The Deepest Conversation You’ll Ever Watch About Money | Codie Sanchez

You need to realize that most people who are giving you advice on the internet about business were miserable before they started their business, miserable as they're building it, and probably still kind of miserable post-success. Those people who say that you have to do the really clickbaity thing, which is grind to the point of misery until you eventually outlive everybody else. I'm not saying that you don't have to work hard. I'm saying you could actually choose a life that you like and fit work into it. And I actually think that's possible.

A former Wall Street investor turned 9-figure founder and bestselling author of a book called Main Street Millionaire. She's also got a new book out right now called Own or Be Owned. Cody Sanchez.

Most entrepreneurs make $46,000 to $64,000 a year. Most entrepreneurs across the US make less than minimum wage. Wow. You should not feel bad about yourself if you haven't started a business, haven't made all your millions, you know, aren't flying on a private jet. I promise you, most people are not. I think it's totally possible. Just don't get it twisted that most people are not there.

What is the mindset that you think keeps people living paycheck to paycheck rather than shifting them to creating more financial freedom? Well, one of the biggest stresses that people have around, I think, work and money right now. You said you did a survey to your audience about do you want to have more money? Do you want to have more profits? Do you want to do more of the things you love or do you want to have more freedom? And you said over 50% of the people said they wanted more freedom. And something you're just saying is like, I think a lot of people feel like they have to grind and work so hard to make more constantly to keep up with the bills, to keep up with the expenses or keep up with the appearances that they're just starting to feel burnt out and exhausted around work, money, or the idea that they have to do so much more work to make more. So what is the, the way out of this trap?

Yeah, well, first, I think you really need to realize that most people who are giving you advice on the internet about business were miserable before they started their business, miserable as they're building it, and probably still kind of miserable post-success. And so like, that was a huge realization for me. It's like, oh, all these people that I'm listening to have lives that I don't want. So why am I listening to them about building a business? And I think as a generation, a lot of us like trauma bonded as entrepreneurs saying like, oh, it has to be this way. It has to be so hard because if instead you say, life's actually pretty good. Yeah, we're grinding, we're growing, and there's a couple things here and there, but like by and large it's good. People are like, you're a liar, you must not be trying that hard. It just sounds so much less sexy. And so I would say first realize that those people who say that you have to do the really clickbaity thing, which is grind to the point of misery until you eventually outlive everybody else, that's one way you can. You can also do what Jeff Bezos talks about, which is he's always puttered in the morning.

Yeah.

You know, or Tim Cook all through his life of being an employee spent the first first hour working out. I'm not saying that you don't have to work hard. I'm saying you could actually choose a life that you like and fit work into it. And I actually think that's possible. And so I started writing this book because that was me. I'm like super pregnant, I'm slowing down, and I wanted to get pregnant. We've been trying to get pregnant for 5 years. So I started writing the book because I was like, when I am eventually a mom or pregnant, I don't want to go at this pace anymore.

Yes.

And I keep building all these things to keep up with all these other people that I don't even like.

Why?

Why?

How long were you running that race for?

Oh, gosh. I mean, I've been in business for 16, 17 years now in varying ways. So, you know, let's call it 16 or 17 years.

Do you think you were consciously thinking about, oh, I need to keep improving and growing and succeeding to keep up with others that you admire or respect or whatever? Friends, or do you feel like it was more of an unconscious thing?

It's unconscious. I mean, I think you, we're all mimetic desire machines, right? Like you see the Joneses have something, you want what the Joneses have. Then social media just amplifies that until you think, well, to be happy, I need to have X. And that is such a, that's such a falsity. And in fact, you know, part of the book was me deconstructing, wait a second, most entrepreneurs make $46,000 to $64,000 a year.

Most entrepreneurs make $46,000 to $66,000 a year?

Yes. The minimum wage in California is $78,000 a year. So most entrepreneurs across the US make less than minimum wage.

Wow. Why is that?

Because most businesses aren't optimized for profit. We— and think about it, how often most people don't even really think profit is sexy. If I was to stack rank, what do you want? Revenue, money, cash, profit. They're not going to rank profit first. And so most businesses aren't taught to pay themselves first and that that's okay.

And there's a great book called Profit First, right? Yeah.

Michael Michalowicz. Yeah.

So they don't think about profit as sexy, right?

No. And I think they— and I think also as an entrepreneur, you end up feeling like revenue is the be-all and end-all. I just want more and more and more and more top line. And eventually you realize, wait a second, I need to eat. I want to have a nice lifestyle. And I remember another mutual friend of ours, Dean Graziosi, said to me years ago, he was like, you know, he's like, I have a lot of friends that have run these scale businesses, these hypergrowth businesses. And he kind of leans in 'cause he's a nice guy. And he goes, but I've had to play it way longer than all of them.

Oh.

And I joked with him and I was like, why do you think that is? He's like, because I've always optimized for having a lifestyle business that paid me first and cash flowed to me and then I cash flowed to the business. Wow.

Instead of like, oh, I'm doing $100 million a year revenue, but I'm struggling financially in a sense.

Yeah. I mean, I was like, most entrepreneurs, they pay themselves last. And then when you're an employee, I remember when I was an employee, I'd go to my boss and think he's super rich. We just made millions. And you don't realize Walmart's profit margin is like 6%. The average business is 15%. So if you're making a million bucks, you're only making $150,000 a year. Well, you'd be better off being one of now my employees than that.

Yeah. And the challenge is if you're making $150,000, I guess, in profit, that doesn't mean there's not other expenses or taxes or legal fees on top of that that you might be spending at the end of the day.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, like one of the great realizations in life is that nobody's really doing as good as you think they are. Alternatively, you're probably not doing as good as they think you are. And so you realize after a while, everybody's out there kind of massaging exactly what's going on in their world, whether through omission or not wanting to have other people know about all the difficulty.

Yeah.

Like, how many of our friends do you know too who are big names on the internet? And when I talk to them, they're like, ah, I'm going through these lawsuits, I'm going through these issues. Like, everybody has something, including you. They're not doing as well as you think they are. And so it's okay wherever you're at in your journey. This book taught me a lot about that.

How has being pregnant taught you about money in a different way? Maybe you haven't had enough time to think about it yet, but is there—

Well, it's really taught me that like the most powerful thing you can have is, is time and freedom and that eventually you'll have something happen in your life that will happen to you. You will have no control over it. And whether you want to or not, your business, your career, your money will not be first and foremost anymore. then you might not even be able to perform at the level you want to.

Hmm.

And so that's not an if, that's a when. And because of that, it made me realize, why am I trying to be a hero in everything I do in my career? And now at our company, we say to be a hero is like to take heroin because it is this addictive drug where you are the one always fixing everything. You're the martyr, it's all on you. And you idealize that at some point until you realize, wait a second, like this is all supposed to support me. Like how you work or your job is what? How you support your family, how you support, et cetera. Well, when did support actually become primary? And so my push is that we should build amazing big huge things. It's super fun. I fucking love what I do, but you should do it by choice, not by necessity.

Do you think a lot of people are trying to prove something when they're building a business or scaling a business?

Yeah. I mean, we jokingly say that entrepreneurship is really a bit of PTSD and that you can't have a lot of entrepreneurs without PTSD because if you go to some of the best entrepreneurs, they've really struggled through life. And so because of that, you have this bias that in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to struggle. And I don't think that's always true. It's just that a lot of people felt like they had something to prove. And a chip on your shoulder can be just as much fuel as a purpose or a mission. It's just not as efficient fuel for a long time. And it's corrosive. You know, it'll eat you.

What is the downside to always trying to prove yourself?

Well, eventually you figure out who are you proving yourself to? And you wake up one morning and your, you know, wife doesn't wanna talk to you the same that she used to. And your kids don't recognize you. And your business has some sort of debt downfall, and you realize that you loved things that could never love you back. And what a tragedy. And so instead of building a system and a business that can support you, that you do like, but is a choice to pick up the phone every day as opposed to an addiction.

I don't know why I want to ask you about being a mom more, but it's probably gonna be hard for you to predict the next 10 years of your life. Because you might have one idea of how things are going to be, and then your child comes, and then maybe something changes, maybe it doesn't. But if you could go 10 years in the future and imagine your child is 10 or almost 10, and it's that 10th birthday, what's the things that you think Cody today needs to hear from you 10 years away from now?

You know, you know what I hope? Is I hope that like I have a picture of when you have a kid and you have a business and you've built all these things, that your kid doesn't end up thinking that your business is the reason that you aren't around.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I have a picture in the future about why so many kids don't take over their parents' businesses. And it's because that was, that was their biggest competition growing up. So why would I take over the thing that kept dad away from me that I have resentment towards? And so I think about that now a lot with business where I want my kids to be involved in the legacy that we have built because I've spent 15 years building this thing. And wow, how sad is that that most kids want nothing to do with their parents' business whatsoever? More than 80% want nothing to do with your business.

Do you?

Yeah. So you think about that. You spend your entire life building a business that then your kid says, Couldn't pay me to take that over if you wanted to. Why? Well, because it's why you weren't at the soccer practices. It's why you weren't attentive to them. And so what I hope is that there's a way to integrate the two. It's like my husband and I, we work together. It was hard at first, but now it's awesome because we are building something together and it's integrated. We make sure it's fun and it's not fun every day and some parts are miserable.

Yeah. Yeah.

But writ large, it's pretty fun.

Yeah.

And it would be really sad if he wanted nothing to do with it. And so that's what I hope in 10 years, that the kid picks parts of the business that they want to be involved in. Right. And they get to see themselves in the thing that you've built for decades.

Yeah, I guess it's interesting because my dad was in insurance and I remember doing like an internship for the company when I was like in college and I was like, okay, like he really wanted me to take over the business. But I really just wasn't into it. Like, I tried it, and I also went to a lot of his meetings growing up, and he involves me. So I got to be around it and I experienced it. I'd go like on golf meetings with him and go to see his clients and go to his office.

Yeah.

And I was there, and I did the internship in college, but I was just like, it's just not what it calls me also. So maybe some kids just aren't excited about the business, and they're like, oh, this is a business that they wanted but wasn't my dream. But I think a lot of people have the opportunity, but they, like you said, they may just not want to be involved in the competition of it.

Yeah. And I don't think it means that the kid has to. Yeah.

Yeah. Give them the opportunity.

100%. And also, you know, could you imagine you like built a house, you go to hand the kid the house down to the kid and the kid doesn't even want to sell it and take the cash from it? That would be weird.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And yet with businesses, we think that's normal. So I'm like, if even the solution is at some point you're like, I don't want to run all the parts of this business, but like, hey, this team's kind of good. I wanna take some aspect of this. Hey, I wanna write a book about sports. I wanna start a media channel about sports, something totally different than what Cody does. I hope there's still like room within it for them. And so, but I, again, I don't think that that's what everybody has to do.

Yeah.

That's just for me in my, like, you get to design your life, right?

Yeah.

Which is just such an unfair advantage once you realize it. Like you get to design your life how you want it to. And I wish I'd realized that earlier.

Yeah.

Because the second that you realize that life and the universe is pretty malleable and that if you want to, you can will different things into existence is the second that you realize, okay, I don't know if this is what other people want, but I'm going to try.

Yeah.

And it's actually— it doesn't have to be hard and miserable. It could be really fun and flow.

Yeah. The challenge is a lot of people today are living paycheck to paycheck and they feel stuck and it feels like it's hard to get out of that. What is the mindset that you think keeps people living paycheck to paycheck rather than shifting them to creating more financial freedom?

Well, you know, it was interesting. My husband and I were on a walk this morning and we were talking about exactly this. I said, there's 2 types of people in the world. It seems like there are builders and there are people who only want to go take what the builders have built. And the builders, by and large seem to believe that there's massive abundance. And by me going and building this thing, I can create whatever I want. But there's a whole school of humans that just believe I have to only take what somebody else has because I'm not capable of building it or because it's unfair or whatever. So I'd say that the first thing is you have to ask yourself, are you a person that has to take? Are you a person that has to be given things? Or are you a builder? Are you able to build things out of thin air? And I like to draw a really tough line there because it's hard. That's a hard thing to look in the mirror and say, like—

Am I a builder?

Am I a builder?

Not everyone is though, right? Or can you be?

I think everybody can be. And by a builder, I don't mean you have to go be an entrepreneur. I mean, in the book, at the end of every chapter, there's 2 parts. One, if you're the owner, and 2, if you work inside of the business, if you're the employee. Because Sheryl Sandberg, super rich employee, She's doing fine.

Oh yeah, yeah, she made money.

Right? How about Gwynne Shotwell, CEO of SpaceX? Always an employee for Elon Musk.

Making money.

She's a billionaire. So I don't think you have to go build something by yourself, but those humans also believe that they can build something in the world. So I think money is attracted to builders and it is repelled by takers.

Interesting.

And so you should go make sure that you are a builder, not a taker, first and foremost.

Why is money attracted to builders versus takers then? What is it about it? Is it an energetic thing or is it a value thing? Is it a worth thing? What is that?

Haven't you ever wondered why some people, like money just comes to them and it proliferates? Yeah. And back when I was poor, I used to hate that. And I used to say things like, it takes money to make money. Or, you know, rich people just have it easier or rich people steal and take it. I had a lot of limiting beliefs. Really? Uh-huh. They were— they must have gotten lucky somewhere in here. But I, I sort of believe that money is like anything that can grow, you know, a garden. Um, and if money is like anything that can grow, that means it wants to multiply, like it wants to proliferate. It's kind of like the universe. I mean, um, every single animal and species on the planet wants to proliferate, you know, it wants to grow. And so money's gonna go where it can proliferate and grow. And I've just seen it again and again and again. The people who are able to make $1 million, who are able to make $1 billion, if you took the money away from them, they would go and they would make it again. And the cool part is, is that you can become that type of person because they're actually not much smarter than you, the really rich people. And the crazy thing I've realized as I've met more of the really, really wealthy, They actually don't work that much harder than you. I used to think they did. I used to think they worked way harder. Then I realized they worked way harder when they were younger, probably hard ramp. But as they got older, it's actually just about better decisions, better leverage, and better narratives they tell themselves.

What do you think are the 3 keys or the 3 mindsets that make someone a millionaire?

Well, one, The number one reason that you'll be a millionaire or not is one thing, and that is, do you actually think you can become a millionaire?

Really? It's the belief that you can.

Yes.

Because if you don't believe that it's possible for you to make $1 million, it's probably going to be hard to happen.

It's going to be hard to happen. I mean, there's so many studies like, like I saw this incredible study about they gave 2 groups of people a packet, like a newspaper packet. And then, and they said, go and find the word Ralph in here and count how many times the word Ralph is in this newspaper packet. It wasn't the word Ralph. I'm making that up, but I can't remember what the word was.

My dad's name.

Oh, there we go. He's in the room. So go and find the word Ralph. And there were 2 groups of people, people that self-described themselves as lucky and people that described themselves as unlucky. The unlucky people, they said, go and find it. It's in there. The number was like 217 times, let's say. So the unlucky people, it took them like 15 minutes or something like that to go find the 215 times. Then they said, when we're done, okay, great. The lucky group, it took them like 90 seconds.

Wow.

Why? Because on like page 2 of the newspaper, it said Ralph is written in here 217 times. Like, there is a lot of research that shows the luckier you think you are, the more luck you find. And so these are just, these are your perceptive beliefs. Wow.

Okay. So that's the first key or the first mindset is believing you can be a millionaire.

Yep. Is believing you can. And you gotta break through that before you can do anything else. That's why like Tony Robbins and this show is really important, I think, because I teach people more like, here's how to grow your business tactically. Like if you wanna build a business less miserably and make more money, I can help you. Yeah. If you don't believe in yourself at all, you should listen to Lewis and Tony first.

Yeah. You know, at work, greatness sometimes starts with a pile of meeting notes here, follow-up questions there. But that's okay because ChatGPT Work, a new way to work in ChatGPT, can organize multi-step projects and help you make progress while staying in control. ChatGPT Work can use your apps, connected tools, and files to create things like landing pages, trackers, internal tools, even web apps. Say your team has a new product concept. Use ChatGPT Work to review customer feedback, pull themes, and draft a prototype. Maybe there's a planning doc that ChatGPT Work can organize into owners' next steps and a shareable status update. Make it even more specialized by installing specific plugins like Google Drive or Microsoft Teams. The big picture? ChatGPT Work helps you get unstuck between thinking about your work And actually making progress on it. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode, available on Plus and Pro plan. Is there a difference between believing you can become a millionaire versus believing you can be something else? Like, what is it about money that holds people back from believing they can achieve or earn more of it.

Yeah, well, money is just a byproduct of skill plus output. So, you know, I always say like, first you gotta believe that you can make money. Then you have to have data or validation that you are worth money, which really just means— I don't mean you intrinsically, I mean your skillset. And then the third is you have to apply that skillset. So if you wanna make money, you have to believe it. You have to have the skills to achieve it, and then you have to actually apply those skills. Yes, it's pretty much it. And I think the thing about money is if you don't believe that you can have it, it's really hard to commit yourself enough to getting the skills. And then it's really hard for you to take the skills and have the belief, which is a little scary thing to do, to put them out in the world and say these are actually quite valuable. You should pay me more.

Okay, so that's step one. What would be the second thing?

I think the second thing Oracle of Delphi says, know thyself, is the most important component of it. I think you have to ask yourself, who are you in this world of business building or money? In the book, we have an archetype. There's 12 different archetypes for business builders or moneymakers. And I think if you don't know who you are, like, you'll have a really hard time figuring out how to make money. And so one of the archetypes, for instance, is—

What's that?

the ball hog. And you might think that that's okay, that you're like a really good closer and you do everything for everybody.

The ball hog. You want the shot all the time.

They want the shot all the time, which means they never give anybody else the shot, which means they're Michael Jordan without Phil Jackson, which means no rings. Right. So second, you got to know who you are and what you're good at. And then I think the third component of it is like, what does the market want? Can you like take— so you now have a lot of ego.

Timing.

Yeah. Yeah. And like honesty. So if the first one is belief, the second one is know who you are and identity. The third one is not about you at all. It's what is the market willing to pay for? And this one I'm obsessed about because in the profit chapter, I think a lot of people, they build product that they want.

But not others want.

Right. And it's so like, are you doing what you want to do? Or are you doing what is necessary?

Because people get so tied to their idea. I have this great idea. I want to go launch this product. I want to do this business. But then do people want that thing?

Yeah.

That's the challenge. And when they don't want it, what does it say about me that I failed at delivering this result or whatever around my big idea? So are my ideas good? Is it bad?

And the real answer is it has nothing to do with you.

Yeah.

It has nothing to do with you. You don't get upset. When you take a shot in practice and you miss the basketball hoop, you're like, okay, I just need to do more iterations. That's it. It should have no bearing on who you are. Google's killed 217, 218 businesses.

They probably acquired a lot of businesses that they've killed also.

Oh, 100%.

Probably spent a lot of money on businesses.

Yeah, I mean, I became friendly with a guy by the name of Astro Teller, who's the— he was the head of Google X, which is their incubation and innovation lab. And he famously outside of his door has a resume. And the resume is not all his accomplishments, but all of his failures.

Ooh.

It's a failure resume. Every single, like, things that would've crippled me, it's outside of his door in his office. And he said, the reason is because I wanna celebrate every single failure that I have because that means that we are trying and going big enough. And I, that really changed my perspective. So like in our bathroom, We have a, I guess it's like a photograph compilation of all of the negative things people have said about our product, of all of the products that we've had that have failed, of all the businesses that we've had that we failed. And it's one, a reminder, it's not gonna kill you. And it's two, a reminder, you gotta fail a lot if you wanna win. Yes. And to kind of wear it lightly.

Yeah, I love that. I had Sarah Blakely on a couple times and she said that Every night at dinner, her dad would ask the kids, her, what did you fail at today?

I love that.

And you had to come up with something that you failed at that day. I think she was a teenager or something, right? And she goes, that, that's really what allowed me to launch Spanx by just having the courage every single day when all these manufacturers or men in business said I couldn't do this thing. I just kept saying, all right, this is just another step forward and it's okay to fail. Instead of being crippled by a failure, you know, early on. So having that mindset is really helpful. That is fascinating. What do you see people struggling with today around money, business, and AI, and just where everything is going around inflation and all the stress of the, the world leading into the next few years? What are people struggling with today?

The largest struggle, well, let's be real about what's really hard today, especially, you know, for some of the younger generations. It's more expensive to buy a house than it's ever been before on an inflation-adjusted basis. Interest rates are still quite high. So that is another added in tandem with it being expensive. Wages have not increased—

Mm-hmm.

In line with productivity. And Jobs have continued to decline. So we are writ large having a harder time in the job market. So I think you could pretty safely say it is a little bit harder during this generation than probably our parents' generation to have the American dream of a house, you know, a really nice life off of one salary. Man, education costs through the absolute roof.

Crazy.

College has 3x'd really in our lifetime since our parents. And so that's all real. Now, the next question here is, what of all of that have we been sold is the American dream that actually isn't? And so I think some real questions to ask yourself that people are struggling with today is like, do you really need the college degree? You know, do you actually— are you actually sure that what you want to do is buy another liability, AKA a house, when you might be able to rent way more cheaply. How much are you sure you wanna be an entrepreneur and take on all of the difficulty and cost of being an entrepreneur? I promise you they're not driving Lambos around every single day.

Yeah.

And so I think if we were sold a bag of goods about what the American dream is, can you actually reset what that might look like for you? And I actually am really proud of this generation 'cause I think in a lot of ways they are, and sometimes it pisses us off, like being a little older, What is the younger generation doing right? I think they're questioning everything, you know, and they're saying, yeah, I'm not sure I need to own a house right now. Actually, I want rental freedom. I don't wanna have to be tied to a W-2 income and salary because I have to pay my mortgage consistently over time, which I think is totally reasonable. I think the younger generation today is actually being really smart about saying they're starting a lot of businesses, but they're actually not leaving their jobs to the same degree. So in 2025, there are 5 million new business starts. In 2019, there were 500,000 new business starts.

Really?

Yeah. Look at the difference between the two. What's crazy, though, is that there's less profitable businesses than there were back then. So the big guys are eating way more and the little guys aren't. The average small business, if you are part of the 60% of the middle, the 1 to 10% at the top, are 30x more profitable. So like there's this huge curve between the haves and have-nots, which means I think you should not feel bad about yourself if you haven't started a business, haven't made all your millions, you know, aren't flying on a private jet. I promise you, most people are not.

Right.

It's very rare. Yeah. And you can have all of that and do all of that if that is what you want to do. I think it's totally possible. But just don't get it twisted that most people are not there. You know, and don't let them sort of clown you into this idea that that is necessary or even be necessarily happier if you do that.

I mean, you've studied a lot of wealthy people for a long time. What is something you've learned from someone extremely wealthy in the last year that's made you think about money and business differently?

Yeah, well, one, I mean, you know what the craziest thing to me is with billionaires and the really, really rich? It's usually like 1 to 3 decisions that got them there.

Hmm.

And almost all billionaires I've ever really gotten to know, it's come down to either their systems that they run or the terms that they set. It's almost never anything else. And what do I mean by that? I've become friends with a guy who's really big in private equity, and he's one of the fathers of private equity. Super, super brilliant guy, multibillionaire. And if you were to ask him how he got rich, It is not from grinding from 6 a.m. to 12 in the morning. He would say, you know what I did? I bought businesses. I implemented systems in every single business. I ran those systems again and again over time. I found the few 1 to 2 things that were problematic in each business, and then I fixed those and then I sold them at really good terms. And what's crazy is most billionaires are that.

Hmm.

They're like, you know, I just had on my podcast David Adelman, who was kind of the founder of student housing, billionaire, owner of the 76ers. You know more about sports than I do. I guess he just had LeBron come there or something.

Yeah, yeah. No big deal.

No big deal.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you were to ask David why he got so rich, it's not because he raised a bunch of capital and did something crazy. He ran a system inside of his business. He followed the system continuously, and he almost told people, don't be a genius, just like follow the playbook. And so I am continuously baffled by the fake narrative and the real narrative. The fake narrative is you have to be a genius to massively succeed. The real narrative that I've seen again and again is you have to just steal everybody's homework and follow a proven system that almost all private equity guys run. And if you do that over time continuously and it's kind of boring, you'll have a much higher likelihood of success. And most people fail because they're golden retrievers chasing after every new object.

Yeah.

They do not fail From implementing something and sticking with it?

Yeah, I feel like in my business I've been really consistent of doing the same things but trying to improve them every single day and every single week for 13+ years now. But I also, for the first maybe 6 or 7 years, got into too many different things and it exhausted me. It drained me. But there was money everywhere and opportunities coming to me as I was growing. So I said yes to everything, and then I was exhausted and drained. And then I said, I'm stopping all of this and sticking to the main thing that is bringing me the most joy, the most fulfillment, the most impact, and the most income.

Yeah.

And for the last 6 or 7 years, we've refocused on that, and it's just continued to be a better life, a better business, and a better product because of that, because I'm able to show up differently. And My mind wants to think, oh, but this opportunity, this opportunity. But I have to keep saying no to so many different things, stay focused, and, and almost keep it boring in certain ways. Whereas I used to invest in so many different things, but I didn't have the right system for investing.

Yep.

So I made a lot of the poor decisions. If I had a better system, maybe it would have been better. And now I'm just like, I'm going to put my money every single month into index funds and consistently ride this thing for the next however many decades, and just be consistent there as well. It doesn't have to be super sexy or know all the best trades or whatever, but just be consistent. Build what I love, put the money in there. If a great opportunity comes that works now into my lifestyle, okay, maybe I'll go for it too. But not doing too much and being very consistent now.

Yeah. You know, you know what I realized is like early on, I thought that all of this was so complicated. And I think maybe that's what people want you to believe. Like, they want you to believe that making money is really complicated because that serves a lot of interests. It means that we give our money to financial advisors. It means we give our sovereignty to employers. It means we sort of, we're like, oh, I don't wanna be in charge. This is so complicated. And then now, you know, we've run like 1,621 people through our systems and processes. Why that's kind of cool is that's 1,600 businesses. So I got to see like what matters. And I found that like if you want to make more money, there's like 3 steps that almost everybody should do and nobody does.

What's that?

The first step is you need to sell more things to rich people. They pay more. We call this persona. And so basically most people do not sell things to rich people because when you start out, you're not rich. It's really scary. And so you have something called the wallet share phenomenon, which means you think that your wallet is everybody else's wallet.

Yeah.

At some point you'll realize, oh no way, having 500 clients pay you 2x more is so much more fun than having 1,000 clients pay you 1x less.

Yeah.

And so it's like, one, find your richest client, try to clone them or multiply them. And then 2 is pricing. So let's say you have a job, Like, you know what the best way is for you to immediately make 20 to 30% more? Ask for a raise. It's the same thing in business. Most businesses are underpriced 30 to 300%. 30 to 300%. In fact, I've gone into 1,621 businesses where I can see their QuickBooks. I can like see into their business in the backend. They're not just telling me. I have the data in front of me. Do you know how many businesses I found that were overpriced?

How many?

Zero.

Really?

Not a fuck. Isn't that crazy?

So they undervalue themselves?

Zero.

Why is that?

Because we think that— well, actually, there's a couple of reasons. The first reason is because you wouldn't be willing to pay more. So you artificially limit what everybody else is willing to pay more. The second is because you have a team and everybody on your team makes less money than you do, right? So what do they do? They artificially limit to the amount they'd be willing to pay and down and down and down and down. And so it's almost like this cascade. And so that's the second thing is pricing. And then the third thing is for some reason, like what you really want in life, you want to sell something once and get paid continuously.

Mm-hmm.

That's what you want. Recurring revenue. Sell once, get paid continuously. You wouldn't work at a job that just paid you one time. Like you want people to pay you again and again, right? But for some reason, when we start our own business, we are fine with people paying us once. In fact, we feel really uncomfortable when we ask them to go on subscriptions or recurring. So most businesses, let's call it 60 to 70%, have a bad product setup because you are chasing— it's like, it's like only ever limiting yourself for the rest of your life to go on a date with a woman once.

Hmm.

That'd be pretty hard to keep getting dates.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right?

How many businesses have recurring revenue?

Less than 30%.

Interesting.

Think about that. That's an F. That's an F grade.

So 70% have one-off sales only.

Yep.

Completely transactional. Or maybe, yeah, maybe the contract is for a number of months, but it's a one-off sale that you have to constantly resell.

Uh-huh.

Interesting.

Yeah. We consider recurring revenue when you put your credit card down and I get to charge you continuously over time until you tell me to stop.

Yes.

That is the golden ticket.

And only 30% of businesses in the US are doing that.

Well, of the 1,600 that we surveyed.

Okay, gotcha.

I should look at what the general, but I would be shocked if it was much higher.

Yeah.

I would imagine it's somewhere between 30% and 50%. There's no way it's more than 50%.

Interesting.

I know. Well, even think about your business. Like you have a media business. Yeah.

It's recurring though for sponsorships. It's recurring.

Sponsorships. Yeah, recurring, but probably you don't have the right to charge their credit card every single month continuously. What would be if you had subscriptions to some degree, right?

I did for many years, but that's got its own challenges.

Yeah, because it might not have been the right kind of subscription.

Exactly.

And the product might not have been perfect for media, and so people could churn. But I think the question we have to always ask ourselves as business owners is like, are you working harder than you need to? Because you have limiting beliefs that are holding you back in your business.

Yeah.

And it's touchy-feely. So some business owners don't do it, but it's where all the money is.

What's the percentage of businesses that have a recurring revenue model that succeed versus those that have one-off sales that succeed? Like which ones last longer typically? Yeah.

I mean, like if you look at it over time, look at the biggest businesses that exist. in the world? Amazon Prime recurring, right? You could say, but what about SpaceX government contracts continuously over time? You could say, look at Tesla, you got a subscription, baby.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the perfect subscription business. So the most successful companies, they maximize for this thing that's like not that sexy to talk about, but it's where all the money is called lifetime value, right? And so you want to obsess on how much will one customer pay you over time. And if you want the secret to winning in your industry, it's to get your customers to pay you more than they will to anybody else. If you can do that, you're really, really hard to beat.

Hmm.

And so it's what Silicon Valley and all the really rich people obsess on. But even if you're an employee and you want to get paid more, use the word LTV more. Throw that around in meetings and to your boss. Because most people don't think about the long term. They think really short term. And that's why you're probably not as rich as you want to be.

Wow.

And I was, I was the same way too. And maybe the only other thing that's a little slightly bit technical is like, I, you know, when you're early on in making money or if you haven't made the amount of money that you want yet, a lot of it is because you don't speak the language of money yet. Early on in my career, I had a little notebook, Lewis, and I was a journalist. So I went to Goldman Sachs. Previously, I was a journalist, and they said all these words I didn't understand. AOV, LTV, churn, basis points, blah, blah, blah. And I would keep a little notebook, and I would write down all the words, and I'd be like, of course, LTV, yes. And I would go and search them later and figure out what they meant, and then I would learn the definition. So I think one of the most powerful things you can do if you wanna get rich is figure out what the language means.

The language of money. Mm-hmm.

And it's all the acronyms that they use to keep you out of the know. And if you can learn all of those, then you kind of understand this, this foundational layer. And it won't be the only thing that'll lead you to making money, but it'll really help.

I like that as another book in the future for you. The Language of Money. It's a good title.

God, it'll be so boring, but it'll make people a lot of money. It'll just be like a list of all these acronyms, you know?

Make it interesting though. Yeah.

Yeah.

You've got a lot of great concepts in your book, Own or Be Owned. But I'm curious, in your mind, can someone become wealthy without ever becoming an actual owner?

Oh yeah. In fact, I think you're a little crazy if you want to be an owner. I mean, in order to own something, you have to be a masochist that kind of likes pain in the beginning because you've never done it before. So when have you excelled at something that's hard without doing it before? That would be crazy. to think that. So you do not have to be an owner to be rich. What I think you do have to have, you have to have an owner mindset. And an owner mindset really just means that you own every task and every bad thing and every good thing that has happened to you in life is up to you. And if you can have the type of mindset where you say, I take ownership over the fact that I'm not making what I want to in my salary, I take ownership over the fact that I got fired.

Mm-hmm.

I take ownership over the fact that my side hustle failed. If you own all of that, then I believe you can succeed. Plus, you'll be so— I don't think people realize. I mean, Lewis, how rare is it when somebody comes to you and they're like, hey, Lewis, I know I'm in graphic design, but I saw over here on the website there are a couple of things I think weren't optimized. So I like spun up a new version of it. I wanted to iterate on that for you. I think this could help improve our LTV. You'd be like, what?

What?

You know, you'd be like, amazing, amazing. And if that person kept coming to you, understanding the language of money with an owner mindset, you would pay them more eventually.

And because they're thinking of how to make you more money, they're thinking of, let me optimize something that I'm skilled at that can help make you more money.

Yeah. And what's crazy is that most people will never do that.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Walden University. Ever think, what if you could go after what you actually want and really make a difference? You're not alone. For over 50 years, Walden University has helped working adults turn ambition into action. Walden is where students get the W, those big and small wins that move them forward and create the change they want to see in their lives, their careers, and in their communities. With more than 100 online degrees and certificates in fields like nursing, social work, counseling, and psychology, it's never been easier to find a program that matches your goals. And Walden is a partner from your very first class all the way to your career with the tools, the support, and dedicated career coaching you need to win. If you've been waiting for the right moment, this is it. Head to waldenu.edu and take that first step. Walden University, set a course for change. Certified to operate by SHIV. The School of Greatness is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. One of my favorite parts of travel is when a trip gives you a feeling you can't really plan for. You're walking through a new city in the morning, you're grabbing coffee, you're talking to someone local, and suddenly the place feels a little bit more familiar. These are the moments that stay with me. They're the things that I crave, not just the photos, but the feeling of being somewhere new and still finding meaningful connection. And that's what I love about Airbnb. When you're away having your own adventure, your home doesn't have to just sit empty either. You can share your space on Airbnb and give another traveler a chance to fall in love with your city the way that you fall in love with the places that you visit. And maybe there's a big game coming up, or maybe people are coming in for a once-in-a-lifetime concert. They need a place that feels comfortable and inviting, and the income from sharing your home can help pay for your own trips. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host. Why is that? Why do most people working in companies not try to take the initiative to make the company more money?

Well, I think in the comments we'll hear this, but if this was to be a if this was to be a short, like here's how to know you're never going to be really successful is that you hear somebody say. here's how to make your boss and the company more money so you can make more money. And your response is, they won't pay me more. It doesn't work like that. That'll never happen for me. They just keep getting richer and then I don't. There's either one of two things happening there. One, you work for a terrible place, in which case you should leave and go find a new job. If you're good, you will be able to do that. Or two, you have a Non-owner mindset, and you will never make a ton of money because you have a limiting belief that other people don't want you to make more money.

Interesting.

And it's fake. And if you don't believe me, go to a bunch of owners, talk to as many owners as you can and say, hey, what are a couple of things that are wrong in your business? What do you need help on? Like, I noticed this. Can I fix this? If I did these things for you, do you think that you would pay me for that? And what you're going to find is they're going to say yes. So I think it's sad, but a lot of people, we limit ourselves. We don't even give other people a chance to pay us more because we'll never ask.

In your book, you say that most owners are being owned by the thing they built. When was the time that you realized part of your business was owning you, that you had to start fixing that?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, so often. Still now.

Last week.

Yeah, I mean, I remember one moment in particular where I had a business that was doing really well and I had done the thing that everybody tells you to do, which is hire great people, get out of their way. Yeah, I hired a guy I thought was great.

It's hard to do that though. It's hard.

Well, I think it's wrong. I think instead it's not— it's never— you should never hire more people, hire great people and get out of their way. You hire great people. You incentive align them, incentive align them, you get out of their way and you track performance consistently.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if you do all of those 4—

Weekly report. Yeah, weekly tracking.

Expect this to happen to you, which is I had a business where I'll never forget, one day I went to go get a loan for the business and I needed for something else we were going to do. And I walk into the bank and I think there's a big pot of money in the bank. And I talked to the banker and the banker looks at me and goes, well, you can't get a loan for this account. There's no money in here. In fact, like we're gonna need you to fill this up again soon. I'm like, excuse me, can you please turn that thing around so I can see what's on that screen? And the account that I thought had $1 million in it was basically to zero.

Come on.

And I remember my gut just dropping. And not only it was about the money, it was like, oh my God, I have to make payroll. And I need to pay the lease, and what am I going to do for this? And so I go to the guy who's the head of operations of the business there, and he was like, oh, well, you know, we kept this spreadsheet but not this one. And I did tell you this one time that it might be tight this summer if we didn't do this, and basically had sort of obfuscated and hid from me that we were almost out of money.

Oh.

And didn't want to give me the bad news, and so kept hiding the ball, hiding the ball, hiding the ball. And it was my fault for not tracking him, obviously. And so I remember sitting at home and I called my dad in the middle of the night and it's lights out in the dark. I'm sitting on the couch and I had no idea what to do next. And I thought I was gonna lose the business. I'd have to go back and get a job. And I remember calling my dad and he, he said, you know what? If you haven't sat in the dark in the middle of the night with no idea of what to do next, You're not really in the game. And I remember he was like, so now what do we do when you step on a nail? He's like, you don't complain about it, ask what happened, try to figure out the culprit. You pull the fucking thing out and then you tape it up and you figure out how to keep going. And so I remember having a good cry and then trying to go to work the next day to figure it out. But what happened after that is it was so painful, like just my identity and that I was a failure because I had let an entire business fail.

Right.

That after I'd cleaned it up, I promised myself I would do everything in my power not to have that happen to me again. And that's when I realized, like, there's a reason why cowboys don't have long lives. You know, when you're out there just riding a bucking bronco with no system, no support, what do you think is going to happen? Eventually you're going to crack your head. And most entrepreneurs, what do we do? We just look at other entrepreneurs around us that also have no idea what they're doing. We mimic them or we have some component or comparison between them and we don't ever try to put a system in place to make sure that we have like airbags when we need them. And so that's when I decided like, I'm never running a business like this again 'cause it was too painful for me. Wow.

And so what did you learn then? I have to build these systems in place when I hire great people and make sure that I'm always tracking everything.

Yeah, I basically realized like, well, if you don't want to have something happen to you again, you usually need to study the cause.

Yeah.

Right. And so I realized like I started to think about it like, like medicine. So if you don't want to have— so you have cancer and you don't want to have it again, what do you do? Well, you go and you diagnose yourself, then you figure out what a score you have in the business. So I have a diagnosis, then I go have a score. Okay, well, I don't eat very healthy. I don't work out that often. I'm not doing a sauna. I'm not doing all the things that might lead to health. So my score is pretty low because of that. I need a strategy, right? How do I fix the score to help the diagnosis? And then I need a review period every 90 days. Like, how am I doing? Am I going to the gym? I'm going to help. Da da da. I'm like, why do we not have this in business? Like, why don't we have we diagnose, we give ourselves a score, we come up with a strategy, and we review every quarter. And then I realized, oh no. The pros do have that.

Yeah, they do.

I just didn't have that. All private equity companies run like this. Yes. And that's why they're stealing all of our companies and making all the money. So let's just go steal their homework.

Exactly. Just copy the homework. Yeah, yeah. Copy the playbook. A lot of the playbook's in your book called Own or Be Owned. What is the difference between having an asset And what's the exact question I'm going to ask you? What's the difference between having an asset and a really expensive job that feels like, oh, this is an asset, but I'm just working really hard essentially, and it's an expensive job? And how do you tell which one you actually own?

Yeah, I think first of all, it's such a good question. Like, do you have a business or do you have a job?

Yes.

And most people, I would say, Have a job. And how do you know the difference between the two? One, when you leave for 2, 4, 6, 8 weeks, what happens? Does everything collapse and the money stops flowing? If you do, you have a job, not a business. If you in your business have to be on your phone, on your computer, checking in constantly on your business, you have what's called key man risk.

Mm-hmm.

Which means that you are like the key that opens the door to the business. And if you don't open the door, the door is shut. And so I always try to get people to ask themselves, okay, if you're gone 2, 4, 6, 8 weeks, what happens?

Yeah.

That's one. And then 2, who inside of your business is better than you? Like, do you have anybody surrounding you who you think, man, in that zone of genius and that zone of genius, categorically better than me? And if they aren't, you've really surrounded yourself with what I call a sea of assistants. I was notorious for doing this. And what that means is assistants are always just going to be there to do what? Assist, never to lead. And so it's like our ego is going to keep us trapped in this thing because we have hired people who are not as good at us because we're probably a little afraid of what that might look like. Wow. And so those are the two very two first things I look for.

What advice would you give someone like me in a key man business? You know, knowing what you know about me or this business or this industry and knowing that I've already done a lot of coaching programs in the past. I've done masterminds. I've been very successful in making multiple million-dollar revenue streams and membership sites, courses, coaching, masterminds, events, all these different things. But they also take a lot of time from me to continue to be the key man. I've tried network of bringing in other talent that takes time and energy managing and—

Yeah.

What would you see from the outside looking in on, on how to double the business or 10x a business without taking on more time from the key man?

Yeah.

Is it investing in other businesses, launching other businesses that have partners and helping push audience to those businesses? Is it something else? What would you see?

Well, on every business you want to start at the source of truth. The, the single source of truth for every business is your profit and loss statement. And so when I come into a business, just like any private equity investor, the first thing I'm going to do, I'm not actually thinking about you at all. I'm going to your profit and loss statement. And when I look at my profit, your profit and loss statement, I'm going to do an analysis to say, where is this business hiding money? That's first.

Hiding money. What does that mean?

That means that inside of your business right now are areas that are inefficient and too expensive.

Yeah.

And the easiest thing to do is not go out and make more money. It's just to keep more of what you got.

To fix those problems first.

100%. So I'm basically looking there first. And the reason we don't like to do that is because we're like, I don't know, that's probably not in there. Where's the big things? That's not so big. But costs always costs. Like, if you can control the costs in your business, you'll survive longer. And any great entrepreneur knows that. So I'd start with your profit and loss statement. Then as soon as we're done looking at your profit and loss statement, we're going to look at the big 3. We're going to look at your pricing First, almost every business, probably including yours, doesn't need to do a damn other thing to increase your revenue by anywhere from 30% to 100%. All you have to do is change how you price and change how you actually get payment from whoever pays you.

Mm-hmm.

So could be your, you know, third-party providers. And this comes down to that idea from billionaires that a lot of the money is made in the terms.

Yeah.

And so the smarter you can get with the terms, the more money you can make.

Yes.

With less work.

Yeah.

And so I would probably tell you, Lewis, don't— you're not allowed to do anything else.

Right.

Don't invest in another business. Don't start another product. Let's look at your pricing and let's look at your profit and loss statement. And then we run a growth roadmap. So the third area is you're going to run— every business has 12 Ps.

And that's in your book too.

Yeah. And the 12— and we call them profit levers. For most businesses, you're only looking at 7 of them consistently. There are a couple that are like big questions, like do you want a lifestyle business, a cash flow business, or do you want to sell? But the ones that matter are pricing, product, persona, profit, process, people. And—

This is called the OWNED System, right?

That's right.

Yeah.

And so for you, we're going to go through every single one of those Ps and you're going to get a score and you're not going to like the score at first.

Yeah, it's going to be bad.

Yeah, there's going to be 2 Ps.

This is your owner score, right?

There's going to be 2 Ps in there that you really probably have to nail, but usually they're pricing and persona. Like I would guess for you, for instance, let's just take your business for a second. One, there's probably somewhere in your pricing in terms that you're doing what the industry says to do and not something creative. Whether it's your agents or your sponsorship team. They're doing what's called market-based pricing as opposed to value-based pricing.

Yeah.

And we've got to have a few swings where you do value-based pricing and you take a bigger cut for less, for less work. And you're going to do that over time. Then the second thing you're probably going to find is that some of your sponsors or some of your clients are way more profitable to you than others. That's your rich persona. So we're going to actually find where can we get more of those where every dollar or minute of Lewis's time is worth more than anything else. And we're going to actually optimize first for the first 2. And why I really like this is you don't even have to be involved in that conversation. These could be your number 2s who just start analyzing it. And in most businesses, we're so busy, especially these businesses are weird because your talent—

Plus, and you're running it.

Yeah, you're running it. It's doubly hard.

Yeah.

But most business owners don't realize that hard work has almost nothing to do with how much money you make. You know, if hard work was going to make you really rich, my roofers and plumbers would make way more money than I do.

Yeah, yeah. But they don't unless they own their business in a certain way. That—

and that would be leverage.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, but I really think we need to internalize that because I needed to internalize that, I guess. I'll just say I'm what's called a workhorse archetype.

Yes.

So I always want to keep working. I associate hard work. Have you ever— how you know you're a workhorse? People go, oh, she's a beast. Oh, you work so hard and you kind of like it.

Yeah, I'm a beast.

I'm tough. I keep going.

I outwork everyone.

Yeah, that is a huge red flag because what that actually means is that you're probably not very good at hyper-prioritization, boundary setting, and choosing other people to do low-level tasks.

Interesting. Yeah.

Which was me.

You take it all on. Yeah, I did a lot of that too.

Uh-huh.

For sure.

Yeah. I wonder what you are now. If I had to guess your archetype, it's not a workhorse anymore.

Where are the archetypes in here?

Put them on the very back page.

Okay.

That one that kind of stands out, look at the back of it.

Okay, let me see. Oh, I see here. Yeah. Oh man, I probably was all of these at one point. I mean, like a mixture of all of them, but the good guy, the one-stop shop, the artist, the founder, the martyr, the closer, the ball hog, the best-kept secret. I feel like I've done all these in some ways. But if I'm—

Everybody has a little bit of them.

Yeah. If I'm like a more dominant one, the dreamer is probably something that stands out to me. The optimist is in there too, but—

Do you have a hard time Narrowing your focus and staying on one task, and you want to do a lot of things at once.

Yeah, yeah. But I'm also very consistent of like the things I commit to, then I can be consistent with them. Like this show has been almost 2,000 episodes.

Yeah.

3 times a week for over 11, 12 years now.

How comfortable are you asking for price increases?

Oh, I can ask for more.

Yeah. Okay. So you're not the good guy?

No, I can ask for more.

The good guy usually doesn't like to ask.

No, I'll ask for money. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So you've come over, you've overcome that one.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because I remember that being yours back in the day.

Yep. Yep.

You're probably— I was going to— I think you're probably a dreamer, which is incredible because a dreamer is really powerful because once you commit, Lord help anybody in your way.

Yeah, I've got some workhorse in me too. I'm like, I used to just grind it out and then I was like, okay, I don't have any systems. Yeah, I need systems. I need team. Got the optimist, I guess. I mean, I'm optimistic all the time. I believe things are going to work out.

But I don't think you are, because an optimist typically doesn't take action, right? Yeah.

Okay. So maybe the dreamer, the workhorse, kind of a blend.

Yeah.

And I've had to learn over time how to build team, build systems, you know.

Will you kill things in your business if you find that, like, are you really tied to the things that you create and you keep them for longer than they're helping you?

I have to ask Matt. To my COO, but I'd have to ask him because that's probably some things yes and some things I'm just like, oh, I'm over this. So I've definitely let go of— I mean, if I've let go of multiple 7-figure revenue streams, I've been like, no, I'm done. If it doesn't feel good to me anymore, I won't focus on it.

That's good. That's because the founder is usually the one where you're like, this is what I created. I will never let it die.

No, if it's dead, I'm like, if it's dead inside of me or No one's buying. I'm like, oh, I don't need to focus on this.

Yeah, that's good.

I'll shift. I'll move on to the next thing. I'll test something new.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know if that's the dreamer.

Yeah, you're probably—

I mean, there was probably a lot of ball hog in me early on because I learned all the skills. And so I was like, well, no one's doing this better than me from what I need to put out there.

Yeah. Ball hog is my second. I'm a workhorse ball hog.

Yeah. So maybe—

sounds like real fun at a cocktail party.

Maybe a little dreamer, maybe workhorse, maybe a little ball hog in there. But Yeah, I was also the closer for a long time, um, because I was doing— say I was doing webinars weekly for like 6, 7 years.

Yeah.

And I was just like, put me in, I'm gonna sell, sell, sell.

Yeah. So, well, it's good. I mean, the night— that's the nice part about the journey of entrepreneurship. I always find, like, if we go back to that thing that's the most important, it's like, first you need to know what you want. Yes. You know, do you want to make a ton of money? Do you want to make a ton of impact? Do you want to just build something and then Do you sell it right away? No wrong answers.

Yeah.

Then it's like, do you— then it's like, who are you? Like, what are your strengths and weaknesses? What are you good at? And then it's, what's the processes that are missing in your career, business, or life?

Yes.

And so, you know, you could, you could be the, the good guy even if you have a job.

Yes.

Because you probably— like, if you haven't asked for a salary increase in the last year, you're the good guy. You're underpriced. True.

It's true. I like what you said in the beginning around kind of the 3 things to— that you need to have in order to become a millionaire. And I really think this is around kind of like a mindset thing. It's number one, believing you can be a millionaire. Number 2, knowing yourself, which is a lot of what your book talks about in Own or Be Owned. It's really kind of first, let's analyze and assess who you are, what type of archetype you are.

Yeah.

And then what does the market want? It's like knowing Not sure— just because you have a great idea doesn't mean others want that thing.

No, that's a hard realization.

And it's so hard when you have— we have egos, we have dreams, we have these visions of something that we want to put into the world, and we wish and we hope that others want to buy it or like it or want to watch it, whatever it is. Sometimes people don't.

No.

And it's hard to not attach your identity to, oh, I came up with this thing that I think is really interesting. And others aren't willing to buy it. Or maybe I haven't learned how to package or position it so they do buy it.

Yeah.

It's scary though.

Well, I mean, think about it. I've like, when I think about when I started, I had a company called Threads Refined. I started that business as a fashion styling marketplace. Massive flop. Didn't work out. Failed, you know, lost 6 figures on it. That was a lot of money for me at the time. And I learned 2 lessons. One, I do not actually think that you should Build, you know, haven't you heard that line before? What's the exact line? It's like, all the profit is in your pain. Wrong, wrong. Do not start a business from your pain. I actually fully disagree with that.

Interesting.

Because what are you gonna get more of?

Pain.

Pain and the thing you don't like.

Pain.

Let's be real careful not doing that. And then second, I started another business called Selling South, which was like a consulting business around US-Latin American relations. And again, it was what I wanted to build.

Yeah.

And so I ran so far from my pain that I built the thing that I wanted to do all day, and I didn't test the market first to see if anybody else wanted it.

Yeah.

So it's like, before you start anything, go and ask 3 people if they'd pay for it. Then take their credit cards and see if they'll pay for it.

Then deliver the results. Yeah, then deliver.

And if you can't get 3 people to pay for it, Don't do it.

Yeah, don't do it.

And also, I think a lot of times you start a business or you take a lot of input from people when you start a business.

Yeah. What do you think of this idea? That's a great idea.

And everybody says that.

And would you give me money? Yeah. Okay, give it to me now.

And then they won't.

They won't.

And it doesn't mean they're bad people. This is just human nature.

Yeah.

So you've got to realize that, and that's totally fine.

Interesting.

But don't take opinions and advice Without taking capital from them too.

Yeah, exactly. One of the things I really appreciate about you in this is a lot of people think you have to be so smart to launch a business or make a lot of money. And you continue to teach people, like, find something that people want. And usually it's pretty boring, right? This is why you talk about boring businesses. Like, people need to wash their clothes, so use a laundromat. People need roofing, okay, get— or plumbing, get a plumbing whatever it might be. Buy a company that people already are paying for every day.

Yep.

And just optimize that. Optimize that business. Don't have to try to launch something new, start something new. It is so hard to launch a new business. It just takes so much time and energy. If you're excited about that, cool. But it is a lot of effort to launch unless somehow you're lucky and like you have a big audience and it's effortlessly comes out and people, you know, but that takes time to build to that too. And so I love that you continue to talk to people like, you don't have to complicate this. Keep it simple. Get involved in a business where people are already spending money so you don't have to come up with some new creative idea. It doesn't have to be that hard.

Oh yeah. I also think like you got to be really careful today trying to follow what the really, really skilled tell you online. Yeah. Because Even if I listened to every single piece of advice from Michael Jordan, I still wouldn't shoot baskets like him.

No.

So even if you listen to every single piece of advice on how to build content from Gary Vee, you're probably not gonna do content as well as Gary Vee does. He's a G at it.

Some people have it and some people don't.

And even if you get all the sales line, the sales stuff, we were talking about this earlier. One of my biggest pet peeves in the world, one of the worst pieces of advice I think you can take is to copy everybody's offers. and to copy everybody's pitches. Because guess what happens if you continue to use the same pitch or offer that somebody else does? What's going to happen to you? You're going to sound just like everybody else. And it so quickly goes to the bottom. You know, I, I actually posted a clip on X of Jefferson Fisher, who's a buddy of mine, and he was on my podcast.

He got some heat recently, right?

Maybe this is— maybe it was my post.

Someone told me you got some heat. Yeah, maybe it was your post. On X.

But here's why. Because he said in a conversation, if you if you want somebody to like you, how do you get somebody to like you? And he said, well, you say their name four to five times in an interaction. And so it'd be like Lewis, you know, have you ever thought about this? And Lewis, and the internet was like yuck.

Seems manipulative.

I don't like it. It seems manipulative. And when people do this, my little red flag goes up. Now that podcast was from probably a year or so ago from. From Jefferson and was a repost. And my point is, he's right in many instances. It takes skill and art though to do it.

Nuance.

Very. And Jefferson is one of the best speakers in the world now. Millions and millions and millions of followers. So when slow-talking Southern Texan Jefferson says your name, you don't notice. Yeah, you're like, hey. You're like, oh, that sounds so nice. My buddy here. Right? But if somebody else was to use it, it sounds inauthentic. And so I'm really careful with these hacks because they only work for so long and they only work with massive skill. What I want are systems so foolproof you don't have to be genius and they aren't a hack. Yes. And so that—

it's powerful. Yeah. And in your book you have the assessment as well. I guess people can go to ownerscore.com and they can take the assessment to see which kind of owner that you are. It's only a few minutes. You get your owner score, your archetype, and you find out exactly what's keeping you stuck. So you can go to ownerscore.com and take that right now. I'm assuming that's free.

It is.

And then people can also go to the— and get the book there as well, I'm assuming. Or you can go on Amazon or anywhere the books are sold. Own or Be Owned: Build a Business So Good It Doesn't Need You. And doesn't that sound good? Something doesn't need you. It's going to need you in the beginning. It's going to need you for a period of time. But This is really going to help you scale. And, and, and for me, a business shouldn't be owning you. You should be having a business that allows you to live the life on your terms, where you're, you're free to live the life you want. And again, it doesn't mean it's not going to be hard work at certain times. It doesn't mean it's not going to require a lot of your time and energy at certain times. But if it's exhausting you forever, that's not really a successful business or a successful life.

Yeah, I think it's so important that you say that. And we need to, like, as successful entrepreneurs, stop making people feel like they have to be miserable their whole life to give it to their business.

People can follow you on social media, Cody Sanchez everywhere. Instagram, Cody Sanchez CT on YouTube and Big— excuse me, Podcast Big Deal as well on YouTube for your podcast. Here's a question I have for you. What is your dream? What is it really your dream? You got a, you got a baby on the way. You've got, you know, your businesses are, I think, are valued in the 9 figures. You're buying more businesses, you're scaling, you're, you know, you're expanding all these different things and you're bringing a family to life here soon. What is your real dream for the future for you, Cody?

Yeah.

Is it to build and exit something at a certain number one day? Is it to impact lives? Is it to have revenue coming in where you can do what you want? What's the, what's the vision for you?

You know, like, I think your vision changes at different points of your career.

Yeah.

And at first, early on for me, it was, I don't ever want anybody to have control over me or my life again. I don't ever want to have to work for somebody I don't like or to spend a moment of my day in somebody else's life architecting their dream instead of mine. And even in points in my career, it was, Like, fuck you. I'll become every single thing that you said I wouldn't. And just try to stop me and try to get in my way because there's no way you'll be able to stop me. And you'll have to watch me on the climb and I will love every minute of it. It was angry.

You were trying to prove yourself.

Oh yeah.

And prove people wrong.

Let's go.

And what did that do for you?

It got me far.

It helps. Yeah, that energy will get you results.

It really— and I don't think there's anything wrong from building from anger. That is okay. You don't think Martin Luther King was angry?

Yeah.

Like, you can build and be angry.

Yeah.

And that's fine. But at some point, you'll get past all of that. You'll have financial freedom. You'll look in the future, you'll have a lot of money, you'll have opportunities, you'll have people that you love around you. And then you get into this weird thing that you only care about when you're kind of rich, which is like, Does any of this matter?

Yeah. Now that you have it all, what really matters?

What really matters? And at this stage, so I'm sure in 10 years I'll have something else, but at this current stage, it's like, I think we can actually do 2 things. One, I think the world is better when more of us own a little piece of something. It's my truest belief is that we humans, you are inherently capable, more capable than you think. And that you are the best decision maker for your life. Nobody else.

Yeah.

And that we should give you every opportunity to have sovereignty over your life. I want that for me. I want that for my kids. I want that for my friends, and I want that broadly. So my belief is I want to try to enable that. And the only 2 ways I'm any good at that are helping people buy businesses and build businesses. And so when I die and people stand around, I hope they say, She believed in human capability and she made some impact on more humans being more capable. That would feel like success to me. Yeah.

Because our mutual friend, Bill Perkins, Die With Zero, he's trying to maximize life. And at the end of our lives, we're not going to have any money. We're not going to have it. Whether you have it in the bank and you have millions in the bank or not, you're not going to have it. Someone else is going to have it.

100%. And I love Bill dearly, but I would say to him, You know, I was just— it's so funny, he's come up twice today. I'll have to tell him that. But he, you know, he'll text me on a Tuesday night and be like, come to our werewolf rave. And I'll be like, Bill, I'm busy, you know?

Yeah.

But he really lives life and is so big and kind of doesn't care and does whatever he wants. He's very laissez-faire, but he has a huge heart and he's helped me a ton in my life and business. But I don't, I don't optimize for fun.

That's not like Um, you know, do you think you should though? Or do you think you could add more fun into your life?

I don't know. I don't think werewolf raves are the thing.

But it doesn't have to be that type of fun. Your flavor of fun, not werewolf raves.

I find really unique enjoyment.

Yeah. Yeah.

In like trying to create something. And that statement from Emma Bombeck, I always go back to, which is like, when I stand before God at the end of my days, I hope I can say I used everything you gave me. I have not one drop left.

Mm-hmm.

And that's sort of my life's motto. And so I find that to be the most interesting thing. And so that's— and my husband's the same way. I mean, he's a Navy SEAL. You don't go into Navy SEAL for fun, right? It's not like— but he loved it.

Yeah.

And if he could have kept that job without the, you know, sort of having to go into bureaucracy and all this stuff, he would've stayed a Navy SEAL forever.

Wow.

And so, I know it sounds cheesy, except if you believe it.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Own or be owned. Cody Sanchez, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Lewis.

You're the man. Powerful. At playing business and not doing business. They go get an LLC, they make a business, a logo. They start talking to their friends about, I'm making moves. You don't do any of that. Go find a customer. I don't care if it's your mom, your best friend.

I don't care.

You got to start somewhere. I don't care if it's an unpaid customer and you do it for free just to get a 5-star review. Go find a customer.