How to Get Ahead of 99% of People (Starting Today)

I'm going to tell you today how to change your life, and it's the total opposite of every piece of advice you're going to hear on YouTube. And like, let me just say the first part out loud. Monk mode is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire existence. If you want to actually be successful, like if you want to make more money and change your life, it's the opposite of that. I call it the surface area mode. You want to increase the surface area of your life because the more surface area, the more hits you have for luck. Luck is not actually random. You can create it. And so the next few minutes, I'm going to change your life by helping you find more of it. Somebody did this for me. I'm going to do it for you. Monk Mode is advice for people who already know what to work on and are already successful. So let's flip the game and show you how it doesn't have to be as hard as you think it is when you start looking outward rather than inward. That is where all of the success actually comes from. Most people optimize for email when they should optimize for lunch. You need to go have coffee, dinner, lunch with everybody— coworkers, friends, ex-bosses, people you find interesting. It doesn't actually matter. The worst thing, you're out a couple bucks and 30 minutes. The best thing, somebody just changes your entire life. I wish I learned earlier on that every single time you move from a Zoom meeting to an in-person, you increase the likelihood that you get the thing that you want. In fact, you should optimize for 99.9% of the meetings that you're having one-on-one with people to be in person. I think Zoom meetings are where dreams go to die, particularly in a world where 99% of the time people are hiding behind one of these things. It's never been easier to stand out. The downside, 30 minutes. The upside, your career. You know, I was just talking to Bill Gurley the other day, a famous investor and Uber billionaire, et cetera, and he said it perfectly. He talked about how the way that he's been able to get into the biggest companies in the world is one thing. He believes in network effects, going to where the thing is happening that he wants to be a part of and inserting himself in the middle. You know, I did this early on in my career when I was young and broke and not building the next, you know, Twitter or anything. I just had a rule. I wanted 3 meetings a day with people, which now I think seems crazy and people probably think I'm off my rocker for that. I wanted to have like a coffee or two with somebody. I wanted to have a lunch and I wanted to have a dinner. And I did this because I wanted to get promoted. I was stuck in a job I hated. I didn't want to work at Goldman anymore, and I wanted to figure out the next step, but nobody was offering me anything. And these days I think we're so locked into this idea that you could go and just submit a resume online, and you don't realize that every time you're doing that you're getting screened out by computers. The robots are saying no to you before you even get in the door because you didn't go to the real door. I know that this sucks. I'm actually kind of an introvert. I don't like hanging out with other people either. There's nothing I would rather do than watch a little Netflix, read one of my fairy smut books, and not talk to anybody. But I can attribute most of the success in my life to getting out I want you at the end of this video to open up your phone. I want you to text 3 people to grab lunch, coffee, whatever. Not this month, but this week. It could be coworkers, it could be somebody in your industry, it could be somebody that you think is really interesting. Here's all you're gonna say. Hey, I'd love to grab a coffee. Are you in town next week? I can do a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. That's it. Then I want you to block out those 3 spots on your calendar every single week, and your role is to fill them. I'm talking about every single week, how can you have an engagement with 3 interesting people that you want to learn more from? Do this for 6 months and your life will completely change. I promise you. Stack and set cheap wins. I stole this one from my trainer, Colin, because he's been able to change so many people's bodies, including my own. When I asked him what's the number 1 reason why people will change, physically. He said that they have to see a tiny little bit of forward progress, and if they don't see it, they'll never change. Like, you don't actually have to have this big, huge, giant leap for change. You, you just need to have really small ones that stack over time. And, you know, for me, there are a couple things I do. I use a productivity app because I want to see how many days in a row I can have a streak, right? And here's the real psychology behind why this works. It's because when you get a little win, you actually get dopamine in your brain, and that is like a reward cycle naturally that the body gives you. And so you can have this cycle that happens with every streak you have— 1, 3, 5, and 10— you're rewarding your brain and telling them, hey brain, I want you to keep doing more of this. Target your icons. Make a list of them. I call this fuck monk mode. We're in scout mode. This is where you look up the people that you want to follow. You're going from scout to operator to builder. That's the plan. This is where you increase the surface area of your luck and the people that you want to go and engage with. But first, I got to talk to the guy who ran Hollywood for 34 years. So he taught me something fascinating when I was trying to get him on the podcast. I'm with UTA, the talent agency, but I sent him an email and was like, you're a legend, because so many people who are in talent in Hollywood, they're really loud, and he's quiet. He's never been anywhere or talked about this in a really big way, so I wanted to lean in. And one of the things he did is very similar to what a guy Michael Ovitz talks about, who was his biggest competitor at a company called CAA. They were like rivals. But what's fascinating that both agree on is that in order to have success in life, you have to go and find your people. And so I did the exact same thing to get Jeremy Zimmer here. You need to figure out who in your industry you can go scout because sometimes becoming the best just means getting around the best. I did this really early in my career. There's actually this guy, Bob Kendall, at Credit Suisse. I couldn't get ahead, I couldn't get promoted, nobody wanted to help give me a hand up. So I went to Bob Kendall. I learned everything I possibly could about him. He was super senior to the point where now if you were to ask him to this day, he'd be like, "Yeah, I feel like I mentored her, but I don't remember ever choosing to become her mentor." And let me tell you how I used it. I thought about what explicitly I learned and I call it the 5F targeting framework. So basically it's this: future, what do they want career-wise? I knew Bob wanted to be the CEO. His name was BK. He was a real player. So he cared about his next chapter and he cared about his legacy. I could be the legacy portion. Then we got family, who matters to them? Spouse, kids, parents, responsibility, whatever that is. I didn't know that for BK, so I didn't play that game. Then fun, what do they do when no one's watching? Sports, travel, hobbies, guilty pleasures. He was a super international dude, so we used to talk about lots of different places around the world we've been. Fascination, what intellectually lights them up, ideas, industries, deals. For BK, it was investing in the market. So I would send him crazy things about investing as often as I could. And then finally, friction, what currently is in their way or blocks them. Maybe that's boredom. Maybe it's they can't hire enough good people. Whatever it is, you want to put your finger on that and try to solve that option for them. I think you don't actually bond over resumes or telling them what you want. You bond over using the 5 Fs to pull them to you. So go scouting. So I want you to get in rooms with people that are going to change the financial trajectory of your life. And that is exactly why we created the Growth Accelerator Workshop, because it's all about the rooms that you get in. If you get in rooms where other people's Tuesday looks like your dream day, you're going to win more often. So the room I created for you is full of 7 and 8 and 9-figure CEOs who are going to teach you how to get your business to the next level. My entire team at your disposal for 3 days. So if you are a business owner and you are looking to grow your business more profitably, more consistently, and maybe you want a little bit of what I got, you're like, I want to hit 8 figures, Codie. I want to hit 9 figures, Codie. I want to make more money. Then you need to get in this room because I haven't yet hit a billion-dollar business. Like Jeremy Zimmer has, but I've hit 9 figures and 8 figures multiple times. So when you get in a room with me, your likelihood of hitting them goes way up. Walk and talk. Let me give you a super easy one. If you ignore everything else in this video, at least do this one thing. You have no excuses. I want you to try to change at least one of your meetings this week to a walk and talk. Let me tell you why. I've found people are 2 to 3x more likely to say yes to a meeting because everybody's trying to get their 10,000 steps. So you're outside and you just say, "Hey man, you want to meet up this week for a little walk and talk?" Fresh air, opportunity to move your body, and the best part is, you know, Maya Angelou famously said, "They're not going to remember what you said, but they'll remember the way you made them feel." This is vitamin D, which is giving you a bunch of endorphins, so you don't even have to be better. You just go for a walk and use Mother Nature to make you feel better. Also, if you think this is silly, Steve Jobs famously did almost all of his meetings walking and talking, and some philosophers say you shouldn't trust an idea unless you had it on a walk. Increase friction. You gotta choose environments that actually create discomfort for you. Growth, you know, it feels socially awkward before it becomes profitable. But the truth of the matter is, the more comfortable you are, the less money you're gonna make, the less you're gonna grow, and the less you're going to do in life. Comfort is really the enemy of all types of success. The most successful people that you know, they failed more than anybody else. They just kept going. So we've got to increase this friction level. Easiest way to do this is just do more things. So just increase the amount of things that you do because that in itself is a difficulty. Then you have to ask yourself, of all the things that I'm doing, am I doing stuff that doesn't actually progress me, that just makes me tired? And is that why I'm feeling burnt out? Can I do more of the things that I actually love to do that light me up? And then you'll be shocked by what you're actually capable of. So for instance, this week I have like 30 minutes on a bunch of days. Look, I got an hour and a half break on that day. That's not that big of a deal because first of all, podcasting and YouTubing has never killed anybody as far as I'm aware. And second, I have an incredible team. I've got to hire more people. I'm having such a fun time. And when I'm tired, I don't make it emotional. I just go, okay, I'm going to take like a little nap and then we're going to rock and roll. I think it's a really powerful reframe to use this idea. What if everything you want is on the other side of 3 days? How can you compress time as much as possible? What can you get done in 3 days? I think this can change your life. It's why I host 3-day events because the human body is way more capable than we think it is, and so is your mind. You could just say, for me, I'm going to be one of the top 10%. I'm not going to have more money. I'm not going to have more experience. I'm just going to move faster than everybody else to do more things. That is how you increase your friction and thus increase your luck surface area. I want you to say yes more. I don't know who told us this ridiculous thing that we need more boundaries, we got to say no to things, you know, Captain No, just tell them you can't, stay in and Netflix and chill. No, no, this is not the way. Instead, I want you to do the opposite. I want you to do something totally unhinged, which is I want you to, when your boss says we have to do a ridiculous TikTok I want you to say yes to it, like my team did here. Give it to me nice and sweet. When you talk to somebody and they want to go and have an adventure and exploration, I want you to say yes. I want you to do the craziest thing in a world of people who want to live small lives, which is live a big one. So pick something ridiculous, experiment with it, and today, right now, get off YouTube. Go do something crazy. Do one better. You can't necessarily be the best in the world at something, but you could be the most knowledgeable in the world. Anytime you can't get the answer to something, just ask somebody. And then when they don't have the answer, ask them who you should ask next. It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Any actor or actress can be linked back to me, Kevin Bacon, You can get so much closer than you think to almost any answer today. And I think about that a lot because every time I can't get the answer, I go to an expert. Like, for instance, David Senna, a friend of mine now, was on the podcast, and he has this line that I love, which is, I've always believed in doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else. But if you want to change your life, become relentless at knowing the most you possibly can about one thing, and I promise you, your life will change. And if you wanna go the next level, like if you actually wanna make a bunch of money in that thing that you care about, just start posting every single day one thing that you learn. Watch what happens a year from now. You're gonna be seen as the expert in something that today you don't even really know anything about. Because what happens is obsession and curiosity, if you pair them together with action, they compound. So start caring, and I think we can start changing your life. Because like the world rewards people who go deep, not wide. And I think about this deeply with my newsletter. So we have a newsletter that we send to a million people, and the way that that started was one email. And I used this platform called Beehive because when you have an email, a newsletter that you send out consistently about the things that you're building, then you allow other people to come on the ride with you. And Beehive's incredible because they do all the design for you. They let you make money off of sharing your story with integrated ads. They help make the newsletter better by giving you suggestions on titles and thumbs. It is my single favorite platform that we use at Contrarian Thinking, which is why I invested in it. And they gave me a code just for you guys. So if you go to beehive.com, Spelled B-E-E-H-I-I-V dot com and use code CODIE30. You get 30% off the first 3 months. I can tell you that there's not many things in life I can promise you, but I promise you, if you start a newsletter, I've never met someone who regrets it. Post right now, like go in the YouTube comments and comment what you're going to be obsessed about. Tag me on Instagram on the next thing you want to learn about, and I'll follow along in your journey because sometimes it just starts with that first step. You got to stop talking shit. I have a deep belief that every time you talk badly about another person, it comes back onto you. There's no science to support that, but there is a massive amount of science to support that venting has no benefit for you whatsoever. Basically, there was a 2024 study on 150 54 other studies, so it's called a meta-study. So that's 10,000 participants. And what did they find? Venting anger might sound like a good idea, but there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support catharsis theory, the idea that talking about things makes it better. In fact, students who hit punching bags after being criticized reported more anger and were more aggressive afterwards. So stop complaining, stop talking shit, do the work, and try to be kind. I like to visualize my brain like a hiking trail. You know, the more you walk a pathway on a hiking trail, the deeper it goes, the more grooves it gets. Your brain is just like that. Those are your neural pathways, right? So the more you're saying positive things, the more you're like, good things happen to me. We're grooving our brain to notice the good things. And there's a lot of science that says, in fact, that if you notice more positive things, more positive things happen to you, that you actually can affect luck just by thinking positively. Not Pollyanna bullshit, but backed by science. Okay, you can try this along with me. I'm working on it right now. I want you to try the 10-second reset. So the second you say something negative, I want you to have something that you trigger positively instead. So if I'm like, "I'm so over today, I don't feel very good," I take a deep breath, I wait 10 seconds, and I go, "And also, it's a beautiful day out today." I'm not negating the fact that I don't feel good. I'm just adding on that there's something really positive going on too. If we do that more and more time, then we become Winnie the Pooh or Tigger instead of Eeyore. And I don't know about you guys, but nobody wants to be anywhere in life. You'll be shocked how much can happen in a year. I truly believe in 1 year you can change the actual trajectory of your life, and in 3, you might be able to change everything about your life. We've seen thousands of our members commit to 1 year of learning to buy a business, and their life has completely changed. I can't even name all of the people that have become millionaires by buying businesses because they committed to 1 year to doing a thing most people will never do in their entire life. It's not rocket science, it's not complex mathematical calculations, it's just focused dedication. And 1 year of focusing on buying a business, I guess that changed my life too. It changed it so much that I bought multiple businesses in a year and didn't even have a bunch of liquid cash to invest with. So in a perfect world, if you want to change your life, you go and get in a room where other people already have the life that you want, and you're not going You're not going to do it when you lock yourself in a room. You go move through the world, meet people, get exposed to ideas, have discipline to act on them. That's how you increase your luck surface area. Also, monk mode is for monks. Who of you here wants to be a fucking monk? Nobody.