Codie Sanchez: Boring businesses beat your paycheck

Sanchez insists your 20s will ‘suck’ if you're doing them right: low-paid, high-effort jobs, long hours, and little free time. Instead of chasing flashy early entrepreneurship or quick-rich narratives (crypto, Bugattis), focus on apprenticing under people whose life you’d want, thinking of your salary as money you’re putting into your brain. The ROI comes later when those skills and relationships let you command much higher income and ownership stakes.

Her first move if starting from scratch at 20: find the richest, most capable person within reach (not necessarily a famous influencer) and do everything possible to provide value. Use ‘concentric circles’: start with the wealthiest person on your street, at your school, or in your local community, then level up every 6–12 months. Offer specific, data-backed help (e.g., auditing someone’s YouTube thumbnails) and apply the 10X rule—give 10x value before ever asking for anything.

Sanchez outlines three ways to buy businesses: with money, with expertise, or with sweat equity. Many small business owners (especially boomers) want to retire and are open to seller financing: you pay them over time from future profits instead of upfront cash. Young, hungry operators can partner with capital-rich buyers or with their own employers to acquire vendors or complementary businesses, using performance-based structures where they earn equity for growth they create.

Rather than chasing complex startups, she recommends boring, easy-to-understand, cash-flowing businesses—laundromats, car washes, window cleaning, pressure washing, painting, and small service businesses. These have few moving parts, can be run part-time alongside a job, and teach fundamentals: P&L management, marketing, operations. The goal of the first deal isn’t to get rich; it’s to get a small, safe win that builds competence and confidence for bigger deals later.

Sanchez rejects the common claim that businesses just need ‘more marketing.’ She says you almost never have a leads problem—you have a product problem. The diagnostic: if 20–30% of business isn’t coming from referrals and positive reviews, your bucket is leaky. Focus first on product quality, retention, referrals, and reviews (her ‘three Rs’). Otherwise, you’ll spend your life pouring ad spend into a broken system.