Why Working Harder Won’t Make You Rich - Codie Sanchez

1. 0:00 – 2:45

   The Biggest Lie About Getting Rich

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Hello, friends. I'm bringing a brand-new live show across the UK and Ireland this October. It's stories, psychology, audience Q&As, and whatever happens when thousands of overthinkers voluntarily leave the house and end up in the same room together. I'd love to see you there. The last tour completely sold out, so make sure that you snag tickets now using the link in the description or heading to chriswilliamson.live. Dublin's already sold out. Loads of venues are limited. Tickets are very limited, so get yours now. Chriswilliamson.live. What's the biggest lie that people are told about getting rich?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez0:31

      That is actually about looking rich and not getting rich. I think especially for men these days, like it's all in your face. On social media today, you can see just about everywhere what somebody's success level is, except if you were to pull up the balance sheet, it would be something very different.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:45

      Hmm.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez0:45

      And so I think rich actually is two things. One, yes, do you have enough money, you know, divided by .4 to have the life that you want? And then two, it's do you actually like the life you want? I love Naval's quote, which is, you know, basically the definition of success is do you have what you want out of life, the definition of happiness being the same. And I think we all kind of trauma bonded as business owners over the fact we should be miserable when we run our businesses.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:13

      Hmm.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez1:14

      You don't look miserable.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:15

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez1:15

      It's hard, but I don't think being rich or being an owner has to be miserable, and that's a great lie.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:20

      I wonder how many people love the idea of working for themselves until they realize that they end up being trapped by their own business.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez1:26

       Oh, well, I mean, interestingly enough, 46% of business owners actually, uh, aren't profitable. So most business owners aren't profitable ever. 64% of business owners are profitable, but they make less than minimum wage in California, which is actually wild. So if you think about it that the average business owner makes somewhere between 40 and 60K per year.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:48

       Hmm.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez1:48

       I think minimum wage, if you were to work full-time in California, shakes out to about seventy-five, seventy-eight thousand dollars a year. So yeah, I think a lot of-

   13. CWChris Williamson1:56

       You don't need to take your job home with you. You're not stressing over whether or not you can make ends meet inside of the business. You're not not paying yourself in order to front load the staff's wages for next month.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez2:06

       Yeah. And you know, and I get a lot of crap for talking about wanting to buy businesses instead, but it's mostly because it's really fucking hard to start one, and most of them fail. And sadly, the ones that do win, that means you paid for the right to one day eventually make some money for three to four years.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:22

       Hmm.

   16. CSCodie Sanchez2:22

       Uh, and people don't think about that. And so if you've-- if you actually have a business that makes money right now, you're in the top 10%. You know, if you have a business that makes a million dollars a year, you're well above the top 1%, even though you're probably only taking home a hun- 150K a year. And if you have a business that's a $10 million a year business, that's 0.01% of all businesses. So it's way harder than anybody thinks.

2. 2:45 – 5:37

   Should You Start Your Own Business?

   1. CWChris Williamson2:45

      Does that mean that very few people should start businesses or become business people?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez2:51

      I think it means you gotta know what you're getting into. You know, I think, uh, anybody who's trying to sell you that you can have everything you want inside of 30, 60, or 90 days and you can do it with little or no money down and you can do it with no effort, it, it's not going to work out. The only time it works out is when you look at the math in most of these things, and I'm just a nerd. Like, I look at the spreadsheets of buying a business, and I say, "What's the lowest default rate you could have?" That's an SBA loan. 13% of those businesses fail per year. That's just public math. Then I look at startups. 90% of them fail within a five to 10-year period. So you basically have these like crazy two amounts of, uh, of success rates. I think probably most people should go work in somebody else's business that's really successful first before you ever think about starting your own. You'd be much better off.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:38

      It's interesting. The question could anybody become a business owner is probably quite high. Uh, with enough childhood trauma and caffeine and sleep deprivation and obsession, probably anybody could. That doesn't mean that anybody should. And I saw this a lot when I was coming up doing nightlife stuff.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez3:56

      Hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:56

      Lots of people had the ability, but not the capacity or the disposition maybe would be a better way to say it.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez4:05

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson4:05

      Like, you have all of the component parts of the talent, but what it does to you, what it requires from you in terms of a sacrifice, uh, especially in the beginning, because for the most part, it's hardest in the beginning. And the, the challenges get more complex and more difficult in some ways. But as you say, momentum is a hell of a drug, and the habit of I'm a business person and I understand what time I get up and I understand how to switch off if I can and so on and so forth. Those are skills that take a long time, and the, like, Dunning-Kruger messy middle bit is where it really hurts.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez4:36

      Yeah. And most businesses fail not just because of cash, but because the founder gives up. I mean, that's why venture capital loves two founders, sometimes even three, because the likelihood of you burning out in your business is actually higher than an employee burning out in their business.

   9. CWChris Williamson4:50

      Hmm.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez4:51

       Most entrepreneurs just don't make it. But I mean, my flip side there is like you can own part of a business for almost anybody pretty quickly. I think people overestimate how hard that is. Like, you must get thousands of applicants, right, for your business. And how often are you like, "God, where are the competent people? Where are they?" Aren't you thinking that a lot? Like, they don't work hard as much. This generation's not as tough. Every business owner I've ever met thinks that. So I think you can actually go inside somebody else's business, carve out a piece of equity in that business if you're super valuable, and then you're still a business owner. Like, we don't look at Sheryl Sandberg differently for that. We don't look at Balaji, uh, Srinivasan different 'cause he was CTO. Guy's still worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:33

       Hmm.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez5:34

       So I think it's actually totally feasible, but people just don't think about

3. 5:37 – 7:35

   Why Codie Turned Down Richard Branson

   1. CSCodie Sanchez5:37

      it that way.

   2. CWChris Williamson5:38

      What's that story about when you turned down Richard Branson?

   3. CSCodie Sanchez5:40

      Oh, well, [chuckles] you know, early on in my career in business, I was a terrible operator. And, uh, I, I had what was-- I call the hero complex in business, like you have to survive. If you don't, if you're not the savior in everything in your business, your business won't survive. And most entrepreneurs tell ourselves that because we're unemployable, and we do have a little bit of a God complex, and we have a little bit of trauma from whatever happened to us that put us into the masochism that is entrepreneurship. And, uh, and so in my business, I was a huge, uh, Branson fan, and I still am. But it was because he got to live this crazy life while he built a business. Like, how many billionaires do you know go and, you know, travel in a hot air balloon across the world? I just thought that was really cool, and I like adventuring. So, um, and then he invited me to his island. Now I don't go to billionaires' islands. You know, that's our own side note.

   4. CWChris Williamson6:30

      You had a bad rap.

   5. CSCodie Sanchez6:30

      Yeah. [laughs]

   6. CWChris Williamson6:31

      I think you should bring them back.

   7. CSCodie Sanchez6:32

      [laughs] I don't know.

   8. CWChris Williamson6:33

      There you go.

   9. CSCodie Sanchez6:34

      So now I'd probably say no, I guess. No, I would go. But I got invited, and I couldn't. Um, I told myself that I didn't have time. If I left the business, it would fail. And I saw this activity list of, like, water biking, water bicycling, whatever that is, hanging out without your phone for multiple days, and, uh, there was just no way I could get away from my business for that. And, you know, since then, I have had a bunch of friends go. They've done business deals. They've met, you know, power players. They did all this stuff that is asymmetric to business being in spreadsheets. And I missed out on it because I told myself a total lie about building businesses, which is that the business is centered around you, and you are the most important part, and if you don't drive revenue, the business won't make res-revenue. And now that's not true at all.

   10. CWChris Williamson7:16

       You told yourself that, didn't go and see Branson.

   11. CSCodie Sanchez7:19

       Yep.

   12. CWChris Williamson7:19

       Meanwhile, Branson's snorkeling and running billion-dollar businesses.

   13. CSCodie Sanchez7:22

       Yeah, multiple. And I think at the time, this business was probably doing five million dollars a year. You know, it was not a big business at all. And it was growing, and it was profitable. You know, there was no fire to put out. It was just a lie I told myself.

4. 7:35 – 8:44

   When Responsibility Is Really Just Ego

   1. CWChris Williamson7:36

      How much responsibility is really just ego, do you think?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez7:38

      [laughs] That's an interesting question. I think, I think when it comes to business building, we try to wrap up our identity so much in the thing that we call ourselves, CEO, founder, creator. And we don't realize that one day, your business will have a giant gaping hole of failure in it, and you'll sit alone in the dark with no idea of what to do next, wondering why you ever started this thing and really worried that it's gonna fail, and it's gonna fail because of you. We will all have that moment. And when that moment happens, if it's your entire identity, then what do you do? Then you're a failure because you couldn't figure out this one business issue? You know, Branson's had something like sixty-plus businesses over his career, multiple huge failures. And so how much of us wrapping our identity in one thing is the thing that's holding us back? Probably a lot.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:33

      Mm.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez8:33

      And is that actually healthy for you at all? And what if, actually, the people who work for you are more competent than you think, and they might be better than you at something? Uh, but it's taken me, I don't know, fifteen years to

5. 8:44 – 15:45

   The Evolution Every Business Owner Goes Through

   1. CSCodie Sanchez8:44

      figure that out.

   2. CWChris Williamson8:45

      Take me through the story arc [clears throat] of the typical founder, business owner, person, who they are, how they start, how they frame it, what that morphs into, the problems they face, and sort of what the path out is on the other side. What's the, what's the story that we've got here?

   3. CSCodie Sanchez8:59

      Yeah. Well, I would say there's really, there's twelve types of owners. And the three most common owners or founders or entrepreneurs are what we call the closer, the ball hog, and the visionary. And we've run about fifteen thousand people through a survey to figure out, what are the three most common, and what are their strengths and weaknesses? And what's fascinating is the three most common all have a very similar story arc, which is, "I worked for somebody else. They wouldn't listen to me. I wanted to do it differently. Uh, they saw a different path for me. I didn't fit into the mold, and so I had to go create my own thing because I became relatively unemployable," or, "I was fast-faster, better, stronger than the other guys, and so I went and did my own thing." And th-the, the founders typically have three characteristics. If you're a closer, they're really good at selling anything, right? You could probably sell ice to an Eskimo. You're, like, selling promotions. Then you're on Love Island selling yourself. Then you're here talking to an entire generation, right? You probably are a closer. I'm not sure. Um, that's, like, one of the most successful archetypes. We have lots of friends who are great salespeople. The second one is the founder, which is like, you will something to existence, like Neutonic, that just hasn't existed before. You create a product that nobody else has had. And the third is the visionary, and the visionary sells dreams. They have... You know, if you want to succeed as a CEO, you have to sell a, a vision that's bigger than what your employees could see by themselves.

   4. CWChris Williamson10:27

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CSCodie Sanchez10:27

      You need to be able to raise them up. Otherwise, they don't need you. And so I think the arc for almost everybody is you're highly qualified, you're good, you're in business, you're outperforming other people, they're not listening to you, you go execute. The problem is all of that is about you. None of that is about you as a leader, as a builder of a real business, putting in systems and processes. That is actually usually for number twos and number threes.

   6. CWChris Williamson10:52

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CSCodie Sanchez10:52

      So you've got to learn that skill, and I had to too. And you have to learn it a lot more when you're outside of an organization and you're creating your own.

   8. CWChris Williamson11:00

      What are the component parts of those skills?

   9. CSCodie Sanchez11:03

      Well, if I was gonna break down what makes a good, like, a great founder, what do the best founders have? One, they hate repeating themselves. Like, how many times have you as a leader said, "I swear to God, if I have to repeat this one more time, I'm gonna lose it"? That annoyance for repetition actually leads to systems, and systems are the only thing that allow you to scale. So you can be an incredible salesperson. If you're a salesperson of one, you'll only get to... I've seen some businesses get to a few million in sales with one salesperson, but that's it. So one, you hate repetition. Two is you love one thing about your business more than anybody else, which is selling the client on exactly, not the product, but the problem you're solving. And usually, let's, I take Neutonic again, it would be like, yeah, I don't actually really know what's in the drink, but you're selling, "Hey, maybe I wanna be like Chris Williamson. Maybe I wanna, like, be super productive. Like, I have this brain fog," right? You have to be obsessed with this problem set. And I think the problem with a lot of young en-entrepreneurs today is they're like, "I'm starting an AI services business." You're like, "Why? Are you obsessed with that? Can you not sleep for the want of it? If not, you shouldn't start it." And then the third thing they have to do is they have to be able to have other people believe that they might actually be able to follow through on the dream, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs fall down there. They'll say, "There aren't A players anywhere." Well- How many times have you wanted to go work for a C player if you're an A player? You gotta be a winner if you wanna attract winners.

   10. CWChris Williamson12:30

       Hmm.

   11. CSCodie Sanchez12:30

       And that's really hard to look in the mirror and ask yourself.

   12. CWChris Williamson12:33

       Hmm. Do you think, uh, is being indispensable a compliment to founders?

   13. CSCodie Sanchez12:40

       No. I mean, if you could take one thing as a founder to heart, it would be your revenue should have nothing to do with you. You-- Actually, the more that you are the driver of your revenue, the less you have a business, the more you have a highly paid job. And, you know, I think about it like a entrepreneur pyramid with three levels to the game. The bottom level of the pyramid, that's the wantrepreneurs. This is like, uh, we all do it together, you know, but really I do everything. The le- the next level is a manager, which is they do things-

   14. CWChris Williamson13:13

       Mm-hmm

   15. CSCodie Sanchez13:13

       ... kind of, but I micromanage and oversee them. And at the very top, it should actually be as a CEO, uh, I do very few things, and the team does everything else. It's also called the generalist to specialist curve. Like, you essentially move people from doing many things kind of well to having a few specialists-

   16. CWChris Williamson13:30

       Mm-hmm

   17. CSCodie Sanchez13:30

       ... that run everything really well.

   18. CWChris Williamson13:32

       Yeah, you say that most dangerous addiction for a founder is being needed.

   19. CSCodie Sanchez13:36

       Mm. I mean, it's true. I mean, I think in your business, there's nothing better than feeling like you can come in and save the day and make the money and do the close in your business. Especially, I mean, we have a lot of entrepreneurs and founders who are, are men. That's like ninety-five percent of the companies that we have, and I see it a lot with them. Uh, women typically wanna be needed by their employees. Men wanna be needed for the business. And so if the business needs them to close and grow revenue, then they feel really excited about it.

   20. CWChris Williamson14:07

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CSCodie Sanchez14:07

       And the thing that got them the ability to be a founder ends up becoming the reason they'll never succeed. You know, we have one founder that I, I adore, and he's built a really big company, and the business is quite big now. It's a nine-figure business. And if that business fails, it will be one person's fault, and that is fucking him.

   22. CWChris Williamson14:25

       Hmm.

   23. CSCodie Sanchez14:25

       Because he will not get out of the way to hire people better than him. And I think a lot of times we get scared of hiring people better than us because what does that mean for us as a founder? Do we have guilt? Do we have shame? Could they take over our position? Uh, it's kinda not normal, and like-

   24. CWChris Williamson14:41

       Do you think that's it? I mean, you, you might be right that, um, lots of founders have access to a talent pool which is better than them. I get the sense that finding people that are competent and hardworking and have initiative is an unbelievably rarefied skill set, and I would guess more founders struggle to find the candidates and the staff than find them and have some existential fear about bringing them into their organization. What do you think?

   25. CSCodie Sanchez15:12

       I think the fear is subconscious.

   26. CWChris Williamson15:14

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CSCodie Sanchez15:14

       And I think-- and, you know, so it's hard to know. I think the fear is subconscious, but the real problem is what Charlie Munger said, which is, "You or I are probably not good at... enough at setting up incentives properly."

   28. CWChris Williamson15:26

       Hmm.

   29. CSCodie Sanchez15:26

       So the reason why somebody... you're scared of somebody in your business being better than you is often because you don't know how to corral them as a force inside of your business. Because if you are really good at incentives, you could hire just about anybody and point them in the right direction and get out of their way.

6. 15:45 – 19:49

   How to Get the Best From Your Staff

   1. CWChris Williamson15:45

      Okay. How does a business owner get the most out of their staff?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez15:49

      Y- you nail the incentives. If you wanna win, follow the incentives always. So first, like, I really think there's only five reasons why anybody does anything in your business. They wanna make money, one. Two, they want relevance. Three, they want to lead. They want a team and to not be a doer, uh, on top of it all the time. Uh, four, they want not just relevance, but significance, like, "I'm higher than this person. I have a higher hier- hierarchy or title than this person does." And five, they want work-life balance or freedom. And so those are, like, the five main levers we use in our business if we want to incentivize somebody. The biggest mistake you can make early on as a founder is thinking that everybody's like you. I like money, so, like, if, if I'm incentivizing me-

   3. CWChris Williamson16:33

      Yeah, fucking money

   4. CSCodie Sanchez16:33

      ... [laughs] you get... And search him off-

   5. CWChris Williamson16:35

      Yeah

   6. CSCodie Sanchez16:35

      ... and his sweater.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:36

      Yeah.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez16:37

      If it's me, you're gonna give me a comp plan that just shows me I can make millions of dollars. I'm gonna fucking run. If you show me a comp plan that gives me lots of work-life balance, Fridays off, foosball table, I don't give a shit. That's not interesting. But if you're in Austin, guess what's more important? The freedom than the money, actually, from the culture here writ large. And so how you incentivize them, you gotta know your people. So we make all of them take a personality score. This comes from private equity. It's not that I'm smart. I stole all of this. And private equity makes every single employee take personality tests and then drives their incentive comp plan to what they do. Like, if you hire somebody who's balance and freedom based, but they're a genius at creative insight or engineering or product, that's a win. But if you put them on a comp plan that's only about money, you're gonna lose, and so are they.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:28

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez17:28

       And so it's, it's a dance, and I wish it was the same every single time. It's not.

   11. CWChris Williamson17:32

       What are the most overlooked from those five, or what are the ones that people-

   12. CSCodie Sanchez17:35

       Probably significance and relevance. Um, if you think about titles, uh, there's a lot of people today that will say, "You shouldn't care about titles. You know, don't have title creep." Um, I don't know that that's always true. If somebody wants to have a high title and that's really important to them, you could pay somebody way less money, you could give them less time off, but you could give them a higher title. Okay, that's just a lever.

   13. CWChris Williamson17:58

       We all know of people in our industry that use the title game to compensate for the salary game.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez18:04

       Oh, a hundr- oh, a lot. Most founders actually put founder or entrepreneur or visionary, that one makes me wanna die, like, next to their name. Uh, but their business makes, you know, 30K a year. But that's important to them, that sort of significance. Um, and then relevance is slightly different in that, um, a lot of people, like my company, for instance, so we have 100-plus employees at the Media company and, and advisory business. And I would say, like, probably 15% of them really care about impact and relevance. Like, they could have been in private equity, they were in private equity before, but they're like, "God, I don't wanna die, you know, on Wall Street doing deals. I wanna feel like it meant something, what I did." So you could pay that guy less, in fact, often we do, but they could have more impact, and that might be a reason why they stay.

   15. CWChris Williamson18:50

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7. 19:49 – 28:40

   When Does An Owner Know to Relinquish Control?

   1. CWChris Williamson19:49

      What I'm interested in most, I think, is this transition from founder mode to owner mode-

   2. CSCodie Sanchez19:55

      Mm. Yeah

   3. CWChris Williamson19:55

      ... over time. And, you know, I've seen this three times now in my life. First running the nightclubs-

   4. CSCodie Sanchez20:02

      Mm-hmm

   5. CWChris Williamson20:02

      ... then running Modern Wisdom, and now also running Neutonic as well. Less so with Neutonic. I've, I've been good with that. But here's the problem that I think a lot of people face, right? Founder initi- initially has to become sort of psychologically fused to the company.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez20:17

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson20:17

      Like, they are the company. They work harder than everyone, they know every, every customer, they take every just checking in call, and that intensity is what gets the company off the ground, right? That is the fuel. And then at some point, the rules reverse.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez20:31

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson20:31

      And to become an owner, the founder has to dismantle that identity. They've got this identity. That's who they've built themselves into, and they have to tolerate other people doing things differently. They've got to lose the dopamine of saving the day. They have to let other employees become more important or make mistakes, allow customers to form relationships with other people inside of their company that they don't anymore, and then accept that the ultimate evidence of their success is that things can go perfectly well without them, right? Like, this is the arc, but the problem is basically entrepreneurship rewards, like, narcissistic levels of self-belief-

   10. CSCodie Sanchez21:06

       Mm-hmm

   11. CWChris Williamson21:06

       ... in the beginning.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez21:07

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:08

       And then ownership punishes narcissistic levels of self-importance when you grow up. How does an owner know when they have s- stopped being the hero and started being the bottleneck? Because everyone, u- unless you buy the business, and I guess you can leapfrog and maybe basically get yourself out of a little bit of the founder mode because I wasn't there at the very, very beginning.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez21:29

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson21:31

       Lots of people are going to found businesses. Many of them are going to fail. Some of them are going to succeed. For the ones that want to not fail, how do you coach people through relinquishing that control? They've wrapped their existential sense of well-being, their personality, their psychic morphic resonance with the world is all, all contorted around this, this thing, right? I'm the guy. I took every fucking call. This podcast, I did thousands and thousands and thousands of ad reads. I signed every single invoice. I made sure that every single guest was booked for 800 episodes with no assistance, like scheduling, researching, booking things in, title, thumbnail, everything. And now I need to relinquish all of this stuff. How does a business owner know when to let go of being the hero because they become the bottleneck?

   16. CSCodie Sanchez22:14

       Yeah. Well, I mean, f- first, our, our line at our company when we bring anybody on to advise them is, uh, being the hero is, uh, taking heroin. So you're, you have an addiction. It is to your business. And if you continue to be the, the hero, that's a four-letter word at your company, actually. W- I think you need to flip the entire script. This is super unpopular, but of... You know how people used to say you have to serve your employees? Well, actually, the best way to serve your employees is make sure you don't flame out miraculously and not be able to pay them and fail. And so your employees actually have to serve you in some ways, and they need to get on the, on the board with that. So that would be first, realize that being the hero is actually heroin. The second is, I don't like to talk about it as founder versus owner mode. I say, are you self-employed versus an owner? Self-employed is what 95% of businesses are. You know, most businesses don't have any employees, and even the ones who do, you have such micromanagement oversight on the business that you're addicted to Slack. Your wife and your friends know it, and you feel good every time you get the dopamine hit of a ping.

   17. CWChris Williamson23:13

       Yeah.

   18. CSCodie Sanchez23:14

       And so if that is you, then the question is, well, what is the opposite of that? And the only reason I can own a ton of businesses today is because I never wanna be self-employed again. It was miserable. I mean, it probably led to me not being able to get pregnant for so long and, and be-

   19. CWChris Williamson23:29

       Congratulations.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez23:30

       Oh, thank you. Um, I think it led to stress of, of, you know, feeling like for the last five years, what if the business couldn't go on without me? Meanwhile, it's growing faster than ever. So if you say the difference between self-employed and an owner is really two things. One, if you're self-employed, that means that either the fulfillment of the product, the sales of the product, or the distribution of the product falls entirely in your hands. If any one of those three falls entirely in your hands, you're still self-employed. We gotta remove those first. And then if you wanna be an owner, actually, that means you have to have the number one thing most business owners don't have, which is transparency. I do not believe you should hire great people and get the fuck out of their way. I used to. That's a, that's actually a disaster because they're never gonna care as Totally as much as you about your business. So you need to have a way to see under the hood and see a dashboard. I think most owners are flying in a, in an airplane without a cockpit, without a cockpit and without a dashboard.

   21. CWChris Williamson24:30

       Mm.

   22. CSCodie Sanchez24:30

       And so I think the way for you to move from founder mode and self-employed to owner mode would be, what if you could see inside of your business the most important metrics every single day, and you could see the two type of scorecards that matter? Activity based, which you can control. So has my team reached out to all the people that they need to? Um, has my team done a number of cold calls, emails, right? So that's activity based. And then outcome based, are we hitting our revenue goals? Are we hitting our close goals? Is our conversion rate right? Is our churn down, et cetera. Most people only measure the outcome based goals with very few predictions, so it, it's hard for them to project out what the future might look like. Very few people measure activity and outcome and have forward-looking projections. And so I think you'll know you're an owner when those th-three, three things aren't completely reliant on you, and you have a ca-cockpit and a dashboard, and you can actually see where the business is going.

   23. CWChris Williamson25:23

       This sounds really complex to build.

   24. CSCodie Sanchez25:25

       You know-

   25. CWChris Williamson25:25

       This sounds like a big, unwieldy, huge fuck off database, and I'm tracking all of this stuff-

   26. CSCodie Sanchez25:30

       Yeah

   27. CWChris Williamson25:31

       ... from the... Like, what, am I gonna have to get McKinsey in to build this for me? What, how do I do it?

   28. CSCodie Sanchez25:33

       Yeah, that's a good question. Absolutely not. Your business should really run on two main oars, in my mind. I don't believe in North Stars because imagine you're, like, in a boat with your team. Now, have you ever talked to the team and, and they feel like, they're like, "Chris, I feel whiplashed in my business." Like, one day you say revenue. Next day you're like, "Where are our follower metrics?" Like, fuck, our followers are down, but our revenue's really up. We're annoying them too much with our ads, right? And so the team's like, "Come on," it's like le- you know, you're, like, pulling a boat like this. Left, right, left, right. If you actually wanna win in business, you have to set expectations with your employees, and you tell them, "Hey, imagine you're in a boat and you only have one oar. What happens?" Well, you go in a fucking circle. You can't go anywhere. So we can't only focus on revenue. That would be great if we could. We have to focus on some top of funnel metric, maybe that's followers, leads, et cetera. And so most businesses have two metrics that you can run your entire business on, and if you find those, then your dashboard can actually be pretty chill. Takes a little work to figure out the two of them.

   29. CWChris Williamson26:32

       Mm.

   30. CSCodie Sanchez26:32

       But most businesses, and, and they're not always revenue and followers. It might be if you're an auto me-mechanic, you might actually care about what is the average order value that every car has that comes through, and you might care about car count, how many cars come through in total. And if you just nail those two things-
8. 28:40 – 37:42

   Is AI Important for Small Businesses?

   1. CWChris Williamson28:40

      How much are you thinking about the introduction of AI at the moment in businesses? Because as far as I can see, lots of people get very excited about it. It's super, super sexy. There's this stat, 76% of small businesses now use AI per Goldman Sachs. 10,000 small business voices survey, yet only 14% have it fully embedded in core operations. And from the same study, they said everyone's dabbling and almost nobody has actually rebuilt their operations around it. I don't know if trusting AI to run a business is a good idea right now because it might be a dangerous place to leverage. We don't know where that's gonna go in future. There's this clause erase an entire company's database and all of its backups. There's still an awful lot of concern. Talk to me about how you think about using AI in new small businesses.

   2. CSCodie Sanchez29:26

      Yes, you do. I mean, it would be a terrible idea to let AI run your entire business. Like, it would be an absolutely awful idea. O-one, I mean, have you tried to have AI just write you something one-shotted? It's the most AI slop... I mean, how much do you wanna die every time from an employee you get a list of questions and it's, it's not X, it's Y, and it's same, same, same, and it's rules of three, right? It's awful. That is, like, the number one way to not make more money as an employee, is to, like, one-shot write in to your boss. Um, I don't know, the, the data says that actually AI is not that important for most small businesses, which is super counter to the narrative. You know what's a lot more important? Answering your fucking phone, responding to emails, answering text. Most small businesses respond on average 18 to 24 hours after they get a lead. And the crazy part is most small business owners will fight with me on that. And so, you know, if-

   3. CWChris Williamson30:15

      Are they saying that that's too long or too short?

   4. CSCodie Sanchez30:18

      That it-- Oh, we respond right away. We respond immediately.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:21

      Right.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez30:21

      No, you don't.

   7. CWChris Williamson30:21

      But they don't.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez30:22

      And so if it's me and I'm choosing between AI and response time, it's response time all day. Like, what if all you need... So they say that most small businesses, 80% of the reason why you win versus somebody else is that you just respond faster or you come up quicker, right? That's why point of sale is so important at the grocery store.

   9. CWChris Williamson30:41

      Yeah.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez30:41

       That's why the first plumber who responds back to you is gonna win.

   11. CWChris Williamson30:44

       Yeah.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez30:44

       And yet we spend all this time AI optimizing from all these-

   13. CWChris Williamson30:47

       Over-optimating, yeah

   14. CSCodie Sanchez30:48

       ... terms on Twitter. Yeah, no. So I, I, I'm an absolute, for most small business owners, you need to earn the right to use AI by doing, like, standard business practices.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:57

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CSCodie Sanchez30:57

       And then you can play around with all this fancy stuff.

   17. CWChris Williamson30:59

       Such a good point. You know, it makes me think about one of the best hacks that we realized when we started running business, which is pay invoices as quickly as possible.

   18. CSCodie Sanchez31:09

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson31:09

       If you are, um... Every business needs a graphic designer. You need some new stuff making for you. If you pay, the guy sends the final version of the flyer through, and you've done a ton of amends and, "Ah, fuck, I'm sorry, mate. It was a nightmare. I'm really, really glad that we got there. Thank you," paid that moment, that day.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez31:26

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson31:26

       If you're the person that pays quickly, the next time that you need to go back to that graphic designer, they will remember, "Fuck, I didn't even need to chase him."

   22. CSCodie Sanchez31:33

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson31:33

       Like, or if you're pushing them for the invoice, "Hey, hey, get it over now 'cause I wanna get it paid," two fucking day.

   24. CSCodie Sanchez31:38

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson31:39

       That, in my experience, has put us straight to the top of the list. Because even if we're just getting charged the same rate as everybody else, they know that we're easy to deal with. Yeah, cool, maybe there was a little bit of pain in the... You know, you gotta be a little bit charming on the back end. Um, that's one, and here's the other one, which is, I guess, I, I don't know whether this puts you in the realm of owner, but certainly gets your foot in the door in rooms that you shouldn't be in, and this was the way that most of the guys that I've worked with have ended up getting in with me. If you're good at something and you say to someone, "I'm gonna come and work for you. I'm a videographer. I want to work for you as this particular person. I'm gonna come across, and I'm gonna work for you for 30 days. I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna give you everything." In 30 days' time, if you're as good as you say you are, they're not gonna be able to let you go.

   26. CSCodie Sanchez32:28

       100%.

   27. CWChris Williamson32:28

       They're gonna have to, have to pay you, and you can call it out. We do this with partners. I don't really talk about the way that I do deals on the show that much, but one of the ways that I've always done them is, "Hey, I'm gonna do a probation period with you. I'll do 90 days or six months, and once that's done, I'm gonna give you the deal of a lifetime. I'm gonna give you way less than you should. In six months' time, I'm gonna come to you with my hand out, and you're gonna have to pay me, and I'm gonna make you pay. But I'm gonna tell you that this is what's gonna happen. I'm gonna call out the game."

   28. CSCodie Sanchez32:59

       Mm-hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson32:59

       "And if I don't deliver, I've taken on all of the risk." And this is the way that we used to get deals back in the day. Between those two things, you're someone that has a skill that you think this person needs. If you can go to them and say, "I'm gonna do it for you because I care about what you do, and I'm gonna show you that you need me," they can't not pay you at the end. If you're as good as you say you are, they can't not pay you. Same thing goes for if you're going to pitch somebody to go and give some sort of a service to their business. "I think that I can do this thing." They don't want to let you go, and there's this weird karmic psychological debt that we have where you go, "Fuck, damn it, he put his money where his mouth was, and he actually delivered what he said he did." So that's on both sides. If you're somebody that wants to get into the room, just work for free for 30 days. Or if you're trying to get a deal across the line, say, "I'm gonna give you the deal of a lifetime, and in 30, 60, 90, 6 months, whatever, I'm gonna come with my hand out, and I'm gonna make you pay for it, but you're gonna want to." Or on the other side, if you're somebody that pays invoices, just pay the fucking thing straight away. Those, at least for me, have been step change business hacks that have, have just keep on working. I can't believe they keep on working two decades later, but they do.

   30. CSCodie Sanchez34:08

       Yeah. Well, I mean, it, it, that goes back to the law of reciprocity. Like, why when you go to the car dealership do they give you a hot dog and a Coca-Cola even though most of the time you don't buy a car? Because actually, there is an innate human belief that if somebody gives us something, we've gotta give them something in return.
9. 37:42 – 41:59

   The Secret to Finding Great Employees

   1. CWChris Williamson37:42

      How do you advise people to go about finding the right talent? Because I do think that a big bottleneck that business owners feel is, "This is my fucking baby-

   2. CSCodie Sanchez37:53

      Yeah

   3. CWChris Williamson37:53

      ... and I'm terrified of giving it over to someone that I don't trust fully, and I've been burned in the past because people have made promises when I was earlier and greener in my business career, and the first person that I hired, that was a nightmare, and then I tried to get a family member, and that was a nightmare." And what's the 80/20 rules of finding and training great staff?

   4. CSCodie Sanchez38:18

      Yeah. Well, I would say, one, your first hires are almost always gonna suck, uh, because you kind of suck when you start. So just don't feel bad for hiring bad people in the beginning. That's totally natural, and you're probably not gonna do much about that. Um, we have something called the hiring matrix, which is basically... This is... So there's three steps to finding great people, right? Or getting great people. First, you gotta find them, but you can't really find them until you know what they look like, and then you gotta know how to close them. So it's like, what do they look like? How do you find them? How do you close them? Those are the three steps to finding great people. Most people say, "I can't find great people anywhere," and that's 'cause they don't know what they're looking for. It's like chicks on dating websites saying, "I want six foot five, blue eyes," whatever that whole thing was. That's not actually what you want, so now you're, you're reverse optimizing for something that's not good. So first we have something called the known candidate matrix, and basically it's five things that will tell you whether this person has a high likelihood of being successful in your business or not. One is proven experience. They've already done this task before. They've been a CEO before or a CFO before. Uh, two is sector experience. They've worked in your specific sector. Three is size. They didn't work at Google, and you're a startup, 'cause that would be a big jump between the three of them. They have a problem set that they have already nailed. So you could hire somebody from a startup that's have proven experience, that is in your sector. But, uh, they were in charge of a growth company, and yours is a turnaround. You got shit sideways. Somebody's gotta fix it. And then, uh, the last one is, does this person know anybody in your sphere so you can get a real gauge on if they're good or not? And so that's called known candidate.

   5. CWChris Williamson39:56

      Hmm.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez39:56

      So they, you know, I like to rank those all as fives. A top performing candidate's gonna be a 25. A bottom performing one's gonna be a zero. And what we've seen across hiring thousands of people for these companies is if you c- the higher you can rank on that, the more likelihood you are to win over time. Um, so that's one. It's like, how do you know what a cheetah looks like? You gotta figure out that it's got spots, right? And then the second is you gotta figure out if you want cheetahs or house cats. So I think most employees are house cats. They're, like, nine to five. They work in this realm. They don't wanna work too much harder than that. They're not gonna go out and, like, find their meals. The cheetah is gonna be your 20%. Those are gonna be your killers. They're really gonna really go after it. But you don't need a whole company full of cheetahs.

   7. CWChris Williamson40:40

      Right.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez40:40

      I think that's a misnomer. They're really expensive. Um, they're hard to manage. Uh, you should hire divas every time you can because actually divas are the ones that perform over time, but you're gonna hear the most complaints about them 'cause we're impossible. Anybody who's really good is impossible to manage. You should give-

   9. CWChris Williamson40:57

      I'm a dream. I don't know what you're talking about.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez40:58

       There's no way. I bet your son-

   11. CWChris Williamson40:59

       No, I'm, I'm-

   12. CSCodie Sanchez40:59

       [laughs] I love that he actively laughs

   13. CWChris Williamson41:01

       ... don't laugh. Shut up, dude.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez41:02

       [laughs]

   15. CWChris Williamson41:03

       Shut up.

   16. CSCodie Sanchez41:04

       We're a nightmare, but you're so good that you will put up with your bullshit when you're a diva or an A player and, and that's okay. So you, you couldn't have a company of 80% of them 'cause you'd drive, uh, everybody crazy.

   17. CWChris Williamson41:15

       Hmm.

   18. CSCodie Sanchez41:16

       Um, and because most people fill roles once you have a system and a set incentive stack. You're like, "They don't have to be amazing," 'cause you go, you do this, and then you do this, and if you do that, you get that. Um, and then the third thing is, how do you actual... now actually go out and, like, figure out if these people exist in the world? That's the hardest part. The only way that we've found to do it really consistently is first is referrals, second is recruiters, then third is websites. I think recruiters are really underused right now. They're expensive, but they're so worth it, and your best recruiters ever will be your employees, and that will be because you've built a culture that isn't terrible.

   19. CWChris Williamson41:55

       Hmm.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez41:56

       And they will come because they wanna work with other people

10. 41:59 – 43:24

    The Biggest Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

    1. CSCodie Sanchez41:59

       just like you.

    2. CWChris Williamson42:00

       What are the biggest wastes of time in hiring? What are the-

    3. CSCodie Sanchez42:03

       Hmm

    4. CWChris Williamson42:03

       ... the, um, unnecessary traditions or, or things that people feel like-

    5. CSCodie Sanchez42:08

       Oh

    6. CWChris Williamson42:08

       ... they need to do as a part of the process?

    7. CSCodie Sanchez42:10

       That's a great point. Um, one, don't do hour-long interviews ever. I would never, ever have an hour-long meeting to recruit somebody until I know that I'm obsessed with them and I wanna have them on at the-

    8. CWChris Williamson42:21

       Fourth stage.

    9. CSCodie Sanchez42:21

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson42:22

        Uh-huh.

    11. CSCodie Sanchez42:22

        And even then, I'm probably setting it as a 30, 45-minute meeting, and you can extend if you want to. But I think 15-minute meetings are totally underutilized. Like, isn't it weird? Why, when you get into corporate- Do they tell you, "When... Let's follow up on that" when? "Next week." Like, why, why did we decide next week? Let's set a meeting for that. It's an hour or 30 minutes. Why? Is that what the meeting necessitated? So I think half of this is getting to, like, the first principles of everything in business, which is how do I do the most amount of stuff in the least amount of time-

    12. CWChris Williamson42:52

        Mm-hmm

    13. CSCodie Sanchez42:53

        ... and kind of not apologize for it. And so in our hiring process, we're very particular about like, hey, these meetings are really short to the point. When I get on, there's not a lot of chit-chatting. I'm like, "Hey, how's it going? You mind if I get right in?" Amazing. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. The second thing is, like, you are really hiring wrong if you don't have a list of questions that you ask, and everybody on the team has set questions, they're not the same, and all the notes get accumulated. You could throw that into AI, and they all get stack ranked and scored. Everybody says they do this for hiring.

    14. CWChris Williamson43:22

        Mm.

    15. CSCodie Sanchez43:22

        Nobody does this for hiring.

11. 43:24 – 56:53

    The Best Questions to Ask Candidates

    1. CWChris Williamson43:24

       What are your favorite questions to ask candidates?

    2. CSCodie Sanchez43:26

       Hmm. Yeah, I mean, my favorite question, it's not just a question, it's I wanna get an answer. Like, if you wanna find an A player, by and large, an A player is determined by how hard of things have they ever done. Have you done something really hard? And, uh, the other, the other probably month or two ago, we had one candidate I really liked, smart lady, gonna be super competent in marketing, and I asked her, I was like, "Tell me about what's the hardest thing that, you know, you've done lately. Like, give me the last 90 days. What has, like, kept you up at night? What has pushed you farther than you thought?"

    3. CWChris Williamson44:01

       Hmm.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez44:01

       "Just let me know." And she said, "Well, I did, I went on a really hard, uh, hot yoga retreat," and I thought, "Well, fuck, you're not gonna make it." Because if that's the hardest thing you've done is go on a hot yoga retreat, which I would deem a vacation, um, you probably wouldn't like this job very much.

    5. CWChris Williamson44:18

       Yeah.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez44:18

       And so, um, I think you wanna try to figure out when was the last time they stayed up all night, like, if you want a high performer.

    7. CWChris Williamson44:25

       Yep.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez44:26

       Um, and so a lot of times, that's a really good question to ask. Like, when was the last time you couldn't go to sleep because you wanted to work on something so badly? And you can just tell in their eyes if they're slow to respond or if they're like-

    9. CWChris Williamson44:38

       Oh

    10. CSCodie Sanchez44:38

        ... "Well, you know, yeah, I don't know. You know, oh, I needed to-"

    11. CWChris Williamson44:42

        "Sister's bachelorette party was getting... The, the flights were a little..." Uh, sorry. No.

    12. CSCodie Sanchez44:48

        That's not a winner. And so that's super unpopular. People don't like to hear that, and I'll, I'll probably get in trouble 'cause people say it's too hard to work in my company. But the flip side is, like, good. Like, if people... Like, we also have something called the anti-sell. I learned this from Amjad, who I think you've had on here too from Replit.

    13. CWChris Williamson45:06

        No.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez45:06

        Oh, he's amazing. I can make an intro if you ever want, but fastest company from zero to billion dollars, uh, in sales in, like, that period of time, not since the beginning of $0, 'cause he went like eight or eight or nine years with $0 in revenue. But, um, Amjad has something called the anti-sale for new employees, and I think this is super smart. If you go to his website, and now if you go to mine too 'cause I stole it, on there it will basically say, um, "Do not join if you do not love hard things that almost break you. You know, do not join if you do not want to be," uh, because this is big in technology, "if you do not wanna be on the frontier of open source as opposed to closed source." So stuff that would be really contentious-

    15. CWChris Williamson45:46

        Mm-hmm

    16. CSCodie Sanchez45:46

        ... put it up front like a billboard. I love... I think one of the best examples of this, which, you know, people on the left wouldn't like, but is Daily Wire. On their website, it's so good. Go to their recruiting page, and it will say... It literally has the most inappropriate meme that they've ever done, which, well, maybe not the most, but the him/hers bars-

    17. CWChris Williamson46:04

        Mm-hmm

    18. CSCodie Sanchez46:04

        ... is, like, front and center, and they make some joke about, like, you're not gonna like it here if you don't think this is a hysterical joke.

    19. CWChris Williamson46:09

        It's like a shit test.

    20. CSCodie Sanchez46:11

        Exactly.

    21. CWChris Williamson46:12

        It's a recruiting shit test.

    22. CSCodie Sanchez46:13

        Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of-

    23. CWChris Williamson46:14

        And you could do the same thing on the left.

    24. CSCodie Sanchez46:16

        Oh, of course.

    25. CWChris Williamson46:17

        You could do the exact same, you could do the exact same thing if you were part of, like, Novara Media in the UK or something, and you could have s- like, if you don't think this meme of Elon Musk's funny, then go fuck yourself.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez46:25

        Yeah. Orange man, make him do something crazy on it. Uh, but I think... And now maybe you don't wanna go that polarizing-

    27. CWChris Williamson46:33

        Hmm

    28. CSCodie Sanchez46:33

        ... which is probably a good idea for most companies not to go that polarizing. But go with what are your top performers all agree with that your mid-performers would actually get ticked off about.

    29. CWChris Williamson46:42

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CSCodie Sanchez46:43

        And that should be what you put on your anti-sale.
12. 56:53 – 1:05:50

    How Does Slowing Down Affect Your Identity?

    1. CWChris Williamson56:53

       Let's say someone, someone who's running their business has turned it into their identity. What do people do with their sense of self-importance if they slow down or begin to use more leverage? Because I think this is, this is one of the mistakes that people make when they think about scaling up inside of business. They assume that doing less spit-and-sawdust work means less importance, but it's actually more leverage, and more leverage from the outside looks less busy. But it's the first time that someone has to face themselves finally. They've got all of this self-importance, and now they're slowing down, at least objectively. How-- Talk to me about the emotional movement, the transition that people need to go through there.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez57:39

       Well, one I would say, if you are an obsessive type of person, you're probably never going to slow down. You're just gonna change lanes. So instead of starting to like going on the highway at 50 miles an hour when the speed limit's 75, you might never like that, but you won't feel like you have to go 75 on something that you don't want to. So realize that you can always just change lanes. Um, it's-

    3. CWChris Williamson58:02

       What would be an example of that?

    4. CSCodie Sanchez58:03

       An example would be in your business right now, you might be what we call a ball hog that closes every deal. Like, every deal has to go through you. You're the one that gets the sponsors. You're the one that gets the partnerships. You close all the deals. And if you stop doing that, are they, you gonna be seen as a sales god anymore, you know? Or are you gonna transition these relationships and, and then you're not gonna have them anymore 'cause other people are gonna steal them from you. You just offload that one part of it, and instead you go, "Okay, I was pretty good at selling one-to-one. What about selling one-to-many? Let's do content now. Could I figure out how to do that?" So just change lanes slightly.

    5. CWChris Williamson58:32

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez58:32

       Add a new skill that has higher leverage. 'Cause really you can only s- Like, business only is so many things, which is really, can I sell something for more money than I pay for it? Like, that's kind of it. And so if that's all business is, then we can just change the seven, you know, uh, segments of the business and do a different part of them.

    7. CWChris Williamson58:54

       Mm.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez58:55

       It could allow you to go and learn how to write more. It could allow you to go and hire people better. Um, but I guess the only thing I'll say about, like, that deep, dark part of you that feels like if you no longer are the man, you aren't a man or, you know, a woman at all anymore, I, I think for that you've gotta ask yourself, what do you think is more valuable? A business where you can take it and sell a job to another human, jobs aren't transferable, or a business where it's so good, you are so good the business runs without you?

    9. CWChris Williamson59:26

       Mm.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez59:26

        And I think the usual, like, the way that I usually can get out of being upset about something like that or worried about my identity is I look at a person in the future that I'd like to be like in that business sense. So, you know, I, the, the GOAT is obviously Warren Buffett. You know, he sort of religiously talks about how little he does. Does anybody think less of the man? No. So, like, it only takes one example to go, "Oh, that's a complete mental fallacy I have. Why did I hold on for so long to something that is so not true?"

    11. CWChris Williamson59:55

        It's interesting the Puritan work ethic which, coming from the northeast of the UK, is almost like a religion.

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:00:02

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:00:03

        Uh, you know, good example of that from my last industry was we would run nightclubs, and as a club promoter you don't own the venue, but you have marketing and networks and 500 staff that bring their friends down and, you know, DJs and, you know, social media and you, people think you're cool. And then you have venues. Venues have got a building and a license and door staff that punch people and g- you know, speakers and DJs and stuff like that.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:00:28

        Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

        And the gap in between building with no one in it and people who want to party, that's where the relationship lies. There is no fucking reason that I need to be on the front door of a nightclub. Certainly not on the front door. If anything, I need to be down in the DJ booth so I can see what's going on, what's the atmosphere, did that most recent pyrotechnics show go off correctly? What's happening with the till? Have we got all the, you know, the rest of the stuff. My side. You sort with the bar. Keep the fucking lights on. I'll do everything else. Just get out my way Problem is, if it's the middle of November, it's freezing fucking cold in Newcastle, and the manager of the venue is outside to make sure that his big hairy door staff don't punch seven shades of shit out of everybody, he expects me to be out there as well.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:05

        Mm.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:01:06

        Because there is this, if you're not suffering along with me, you're not in it with me-

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:13

        Mm

    19. CWChris Williamson1:01:13

        ... mentality, and that took so long to unwind. And lots of businesses, I think, still have this, if I achieved it but I didn't suffer, it didn't matter, or it doesn't count. If I don't see you proselytizing yourself, you know, or prostrating yourself, sorry, on the fucking crucifix altar of whatever this d- business is, you need to be the first person in and the last person out. And yes, you, for a very long time you do, and the, the kernels of truth-

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:01:42

        Yeah

    21. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

        ... that are in this are why it's so pernicious. Because you're like, "I do know that. And also, by the way, I'm trying to hire the cheetah that is staying up all night to do this thing." After a while you can't lead from the front anymore, and that took a very long time for me to unwind. And also separating out, especially if you've got other parties that are in and around this, you've got maybe, uh, uh, uh, partnerships outside of that.

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:05

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:02:05

        Like working on the front door of a nightclub. It's like, "Hey, I need to have a really serious conversation with where my value adds here. It is not my highest point of contribution for me to be stood on the front door at 1:00 in the morning, freezing my tits off with you. My highest cont- point of contribution is to be dealing with DJs and bookings and making sure that the accounts are right 9:00 AM tomorrow. So we need to change the way that this works." But that, um, Puritan work ethic and unwinding it-

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:29

        Yeah

    25. CWChris Williamson1:02:29

        ... is, is very difficult. It's very, very difficult.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:02:33

        If I might make a suggestion, I think it always works the best when you don't make it about you, you make it about them. I try in my conversations with my team to almost say nothing about what my highest value is. Instead, my conversation with your doorman would probably go something like this. I'd be like, "All right, Brad, dude, freezing out there today. It's gonna be intense. People are gonna be rowdy. You're probably gonna wanna hit them in the face. I feel like I should be out there, but I know that you've been doing this for X number of months now. Like, you're a pro. You don't actually want me over your shoulder doing that with you, because you want us to earn more, bring more people in, get the club full. Is that, is that right?" You'd have to know that that is what he wants.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:03:16

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CSCodie Sanchez1:03:16

        "Yeah, I actually do want that." You know, or you know that like, "God, we're having problems in the back and I can't get them to spend enough. I wanna go back there. I wanna try to like get them, do bottles, sell it."

    29. CWChris Williamson1:03:25

        This is what I'm going to do instead of...

    30. CSCodie Sanchez1:03:27

        Exactly. And you are getting their buy-in to your highest and best use, as opposed to saying, "My highest and best use..." What do we always like to hear? One, we like to hear ourself talk, and two, we like to believe everything's our idea, not somebody else's idea, right? So if you can get your employees to think it is a good idea for you to not be there, that's when you get them. And then, again, you go back to that like five quadrant. If you know Brad really cares about money, you play with money with Brad.
13. 1:05:50 – 1:08:21

    How to Approach the Hard Conversations

    1. CWChris Williamson1:05:50

       What about the other side? What about disciplining staff? Saying, "Hey, look, Brad, we need to have a really serious conversation here. That things aren't going well, and I need to really tell you where I'm at."

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:06:05

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:05

       How do you think about broaching that?

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:06:07

       I think most people quit jobs 'cause they have terrible bosses, and their terrible bosses are not bad because they overly discipline them, they're bad because they never tell them the truth, they gaslight them. They tell you that, you know, you're winning even when they're not. They wuss out on tough conversations, and they don't tell you how to win, they just tell you why you're not winning. And I think we've all had that. I think most people don't like conflict, and most people's leaders are not good leaders because it takes a lot of training.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:32

       What's your advice for leaders that don't like conflict then? How can they get better at it?

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:06:36

       You sit down, you don't think about it as conflict. You sit down and say, "I wanna have a conversation and I'd like us both to win. You know, I'm the leader over this. I have these metrics for you as an employee. I have these metrics for me as a manager. You're not hitting these metrics, which means I can't hit these metrics. What's going on?" And you're gonna listen to a lot of stuff, and you're gonna say, "Well, at the company, w- you know that we work on 90-day plans." I run all of our businesses on 90-day sprints. It's kind of like our core owner beyond. And the reason why is humans work in cycles, right? Uh, birth, you know, growth, decay, winter, summer, spring, fall. And, uh, quarterly cycles work really well for businesses. And so you would sit down and say, "Over this 90-day period, we gotta start hitting these numbers. And if we don't, how do you think I could keep running a business in which our team doesn't hit their 90-day numbers? Do you think we could keep doing that and paying everybody?" What are they gonna say? "No." "Okay. So over the next 90 days, we're gonna check in every 30 days, and if I, if we don't keep hitting these numbers, I can't keep you here. Like, that's reasonable, right? Am I crazy? Should there be a way that I can keep you even if you don't hit all the numbers?" "Well, what about this? What about this?" "Hey, listen. We have to be fair to everybody. You might be my favorite person, but if you're not doing it, I can't just say that's okay for you. So we're gonna check in every 30 days, and we're gonna see if we're hitting these numbers or not." And this is so foreign to most people because it's a bunch of PC bullshit in corporations about, "Well, I don't feel like you're doing that well," and Sally said, and HR is in the middle. Like, how often have you just sat down and said, "Here's what you're supposed to do. You're not doing X."

    7. CWChris Williamson1:08:13

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:13

       "Either why not, what can I do for it, and how do we fix it by 90 days? Otherwise, we gotta part ways 'cause maybe you'll go be a superstar somewhere else."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:08:20

       Mm.

14. 1:08:21 – 1:11:31

    The Jobs Founders Need to Stop Doing

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:22

       What are the things that a founder should stop personally approving first?

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:26

       Oh, God. Yeah. Um, well, let's do a done list. If you're a founder doing this currently, you're doing administrative work, uh, at a minimum wage of a virtual assistant, which would be responding to emails by and large. That needs to go immediately. Uh, if you are doing any sort of automated reporting for your business, so reading out of numbers, scorecards, et cetera, see that a lot in businesses. Uh, if you are approving any invoice that is less than, depending on the size of the business, 1 to 10% of your revenue. If it's a really small business, that's why it could go up to 10%. That's probably not something you should be doing continuously. And you should be using something like Ramp, which I don't have any affiliation with, but can track all of your expenses of your employees instead. Uh, and then probably the next thing that you need to be doing is thinking about how many employees... I also think we were told a big lie as leaders, and the lie was you should have an open door policy. You should be available for everybody on your team, but an open door policy just means that you are on everybody else's schedule, not your own. And as an employee, I think you should guard against it too. You shouldn't allow people access to you every second of every day continuously. Instead, you need to set up ways and means to get to you only when they have what we call the three, which is basically problem, potential solution, risks to potential solutions. Then if you have those three things, let's talk. And if you're just bringing me a problem, you're not ready.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:09:56

       Mm.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:56

       Go back and work on it a little bit.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:58

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:09:58

       But all of this stuff is so hard because you sound like a hard ass when you say all of it, and then everybody's like, "She sucks. Be a terrible leader. That would be the worst." But I think the worst leaders actually are the ones that seem nice and then never help you make more money, never help you progress in your career, never help you get better, never help you get promoted. What a fucking tragedy.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:10:20

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:10:21

       Who wants to work for that person?

    9. CWChris Williamson1:10:22

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:10:23

        And I think that's most people, and then they wonder why they hate their job and don't make as much money as they want.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:10:28

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15. 1:11:31 – 1:18:01

    Are Pricing Problems Really Confidence Problems?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:11:31

       Why do you think so many entrepreneurs are afraid to charge more?

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:11:34

       Oh, yeah. Well, I don't think you have a pricing problem. I think you have a confidence problem. I mean, one of the first things I said to one of the business owners in our group was, "I can tell about your lack of confidence in yourself and your business by your price." Because most people price according to market pricing, like here are what other people charge. Well, why do you think other people have any fucking idea how to charge in your space? They don't. Everybody's just guessing by and large, and most people haven't done any research at all. So people, one, don't have confidence. Two, they don't do market-- they do market pace pricing. And three, they don't understand value-based pricing, which is basically I give this much value in savings or in revenue or in freedom or whatever it is, and I'm gonna take somewhere between 10 and 30% of that value that I drive you. That's just like the number. But when you look at how many business owners actually do that, we all are so scared of getting told no, ever since, like, our first high school date told us that we couldn't, that I think it translates straight through to our prices.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:12:34

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:12:35

       And then, perniciously, a lot of us as entrepreneurs have a martyr complex where we think it is good for us to not charge.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:42

       Charitable.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:12:43

       Yeah. That means I'm a good person. I don't sell to-- you know, I don't sell expensive things, so I'm good.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:12:48

       Get the fucking money.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:12:50

       Get the fucking money.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:12:51

       Get the fucking money.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:12:52

        And don't... Now, don't sell a shitty service. That's what you should be worried about. Do not provide enough value. But you should never worry about do I charge too much. If you provide enough value, the The price spectrum is unlimited. Last thing I'll say on this, it's kinda nerdy, but we break it down, is this wallet share phenomenon. Have you heard of this?

    11. CWChris Williamson1:13:09

        No.

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:13:10

        So fascinating study that basically says, basically saw, you put a group of pricing experts in a room many, many times over, and normal people in a room. And you knew a couple things about them. You knew what they were worth, so, and how much they made per year, net worth and income. You would think that the pricing experts across net worth and income would be better at determining the right price for something than a group of random people, right?

    13. CWChris Williamson1:13:38

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:13:39

        Yeah, that's their job. Well, it turns out those people were no better at pricing than the random people. In fact, they actually priced about 15% lower than the random group. Why? Because of something called the wallet share phenomenon, which is most people will only price about 10% to 15% higher or lower than what they could afford. And this happens across almost every business.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:14:01

        Hmm.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:14:02

        So you are actually restricted by your amount of money you make without even realizing it. It's a subconscious bias. But sitting out there is somebody like Chamath, who would spend a bajillion dollars on a sweater, and you can't even conceptualize why that would be worth it to somebody. And so in business right now, you gotta ask yourself, one, what's holding you back because of how much you make? But even more so, what about the other people on your team? 'Cause they're probably... Employees on average have a 30% lower pricing range than owners think they do.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:14:32

        Hmm.

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:14:32

        So your employees are dragging down your profits by 30%, and you don't even realize it, which is cra- when I heard that, I went and analyzed our business and saw, oh my God, it was the same for me. And so that's a good realization to have. You don't have a pricing problem, you have a confidence problem.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:14:46

        So many people are undercharging. God, well, uh, almost all of my friends, especially people in, in service businesses-

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:14:52

        Oh, yeah

    21. CWChris Williamson1:14:53

        ... right, it is insane. I have a couple of friends who've done features on records. These records have gone on to do tens of millions or hundreds of millions of plays, so they're an integral part of a unique part of a, of a music track. And [laughs] the fucking... Like, even in retrospect, they're not thinking, "I undercharged for that." Like, dude, this is one of the biggest things that's ever happened, and you still can't bring yourself the next time that the opportunity comes around to, to, like, turn the screws on. It's almost like you wanna shake people and go like, "You don't understand how good you are at what you do."

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:15:37

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:15:38

        You can charge more.

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:15:39

        Well, so that's fascinating because that's why we do this thing called Owner Score that I was telling you about before this. And if you go to ownerscore.com, it's free. You can do it. But basically, those people are usually either the artist or the dreamer, and, and so it's funny because they literally are an artist in this instance.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:15:56

        Yeah.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:15:56

        But the artist almost always underprices in everything that they do. And so even if they're at the top of the food chain in their industry, they have a predilection to think charging more is actually greedy. And so the interesting part about business, the part that, like, kinda got me ticked off at some point is I started thinking, have you ever started watching, like, a really good businesspeople online? And you're like, "Elon Musk," and, uh, you're like, "Well, if I just follow Elon's directions, then my business will grow. Like, I'm just gonna listen to his advice 'cause he's a mega billionaire." Well, that's sort of problematic for a lot of reasons because, one, you and I aren't as good as Elon Musk, right? Like, if we were, we'd be billionaires. We're, we're not. He's an anomaly. Second is, I don't want his life. Like, with much love, we know a lot of people in common. I'm happily married. I'm gonna have a kid. I like to hang out a little bit. Like, I wanna enjoy life. I wanna be fit. Not now, but again eventually. [laughs] And so it doesn't work on two fronts. I'm not Elon, plus I don't want his life. And so if you take business advice from somebody whose life you don't want and who has skill sets you don't have, you'll be fucked even if the business advice is great. And so I was like, God, we have, like, these thousands of companies. Why could I have HVAC, HVAC, HVAC company, all the same information, same revenue, same team, and there's total variance?

    27. CWChris Williamson1:17:24

        Wildly different performance.

    28. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:25

        It's 'cause of the founder, right? But if I know, hey, founder A is an artist, so he's probably underpricing just at the gun, then I can have different advice for him than I can have for closer founder, which I know probably doesn't have as good of fulfillment or creative in his business. And so, like, it seems standard, except nobody does it. Everybody starts with, "What's the best business advice I can do?"

    29. CWChris Williamson1:17:48

        Yeah.

    30. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:49

        As opposed to, like, "Who are you?"
16. 1:18:01 – 1:27:56

    When Should Founders Start Paying Themselves More?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:18:01

       Related to the price thing, when do you think a founder should start paying themselves properly?

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:18:05

       Immediately. Like, almost immediately. Even if you can't afford it, and what would that mean? Put it on your, on your, uh, profit and loss statement. Like, and just write a little loan to yourself or put it in a spreadsheet so you know going forward. I think a lot of times founders will spend years, you'll spend years not making any money and thinking that you have a profitable business, but really the only profit is your labor, and basically it's slave labor at this point.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:18:32

       Right. So the founder's free labor is disguising bad economics inside of the business.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:18:37

       100%. And you can't fix a business if you don't understand the underlying math. And so I always start with, like, pay yourself a market rate salary. It's super easy to figure out what that is. Go online, say market rate, this size company, this industry, this location. Okay, I'm gonna pay myself that. If I can't pay myself that in year one, okay, that's okay. If I can't pay myself that by year two, that's actually not okay.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:18:59

       What are you doing?

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:19:00

       Yeah. Then you're doing something wrong.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:19:02

       Yep.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:19:02

       And that means that you either have to probably usually raise your prices, sell more expensive things, find rich people, they like to pay more. Um, but I think, I mean, if, if it's... I mean, like, what a wild thing. There's-- So let's see. Last year, there were 5 million business, businesses created. That's the most businesses that have ever been created before in history. In like 2019, we should check my math, I think it was a couple hundred K, somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 businesses created. So we've had more businesses created than ever before, and yet we have less profitable businesses than we've ever had before.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:19:38

       Mm.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:19:38

        And entrepreneurs' wages continue to go down. So you look online and everybody looks like they're Gucci, Fendi, Prada, you know, Lamborghini, whatever.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:19:46

        Speak for yourself.

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:19:47

        [laughs] And they're not. And they're, they're actually poorer than most employees.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:19:52

        Yeah.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:19:52

        So it's like-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:19:53

        It would be better to work for you than to run it?

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:19:55

        It would be 1000% better. And so wh- why are we doing that to ourself? Let's look ourself in the face and be honest and say, "All right, I'm not quite ready for this game yet."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:20:05

        I mean, if your company becomes enormous or reputable and it still owns your life, I don't think you can class that as winning. I don't think you can class that as being successful. And I, I'd love to ask a question of a lot of founders. I'd love to ask if nobody ever knew that you founded the business, would you still want to own the company?

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:26

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:20:27

        And I think that a lot of them wouldn't. You know the best example of this, I had Ben Francis on the show a few years ago, Gymshark founder. 70%-

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:34

        Yeah

    21. CWChris Williamson1:20:34

        ... of the company is owned by him, completely bootstrapped. Took some advisory thing. A, a, a few people have got some percentages here and there. 70%. He's worth like two bill, pounds, right? Fucking pounds. That's like $3 billion. And he was co-founder, CEO, then stepped out of the business entirely from 100 million to 500 million, and the guy that used to run Reebok came in. And then at 500 million, he stepped back in. And he gave me this line and he said, "When your aspirations for the business are bigger than your aspirations for yourself, you'll become a successful entrepreneur."

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:21:12

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:21:13

        And I was like, "That is fucking great." That is so good. I care more about the success of the business than my own ego. And you can say, this is actually an acceptable thing to say, do you know what it is? I take so much pleasure from being a business owner, from playing the game of business, even if I'm playing it badly by m- most of the metrics that you would assess the business by. But I just love the, uh, impact, I love the significance, uh, even like, uh, giving it to myself, being a business owner, being able to say that it's my thing and my baby and I get to... You do the obsession thing. That, that's cool, but don't kid yourself that you're doing business. You are playing the game of business there, and playing it at least by most metrics pretty badly. And yeah, I, I... If nobody knew that you founded the business, would you still want to own it?

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:22:03

        Yeah.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:22:03

        I think is a great question.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:22:05

        It, it's... And you know, it took me, it took me 12 years of working for other people before I went and started my own thing. You know, I actually, I was way more risk averse than you and a lot of the people that we know who just went out and did this crazy th- I didn't like that idea. I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I didn't believe in sleeping in like closets and couches and garages. You know, I wanted to... I'm not that fancy, but you know, I wanted to be able to go on vacations and do all the things. Eyebrow raise, I saw that.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:22:33

        Yeah.

    28. CSCodie Sanchez1:22:33

        I know now I can actually eyebrow raise again, 'cause when you're pregnant you can't get Botox, so it's a real tragedy. But, um, the, uh, like it took me a long fucking time to take the risk, and I actually think that's totally fine. I think if you're scared and you wanna stack cash and you only wanna build on the side, that's totally fine, and you have to stop listening to people who try to get you into entrepreneur porn-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:22:54

        Mm

    30. CSCodie Sanchez1:22:55

        ... when in fact you could just own a part of the business. You could invest in a bunch of businesses. You could be really successful as a number two and be way happier.
17. 1:27:56 – 1:31:26

    How to Move into An Owner Role

    1. CWChris Williamson1:27:56

       What would you... Let's say there's somebody listening who is ready to relinquish some of that control and is ready to go from being owned to owning. What would you leave them with?

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:28:08

       Well, I would start with, like, there's one, one hire I would highly consider, which is, like, who is going to be your right hand in business? Do you have a number two that you trust? Uh, because I think it's really hard in the beginning to just implement a ton of systems, et cetera. Typically, if you're the founder, you're, you're the visionary. You're the one with the crazy ideas. Your execution is probably not as good as it needs to be for most people who aren't running multimillion-dollar businesses. If you don't have a number two, if you don't have an assistant, you are one. I mean, one of my, my mentors, Bill Perkins, who you know too, he famously told me when I wanted him to invest in one of our companies, he wouldn't do it unless I had not one but two assistants. And I said, "That's the most elitist shit I've ever heard in my life, Bill." And he was like, "I don't give you my millions so that you can go do minimum wage work." So, like, no, you, you need to have junior people. And again, it's like, do you wanna, do you wanna sound right, or do you wanna win? Do you wanna be right, or do you wanna win? And so I think that would be the first thing. And then maybe the only other thing is a chief of staff, one of the most underrated, uh, hires out there. For anybody who's making seven figures plus, if you don't have a chief of staff, I highly recommend it. You're gonna train a number two. They're not much more expensive than an assistant. And you know, ours, his name is Azad. He's a stud. And we actually, Chris, uh, worked with him in Iraq. He was his interpreter, uh, when Chris, my husband, was in the military. He was a Navy SEAL in Iraq, and, um, he, during the, the pullout of Iraq, uh, Azad's a Kurd, and so, um, they were prosecuted. And so Chris had to call in a bunch of favors to get Azad out of the country, and we got him here. The guy went and immediately upon coming in, went and worked at Starbucks and, uh, the grocery store, uh, two jobs at the same time to just, like, pay rent. The second he got his green card, he went and applied for the Marines, joined the Marines, was, like, first in his class. Total stud. Then goes and, uh, becomes an electrical engineer and was gonna go work at Amex for an internship, uh, program, and we pulled him to be our chief of staff. He didn't have any of the background. He didn't have any of the knowledge of it. But I knew I was gonna hire him because I remember we just got breakfast with him, and I was talking to Chris about it, my husband. I'm like, "I think we should hire Azad. Like, he's just a killer. He wants it. He's so hungry. He, he has none of the experience, but I think he's gonna grind, and we can help him be really successful." And so I call, we, we called Azad, and he was, like, twenty minutes away. And Chris just says, "Hey, can you come to the house?" And he's like, "Yes." He had just left us. Any normal person would've been like, "Why? What?" He comes to the house, and we offer him, and, uh, I don't even get out, like, what the pay is and whatever, and he's like, "Yeah, I'll take it." And I was like, [chuckles] "This guy's gonna win."

    3. CWChris Williamson1:30:59

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:30:59

       And I think all around you, you don't even realize it, but there's, like, some young gun or there's some hungry person, age unrelated, who would kill to just be next to the owner, to just be next to one of the winners at the company. And you don't have to pay that much. But then the second they start outperforming, you start paying them more. And those people, almost every time for me, have become the people who have run my companies eventually. So I could see Azad doing that one day too.

18. 1:31:26 – 1:32:59

    What’s Next For Codie?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:31:26

       Unreal. Codie Sanchez, ladies and gentlemen. Codie, you rule. Where should people go?

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:31:30

       Uh, ownerbook.com. We have a... This is kinda cool. We're doing something a little crazy we've never done before. Uh, ownerbook.com, we're doing a massive giveaway. And the idea was, I don't know, you wanna get your book in everybody's hands, but then it becomes about how many books you've sold, you know, as the author, and that's cool. But I was like, "What if we could give away a million dollars in cash and prizes live at the book launch so we could say people made money, like, right now today on here?" And so we're doing that. So we're gonna try to, like Oprah Winfrey, a bunch of business grants to business owners. We're gonna give a bunch of cool prizes actually, uh, while we're there, things to help people with their productivity. And we're gonna try to help a bunch of business owners actually make some money live during the book launch, which I don't think there's ever been a million-dollar book launch before. So that's kinda fun. And then, um, we're partnering up with all these charities. And so, uh, you might... Like the Navy SEAL Foundation. So some of these charities will, like, live have videos and access to things that they wouldn't because of everybody coming and, and buying books. So anyway, could totally implode, but it's gonna be really fun to try.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:32:40

       Unreal. I'm gonna watch either the fireworks or dumpster fire, depending on-

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:32:43

       Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

    5. CWChris Williamson1:32:43

       ... what direction it goes in.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:32:44

       Exactly.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:32:44

       You're great. I appreciate you so much.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:32:46

       Thanks for having me.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:32:47

       All right. Goodbye, my beauties. Dude, yes.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:32:49

        This was great. Thank you.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:32:51

        [outro music] Congratulations. You made it to the end of a podcast episode without dying. Now, here's another one. Go on, watch it.

Episode duration: 1:33:00