The Money Expert: From $0 to Millions In 2 Years Without Any Hard Work!: Codie Sanchez | E258

1. 0:00 – 2:28

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      Why do you think most people don't ever reach financial freedom in their lives?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez0:03

      This is where people get it so wrong. One of the secrets to success is...

   3. NANarrator0:08

      Cody Sanchez. She's an entrepreneur who's invested in over 100 companies. Turning over millions a year. After spending 15 years on Wall Street, she's now sharing her secrets to the world.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez0:18

      On how to make money. I think that is the question everyone's asking themselves. I think every human should understand the language of money. It's not that complex. We just make it sound complex because the less people speak our language, the more we can charge them.

   5. NANarrator0:31

      For the first time in 25 years. The richest 1%...

   6. CSCodie Sanchez0:34

      ... will control more than half of the world's wealth by next year. The gap is huge. This is why only one in 10 people dies wealthy. If you understand the language, you can become an expert, and- and expertise leads to a bunch of cash.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett0:48

      But what have you come to learn about what holds us back in that moment?

   8. CSCodie Sanchez0:51

      The people who love you, they want what's best for them, which is that you're safe, you're secure, everything's okay. My loved ones were super supportive, but they were always saying things like, "Is the grass always greener, Cody?" And so we've become a generation of vitamin D deficient, alternative milk drinking softies. So I had a job I shouldn't have been at, a guy I shouldn't have been with, and a place I shouldn't live. But I was too scared. I'm not one of those entrepreneurs who'll just burn the bridges or sleep on the couch, and so I needed something where I could stair step my way out of a corporate job and then I realized this could be way bigger than what anybody else could pay me.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett1:24

      If we zoom in on that moment, what would you recommend my first step be, Cody?

   10. CSCodie Sanchez1:27

       First you have to-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett1:30

       Before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask from you. Two months ago, 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe. We're now down to 69%. My goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. (instrumental music) Cody, who are you speaking to and what is the message that you're trying to send them?

   12. CSCodie Sanchez2:11

       I think the every man and woman. Maybe people like you and I when we were younger, before we had any zeros or businesses. And the mess- the message is very simple. It's that I think by and large, and maybe they could feel this inside them too, we've slowly gone from a

2. 2:28 – 6:20

   My mission to help people become owners

   1. CSCodie Sanchez2:28

      nation of owners or a country of owners or a world of owners to, uh, a nation of renters or serfs, in another word. And the idea is, what if we could take that back? And that's the whole premise of everything we do, is getting people into the owner's chair, into ownership, as opposed to letting other people be the architects of their lives. And it took me way too long to do that, and so I'm hoping that it will take other people less time if we share.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett2:55

      Give me the persona then of someone that you believe will find value in this conversation. Like, where are they- are they in their life? What are they thinking day to day? Um, what are their aspirations?

   3. CSCodie Sanchez3:05

      Yeah. I think there's sort of three humans that I picture. There's one that I call Working John and, um, and he is basically, or she, but I just have a male avatar for this one, is sitting in a job right now that they don't really like, doing things they don't want to do for people they don't like and building their dream and their castle. And they're mad about it, although your choice to be there, but they're mad about that decision and they wanna- they want a way out, but they have either golden handcuffs where they make too much money or they have responsibility, bills that have to be paid. And so they don't really feel like they have a solution except going to find, like, the next best, but kind of still worst company. And then the second avatar is there's an- there's an aging population that by and large in the workforce we say, "Uh, you're over 50 or 60, like, you're not getting as many job looks as you were before." But now we live until we're 90. So what are they supposed to do for 30, 40 years? And I think their evolution can be also buying a business, taking over something, becoming an owner, and maybe something not aggressive, as aggressive as they were before. And then I think the- the third avatar are humans who kind of got sold pipe dreams over the last couple of years. Like, if I buy 472 houses that pay me 100 bucks a- a month profit, uh, I'll finally become financially free. Well, it takes a lot of cash to do that. Or, you know, if I have NFTs on the side or if I go into the stock market on the side, all of which aren't rigged games exactly, but are meant to just beat inflation. And so that third group of people might like what they're doing, they just need... they need something else on the side that's a little bit of a safety net, because I don't think our safety nets will be around by the time we need them.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett4:46

      And you've been through your own journey from the corporate world to working in finance, working as a journalist to where you are now. Which one of those avatars did you represent?

   5. CSCodie Sanchez4:56

      Well, I was definitely a Working John, so that would have been the first one. When I was in finance I was doing well, but I definitely felt trapped. I mean, I was all those things. I was... Should have been happy and content with where I was, but felt like the 60-hour work weeks were too much and I didn't really like the culture of the company that I was working for. Um, I had a lot of respect for the CEO, but I didn't really fit. And, uh, but I was too scared. I'm like a little bit of a scaredy cat. I'm not one of those entrepreneurs, like our mutual friend Alex, who just was like, "I'll burn the bridges, I'll sleep on the couch, you know, I'll- I'll sell it all." That's just not me. It's too scary. And so I needed something where I could have, like, a soft landing, I could stair step my way out of a corporate job. So I started buying these small businesses with the idea that maybe one day they could just meet- meet my costs. And then I realized, "Oh God, I'm thinking so small. This could be way bigger than what anybody else could pay me." But I was a Working John for sure.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett5:54

      If we zoom in on that moment, because I think most people listening to this now can re- can relate to that moment of...Maybe hearing you speak and hearing your content online, or hearing an Alex Hormozi or whatever, hearing Gary Vaynerch- whoever it might be talk about starting that business, pursuing that side hustle, but there's, th- the psychological barrier to overcome, which most of us can't overcome. We, we call it fear. We say, you know, that, "I'm waiting for the perfect

3. 6:20 – 8:29

   Our loved ones hold us back

   1. SBSteven Bartlett6:20

      time. I don't have the confidence." If you zoom in on that, now you've started this new journey in your life where you're creating content and you're advising people on how they can pursue the paths that you've pursued yourself, what have you come to learn about what holds us back in that moment, and the, and the, maybe the falseness of the stories we tell ourselves? Y- you described it as being a scaredy-cat.

   2. CSCodie Sanchez6:39

      Yeah. I, at least for myself, what I'll say is, you know, daughter of immigrants, um, who thought that what I had achieved was the pinnacle, you know? People that I love more than anybody in the world, and maybe that's similar for a lot of people listening, the people who love you, they want what's best for them, typically, which is that you're safe, you're secure, everything's okay. They don't really want what's, quote unquote, "best for you" because that's actually the scary thing. Real growth happens when you take huge risks and you potentially fail and you realize that you're not gonna die. And so I realized that my loved ones, for some of the reasons that were actually holding me back, um, super supportive, but they were always saying things like, "Is the grass always greener, Codie?" You know? "What about this next thing, is that really gonna make you happy?" You know? "Are you sure it's not you? Is it them?" And in some cases, they're right. I just have that, that ridiculous urge to keep growing and doing more. But that, that made me jump from one, two, three, four, five, five finance companies in, like, 10 years or something like that because I thought it was each... it was the individual company, and I didn't realize, "Oh, no, I'm just, like, unemployable. I wanna work for myself. I'm not gonna be great at being at somebody else's employee." Um, but it was the stories that I heard again and again from my family because they wanted to keep me safe. Very kind, but not right for me.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett8:03

      So in your life, there, there comes a moment where you make this kind of p- peculiar decision, and I say peculiar because most people don't make the decision, to, um, start off-ramping from the corporate world, essentially.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez8:14

      Yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett8:15

      You s- you buy your first business, right? So you're, you're in a job-

   6. CSCodie Sanchez8:19

      Yep.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett8:20

      ... and y- while you're in the job, you decide to buy a business.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez8:23

      Yeah.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett8:23

      Did you have loads of cash when you did that?

   10. CSCodie Sanchez8:25

       No. No, no, no. In fact-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett8:28

       And why did you do it?

4. 8:29 – 10:17

   Leaving the corporate world to start a business

   1. SBSteven Bartlett8:29

      What, what was the, what was the thought process that made you go, "Do you know what? That's a good idea."

   2. CSCodie Sanchez8:33

      I think it's usually triggered from, from some sort of pain. Like, at that time, I was s- was fighting a little bit with the CEO of the company that I was working in, and they really wanted me to... They wanted me to run this business that I'd taken from zero to a couple billion in assets under management, and they wanted me to continue running it, but I started getting press and stuff started happening because we had had this growth. And they wanted me to do it really quietly, and, um, not as much the CEO, but some of the other managing directors. I was by far the youngest. I was the only female, and, um, you know... (laughs) That company was wild. But they basically, in many ways, were like, um, "You need to do it our way." And I was like, "Well, your way didn't get you to this couple billion dollars under management. It works great for you guys over here, but it didn't over there. So, no, I'm gonna run the business this way." And, uh, and so we were kind of arguing a little bit, and I think I saw the writing on the wall that it wasn't my casino, they weren't my chips. I was working for somebody else. And at the end of the day, they were writing the rules, as is fair. It was their business, and I knew that at some point I was either gonna get pushed out or leave. And so at that point, I started buying these businesses on the side because I wasn't sure I wanted to work for somebody ever again.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett9:51

      I'm, I'm fascinated by the first step people take because the first step seems to be the hardest.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez9:55

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett9:56

      That first step to buying that first business, and you're stepping out into uncertainty and the unknown there, and that's really like the... You know, if I could give one thing to the audiences that have listened to me for the last 10 years on social media and on this podcast, it would just be the answer to taking that first step-

   6. CSCodie Sanchez10:13

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett10:14

      ... like, out into b- y- like you did it, 29,

5. 10:17 – 17:25

   How to buy your first business

   1. SBSteven Bartlett10:17

      30, to buy that first business.

   2. CSCodie Sanchez10:18

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett10:19

      Talk me, talk to me about specifically that first one. What were you looking for?

   4. CSCodie Sanchez10:22

      Yup.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett10:23

      What was your thesis? And, um, I guess how did you learn? How did you learn about buying, as you call them, boring businesses?

   6. CSCodie Sanchez10:32

      Yeah. Well, I had a benefit, which is, as a journalist, I sort of infiltrated finance. I'm not technically as intelligent, uh, you know, I'm not as, I'm not a financial modeling guru. I'm not a lot of things that people are in finance, but I'm pretty decent at asking questions and then figuring out who are the right people that could get me the answers. And so what I realized pretty quickly is we were doing a bunch of deals. You know, I was doing deals that were tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and billion-dollar deals. And I don't know why it took me so long, but I realized there's no difference, like materially, between a billion-dollar, a hundred-million-dollar, a $10 million deal, and a $1 million deal. And if that's the case, then I bet if I have a couple hundred thousand or $10,000, I could do a much smaller deal, wouldn't I be able to do the exact same thing? So I saw behind the curtain, uh, you know, like at the Wizard of Oz, and realized that the wizard was actually pretty short. And because I saw that, then I just said, "Well, now we just work backwards." And just like you would buy, you know, a hundred-million-dollar condo unit, or you know, condo building, you could see how you could go all the way back and buy your first studio, right? It's the same thing with businesses. It's just stair-stepping real estate. And so I, at the time, my biggest constraint was not knowledge, I knew how to do deals, it was time. You know, I was working 60, 70 hours a week. And so...One of the first deals I did was a laundromat deal, uh, because I figured, well, you don't need somebody to run it full time, and it was 100K transaction and so that wouldn't bankrupt me. And, you know, I could buy a little business like this and that business could keep running even while I wasn't there, and I could have an operator that could probably help me with anything that went sideways.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett12:14

      Where did you find a laundromat to buy for 100K?

   8. CSCodie Sanchez12:17

      Uh-

   9. SBSteven Bartlett12:17

      Wa- was there a website? Did you know the guy or woman?

   10. CSCodie Sanchez12:19

       No. Th- th- know the guy. So basically what happened, for my first deals, I didn't have a framework, so it was just, "Hey, I do these really big deals, could I do a smaller deal? And if I could do a smaller deal, what would be the easiest small deal to do that would be the least risk?" And so at the time, I knew a guy that was running a couple of laundromats, so I basically said to him, "Hey, if I find one for you, will you help me operate it?" And he knew how to do that. And so the very first one we had was in California. And that's one of the secrets to this, is two things. F- first you have to learn how to do deals, which is not really that complex. We just make it sound complex in finance because financial lingo is like the moat around how we make money, right? The less people speak our language, the more we can charge them, which is the secret. And then the second aspect was how to run a laundromat, right? Like, I don't know, machine breaks, where am I gonna do? And so then I had this guy who knew how to run these, and I could just find the deal for him, close the deal for him, and be the cash for him.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett13:18

       Why did they sell to you?

   12. CSCodie Sanchez13:19

       Old, you know? These are 68-year-old owners of a business that had been running this laundromat plus a bunch of other small businesses in the vicinity for 20, 30 years. And so, can you imagine running your podcast for 30 years? Would probably be fun, but by the end, you might be open to selling. Now imagine you had a laundromat for 30 years. You know, you're dealing with broken machines or there's somebody who's homeless messing around with some stuff. At a certain point, you don't even wanna continue with a profitable business. And this is where people get it so wrong. All the time on the internet, people love to tell me, "No way would anybody sell a business." That business made $67,000 in profit, so I bought it for 100K-

   13. SBSteven Bartlett13:57

       A year?

   14. CSCodie Sanchez13:58

       ... a year. Did 67,000. And people on the internet do one of two things to that. They go, "No fucking way. It didn't happen." And, "Why would somebody sell?" And, like, "Did you give them a bad deal?" And the second, uh, group of people go, "That's a terrible deal. I'd never do that deal because you don't have enough profit in that for that to be a business, not a job." So those are the two, two things. And to the first one I'd say, in the US right now, there are tens of millions of small businesses for sale that will never sell. And, and I told a story about my Uncle Eb who had a small business that was exactly that, um, that he closed down, which by the way costs you money as opposed to selling, because he had no idea his business was sellable, um, like many businesses that I had before I did this, I shut down instead of selling them. I didn't even realize that, even though I was in finance. And then to the second group I'd say, you start with a small business that probably isn't the greatest business for you own long term, but businesses are like real estate, you can turn around and sell them after you get in the game. But I think of these businesses, I call them gateway drug businesses. They're, they're the... Once you learn how to do a deal, you'll, you'll never see the world the same again. It will change your entire perspective on everything. You will walk in everywhere and you will realize that business is full of masochists, like you and me, who do this despite it being awful many times, but we love it in some way. But at some point, we're gonna want to sell our thing and move on to the next. And so everywhere around you right now, wherever you are, somebody sitting next to you wants to sell their business. And what if you could figure out how to buy that business, put in an operator in it, and then do it again and again and again? And that's the only difference between you and Warren Buffett or Blackstone or these big huge companies.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett15:37

       Is it important to have competence in the area and the industry that you're trying to buy these small businesses in, in your point of view?

   16. CSCodie Sanchez15:43

       Not really, no. Not at all. Yeah.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett15:45

       But it helps, right?

   18. CSCodie Sanchez15:47

       Oh, of course it helps. Um, more important than anything is, it's sort of like real estate, it's really about the deal. Can you understand? Can you read a balance sheet? Can you understand profit and loss? Which is not that difficult to understand. And then can you figure out how to get to the person that can get you answers? So for instance, I didn't know anything about laundromats, but I knew a guy who knew laundromats. Um, often what I tell people these days is, I'm, uh, I'm more old school, like, I would go knock on doors and I would shake business owners' hands, but, uh, you could also go to Reddit where there are, uh, platforms with 100,000 electricians on them. And so if you wanted to buy an HVAC company, which was, which is like heating, uh, air conditioning and, and often electric- electricity, um, I would go on there and I would try to find electricians in my local area and I would ask them questions, and I would pay them for an hour consult to figure out how to run this business. I think we forget in this day and age how easy it is to get the information that we want, and so we listen to the fear of the fact that we don't know what we're doing. And I actually think that's irrational. Uh, I think it's really easy for somebody to tell you why things won't work. It's actually quite hard to convince somebody that they're capable of doing something.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett16:59

       What if I don't have 100K? You had 100K, right?

   20. CSCodie Sanchez17:01

       Yeah.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett17:02

       Say I'm working a job, I've saved up only $5,000.

   22. CSCodie Sanchez17:05

       Yeah. Well, I've bought a business for $3,000, I've bought a business for $8,000, and I've bought many, many, many businesses for $0. And, and I'm not saying this in a way that's clickbait-y. D- will you go out right now and talk to somebody tomorrow and be able to buy a business for $0? Like, you're gonna need to do a little work. Um-

6. 17:25 – 23:04

   You can buy a business regardless of your budget

   1. SBSteven Bartlett17:25

      Just on the structuring of the deal, right?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez17:26

      Just on the structuring of the deal.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett17:27

      So they get paid on performance?

   4. CSCodie Sanchez17:29

      Exactly. Or they get paid on what's called seller financing.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett17:32

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez17:32

      So these, you know, you can go and m- most businesses, most small businesses below $10 million in revenue, 60% of them sell with some component of seller financing, which just means if, let's say, you know, somebody manages your property here, let's say that that property manager makes 100K a year profit. They want to sell their business. You're a terrible tenant that can't handle it anymore. (laughs) And they sell that business, they want to sell that business typically for 2 to 5X profit. That's what these small businesses go for. And the, the... Typically there aren't enough buyers, like there's not a bunch of people running around trying to buy property management companies. So, what do they do instead? Well, you would come to them and say, "All right. I'll buy out your property management company, but you're going to be my loan. I'm going to pay you a percent interest rate. Plus, uh, I'm going to defer your tax burden, so you pay less in taxes." Nobody likes that. "And, uh, and I'm going to buy the business by giving you $300,000 with, uh, you know, over five years." Right? "So, I'm gonna keep a percentage of the profits and I'm gonna give the rest to you." And it's not really that complex. It's really what happened in real estate before we had Zillow and Redfin and all of these sites that made it super normalized to sell real estate.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett18:46

      The... As you said a second ago, the real key here is knowing the art of the possible as it relates to deals. The way you construct your deals so that, um, you win-

   8. CSCodie Sanchez18:56

      Yeah, 100%.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett18:56

      ... basically.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez18:57

       Well, and, and the, the... I think the truth of deal-making that people forget about is that it is one of the very few things where it's never a zero-sum game.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett19:05

       Yeah.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez19:05

       So, if I go to sell a stock, I hope that when I sold the stock, I sold at the right time and you bought at the wrong time. Right?

   13. SBSteven Bartlett19:12

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez19:12

       Like, that's what we hope. In buying and selling small businesses, that doesn't have to be the case. You know, I could buy... I could sell my property management company to you, you could pay me 3X profits, and I could say, "But if the company increases revenue by X amount, which I think it will with these tweaks and I kind of help you a little bit, how about you pay me $400,000 instead of $300,000?" And you would go, "Great. If you hit those metrics, no problem. That'd be an awesome deal for me." So, there's plenty of ways to make sure it's a win-win. But to your point, this is why people are poor, because nobody teaches us the language of deals. And if somebody taught us, not how to negotiate our salary, that's fine, but how to negotiate for equity and ownership, the world would look a whole, look a whole lot different. But that's not in the big picture's incentive. It's really good for the little guy, not so good for the big guy.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett20:01

       The other thing when you're approaching a business and trying to get them to... Knowing this, how to structure a deal is one thing, but then there's an element of persuasion and saleswomanship-

   16. CSCodie Sanchez20:10

       Oh, yeah.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett20:11

       ... involved in this. How important is, is learning to sell and how, how can we better, be better salespeople in your view? What is the key to being a great salesperson? Because you must be-

   18. CSCodie Sanchez20:22

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett20:22

       ... to be buying businesses. You must be able to figure out what someone wants and present it to them.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez20:28

       I truly believe that sales is a fallacy. I don't think sales exists. I think you find people who are already predisposed to want what you are quote-unquote "selling". And I learned that very early on from one of my mentors actually at Goldman, that you don't sell anybody on anything. You're never gonna change somebody's mind and if you think I'm wrong, go try to convince a Republican to become a Democrat, right? Or a Tory to become a... I don't know, what's the other side?

   21. SBSteven Bartlett20:55

       Labour.

   22. CSCodie Sanchez20:55

       (laughs) Okay. Uh, it doesn't really go very well usually and so, um, my belief is actually what you're looking for is just who are the people who are... You're, you're finding trigger moments like if I was to have a conversation with Stephen about selling your business, I would try... I would be asking questions like, "You know, how's it going running it? Wow, 20 years? That's a long time." If, if their answer is, "Fucking love this business! I am never selling. This is amazing!" You're like, "Cool. Awesome. No problem. So lovely meet y- meeting you." But if you meet the person that's like, "Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready to retire. I've got this vision of a ranch in my head out in the countryside and, you know, s- but my kid doesn't want to take over the business." You're not, you're not gonna get them to think something different. You're purely discovering what they truly feel and then you are gonna be the person that enables them to have a retirement in a way that no government can. Like you are the retirement plan. And so, that's maybe what you need to learn is just curiosity for another human and then you need to understand what a, what a motivated seller looks like. And a motivated seller looks like somebody who's ready for their next adventure, whatever that may be. And if you can find those two things, then you find the people that actually, yes, they want what you're selling. Now, what you actually do have to convince somebody of, and I hope you're true about it, is that you are going to be a good shepherd. If you are going to be their retirement plan, you better not go broke, right? You better actually be able to take this business and run with it. And so, that is one part where you have to convince like, "Why should I sell this business to you, Stephen? How are you gonna take care of my business?" And that part really again comes down to curiosity, making sure that you're setting yourself up and the seller for success. Not rocket science.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett22:38

       If I, I'm gonna play, um... I'm gonna play the role of a 25-year-old.

   24. CSCodie Sanchez22:45

       Okay.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett22:46

       I'm working in a job. Um, I've got a little bit of disposable in- income, but not a ton.

   26. CSCodie Sanchez22:50

       Yeah.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett22:51

       I'm listening to you, Codie, and I'm going, "I want some of that." You've got a holding company, right?

   28. CSCodie Sanchez22:55

       Yeah.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett22:55

       You've got a fund as well?

   30. CSCodie Sanchez22:56

       Yeah.
7. 23:04 – 28:15

   Business advice for young people

   1. SBSteven Bartlett23:04

      as well?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez23:04

      Yep.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett23:05

      How big's the fund?

   4. CSCodie Sanchez23:06

      Small. 10.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett23:07

      Okay. So, 80 million combined. Um, I want to get to where you, you are, but I'm currently working in a job, I'm 25 years old, I've got, I don't know, $7,000 in the bank, £7,000 in the bank, whatever. What would you recommend my first step be, Codie? How do I get out of this job?

   6. CSCodie Sanchez23:24

      Yeah. Well, the first step if you, if you're gonna do it like a pro, I'd say this, which is-

   7. SBSteven Bartlett23:31

      I'm not a pro.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez23:31

      ... tell me what you do for a living.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett23:33

      I do content.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez23:37

       Perfect. So if you do content for a living, what I'd say is don't buy a laundromat. I talk about laundromats. I actually need to change that. I need to like tell somebody I bought a different first business because it's a terrible business to buy. It just was my first one and it's very easy to understand. So I'm like, if you can't understand quarter, machine, clothes, clean, don't buy a business, any business. Just forget you heard me talk about anything. And so, that's why I talk about laundromats.But if I was going to do it the pro way, I would say, "You should use your unfair advantage. And if you're in the content business, don't buy a boring business in the traditional sense. Look around you." I, it's something I call my personal P&L review. So I would basically look at, "What do I spend money on already?" If you're in content, you probably spend money on ad purchasing, right? You probably spend money on video production. You probably spend money on, maybe you rent a s- a, a set space.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett24:30

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez24:31

       Uh, you have all these expenses around you.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett24:33

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez24:33

       And what if you could turn one or two of those expenses into an asset, not a liability, a thing that makes you money, not a thing that costs you money? And so, you know, I did a deal back when I was doing more video production in my last company where I bought a podcast and video production company, and I did that deal basically for $0. I think I put $10,000 down for that deal that ended up doing about 300, $400,000 a year because I just said, "I know, like, five or six other people that could use your service. I'm going to, like, double your revenue by introducing you to these people, and I pay you, let's say, $3,000 a month now. What if we're just going to wipe that out if I can hire these other people, and you're going to give me 25% of the company," or whatever percentage it was. That's what I would do if I was you. So if you're young and hungry, look around you and see what you pay for and what you currently utilize already, and then try to get a percentage of that business, if not buying the whole thing. And that's sort of the pro way to do it, as opposed to car wash, need to go learn, totally different market. You can do the second. It's just a little bit riskier.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett25:38

       So I'm, I'm working in content, 25 years old, $7,000 in the bank. Um, I realize what you've just said, and I go, you know, I'm at a marketing agency. We book a lot of studios.

   16. CSCodie Sanchez25:49

       Yeah.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett25:50

       So what I'm going to do is I'm going to approach a studio space, try and do a deal with them, and then I'm going to send clients their way?

   18. CSCodie Sanchez25:58

       Yeah. You could totally do that. That'd be a sweat equity deal or a rev equity deal, revenue equity deal. So for a studio space, I mean, I think the, the probably pro way to do that, um, would be, one, you'd approach them and you'd kind of get an understanding for their business. You'd be like, "How much revenue do you make? Like, how big is this?" You'd figure out if you were material to their business. So me doing 3K a year with my video production guy, I was material to his business. He was only doing, I don't know, you know, $100,000 a year or something like that. And so if my 3K went away, that was, you know, that's like, uh, 20% of his business right there over a yearly basis. So if you go to a studio production company and they're like, "Yeah, we're doing $7 million a year," and you're paying them 3K, you're like, "All right, cool. Anyway, nice to chat with you." Or you could say, you know, "Who's the owner? How long have you been doing this?" And you could dive into it. And the other side of the coin is you might find out that the owner's 70, and you become buds with the owner. And the owner loves when you come in because you're kind of like young and you learn about what he does, and then you ask who's going to take over the business. And then you might say, "Hey, you know, I did this other thing, but I would love to sort of be an apprentice to you in a way and potentially buy your business using future profits, and you can sort of, like, stay on and we can stair step our way into this. But would you be open to that, like leaving your legacy to somebody like me?" And so you could do it that way too. But I think it is learn- it goes back to kind of the smart question you asked, which is like, the two avatars are, who's listening to this right now? And then that's the same question to the people listening that you're going to ask the owner, what sort of avatar is the owner, and how can you become the solution to what that avatar is looking for? How can you become the son to the father, you know? How can you become the buyer to a really anxious seller? Um, and then you can get your deal done.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett27:49

       Why do you think most people don't ever reach financial freedom in their lives? Do you think it's a psy- psychology thing, a mindset thing? Obviously, let's take, you know, the very practical elements out of the equation, so, you know, severe hardship, poverty, all of those kinds of things.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez28:05

       Yeah.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett28:05

       But people that are in that sort of middle layer, that are comfortable, why do, why do they never, some of those people never really reach a point of financial freedom?

8. 28:15 – 37:37

   Why don’t we reach financial freedom?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett28:15

   2. CSCodie Sanchez28:15

      I think humans defer to the paths they've seen before them. I think so often we follow in our father's or our mother's footsteps, and that's why I think the internet is really powerful is you have an opportunity to now choose the family footsteps you want to follow into. Um, so one, I used to think it was just a knowledge gap, but then I, I went to this event, um, and I was talking to my friend about it, and she, uh, said that the facilitators did something really cool. It was a group of women. Imagine like 40 women in a room, right? And they're there to talk about finances. And in this room they said, "Okay, everybody close your eyes and I want you to picture money, picture money right now, and then I want you to turn your body into the shape you feel when you hear the word money," right? And so 30 women, all eyes closed, they take whatever shape, and she goes, "Now open your eyes and look around." And, you know, my friend was explaining to me how most people in the room were like fetal position. They were like holding, they were like really close, some were on the ground, you know, some were covering their eyes. So in a room of 30 relatively successful women, their reaction was like attack, shame, guilt for money, and she was like n- you know, sh- she was standing there with her arms open wide like, you know, give me the money. And when I think about my relationship with money, it's the same thing. I'm like, if I think about money, I'm like, yeah, it's over here. Like my hands are up. Like I am here for it. But most people have this weird emotional attachment to money, and so I used to think that people on the internet, like, not, I like Tony Robbins, but like Tony Robbins or whatever who do a lot of the motivational stuff, I kind of didn't get it. I'm like, just give me the tactics, skip the, skip the other thing. And then I realized that most people have really bad stories that they tell themselves about money, and you could tell. I mean, it'd be interesting in your next speech, you could try it. I tried it at one of mine, same thing. Men and women holding each other like they're being beaten when somebody talks about money. The average human feels that way.And so I think it, it all comes down to what we believe. Which is hard for somebody in finance, like me, to say. You know? Typically I would think, "Well if you knew what to do, you could just do it." But that's not the case. It's you have to believe that you can do it. And the only way I can figure out to get more people to believe that they can do it, is to show more people who are super normal or, in fact, below average doing the damn thing. But if I had the answer to that, that'd be the million dollar question. I, I read a, a stat in the US that only one in 10 people dies wealthy in the US. That most people die broke, uh, and, uh, and young. And, and I thought that was fascinating because we're at, uh, economic high times, like lower poverty levels than ever before. But still most people die, uh, at least without extra cash to pass onto the next generation. Why do you, you think people don't reach financial freedom? Or most people die without a lot of cash?

   3. SBSteven Bartlett31:19

      I think, um, obviously it's a very complex topic, but I think... I really resonate with the emotional psychol- psychological side of things that you described. You know? It's the same reason why most people don't go to the gym or eat healthy.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez31:34

      Yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett31:34

      Money is inherently emotional.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez31:36

      Yeah.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett31:36

      When I was... When I had no money, I was reckless with money.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez31:40

      Right.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett31:41

      All the gambling shops were in the areas where people don't have money. Um, there's something deeply psychological about money, so I would... If I... When I was working in those call centers, if I got paid £1,000 at the end of the month, I would, the same day, go and buy a TV or an Xbox, like a PlayStation, for about £600, £700. I would not pay my rent to go and buy that PlayStation. And sometimes I'd buy the PlayStation without having a TV. There was just something psychologically attached to the, I don't know, the dopamine rush or the sense of self-worth that I got from owning the shiny thing. When I got money, my relationship with money became amazing.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez32:21

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett32:22

       I, I stopped buying designer things, I stopped wasting it. I didn't ha- feel the need to, to show off or buy, you know, Rolexes or whatever. So, I was able to preserve wealth more. There's a really interesting relationship with money on both ends of the spectrum. When, when you have less of it, it's harder... It's often because of certain psychological things and certain people, I was one of them, it's harder to hold onto. And when you have more of it, it feels easier to hoard and people, you know... And more broadly on the, on the subject of, um, why people don't reach financial freedom, I think the modern world tells us that we can get rich quick.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez32:59

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett32:59

       And when you think about how people build wealth, w- we think about the Warren Buffetts of the world, it's so boring and slow.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez33:05

       (laughs)

   15. SBSteven Bartlett33:05

       And, no, who's gonna buy that book?

   16. CSCodie Sanchez33:07

       Yeah. (laughs) It's-

   17. SBSteven Bartlett33:08

       You know? Get r- Be a billionaire at 87. I, fuck, what?

   18. CSCodie Sanchez33:12

       (laughs)

   19. SBSteven Bartlett33:12

       I'm not gonna be able to, you know, dance in the nightclub at 87, so why do I want a billion then?

   20. CSCodie Sanchez33:17

       Yeah.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett33:17

       That's why the NFT thing and the crypto scam, this whatever, is also appealing to people.

   22. CSCodie Sanchez33:22

       Yeah.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett33:22

       'Cause it's quick.

   24. CSCodie Sanchez33:24

       Yeah, it's true. Well, you know what's... I actually, um, was reading somewhere, a story about in South Africa in the slums, um, they have the highest concentration of the largest televisions, uh, per square foot of the, the houses. So that you, you... If you've been there-

   25. SBSteven Bartlett33:39

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CSCodie Sanchez33:40

       And, and I've actually never been, so I can't validate but you will see very small, little rooms with huge televisions. And, and I thought that was interesting, um, but it actually makes sense 'cause maybe it comes down to a belief that people don't think they're ever gonna get out, and so they think the only chance of getting out is going into whatever the short term pleasure is. It's like, if you never think you're going to escape your everyday reality, which is actually kind of miserable, then you're gonna buy the PlayStation because why wouldn't you? Why would you save and try to get out when you've never seen anybody else get out?

   27. SBSteven Bartlett34:13

       But what does the Play- The PlayStation means so much more to you in that moment than a PlayStation. It means, it's your... It's self-worth.

   28. CSCodie Sanchez34:20

       Yeah.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett34:20

       It's one tiny token that you are successful.

   30. CSCodie Sanchez34:26

       Yeah.
9. 37:37 – 44:00

   Using social platforms to make money

   1. SBSteven Bartlett37:37

      m- um, "A Range Rover Sport will be my first car." Didn't have a driver license until I was 23. Um, "I'll make a million pounds. I'll, I'll work on my body image," again, 'cause I'm a very small kid, uh, "and I'll get a girlfriend." Those were my four goals in life and they were totally influenced by the outside world. That's why my book is called Happy Sexy Millionaire, because I thought if I became a sexy millionaire, then I would become everything I needed to be. And I was so wrong. I mean-

   2. CSCodie Sanchez38:02

      Yup.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett38:02

      I don't regret the decisions I made because you can't really in hindsight. But, um, I wish I had better influences, to say the least.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez38:10

      Yeah. I mean, I think that's why content is so important. You know, I think about, I think about Warren Buffett's annual shareholders meeting, right, which you can go and attend-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett38:19

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez38:19

      ... if you, if you own stock, and you don't have to own much of it. Um, and I think... You know, people made fun of me when I started creating content online 'cause they were like, "Oh, big successful private equity person, now you're taking your own money? And if you really had companies that made $80 million in revenue, that means they're, you know, you're worth a couple hundred million bucks. Uh, and if that's the case, why would you be making Instagrams and TikToks? I mean, that doesn't make much sense, right?" And my reaction at the time was, "I think we should make it just as entertaining talking about stuff that makes us money as we do stuff that costs us money." I think probably that'd be good.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett38:55

      Mm.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez38:55

      And if we could do that, that'd be worthy mission, and also it'd be fun to try to do it. I don't know if we could do it. But, um, yeah, maybe the next rap videos... I mean, and now, now for honestly, my favorite deals to break down are the celebrity deals because they're fascinating. Like The Rock. Have you ever looked at The Rock's content from a, uh, product perspective? Brilliant. So The Rock, if you look at his content... So let's just talk Instagram. If you go to The Rock's Instagram, I want you to count how many pieces of content he has that have product placement in them of companies he owns. And the answer is close to 80%. So almost every single post The Rock does is an ad. But what do we really see? We see sexy tequila. We see abs. We see him with his beautiful wife. Like, we see these other things, but we don't realize that every single one of them is an ad. And so what if we could flip that around? Like, wouldn't it be cool if The Rock talked about the deals he did too and how he did that? Now, he goes back and he talks about how he stole Snickers bars, similar as- to you with pizza. Um, but I think even for celebrities, they don't want to talk about the deals that they did. They just want to talk about all the money that they have. It almost seems like faux pas somehow to talk about the deals and how good at deal-making they are. Like Reese Witherspoon, billionaire now. Why? Because Reese Witherspoon, little sweet Suzy Sunshine in Pink, basically took a book club and said to authors, "I'll give you part of my platform for you to talk about your book because I'm lovely. It's free. You're gonna sell a bunch of books." Tiny insignificant detail, "I'd like the future rights to, uh, turn your book into a movie and I'll pay you some sum or I'll have a right of first refusal, AKA I have, I get the right to buy it before anybody else and I'll pay you then for it." The author goes, "Amazing. Reese, of course. Perfect." They come on. Reese basically A/B tests, so tests out which books do best, and depending on which books do best, uh, Reece bought- Reese buys their movie rights and makes movies that create, you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. But Reese doesn't tell that story. Reese tells the Suzy Sunshine story of her selling the books. I think the other story is more interesting and more people can learn from it.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett41:11

      So when I hear these deals and when I see these big success stories, we've got Kylie, we've got the Rihannas of the world, we've got Ryan Reynolds, The Rock, Reese Witherspoon. The question that we must always be asking ourselves, and I ce- I certainly ask it, is, was that them or did they just have a great advisor, a financial advisor-

   10. CSCodie Sanchez41:29

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett41:29

       ... that came along at some point and went, "By the way, you do it like this-

   12. CSCodie Sanchez41:33

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett41:33

       ... and you'll make fucking shitloads"?

   14. CSCodie Sanchez41:34

       Yeah. Well, my question is, who cares?

   15. SBSteven Bartlett41:37

       The-

   16. CSCodie Sanchez41:37

       I still want to know the secret sauce.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett41:39

       Yeah.

   18. CSCodie Sanchez41:39

       And so she's... None of them are that dumb where they don't know what the deal was, right? Like, even if somebody was smarter than them, which could be... Reese may have a genius behind her. The Rock too, probably Danny Garcia, his wife, his manager.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett41:51

       Kylie.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez41:52

       Kylie. Yeah, the, the G.O.A.T., you know, which is weird to say about the Kardashians. But, you know, behind them, the mom, for sure. But they're, you know, they're smart enough, when you create that much wealth and you do it continuously multiple times, like Reese has done with Draper James too, you definitely know what's going on. So I think, like, sharing those secrets would be cool. But that's usually where people go. People go, "Well, they're famous, so it's easy for them," or, you know, "Who did the deal?" And I'm like, "Yeah, maybe it's Scooter Braun behind the scenes, but I'd like, I'd like to know how they structured that."

   21. SBSteven Bartlett42:24

       The reason they don't tell you, though, is because it feels like it's the opposite of the authenticity that-

   22. CSCodie Sanchez42:29

       Nailed it.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett42:29

       ... they're trying to maintain.

   24. CSCodie Sanchez42:31

       Nailed it.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett42:32

       So if they came out and went, "Listen, the way we did you on that whiskey deal. (laughs) I got 50%. My job was to post it with the abs every week and you guys fucking bought it and now it's worth a billion dollars. (laughs) Here's the how to." They can't do that deal again because everything they touch, I'm gonna think, "Oh, it's a deal."

   26. CSCodie Sanchez42:47

       Well, I think you could do it in a way that was real. Like, you could be, like, "We did this business," and maybe you could give some of it away. Like, you could be like, w- you know, if, if the Rock makes a billion dollars off of Teremana, couldn't he then say, "We would never have done a billion-dollar deal unless you guys bought it, and because you bought it, we're going to give you some equity. We're going to allow people to buy into equity at the company at a lower valuation and have access to it"? I mean, that's kind of what venture capital and crowdfunding does, right? So, I mean, they can do whatever they want to do, but I think there's so many ways to get around it, and maybe there's nothing but downside because people these days get mad when people make money. And so, maybe people would hate that, but God, I think it'd make a lot more humans rich for people to be honest about how they got there, you know?

   27. SBSteven Bartlett43:34

       I reflect, as you were speaking, on a conversation I had with a cab driver in the UK. He said to me, he went, "Oh, you're that Diary of a CEO girl. I listen to your podcast in the cabs and, you know, I'm, I'm working three jobs. This is one of them, and I'm trying to..." What he was saying was, "I'm trying to find financial freedom."

   28. CSCodie Sanchez43:50

       Yeah.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett43:50

       "I'm working this cab job. Um, I'm doing this other little thing on the side, but I'm trying to find the way. I'm trying to find the way to get out of this life and to..." And he was scrambling

10. 44:00 – 47:08

    How to take the leap

    1. SBSteven Bartlett44:00

       around. He was saying to me, "You know, my friend does some stuff in Africa and in Ethiopia, and he's got something there with property, so I might go there, and-"

    2. CSCodie Sanchez44:06

       Yep.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett44:06

       "... there's this other thing I might do." Those people, those are the ones that I'm trying to speak to today, those ones that are, like, looking for the way out.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez44:15

       Mm-hmm. Well, first of all, cab drivers and Uber drivers are my people.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett44:20

       Yeah.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez44:20

       I always-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett44:21

       I love 'em.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez44:21

       Yeah, I always chat with them. Well, and they always listen to my stuff because they know small business. Like, they have a friend that owns a laundromat-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett44:29

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez44:29

        ... or they have a friend that works inside of a car wash or owns a car wash. These are, like, blue-collar businesses, right?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett44:35

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CSCodie Sanchez44:35

        Um, but usually what I would say to them is something I actually said to one of the guys that's with me today. I'd say, "Try to break your frame entirely." Most people look for individual next tactics, so they're like, "What can I do over the next one, two or three years to get here?" One thing I think is really helpful to do is say, "Okay, you have a three-year goal. Break the frame. How could you achieve that goal in six months? What would be something so different, so out of the box, so big that the goal that was gonna take you three to six years is now gonna take you six months? And I want you to spend some time on that. Spend a week, spend a weekend deeply thinking about that idea because what you're gonna do is you're gonna come up with ideas for the person that could be the impetus for your financial freedom or for the business risk that's super smart, but you haven't been wanting to take it." And I think most people, they, like, they wade in the shallows of life, and you cannot have massive change by going sh- shallow. And so I like to say... When people want a, an answer, I like to ans- ask them a question 'cause I think they know. I think they know deep down inside, but they get scared just like I did, and so they wait years to do the thing that they knew they should have done earlier. And I don't think you need a guru or a podcast to tell you that. I think you've got to break your frame and say, "I'm super capable. If I was gonna do this crazy thing in six months, if anything was possible, if I really believed in myself, what could I do? Who could I go to that could make an unfair advantage for me?" And I do think that book, Who Not How, people usually read it as leaders because it's a lot about hiring, but I think it's actually about life. And I think usually your answer to freedom is a who, not a how. Uh, because often for hustlers and people who are gonna work hard, you know one or two people who are very wealthy or who run big businesses. There are a few people in your ecosystem that you could go to and become their hustler for them, and that can lead to f- fantastic financial reward because most people are not relentless in the pursuit of the things that they want. If you can be relentless, you can accomplish way more than the average person.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett46:41

        And most of us... Y- you used a phrase earlier on in this conversation which really stuck with me because I've used this phrase with my friends over and over again. You said you got to see behind the curtain, and I remember the first moment in my life where I really felt like I got to see behind a curtain that I didn't even know was there.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez46:58

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett46:58

        For anyone listening to this podcast, there's a curtain on my right. For anyone watching, you can see the curtain on my right. Behind that curtain, there is actually a room in there, and th- there's actually another studio in there where we

11. 47:08 – 55:13

    What’s behind the curtain of success?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett47:08

       record some content. It's kind of like a standing-up studio. We've got some backdrops and stuff like that. But the analogy that I'd give you is, in life, you never know how many other rooms there are behind the wall.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez47:20

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett47:20

       And there was a point in my life where I started understanding deals and the public markets and how certain high-net-worth individuals were playing what I call money games.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez47:30

       Mm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett47:31

       They were basically not doing much work, but they understood the laws of money so they could buy things at an arbitrage or flip things at an arbitrage and make g- uh, put them on the public markets-

    6. CSCodie Sanchez47:41

       Yep.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett47:41

       ... and all of these crazy money games that no one had ever told me about in life. I thought the way you build wealth is by working, and these fuckers, the richest people I know, do very little working-

    8. CSCodie Sanchez47:52

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett47:52

       ... and they do a lot of money games.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez47:53

        Yep.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett47:54

        And they live behind the curtain that I didn't even know was there. Um, and I was thinking about the cab driver there. There's so many... What is behind the curtain? The c- behind the curtain is a bunch of information. That's essentially what it is, you know, a bunch of people that have a bunch of information. What I might say to that cab driver is like, "Who can take you behind the curtain even if you have to go get a shit job for six months?"

    12. CSCodie Sanchez48:15

        Yep.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett48:16

        Like, you were alluding to it there, like, "Is there a, a guy or a woman that I could go just shadow, just make the fucking tea, and get behind the curtain and figure out how they do it?"

    14. CSCodie Sanchez48:25

        Yep.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett48:25

        Like, if you wanted to be the best podcast in the world or you wanted to be a good podcaster, you sh- come... Go host Joe Rogan if you can go clean the floors. (laughs)

    16. CSCodie Sanchez48:34

        A hundred percent.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett48:35

        You know what I mean? A lot of people don't want to, want to do that. They want to work their way there. But, uh, so much in life is about information, right? And the information you, you don't even know that you don't have.

    18. CSCodie Sanchez48:44

        Oh, yeah. Well-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett48:45

        When did you see behind the curtain? Well, you worked in finance, so that's unfair.

    20. CSCodie Sanchez48:48

        Yeah. (laughs) I think, I think it is a hack. Um, I saw behind the curtain for the first time w-... when I had managers and bosses who were making tens of millions of dollars a year, and I realized how little they worked, like you said, but also how average they were. You know, I saw these largely, you know, middle-aged dudes who, um, were no more impressive than I was, and they were crushing it. And instead of having envy or hate for that, I was super curious. I'm like, "Huh, this guy can do it, that means I can do it." And I think that's a huge unlock, actually. I was talking with another friend the other week, and I think one of the secrets to success might be when you see somebody who has more, who is doing better, who has more money, realizing that means that you can get it as opposed to, "I hate them because they have it." If you can fl- flip that mindset, on the other side of that lives nothing but opportunity. And, and it keeps... I keep finding new rooms in the house, new curtains behind it. And I'm not sure that will ever stop. I mean, I was talking to my friend Bill Perkins the other day, who's a, a hedge fund manager. And Bill, um, is very successful, huge, you know, compound house we're walking around at. I'm like, "This place is pretty nice." And, uh, and he said to me, "Cody, um, you know, do you think that you... because you've been around small business for so long, small has infected your thinking?" And I was like, "Oh, God." You know, "I don't... fuck, I don't know." And, and, but then I realized, to him, it had, because he's got way more zeros than I do. And so, like, those zeros become unlocks to the curtain. I mean, the, the other day, I was flying home y- yesterday, or flying here yesterday, and I sat next to Geoffrey Kent, the CEO and founder of Abercrombie & Kent. And he built that business up to multiple billions of dollars before selling it. He, uh, played polo with the king, is quite close with King Charles, and, um, you know, uh, also has traveled the world, came from nothing in South Africa, was in a town in South Africa where there were only 100 white people, which is fascinating. Um, like, mostly was barefoot all throughout his childhood, um, and created the luxury travel market, essentially. And I was just sitting next to him on, on the airplane, and I kind of looked at his watch, and I was like, "Mm, that's a nice watch." And I sort of looked at his mannerisms, and I was like, "I just have a feeling this guy is worth a lot of money." (laughs) And so I started chatting with him. I just said, you know, "Hi," uh, "Like, I'm Cody, I'm... You know, why were you in town? What were you doing in Cannes?" And, um, he lives now in Monaco. And what I thought was so interesting is when I talked to him, I said, "What do you think the secret is? Like, you're a billionaire. Like, h- what is that? How, how do you become that?" And he said, "There's really one ingredient to success, and that ingredient is the thing that everybody has but everybody wastes, time."

    21. SBSteven Bartlett51:48

        Time.

    22. CSCodie Sanchez51:49

        He's like, "I ran my company for 61 years, 61 years running one company." He goes, "Can you imagine what the compounding looks like in 61 years focused on one thing?" He goes, "This generation cannot imagine." And, and then we went a little deeper, and I said, "You know, what do you think is the biggest difference between entrepreneurs today and entrepreneurs when you were really in the game?" Because he's in his 80s now. And he said, "Well, back then, we, we were explorers of the only frontier that still existed, which was business." You know, they were the, the privateers asking money for the king and queen to buy a ship to go to the, to the new land, right? Except he was doing it in a business sense. He went to China in '76 and was the first person to open up the Chinese market to travel. You know, he, uh, broke so many bones, uh, playing polo that he had to retire at a young age. Like, they were hard men. And I think about it with, um, with, with us today. I think that we've become a generation of vitamin D deficient, uh, Allbirds-wearing, uh, computer programming, alternative milk drinking softies in many ways. And some of my most successful friends who are worth so much monetarily, their health is not very strong, they don't adventure, and they don't have true difficulty. And I think that's the difference between his generation and ours and between true success and not, is this idea that I'm sort of playing with, like a third-degree human, somebody who has a strong mind, a strong bank account, a strong body, those three things all together, and where we don't just take other people's risk, meaning take other people's money to run our business, but we, we take the risk ourselves. And I think his generation really did many things wrong, I don't want to glorify it, but I think they did that right. And how much more interesting is it to do these big, huge things? And maybe if you do that, you break the frame entirely. Um, and I... Every time I meet with a billionaire, my mind just kind of... it expands a little bit more.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett53:59

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CSCodie Sanchez53:59

        And I think it's the same way, like the first time you met... Like, my parents weren't millionaires when I was growing up, so the first time I met a millionaire, I thought, "Whoa."

    25. SBSteven Bartlett54:07

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez54:08

        "Like, this is a m- What is this magic land? You know, this person has so much money, they don't know what to do with it." And then you meet the first decamillionaire, and then you m- meet the first hundred millionaire, and at each level, not that we want to worship money or that money is all there is, but it is a scoreboard for a game that a lot of people are playing in this society. And I think it's interesting to try to get in those rooms. And these days, those rooms are open, you know? Back when we were first doing our businesses, a billionaire didn't write a book, you know?

    27. SBSteven Bartlett54:37

        Or do a podcast.

    28. CSCodie Sanchez54:37

        Or do a podcast.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett54:38

        Or tweet.

    30. CSCodie Sanchez54:39

        Or go shake your hand at a conference. That was unheard of. And now they're all around.
12. 55:13 – 58:57

    What makes a millionaire?

    1. CSCodie Sanchez55:13

       that comes with building. Because I do think it's more comfortable, by and large. It's more, it's like the low, dull pain is being in a job. You know? That's, like, kind of like having a little ache constantly, being in a job. Being, uh, an owner, an entrepreneur, or trying to strive for billionaire status is a rollercoaster ride of extreme pain at some points, or maybe you'd say extreme pain at some points, extreme pleasure. And you, you kind of go like this, right? You have to be able to wade through that. And so, I find that most of them are the opposite of what I thought they'd be. I thought they'd just be like Scrooge McDuck, like swimming around in their riches. They'd be kind of shallow. Maybe, you know, maybe they'd be super self-interested. They'd only be focused on their own thing. They wouldn't be nice. I wouldn't want to meet them. And actually, what I find, they're inc- this is gonna sound like a gross generalization, but most of them really wanna help you up when they realize that you're hungry. Like, when they see the hunger paired with the ability and willingness to take action, they want to help you. It's so rare. Like, if you're listening and you have that desire but you actually do the hard things, you're rare. You're actually really rare. 'Cause everybody says they want it, but nobody really wants to do it. I mean, I knew I had to fire one of my employees back in the day, which made me really sad. The second that that person told me that they had a bunch of debt, uh, they were working in the business with me obviously, they had a bunch of upside in the business, but they decided to take some of their cash and they were gonna invest in a day, day trading, uh, thing in the stock market. And I said, "I really don't think you should do that. I think if you want to take that cash and buy a business, we should talk about that. I can help you, um, if you want to focus more on a secondary business that increases your income. But if you want to day trade, what you're telling me is that you want to get rich fast and you want to speculate, that you want to get lucky, you don't want to earn it." And anyway, they kind of laughed and then they did the thing. And that was in that mo- moment I knew, you don't have what it takes at this level. Maybe you could change, but if you're gonna make that decision now, you're telling me you're a short-term player. And long-term games with long-term people, like Naval Ravikant said, is the goal, so that's what billionaires have. They think long-term. I was actually just talking with a member of my team on the taxi on the way over here, and there's a, close to a billionaire that I've become friends with here. And I was like, "Why do you think he's invited us to do this stuff?" You know who this is. And, um, and I was like, "I'm not a big enough name for this. Like, there are other people. You know, what's the thought here?" And then what I think I realized is that this guy is taking a bet that I might keep growing my social platform and I might keep spending on it, and in two to three to five years I might be a really big name. And because he associates with me now, when he needs something in two to three to five years, I'll be really big and he'll have, like, a "remember when" moment here. And he could go get a Damian John, right? And pay to do something with a Damian John. But then he doesn't have the "remember when" moment 'cause Damian's already at the top, right? And so that billionaire, almost billionaire, is thinking three to five years out with a potential call option, AKA a maybe possibility. How often do we do that? I don't even do that enough. And so that's where I think they're different. It's just this different scope because probably they see many curtains.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett58:31

       With that long-term view, they want to water some seeds, right?

    3. CSCodie Sanchez58:34

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett58:35

       I, I can totally relate to that. I've often say been perplexed in my life by why extremely rich people wanted to give me a hand (laughs) .

    5. CSCodie Sanchez58:41

       Right.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett58:42

       Especially when I was, like, 18. Kid with an idea, all the enthusiasm in the world, you know? But, meh, you know?

    7. CSCodie Sanchez58:49

       You almost don't trust it, right? Like-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett58:50

       It was so weird.

    9. CSCodie Sanchez58:51

       Yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett58:51

        I've, I've described it as b- being so unusual over and over again every year for the last 10 years that

13. 58:57 – 1:01:03

    What are the traits of successful people?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett58:57

       when I was 18, 19 years old and I stood on those stages and I went around, again, stealing the Chicago Town Pizzas in my spare time to feed myself, but all of these really successful people wanted to give me a hand. Like, wanted to introduce me to someone, you know, give, uh, invest in my business, even though I had no credentials. They just saw something in me that I never understood.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez59:16

       Uh, that would be an interesting thing to try to break down. What is it that you see in another human? I mean, one of the things that comes to mind for me is, how many people reach out to you every single day? A DM, you know, "I'd love to meet you, Steven. Could you help me with this?" Could you, I would be gue- guess a lot.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett59:34

       None. I'm joking (laughs) .

    4. CSCodie Sanchez59:35

       I was gonna say-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett59:36

       (laughs)

    6. CSCodie Sanchez59:36

       ... that seems like that doesn't track.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett59:38

       (laughs)

    8. CSCodie Sanchez59:38

       But okay. So, probably a lot. But what I found is interesting is in the beginning when I was starting to be a little public, I would respond to almost all of them. Almost every single one I would respond, but I would respond like this. I would say, "Happy to help. Read this book, uh, and then do XYZ thing for me." Something very small. I'm like, "Read this book first. Do this s- small thing." Do you know how many people did that?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:00

       Fuck all. None.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:00:01

        Fuck all.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:01

        Yeah (laughs) .

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:00:02

        That's a great saying. I'm gonna use that. Fuck all. Not a single person actually did that. And then if you compare that with, and I think I've hired five team members now who all reached out to me with value. They gave right away.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:15

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:00:15

        One of them did this deep analysis on my business. Another one basically wrote up this whole piece like she was me, um, and it was incredible. And for those individuals who actually asked nothing of me, I gave them a job, an opportunity, and many of them make six figures plus. And so, there might be a secret there, that just the humans who do are the ones who follow up.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:37

        The, the DM tells me everything I need to know about the person.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:00:40

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:41

        And I, I can give you every example of every DM that I ever get and how I filtered them. How I know from the first DM whether they are someone that I should be connecting with. Let me give you the one side of the spectrum. The one side of the spectrum which I often get is, "Any jobs going?" In that, you've told me everything I need to know.

14. 1:01:03 – 1:07:07

    Why did you become a content creator?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:03

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:03

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:03

       Because not only could you have checked if we had jobs available-

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:06

       Of course.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:06

       ... on a, on our many websites where we list our vacancies.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:09

       Yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:09

       You didn't even have enough effort to, like, go check out the job site.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:13

       Yep.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:13

       Um, didn't say hello. Poorly structured message. Um, you think that we hire over DM on the basis of no-... pitch at all. That's the extreme example, but it happens. You wouldn't believe, I will get any jobs going once a day, without fail, on one of my inboxes. And sometimes, (laughs) and I've never said this before, on the very rare occasion, I'm saying once a year, I'll click on the person's profile and I'll care about them so much that I'll send them a voice note. So, 'cause I, I look, I click on their profile. I remember this one kid, and he kind of looked like me.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:48

        Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:49

        And he was a young kid, and I remember thinking, "I really..." You know, I could just ignore it, it's the easy thing to do. The hard thing to do was try and give him some feedback on, like, "Please don't do that to more people. Please don't send them any jobs going, question mark." So I remember sending one particular kid, like, a voice note saying, like, "Right. Listen, buddy, I'm on your side here. Here's some advice." Um, and then on the extreme end, the good end-

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:10

        Wait, what happened with that?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:10

        Sorry?

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:11

        What happened?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:11

        And the response was he w- he, he was thankful.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:14

        Oh, that's good.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:15

        But, uh, when he responded, I realized why he was the type of person that would send any jobs going.

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:19

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:19

        Maybe a bit of a maturity issue there.

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:21

        Sure.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:22

        And then on the other end, you have the perfect reach out where someone realizes that they can't give you what they're asking to take from you.

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:30

        Yeah.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:30

        So if someone wants maybe an hour of your time, they know they can't give you anything worth an hour. They can't give me 50k, they can't... Nothing, nothing they can give me worth that hour of my time. But, they do two th- three things, maybe. The first is they realize that, and so they realize that they should offer something of value. Even, I'm not- never gonna take it, they... But the gesture itself, it's like someone pulling out their card to pay.

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:52

        Yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:52

        The gesture itself matters.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:53

        It does.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:54

        The third thing is they realize the world that I live in and that I have no time, and they acknowledge that. So they might say, "Listen, you get thousands of messages like this. Um, I know how busy you are." So just by them saying that, I go, "Okay, you understand."

    28. CSCodie Sanchez1:03:07

        Yeah.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:07

        "Um, could I, could I just sit?" So I see it as an equation. Ask for as little as possible and give whatever you can. "Could I just sit in the room one day when you work? Means a lot to me." The third point there is research the person, because that's a huge show of care.

    30. CSCodie Sanchez1:03:22

        Yeah.
15. 1:07:07 – 1:14:22

    Leaving things behind to achieve your dreams

    1. CSCodie Sanchez1:07:07

       in line at the club. I wanna own the club. I wanna get the invite. I'm actually...... another good example. I was just with my friends in Cannes and they were like, "Let's try to get into this party or this party." I'm like, "I was invited to this one, I'm gonna go to this one," because I don't like doing the hustling to try to get in to the ... I don't like it. I've never liked it. It's probably a, a ... like, I should get better at it, I should get over myself, who cares? But I was like, "I'm not gonna try to, like, finagle my way in."

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:29

       That's the short-term game, right?

    3. CSCodie Sanchez1:07:31

       Right. And it feels gross and it feels thirsty. I don't wanna be thirsty. And so, creating content is a way for you to have unfair access in a world. Um, you know, these days, how do I become friends with billionaires? Because they watch my weird content on laundromats and car washes, and they see something in it. And so that ... If, if we truly believe that money is power, I think the way you get money is usually people, which is like a theme we've kept coming back to. Most people on the internet, I think, try to explain how smart they are, and what I hope to express is like, "I'm not that smart, I just found people." You know? And I, and I think we can all do that. So that was one. I don't, I don't wanna be standing in line at a club trying to, like, finagle my way in. I wanna find that ... What's the, what's the backdoor that nobody's talking about where they invite you into it? That's one. You know, the second is-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:21

       Let's pause on that.

    5. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:22

       Yeah, tell me.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:22

       'Cause I think that's ... It's, that's not just a nightclub analogy, that's, that is a philosophy towards every facet of your life, being the magnet or the peacock instead of the door-to-door salesperson.

    7. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:34

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:34

       Like, you know what I mean? Like, even-

    9. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:35

       Totally.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:36

        All my companies have grown on this basis. All of my companies have grown on the basis ... This is maybe my biggest ... one of my m- m- least shared business secrets is that all of my companies don't have outbound sales teams, because we make content. And we know, I know, that 99% of my competitors are gonna go the door-to-door salesman route.

    11. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:56

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:56

        They're gonna go network at events. You will ... In the last 10 years, you have never seen me swanning around a network event.

    13. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:04

        (laughs) I haven't either.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:04

        Content is networking.

    15. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:05

        Yeah, I agree. (laughs)

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:07

        (laughs) I- you will never catch me-

    17. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:08

        Agree.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:08

        I've n- I won't have a business card, I'm not gonna hand it to you. I won't even be there. On stage, out the back d- meet people, "Hello, hello, hello." Out the back door.

    19. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:16

        Same.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:16

        Straight back on to LinkedIn-

    21. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:18

        Yeah.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:18

        ... to start making content. People don't realize that, and it's much easier, it's a much more sustainable, more cost-efficient, long-term strategy, if you know how to do it.

    23. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:27

        Yeah. Well, I mean, and if you actually want to see me, like sweat, it would be having to go-

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:31

        Small talk.

    25. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:31

        ... network, small talk, han- like, oh God, I wanna die. Um, and I had to do sales for so long in finance. You know, finance is just all sales. We used to, at Goldman, we had like a spreadsheet that they would track every single day how many cold calls you made when we were trying to sell a deal. And, um, it was awful. You know, I remember one time I was, like, pretending like I understood golf, and so I'm like, "Ah, this is great," like, "How was, how was the game yesterday? Did you, did you get the goal?"

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:56

        (laughs)

    27. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:56

        And they were like, "What the fuck are you talking about? You know, I don't know anything about it." Miserable. Um-

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:01

        It's like a fishing rod versus a net, isn't it?

    29. CSCodie Sanchez1:10:03

        Yeah. (laughs)

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:04

        Like, the fishing rod can only catch one fish. (laughs)

Episode duration: 1:38:36