Codie Sanchez walked away from managing a billion dollars in assets after burnout and divorce. She bought laundromats to replace her income, expecting simple cash flow but finding the human side of small business far messier than corporate work.
Questions this video answers
A billion dollars ("I had a billion dollars in assets under management").
About 70 hours a week ("was working like 70 hours a week").
I had a billion dollars in assets under management. I built the thing from zero. Everybody thought that job was really cool, including my parents. They're like super proud. But I hated it. Was going through divorce, was working like 70 hours a week. And so I bought the businesses to get the fuck out of corporate. And then when I finally replaced my income is when I thought, oh, well, now I'm going to take a jump and become a partner in a private equity fund. And then finally I got the balls to go do it all by myself.
Why do you buy a laundromat? How much you buy these for? How much do they make? What's the deal with these? Where's the value add? I want to know everything.
I talk about laundromats. One, because that is one of the first businesses I bought. And then two, because I think if you can understand. Understand taking a coin, putting in a machine, getting out clean clothes or dry clothes from it, and running that business model, you probably shouldn't run a business. I have a belief that almost anybody could have a business that they currently work as a job and have some ownership in that business. The thing is, the worst part about running the laundromat is not reading the piano. The worst part about running the laundromat is the machine breaks. What do you do? There's a homeless person there. Like, how do you handle that? Somebody breaks in to your laundromat and breaks the glass door. Any human could handle that.
