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BigDeal by Codie SanchezHow to Build a $10M+ Online Empire (feat. Joshua Weissman)
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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Joshua Weissman on Relentless Reps, Honoring Audiences, and Building Online
- Weissman explains he left restaurant work for YouTube because he was bothered by uncaring, non-practitioner food entertainment, and he sacrificed sleep for about a year to make both jobs work.
- He credits restaurant kitchens and childhood bullying with giving him thick skin, and describes pausing before reacting so that feelings pass without causing permanent actions.
- On content, he says to be yourself rather than a character, follow your own viewing intuition on cut timing, treat content like a business, and accept big losses on some videos as investments.
- His book launch relied on entertaining, value-first promotion rather than hard-sell ads, including a stunt that he says sold about 60,000 copies in a day while a free $200,000 Pinterest ad allotment drove under 1% of sales.
- The two also discuss cooking as connection, with Weissman recommending that someone cooking for a date first learn what the person likes, and Codie's deal-of-the-week segment warns about restaurant economics while highlighting chef-influencer Thomas Straker's butter business.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasMastery comes from relentless repetition
Weissman says the top lesson from restaurants is that anyone can become great at almost anything if willing to do the reps, whether 500 or a million. Codie ties this to a 'law of more' with examples like Picasso and Taylor Swift.
Pause before reacting to negative feelings
Weissman says feelings can't be controlled but reactions can, so he suggests not responding for a day or more because feelings fade while actions can be permanent.
Be yourself rather than a character
For people starting food content without a presence, Weissman advises figuring out who you are and emphasizing that, even if you're quiet or awkward, since characters are hard to sustain happily.
Honor the audience, even in selling
Weissman treats book promotion like content that should be entertaining without the product, and leads with value before the ask. He says the 'Don't buy my book' and toilet-paper-style stunts worked because they signaled confidence and trust.
Content is a competitive business with real risk
Codie says attention is the scarcest commodity and there's no moat, while Weissman says he has lost multiple six figures on videos but sees them as investments if they gain subscribers who watch many more videos.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesThe number one lesson that I learned was you can become great at anything if you are willing to perform the relentless amount of repetition that it requires to become great at it.
— Joshua Weissman
Feelings will always go away. But the action that you choose to take might be permanent.
— Joshua Weissman
The irony about food is that same level of attention to detail, care, passion, stress, practice, um, craftsmanship goes into it, but it is made to be instantaneously destroyed
— Joshua Weissman
The content game is the most competitive game there is. There is zero moat to this game, and you are competing for the highest and most expensive commodity that we have in this day and age, which is people's attention.
— Codie Sanchez
I would say most people get into this nowadays by accident, right? They're like, "Oh, I made this video and it went viral one day, and then I kept..." No, motherfucker, that's not what happened here. Like, the two hours of sleep every night, that was not by accident.
— Joshua Weissman
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SPEAKERS
Joshua Weissman
guestChef and food content creator best known for building a large YouTube-based cooking brand and publishing cookbooks.
Codie Sanchez
hostHost of the BigDeal podcast and business investor/entrepreneur focused on helping owners grow and buy businesses.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
