Codie Sanchez argues against the "one thing" philosophy and explains how she manages many businesses simultaneously. She presents a three-step approach—decentralized management, "rip off and duplicate," and resisting data overload—backed by examples (Buffett, Disney, Sam Zell) and practical tactics like hiring COOs/CSOs and maintaining simple weekly scorecards focused on a few key metrics.
Chapters
So fear not, my fellow children of the adhd. We may make a billionaire out of you yet. Lots of people give me crap because I have a lot of businesses and they say, why, Cody? Why don't you focus on one thing? And you know, it's probably not usually a great idea to argue against billionaires like Gary Keller, who proselytized Focusing on One Thing and wrote a literal book called the One Thing about, you know, Focusing. Okay, I get it. But then again, while I love the book and have become buds with his co author, Jay, I disagree. Here's why. I love doing one thing until I get good at it, but I only love it until then. And as soon as I hit competent and then highly competent, I'm in search of the newness. I don't know if you can relate, but that perpetual little itch for the unknown, the chasing of the squirrel, we're actually wired for that. It makes us happy. It's how we get dopamine hits. It even turns out there's studies that show that newness is good for us. So I don't like this whole idea about the one thing. In fact, I like focusing on many things. But the problem with not doing that is you have to make sure that the one thing you're doing at the time actually works pretty well and keeps doing it even after you're not doing it anymore. Now, you don't have to believe me that diversifying is good for you and that in fact, I think we all absolutely should be. Why don't you believe the billies? In 2014, there were 1,426 billionaires in the world. Out of those, about 960 of them are self made. Out of the 960, 830 of them made money from multiple businesses. In fact, one of my idols, Sam Zell, another Billy, an infamous dealmaker, said, I want to be chairman of everything and CEO of nothing. He wanted to be that elusive unicorn, jack of all trades, master of none. And it turns out he's not alone. Look at this. Branson, Cuban, Adelson, Musk, Bezos, jobs, all followed their curiosity even to the moon. The question then becomes, how do you build an empire and manage it the way that you do? It is actually easier than I think most of us realize. And the best part about it is I didn't create it. I stole it from somebody else. My favorite type of R and D is really rip off and duplicate. So here's how to manage your zeros and where I got them from. There's sort of three different steps here. Decentralized management. Rip off and duplicate and don't drown. Dagno now the decentralized management with a small team. I learned from none other than Warren Buffett himself. Mr. Buffett manages Berkshire Hathaway's over 360,000 employees and still read six newspapers a day. How he uses Tom Murphy's do you guys know this guy? He was former head of Capital Cities, then abc, then Disney all bought them out. And his management principles of decentralization mean really hiring the best possible people, letting them do the work and watching the costs. What does that mean exactly? Well, Tom said about Buffett perfectly. We are both proponents of a decentralized management philosophy of hiring key people carefully, of pushing decisions down the organization, and of setting overall principles and resisting the temptation to be involved in the details. In other words, don't hire a dog and try to do the barking. So the key to managing multiple businesses is first putting the right people in charge of them, then letting them report to you high and tight on expenses. But more reports equal more problems, so keep it tight. In fact, Buffett runs his headquarters with a staff of 25 to manage billions in investments. Don't believe me? Check out this Christmas card from him. This is a Christmas card from last year. So how about this next one? Oh, yeah, that's 20 years later. Did anybody on this Christmas card change? Side note, if you want to get a job at Berkshire Hathaway under Buffett, you probably need a new dream job. Since everybody on this photo is the same as the last photo. What does this mean for the my businesses? It basically means that I want in depth scorecards that are short and sweet at a high level and allow me to view the business with an eye towards profits and costs. That's it. I occasionally get drawn in, but I do all I can to back away. Your value as you grow is your brain and your distance to work on the business, not inside of the business. So the second thing is rip off and duplicate. Sometimes I think that's the best type of R and D. When I first started accumulating multiple businesses, I was overstressed, overworked, involved in everything, super close to burnout, and I was perpetually doing many things poorly, which means I was basically failing at everything. And one human is not very powerful, it turns out. A friend of mine, Clint Bruce, this guy, he's great. He's a former Navy SEAL and current badass business owner. And he said it perfectly. Said for so long I was an arrow trying to hit my target. And now I'M an archer trying to let fly my arrows in the right direction but trusting them to find their own way. So I started to think about how do I become the archer, not the arrow. And that meant building the right teams. Easier said than done, but there are some lessons to learn here. In fact, I like to look at other people's models and steal their models. Disney Corp. Tells some secrets. Check out how they organize. They channelize into media networks, parks, merchandising, marketing and entertainment. They share marketing and business lines and they share marketing across all business lines as well as merchandising. What's also interesting about them is do you know what their top paid executive is besides the CEO? It's the Chief Strategy Officer and the chief counsel. Why? Because strategy comes first and what comes second? Great deal. Making the way that you should think about this for your business is your first hire shouldn't be an assistant. It should be a coo, CSO or a chief of staff. My first hire is always my COO who comes with a strategy for overall management at first Trust my last firm, it was April. At Contrary in thinking, it's Nikki, you need mental leverage, not simply operational leverage, AKA administrative tasks. The goal is not a command down structure but a command of teams or team of teams. This is where you are an interface but you're not the funnel. This is what it looks like. This is actually how the Navy Seals organize. And number third is don't drown in the data. Do not drown in the data. What gets measured gets managed. Period. The problem most people fall into is they don't know what to manage and so they manage too many things and they get too much data. I like the KIS method, the keep it stupid simple which basically means I have a scorecard that do two things. One measures output and activity AKA what did your team achieve each week or what did you achieve and what oh that's a team member calling right now. They should know better. So there's the output and activity level and then the second one is performance AKA what happened because of your activity. Did you bring in more profits? Did you bring in more expenses? They're very simple. A boring businesses scorecard for a laundromat would be really simplistic. It'd be something like total cash collected, customer complaints issues, machines in working order, total costs. That's it. I want to look at that each week and I don't want to see anything else. Ask yourself if I could only look at three to five numbers on each business, which ones would tell me the complete story. Then make them into a scorecard with a trend line so you can see growth or decay. Don't drown in the data. The numbers should leap out at you like a frog off the page. Anything less is worthless to end. Let your dogs do the barking and question everything. Thanks, guys.
