, you know, emails in your inbox, but teach them the way to do it right. Then you don't have to do it, but if you're gonna do something, do it right.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:10 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:17:10 It's painful and I'm not great at it all the time, believe me.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:13 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:17:13 My husband also loves to then say these things back to me later, which is very obnoxious. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:17:17 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:17:18 So be careful what you put out in the universe.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:21 Nice. Um, give free value with zero expectations and you'll get 10X returns down the road.

Codie Sanchez 1:17:26 Yeah. Give, give, give, always. Uh, it's, it, you know, you

Codie Sanchez 1:17:30 know this, the law of reciprocity, right? We humans feel like we have to give something back if we are given something. And so, um, I think if, if I could, if I could leave one thing for humans listening it would be, uh, give first and be curious. If you could do those two things, I think you'll go so much farther than you could anticipate. A lot of people in this day and age think that in a world of scarcity and there- a lot of people take, take, take, take. Um, I have a, a friend actually, loose friend, who, um, [laughs] he's notorious for, uh, asking for introductions and things, and he always ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask. And in some ways he's gotten far, but he's also gotten known in our community as a person who will always ask you for things.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:17 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:18:17 And so you be- you become very careful about giving things and asking for him. I never ask for anything from him because I know it's gonna have like this 3X return on the other side, and that's what you don't wanna have in life. It'll get you quick pretty far, but those people always come back down again.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:31 Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think about this a lot, like the, the ROI on free is way higher than the ROI on almost anything transactional or anything paid.

Codie Sanchez 1:18:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:42 Um, and yeah, there are so many instances in my life where, I mean, I guess just building a content business is just basically are all about that.

Codie Sanchez 1:18:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:49 Um-

Codie Sanchez 1:18:50 Well, I mean, w- we have a mutual friend, Alex, and him and I talk about this a lot. The, what do you think the mafia does first to d- indoctrinate people, to bring people into the mafia circle? They give something. That's why, like, the mob bosses go around and they make sure, you know, the kid has food who doesn't have food on his table, and they make sure the people that they come in, they give them cash up front. Now, that's a dark side of it, but the reason why they do that is because then when you've taken something, you've taken a favor.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:15 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:19:15 And when you've taken a favor you have this little bit of a debt, right? And again, you don't wanna take it from a dark perspective, but, um, there's a reason why that's often how sort of these tribes and cults are created is immediately they give something to you because they know that they're gonna ask you for something later. It's that famous, like, one day I'm gonna call you and ask you for a favor thing, right? Um, and so, uh, it's real in the world.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:37 Hmm. Your first $100,000 comes faster if you earn before you invest.

Codie Sanchez 1:19:44 Yeah. Too many people want to take a dollar and invest it in the stock market and have a Robinhood trade do well for them or a Bitcoin Go up or down or an NFT,

Codie Sanchez 1:19:53 and I think it's completely wrong. You should optimize first. We have a strategy called Learn, um, which is basically we want you to focused first on earning money before you do anything. And the reason why is because you can't, uh... If you have money, it's always easier to make money. Rule number one. In order to make money, you have to first do the thing that is easiest and highest ROI. That's typically not gonna be that you put a dollar into the stock market and it makes you $100,000. But what you could do is you could negotiate a salary increase of 5 to 20% each year or biannually, and you're much more likely to then be able to invest that money intelligently. But a lot of people, you know, instead of first earning and then learning and then investing, they go invest, learn, earn, and I think that's the opposite of what we wanna do. Too many people have seen people make a lot of money in investing, and it's a long game.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:46 Yeah. Yeah, I think that's so true. It's like, uh, sometimes I'll, I'll get friends asking me like, "Hey, you know, uh, you're, you're into investing. Like, what should I invest my money in?" And I'm like, "Hmm. [laughs] The easy answer is S&P 500, but-

Codie Sanchez 1:21:00 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:21:00 ... I, I think that's not actually the answer. Like, what's the goal here? Let's figure this out." And then, you know, find out that, oh, they'd love to become financially independent, or they'd love to have an extra few thousand dollars a month to kind of, I don't know, go on holiday or, or whatever the thing might be. And I'm like, "Okay, so if we, if we... If you continue investing in the S&P 500, you'll get there maybe 30 years from now."

Codie Sanchez 1:21:18 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:19 Is that what you want? Or like... And ul- ultimately-

Codie Sanchez 1:21:22 It's a great question

Ali Abdaal 1:21:22 ... what it comes down to is, like, increasing your own ability to earn money-

Codie Sanchez 1:21:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:21:26 ... whether through investing in your own business or investing in your own skills.

Codie Sanchez 1:21:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:29 It's just way higher ROI than the 7% returns you'll get by investing in the top 500 companies in the US.

Codie Sanchez 1:21:34 100%. The ROI of you is infinite. The ROI of an investment is capped. Um, and so I think you wanna invest to beat inflation. I mean, that's originally why we have investing, is that the co- you know, the price of money decreases every single year due to the government. And so we have to have some sort of investing so that we, our money doesn't get eaten away by inflation. Um, that's what we should expect. 7 to 10% per year would be great if we could do that continuously. Anything above and beyond it, unless you're actively involved in the investment, which changes the game, uh, isn't going to make you rich. It's just going to make you beat inflation. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:22:11 [laughs] Okay, so buying boring businesses, buying the local dry cleaner, restaurant, cafe kind of thing seems interesting, but w- what sort of people would you recommend that to, I guess, compared to

Ali Abdaal 1:22:24 starting your own business versus investing in the S&P versus buying houses for real estate rental type stuff? How, how, how does that work?

Codie Sanchez 1:22:31 Yes. One, start up. If you have a dream so big you can't sleep for the want of it, then do that. That should be your startup. If you just want cash flow, this is the path for you, I think. And here's a couple thoughts. One, real estate, on average in the US at least, a one rental property makes about $476 a month in profit. That's not enough.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:55 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:22:55 So you have to-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:55 Mine make less than that in profit. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:22:57 Right. You have to buy a ton of them.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:59 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:22:59 And how much cash do you have to put down?

Ali Abdaal 1:23:00 Yeah, an, an annoyingly huge amount.

Codie Sanchez 1:23:02 Huge amount.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:02 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:23:02 Not to mention you have giant risks-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:04 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 1:23:05 ... from the loans. Um, so I think real estate by and large is a great way to keep wealth and to invest so that your wealth grows slowly over time. It's not a great way to make wealth. Now, buying a business is a lot more work, and it's a lot more risk theoretically because your building, it's probably not gonna burn down. You have insurance anyways, and it can't go to zero very easily. Business, if you do it wrong, theoretically could. So there's pros and cons. But a, a s- a small business, I like owning a bunch of them, especially if you can do it in things that you wanna play in a little bit. Like for instance, if you're an accountant, I might buy an accounting firm, right? Why just work in one when you could own one? Um, if you are like me and you're in content and you actually really like what you do, like I wanna spend my time doing this, maybe I buy a laundromat and my mom runs the laundromat, right? Or maybe I buy a property management company, and my brother runs that property management company, which is in fact what I've done. And so, um, I like to do deals like that where you don't have to be the one running them. It could be your friend that, you know, your friend that you've worked with for a long time wants to operate one of these companies. Um, and you are just the one putting the deal together.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:13 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:24:13 Uh, and you wanna continue to do your own thing. So it, buying a business is really because, one, you want the cash flow, and two, maybe you wanna get closer to your lo- your local community, which is big for me.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:24 What advice would you give to 16-year-old Codie, who maybe she's, she's got $1,000 through mowing the lawn and through tutoring maths or something, and she's got $1,000 and she's like, "I wanna invest this $1,000."

Ali Abdaal 1:24:36 How would you approach that conversation with your young- younger self?

Codie Sanchez 1:24:40 Well, I'll tell you what I tell my cousins now-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:44 Hmm

Codie Sanchez 1:24:44 ... who are right about that age. So to my 16, 18-year-old cousins, I say take the big risk now while you have no responsibility. The more responsibility you get, the scarier the risk becomes. When you have kids, when you have a mortgage, when you have a big paycheck that you could lose, it's scary to go start a business, to think about buying a business, to think about being the operator in a business. Um, but when you're young, you should take all the risk humanly possible because failure doesn't really matter when you're young. Um, I don't think you should take $1,000 and invest it in anything when you're young, unless you're investing it in yourself or you're investing it in a big risk, like trying to potentially turn $1,000 into $100,000 business purchase.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:28 Okay.

Codie Sanchez 1:25:28 Interesting.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:29 But not Bitcoin or NFTs.

Codie Sanchez 1:25:30 Not Bitc-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:30 Okay.

Codie Sanchez 1:25:30 No, no, no, no. I mean-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:32 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:25:32 ... there's, uh, in, in investing we say, um, we say that those people are speculators, not investors. And there's a whole generation of people that have been taught speculation, not investing. Anytime you have the last man fallacy, which is that the person who comes in next that you're gonna sell to is the one, is the dumb one that's gonna be holding the bag, you should know that you should run away from that because you're the last man. We don't want to be a nation of people who are trying to kind of dupe people into being the next person to buy it at a higher valuation than we did. We wanna have assets that are so good that you think like Warren Buffett and you wanna hold them for 30 years. You have to pry that business out of my cold, dead hands 'cause it's a great business. And I think because we had that fast money run of NFTs and Bitcoin and, and stocks, people Get confused. And, you know, the, the other thing that's, that's so true is really good finance people who trade stocks have something called a black box. They don't even tell their salespeople that go and rep their product what's inside of their algorithms. It's firewalled. You can't see inside. Why? Because I would never tell somebody my unfair advantage that everybody else could go replicate immediately if trading is the way that I make money. So anybody that teaches trading online is totally full of it, in my opinion. Because if they had great secrets, they would never share them. They'd just pile as much money as humanly possible into it and buy a bunch of Bentleys. Um, and so I'm really cautious on speculators, and I'm really bullish on ownership.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:04 Hmm. So how might said 16-year-old or said cousin actually invest that $1,000?

Codie Sanchez 1:27:09 You invest it in yourself. I think you need to learn at that point.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:13 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:27:13 You have to learn, then you increase your earnings, then you invest. No 16-year-old should be taking their 1,000 bucks and putting it in the S&P, in my opinion. They will make so much more money by taking that 1,000 bucks and going and learning how to create a bunch of YouTube videos, or going and learning how to buy businesses, or going and learning how to talk to people and negotiate. Whatever the case may be, I would take the 1,000 bucks and I would consider it your little MBA money. And I think spend like that until you can start putting... You can do the S&P 500, putting 10% of your savings in. I've done that for a long, long time, but that won't make you rich. Uh, it'll just potentially beat inflation.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:51 [laughs] Yeah. Um, how do you feel about these days the balance of you can learn anything for free on the internet, therefore you don't have to pay for it versus the value of paying for things?

Codie Sanchez 1:28:03 There's a lot of research that supports the fact that if we do not pay for things, we do not appreciate them. It's why we have products that have costs at my business. Because your likelihood to accomplish something if you put skin in the game is infinitely higher. And so we actually see it. It's fascinating. The more we charge for products, the more likely they are to actually finish and accomplish them. When you get something for free, you tend to not value it, right? I mean, you think about all the giveaways at a conference as opposed to something that you buy. And so we give away 90% of our content for free with the hope that people will take their own action, but if you actually wanna take action, put skin in the game. I mean, my husband and I like to do little bets. So if I wanna go, and right now I want a six-pack, so I'm working on that.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:47 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:28:47 And so, like, we'll have a little bet. So we'll have 1,000 bucks in, and whoever does X thing related to fitness first gets the 1,000 bucks.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:54 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:28:54 And it's just enough painful where you're focused on executing on it.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:00 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:29:00 And so that's why we charge for our products. And I think if you have a product, you should always charge for it because people will value it more.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:07 How does that vibe with do things for free?

Codie Sanchez 1:29:10 Do things for free, but if you want to do things to accomplish them-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:15 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 1:29:15 ... pay for them. It's, it's the same thing as, like, accountability buddy.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:19 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:29:19 I mean, if you really wanted to accomplish something, you'd do two things. You'd get an accountability buddy to hold you, uh, to a higher standard, and you'd pay for help to get it done. I have a personal trainer.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:29 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:29:30 You know, I have a nutritionist I work with, um, because I wanna get there faster. And I will go to the gym if I'm gonna lose 100 bucks, uh-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:37 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:29:38 ... if I miss my training session.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:39 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:29:39 Whereas often I will not go to the gym if I don't pay for it because it's easy to not.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:43 Hmm. Yeah, I think it's like in, in fields like, you know, if you, if you wanna learn, if you wanna learn how to play tennis better, it's just kind of assumed that of course you would hire a tennis coach. But I think one of the, one of the good things about information being free on the internet is also one of the downsides of information being free on the internet, that people think, "Oh, great, the fact that there is a l- eight-hour long YouTube video on how to code in Python means that I should not pay for this boot camp." But actually, [laughs] you know, paying for the thing gives you a li- gives you accountability, skin in the game, gives you a community, gets you out there. And yes, there are a lot of self-starters who absolutely can learn stuff for free on the internet, but I found this as well, like, with my, with my YouTuber academy. I'll have friends messaging being like, "Hey, can I, can I get on this course?"

Codie Sanchez 1:30:23 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:24 And I u- in the very first cohort, I would be like, "Yeah, of course." And not a single person even ever logged in to make their account.

Codie Sanchez 1:30:30 No.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:31 But now, so now what I do is-

Codie Sanchez 1:30:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:30:32 ... yeah, I say, "Pay the $5,000, and if you complete the, the homework, I will refund you the $5,000."

Codie Sanchez 1:30:37 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:37 And they all do it. And some of them just, uh, some, some of them have started YouTube channels off the back of it and have now quit their jobs because they had that skin in the game. Others have done the six videos and said, "You know what? It's not for me. Can I have my 5K back?" I'm like, "Yeah, sure. Here you go. [laughs] Here you go."

Codie Sanchez 1:30:48 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:48 But at least they've done the work.

Codie Sanchez 1:30:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:49 And it kind of forces some level of accountability.

Codie Sanchez 1:30:52 Right. Well, it also shows that you value yourself as the creator because oftentimes what I've found is my friend's, my friend's friend's friend's family will wanna have a phone call, right, about buying a business. And the reason that I started on the internet creating content, uh, was basically I didn't wanna answer the same question a million times. I'm not as nice as you, right? So I was like, "No, no phone calls, no coffees. Dear God help you if you ask to pick my brain." Like, also gross visual. Like, I don't want any part of that. And so, um, so I started creating the content because I was like, "I don't wanna have the same conversation 372 times." And so, um, I think it shows that you value yourself when you start to charge for the services that you render. It's really actually an important transfer of value. And it's, and, you know, also, I have a big proponent that you shouldn't ask friends for discounts. You should pay premiums. And in fact, if you wanna support your friend's business, share it and pay for it.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:45 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 1:31:45 And most people forget those things. I would never ask a friend for a discount, and I never have, even when I didn't have a lot of money, because I want the honor of getting to pay for their hard work. What a beautiful thing. Um, you wanna give to charity. You wanna be known as a charitable person, but you don't wanna pay for the things that your friends spent their precious hours creating? It's actually a little bit of an insult, so I'm very big on that. Um, and I think Our information is so good that what we charge for it is so cheap that you are crazy to not pay for it. Because if you went to Harvard, first of all, you couldn't get this information. They don't teach private equity in this way. And I had to spend, you know, seven months with a vitamin D deficiency at Goldman so that I could learn this stuff and work 70 hours a week, and now you get it in a compressed way. I'm so thankful that there are humans now on the internet that create and share, and I can pay for it. Could you imagine if you could get a supply chain class from Jeff Bezos? I would pay so much money for that. But most people do the selfish thing, which is they don't share the information. Now, we've kind of gotten it weird and twisted 'cause there's a bunch of fraudsters on the internet who didn't do anything, who are creating things sounding like they did, and they've tainted the whole thing. But in actuality, most humans in finance, the saying is, "We get rich quietly." We don't share our practices. It's a black box. And now there are humans that will actually tell me how they did all of this and give me the information. I get to pay for it. That's incredible. And, uh, and so I think you have a moral prerogative to charge for it because more people will actually take action. And if what we care about is legacy and humans taking action, and that's what feeds our ego or our tombstone or whatever, um, then I just follow the numbers, and that's what the numbers say.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:28 Nice. Codie, this has been absolutely wonderful. We'll definitely do a part two-

Codie Sanchez 1:33:30 Let's do it

Ali Abdaal 1:33:31 ... talk about all, all, all of the things content, all of the more about the business stuff, uh, maybe in Austin when I come visit.

Codie Sanchez 1:33:35 Sounds like a plan.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:36 Um, any final piece of advice for anyone who's vibed with the maybe two hours for this interview so far, um, who, who likes what you have to say and who kind of vibes with your way of thinking? Any, any pieces of advice?

Codie Sanchez 1:33:47 Maybe just that a capable optimist is worth six times more than a brilliant pessimist. There's a whole world of people who want to tell you why you can't do things. It's actually very cheap and easy. It's super easy to tell somebody why something's not possible. It's actually quite hard to convince somebody that they can. And so I think listening to things like this and getting people to believe that they're capable is hugely powerful. Um, so I think it's really cool the platform that you've built, and I know you've influenced lots of people, including me.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:16 Oh, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Codie Sanchez 1:34:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:17 And thank you so much for coming on.

Codie Sanchez 1:34:18 My pleasure.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:19 All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.