Codie SanchezFounder @ Contrarian Thinking

If I Had To Start Over, This Is What I Would Do

7 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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Codie Sanchez outlines the "Venmo method" for buying small businesses: scan your payment history for vendors you actually use, pitch the owner on selling you a stake, and offer a performance deal where you only profit if revenue grows. She used this to acquire her podcast production company.

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Here's exactly what I would do step by step if I had to start my business from zero and do it all in less than one year. Called the Venmo method. I would right now go to my Venmo and I'd pull up all the vendors I've paid lately and see which of them are small enough where I could get to the owner. I'd ping them to meet quickly by saying, hey, I love your product or service and I use it all the time. I wanted to talk to you about this in particular because I'm looking to buy a small business. Would you be open to talk? I need to know, one, how much revenue do you do a year? Two, do you own the business outright? Three, do you want to grow your business? And if they say Yes, I say I'm helping increase one small business each quarter or year. How? Well, right now, let's say you do $10K a month in sales. I'll grow that, and anything I grow above your $10K, I'd like to take as ownership in the business at a pro rata discount. So if I double your sales to $20K, I only take half of the additional percentage I make. If I drive nothing, it costs you nothing. But are you open to at least talking about that? And you're off to the races. It's actually how I bought part of my podcast production business back in the day.