This Is How to Build Real Wealth & Become Rich - Codie Sanchez

The attitude you have is the life. You architect. We turn this bad boy into $100 million business. You know, I've bought businesses for as little as $8,000 and then we've certainly done deals that are nine figures.

And what's your net worth now?

It's a great question. I saw what happens to those who have money and can assert their will on the world and those who do not have money, they get the world asserted upon them.

Do you think it's harder being a woman in business in the this day and age?

Oof. There were slaps, inappropriate advances showing up in hotel rooms like, don't ever do that again or I'm going to make sure you don't work here.

Best business model for them to start or scale in 2025.

I really like three types of businesses. I think it's hard to argue against Elon Musk. Here's what I don't agree with.

Cody, I've got to ask you, what do you think of Donald Trump being president and as a female entrepreneur's perspective?

Well, I think it'll be good for business. I think it's hard to argue against Elon Musk coming in and doing a thing that nobody wants to do, which is massively cutting the size of the government here. I think we have to do it across the board. So I don't really play the personality game of which president. You like which one, don't you? Which one upsets you. I'm more like, I think that ownership is the key to all freedom. And we have less ownership than we've ever had before. We have more bureaucratic red tape than we've ever had before. It's harder for new businesses to actually make profits than it's ever been before. Big corporations are doing great, but the little guy's not doing so great. And so in order to do that, I think we have to have some people in there that maybe aren't so nice and shake things up a lot. And I'm hopeful we'll see. I don't think any president is coming to save us, but I do think that a president can really hurt us.

And do you think Trump will cut taxes? I think he did when he came in in 2016. I think he cut corp tax. Do you think he'll support business and entrepreneurship?

Yes, but I think that taxes is even less of the interesting part. It's how can we cut the amount of rules and regulations that the government puts on to each of us and to our businesses? Taxes are a part of that. But Even more so. I mean, it costs the government less to oversee and it costs the entrepreneur less to have a bunch of regulations on top of them that throttle businesses. I mean, I don't know if it's that interesting for people there, but, you know, we saw for the first time ever in California, you know, a population decline. And that's even with immigration. You know, we saw kind of a fun fact to see which states are more business friendly or not a U haul. So like a rental unit for trucks to move from California to Texas was 3x the cost as a U haul going from Texas to California, which is telling you what that people want less people telling them what to do all the time. And my hope is, is that this administration follows that and it's too early to tell, but I like that they're bringing on people from both sides of the aisle. I like rfk, a Democrat, Tulsi, a Democrat, Vivek, a Republican, Elon, historically a Democrat, and then Trump, historically a Democrat, now a Republican. I like a mix. I don't think we should be any one party.

So you talked about Elon. I love Elon. I. I'm really hoping that America are the split test, crash test dummy whereby they come in, they get rid of most of the civil service and the bloated government and like you said, reduce regulation, increase speed, increase the economy through increasing capital allocation. And Elon seems like the man to do it. Do you think he's going to do it or do you think this is just a play to grow Twitter and grow his own business empire?

I think it would be a miserable job being a politician and a bureaucrat. And the one good thing we know about today is that there's a lot of transparency. So, you know, if he actually goes in and cuts nothing and the budget doesn't get cut and no employees get cut by the government. We see it, you know, they can't really hide stuff from us anymore, so we'll know. And if he doesn't follow through on it, then it'll be very obvious and everybody can call him names and, you know, do whatever they want to do. But I think his history looks like he does make massive cuts and, and Twitter X is a pretty good example of that. But I think we're also crazy to imagine that one administration could fix everything. I mean, this is a pervasive, advanced, late stage society issue. And so I'm hoping that even though this is all going on, we as entrepreneurs and as builders, we remember that like it's still up to us that like, unfortunately, you know, I've never had a president actually pay my bills. And so we're going to still have to grow our own businesses. We're going to still have to tough it out, and we're going to have to hope that a lot of people believe in themselves more than they believe in big government.

So you talked about, I think you used the words private ownership, and I think you linked it to, you know, personal wealth, even freedom. So do you mean good private property rights? Can you explain what you mean?

Yeah, well, so for instance, in the US right now, about 6.8% of Americans own a small business privately. That's not public stock market like Google or Tesla. They own their own equity in a business. That's not a very good number. And I know it's not a good number because even the Canadians are beating us at it. They have like 7.5% ownership in Canada versus versus America. And so I think that's really sad because in the 1800s, when the US was created, about 80% of Americans had their own ownership of a small business. And we've sort of really slowly eked away until most of us work for other people and don't have equity. And so thus stopp earning the second that we stop working. And so my mission is sort of to take that back for us to all own a little piece of, of our, our company, even if we don't own the whole thing. And actually, I was pulling some numbers for your UK audience because, you know, what's crazy is the UK has the exact same issue. And you, you, you guys have it a little bit more exacerbated than us, probably because you have bigger, you know, you have bigger regulatory oversight than we do. But what I thought was interesting is that, you know, in, in the UK you have about 3.5 million boomer businesses. They employ about 40% of UK workers. That's like $2 trillion in annual income. But what's happening is we're seeing that on average in the UK they're getting bought by corporations. There's not an. And you call it high street there, I think often we call it. But often these small business baby boomers are getting bought by corporations as opposed to individuals. And the problem with that is those corporations, by and large, they do restructuring. So centralized operations, close physical locations, anywhere from a 4 to 14% layoff of staff when they take over. And so it's really not just a US phenomenon. It's happening all over the world.

Do you think it's cultural or do you think in some ways it's just normal because some of my friends who are entrepreneurs say that anyone could be an entrepreneur. But how many people go to a martial arts class once and never go back? Probably 80%. How many people get a white belt? Probably 5%. How many people get a black belt? Probably 1%. So is it not just also, it's kind of easier, isn't it, to be employed? It's less risk.

I think that's very true. It's less risk and it's less headache. You know, the game of ownership is not easy in any way, shape or form. But I also think that we've sort of been conditioned to believe that it's less risky. You know, historically we felt safer with corporations. But, you know, as we've seen what's happened over the last two years, we've seen a massive series of layoffs in big companies where we used to think that we were safe. And these aren't even companies going under. We used to think, well, if the company itself is pretty healthy and they have lots of cash and I am contributing to the company, we're good, you know, then. Then I'm probably going to be fine. But what we've actually found out instead is that the norm has become for these companies to raise a ton of money and plow it into the company, outgrow themselves or outspend their growth, and then when that happens, fire a bunch of people. And so I'm not so sure that it's not less risky to actually have some ownership yourself, because we've kind of normalized entrepreneurship, right? We've normalized starting a business to some degree, even though that has a huge failure rate. But why haven't we normalized owning parts of businesses? Or why haven't we normalized buying businesses yet when the risk return profile is actually, it's much less for buying a business. And if you were like, what do you mean much less? I would say, well, one way we could measure it is in the US we have something called the Small Business Association. You have a sister entity to this in the uk but the Small Business Administration offers loans to small businesses if you want to purchase them. Sort of like a mortgage for a house. Well, that Small Business Administration loan portfolio. So all these businesses that they loan money to for purchase has anywhere from a 5 to 20% failure rate. So when you go and buy a business, you have the likelihood of failing if you get an SBA loan 5 to 20% of the time. Now, could it be a little bit higher during the worst periods? Sure, let's call it 30%. Well, what's the flip with entrepreneurship? Well, we know that most startups fail within the first 10 years at a 90% rate. So you actually have inverse. In order to start a business you're 90% likely to fail or a 10% success rate. In order to buy a business you have a 5 to 20% fail rate and somewhere between a 95 to an 80% success rate. And that would be at least one way to look at it.

Right. Well, I definitely want to dig into the buying businesses part because I know it's a big part of what you do. Is it all right if I just get some of your top line numbers, maybe do a bit of a, a Cody cv?

Yeah, sure. What do you mean?

Well, as in how long have you been in business for yourself?

So I, well I'm, I'm old now but I know a gentleman never asks, but I'm, I'm 38 so I've been in finance since 2008. I was a journalist for a bit before that, covered human trafficking. And I started buying businesses probably like five or six years into my journey. Couple failed ones, nothing that interesting. Finally a laundromat. So I became an owner when I worked for somebody else. You know, I became an owner when I had a W2 and then I became a partner in a private equity growth equity fund. That would have been like you know, 2019, something like that. And I owned a couple of different companies at the same time, grew up my assets and then I basically said no more partners after. So I guess I'd have been 2017. I said no more partners after 2020. So you know, like even somebody like me had partnered or been employed for a decade plus before I really felt comfortable owning my own businesses outright by myself, no third party investors.

And what would be the. Maybe give us an idea of the size of the businesses, whether it's number of staff they hire or you know, the revenue that they generate. Just so everyone can get a feel if we don't know you in the uk.

Yeah, well, you know my very first business was a tiny transaction that was a laundromat. So less than six figures of a deal that business only made. Not only it's a lot of money or it was for me then, but you know, made about $60,000 a year in profit. But now the businesses are much bigger. Like for instance, I don't know if people can see me online but this is one of the companies we own, it's called Pinks. This is A window washing company. And we own four other companies in this, this is what in the US is called a home services business. So painting, window cleaning, handyman, roofing companies, and a garage installation company. And those businesses are interesting because when we scale them across the U.S. now, there's like 120, 130 locations for those companies across the country. And you know that that business will do high eight figures this year in revenue. And so you could go from, you know, something that makes $60,000 to something that makes 60 or $80 million a year. And it takes a while to get there, but I like to start with the little guys because, you know, I've bought businesses for as little as $8,000. That was a newsletter business. And then we've certainly done deals that are, you know, nine figures before.

And you said after 2020, no more partners. Except it sounds like what grew you from the corporate world to being an entrepreneur was partnerships.

Yeah. So, you know, in, in private equity, there's something called gps general partners. So those are the people obviously for people in your audience that own the private equity firm. So I was one of those. It was me and four other partners. And you know, it was interesting then is I realized at some point, I think most entrepreneurs were kind of unemploy. Right. Like, we want to do things our way, we want the business to run like this. And I think I was like that for a while. I was like, why aren't we growing faster? Why aren't we building this way? And so in those entities, yeah, we had four other partners and we built up a pretty large growth equity firm. And, and then my little side businesses, for the most part that I owned, I own those outright. But I don't think there's a right or wrong way to do it. It's really just how can you get comfortable enough to start on a first deal, make sure that first deal doesn't bankrupt you because if you really mess up on your first deal, you'll never do another one. So I kind of, I was, I was really, I was a wuss. Like, I didn't ever want to leave my corporate career. You know, I'm, I'm Latina. My family are immigrants. So like the idea of leaving a job where you made a lot of money, they didn't think that was very cool. And like going from kind of fancy Wall street to owning a laundromat, not on my parents wish list, you know, they thought that was a really bad idea. And so I was too scared to leave my corporate field because I thought that maybe I couldn't make it by myself, or I thought that it would be less than I wouldn't be taken as seriously. And so I had to actually buy lots of businesses, and it had to replace my income before I even considered doing something with it. And I worked for years after I had replaced my income with my side businesses. And so I'm sure a lot of people here are less of a wuss than I was. But, you know, that was just for me. The idea of giving up something where you make a lot of money to take a lot of risk was really, really scary. And so I guess my hope is if I could go back and do one thing different, it would be to do it sooner. I really wish that I had taken the leap sooner, and I wish that somebody had told me that I could, but that just was not my psyche at the time. And the other reason might be, you know, I was a journalist covering human trafficking and drug smuggling along the US Mexico border for about a year and a half. And, you know, I saw what happens to those who have money and can assert their will on the world and those who do not have money, and they get the world asserted upon them. And I will never forget that. And it did make me realize that I wanted to make sure that I had money as like, a protection, kind of about some of the atrocities you see when you cover human trafficking.

How old were you when you became a millionaire? And what's your net worth now?

Oh, I was in my 20s. I don't remember the exact year, but I don't think I. I don't think I, like, registered it. You know, when you're poor, you kind of. Or when you grow up kind of poor, you never really feel like you're worth, you know, what you're worth. Chris and I always. That's my husband. We always jokingly laugh when we see our personal P and L statement and say, I don't know, could be 20 bucks. Because I think that hunger when you grew up that way doesn't go away. And so you got to make sure that it won't run you forever. And then the. The word net worth I never really loved, because to be fair, like, isn't that a weird thing? No wonder we have all these problems with money. It's because we say, what is your net worth? Like, if you Google Cody Sanchez, it'll say, like, net worth. Like, that'll kind of come up. And what that's actually saying is, like, what is the worth of a human? We're putting A price tag on humanity. And so probably about, like last year, I stopped staying. The thing that a lot of people started saying about me on the Internet, she has $100 million portfolio. She has a nine figure portfolio. And I stopped saying it because I don't think that any human is worth more than another because of their net worth. And at any given moment, I could lose it. You know, your stock portfolio could go down. You know, a company could go bankrupt. And so I stopped sort of associating with this idea of, of net worth and instead kind of reminding myself that at any given point, anything could go sideways. And the only thing I know for sure is that I want to continue adding to my skill set. So, yeah, I don't play the net worth game anymore. And Jesse Eitzler actually taught me that. He's married to Sarah Blakely, and between the two of them, they're probably billionaires multiple times over. I'm not there yet. And I remember I said that to him, I'm like, but you're like a billionaire. And he looks at me and he goes, I got enough. And I always liked that answer.

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in here because that's a question I always like to ask and is, I actually don't want to ask it by Ask it. So I challenge myself to ask it. But if someone said to you, I'm a sprinter, you'd probably say, well, how quick do you run the hundred? So, you know, in some ways, if you are an entrepreneur and a business owner and you're teaching thousands, maybe even millions, I know you've got millions of followers. It's not, it's not how I value you as a human. But it is a way for you to keep score, to know that you're going in the right direction. The right direction, you know, and a lot of rich people say it's the way to keep score. And, you know, you'd probably straight away want to know the profit and loss of a business. So is it something maybe we should actually be okay with talking about more?

And I don't think there's anything wrong with ever asking almost any question. I think, you know, I think that's the beautiful part about this world we live in is like, at least in the U.S. you know, First Amendment rights, man, say whatever you want to say always. And, and also ability for the other person to answer or not. But I kind of like where you're going. I mean, one of my other friends, his name is David Osborne, and I was at a charity event when I first met him. And a young. A young member in the crowd asked me if I was a millionaire. And at that point, I was a millionaire many, many times over. But I was so uncomfortable with it. I said, you know, I've done well. And David, afterwards, when I got off the stage, he's very public about saying, you could look him up and it would probably say 100 million or 200 million or whatever he's worth now. And. And he said, you know, you should just. You should just answer that question next time. Why don't you just tell them, yes, I'm a millionaire? And. And I thought it was interesting. And I kind of asked him why he thought to say that so specifically. And. And he said, because if they can't see it, they can't be it. And so, like, you had a chance to say to a young person, yeah, I'm that thing that you want to be and see how human I am. Like, I'm just as fucked up as you are. And so if you. If you say yes to it, then they can be it. But I think something happens once you start getting into crazy, crazy amounts of. Of money, and that is that it becomes unrelatable. It's not helpful to anybody because then, you know, people are like, now I get the question of, like, well, yeah, Cody, of course you could do that. And I'm like, guys, I'm not that far away from one of my first deals being a couple thousand bucks. And so to me, it's always in service of, like, who is it going to inspire? And is the answer in service of that person or not? But I think it's a great question to throw out there. You got to shoot your shot, too.

So I understand you like very boring and unsexy businesses. Is that right?

I do.

Why do you like boring, unsexy businesses in 20, 24 and 5 when there's lots of sexy businesses?

Yeah, well, you know, a couple different reasons. One, I say it tongue in cheek, because here's the truth of the matter, you know, it's sexy. Profitable businesses. Profitable businesses are really sexy. And it's sexy to have a business that you could bootstrap, you know, with your own two hands. And you don't have to have a bunch of venture capital and big, huge dreams behind you pushing you to do something that might not be in your best. I also think it's really sexy because they're simple. It's not easy to run a boring business, but it is more simple. I think we've kind of Or a lot of us have gotten caught up in this idea that in order to be successful we've got to have this groundbreaking app. You know, we've got to have some sort of AI startup, we've got to have a SaaS marketplace. And the truth of the matter is most of those entrepreneurs that run those types of businesses don't make money for 3, 4, 5, 10 years and they sort of hope and dream that one day they'll be able to exit. And so we have massive survivorship bias where we're looking at the biggest winners in the world and saying, oh well, that's the norm, when in fact there's this series of people who never made it. And so for me it's much more important that you buy a business that's already been around for a while, that's already been successful, that is simple to understand, that will likely continue to be around for a while and has been neglected. And those businesses are, are all around you. And it's not a zero sum game like AI will largely be not a zero sum game. But very few people will win and most will become irrelevant. So you'll have 1 to 10% of big billionaires created and you're going to have, you know, 99 to 90% of people lose money doing AI startups. Whereas in my, you know, painting companies or my window cleaning companies, we need more of them, we actually don't have enough. And so I have a higher likelihood of continuing to win, maybe just not win as big.

I want to go back to something you said about, you know, you wish you'd started sooner. I started my business age 27, I'm 45, plus taxes. Now I'm getting on a bit. Even older than you.

You look young. You're 45.

Yes, I am. It's the light. So I like you. Wish I'd started sooner, but I think we all do and I think you did something quite smart, which I've changed my view on because I've been teaching entrepreneurs for 20 years. And I used to say, look, if you've got a dream, a passion, you want to start a business. Starting now. The younger you start, you know you've got less overhead, less risk, you can fail a bit more when you're younger. But I think it's very smart what you did, which is go through the corporate world, build out some experience there. Like anyone listening or watching that wants to start a business but isn't ready, they can go work for an entrepreneur, work for them for three years, almost like shadow them a Bit be a kind of an entrepreneurial apprentice, learn and earn at the same time without all the risk and then when they're ready, jump. What about that?

Yeah, I mean I. We just found a study the other day that was fascinating that basically showed two people start a business, one per, most things being equal. One person starts a business and they leave their nine to five, they go all in, they burn the boats, other person stays in their 9 to 5, continues to work dual simultaneously. It's hard, long hours. Which one's more successful? Well, I historically would have probably thought the burn the boats like you got to do it singular focus, go. We've heard that so many times. Right. Turns out the study says 33% higher likelihood in those that stayed in their 9 to 5 until product market fit, which means until they started to make some money in the startups. So I thought that was an interesting study that I wouldn't have thought of. And so I'm glad, in some ways I'm glad I was a little bit of a wuss and I couldn't get myself to jump, but I think you're exactly right. I mean, you know what the best business school is? Being in business. You know what the really best business school is? Being in business. Learning on somebody else's dime and getting paid for it. It's pretty awesome. And then, you know, maybe just don't do what I did and don't wait, you know, 10 years to leave. Maybe there's a beautiful three, five, six, seven year time period in which you're really learning, you're building up your skill set, you're becoming really economically viable. You know, you're learning all the things you would need to run a business and then you jump. But during that time period, you've stacked up a little war chest. And, and I understand why people don't want to do this because your first jobs out of college are miserable and, and mine certainly were. And I think I made, I made like $37,000 in my first job and, and I thought I was super, super rich and I had made it and you know, and then I had taxes and had to pay for my place and realized there wasn't much left. So I think there is a real benefit to slogging through those first couple of years, increasing your earnings as fast as possible and then applying that to something like buying a business or doing a partnership deal with the, the company you work for.

Well, I say to all my staff, I am, I did two or three training sessions a week for. We have about 100 staff, they can all come in. They're optional, through lunch. And I say to all of them, number one, I want you to pitch me for a pay rise. Every time you have a good idea, you don't have to wait for a yearly pay review. Anytime you have a good idea, pitch me. There's no limit. If you can help the company make money or save money, you're getting some of that. And the second thing I say is, if you ever want to leave and start up on your own, pitch me first, because maybe I can go into business with you.

I love that. And I. And I. I think that it's maybe not normal. Everywhere I say the same thing. And then normally people will be like, no way. My boss would never do that. That never happens. And I get that feeling because that's how I felt. I felt like one. If I ever told my boss that I was planning on leaving and doing something else, I'd be fired. I would be like, I just thought it would end. And now that I, you know, have had employees for a long time, I realize your boss isn't going to do that if they truly have trust in you. And you're like, hey, sometime over the next year, I'm going to think about leaving. Likely. I want to backfill my role. I want to, like, set you up for success. I want to do everything I can. So, like, boss, your life is easier. But I would like to pitch you something before I le. Like, that would. That would shock me. I mean, I just had an employee in one of my businesses. We both figured out it wasn't a mutual fit, you know, but he told me, like, he probably told me, like, 14 weeks in advance. And I was like, well, how long do you want to keep working here? Like, I'm not going to fire you just because you tell me that this is not your forever home. But, you know, take it with a grain of salt, because there's plenty of bad bosses out there. I've had my own.

Do you think it's harder being a woman in business in this day and age?

No, I don't. I think. I think the generation before me, I think that was hard. You know, those women, we stand on the shoulders of giants, definitely. Because it's not so many generations ago that we couldn't own property. We couldn't. We couldn't vote, we couldn't work in. In all industries. That is just. That's just truth. And even the generation before me, we had to be, like, they had to be a little tougher, you know? If you, I'm sure you've met like some badass corporate business women that are like, you know, in their 50s and 60s and they kind of, they would always tell me about like the One Token club. So a lot of times they were tough on other women because there was really only going to be one in the room. And, and that has been the opposite for me I think. You know, these days I'm a, I'm a Latina and I'm a woman. I'm a double checkbox. And. And you just stand out a little bit more. And so I kind of, I push people to try things, things on. Such as if you think that it is hoarder and you are a victim and everybody is out to get you, do you think that is what you see more of? Do you think that is what you get more of? I think the truth is yes. If you think that it is powerful to be a little bit different. If you think that it is powerful to be somebody that you could be remembered by and that largely men want to help you just as much as they want to help the next guy, I bet you get helped more. And so I think like the attitude you have is sort of the, the life you architect. And it sounds touchy feely except it, it happens to be true. I mean just think about that. When, when was the last time you attracted something you hate and that you hate so much you repel. It doesn't happen a lot. And so I never let somebody else call me a victim. Even when I had the inevitable, you know, weird thing happen in a corporate sphere, I, I wasn't going to let myself be defined by that.

And when you say weird thing happened, you mean inappropriate approaches from men?

You know, I mean I was in finance during a period where, oof. You know, there was, there was, there were ass slaps, you know, there were inappropriate advances, there were like showing up at hotel rooms. And I, but you know, for the most part I think when those things happen, I just said that's super inappropriate. Like don't ever do that again, you know, or I'm gonna make sure you don't work here. And I don't think we should have to do that anymore. And if I saw that with my staff today, it would be a different scenario. But I also think we gotta realize we all come from a man and a woman. Like we got way more in common than we do separately as the sexes. You know, my best mentors in my life were men. And, and so I think this war against genders doesn't help anyone. And, and even if you have a bad experience with a man or if you have a bad experience with a woman, it doesn't mean that they're all that way. And that's a narrative I think we are waking up to, but was really gnarly the last couple years.

So you said earlier you're a bit of a wuss. Has business hardened you or have you hardened yourself for business?

I mean, business, business will put some hair on your chest, as my father.

Says, and you don't, you don't need that.

Yeah, lots of that. Um, so, yeah, I mean, I think business is like one of the most incredible opportunities for you to be force functioned into a better human. I mean, think about this. Where else do you get, like constant feedback daily on how to become better, on how to be a leader, on where you're failing, on what your shortcomings are? And there's really just a scoreboard. It's like, are we winning, AKA making money? Are we losing, AKA losing money? Are we growing, winning, or are we stagnating? Losing? And you can, you can't talk yourself out of it. So the mirror is a direct reflection of how good you are. And sure, bad things could happen to you. Some of it could not be your fault. But I think business doesn't really harden everybody, but it, it makes you realize where you are lacking in your skill set. And, you know, one of the things that I was lacking for years and really had to work on was, was leadership. You know, it just. I didn't think that that was that important. I was like, let's focus on skills, skills, skills, skills. And then I realized, you know the African proverb, if, if you want to go, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. Is super true. And the only way you're going to make like a fucking unreasonable amount of money is by having a team that buys into your vision. And that team needs to be super talented. And that means you have to lead them and they have to want to follow you. Otherwise you will never achieve what you could potentially achieve with leadership.

So, gun to your head, you're only allowed to choose one of your businesses. All the rest have to go. You keep the best one. What's your best business?

Oh, it's so rude. You're going to make me call one of my babies ugly. You know, it's not a great economic decision, but I love the media business. You know, our biggest businesses by far are our boring businesses, our main street businesses, our Main Street Holding Company is the portfolio where we hold a lot of these businesses. But I think that people underestimate, you know, the power of media today. And so that's my favorite business by far. It's also kind of a selfish business because, you know, when you, when you get to a certain level of wealth, kind of at some point you're like, what else? Like, I'm not really like a big fancy car person. I'm not like, you'll never see me posting pictures of a private plane or a mansion or whatever. I don't like. Not that I don't love all those things. That sounds great, but, but I think at a certain point you want to feel like it mattered that you lived at all. Like that you, you actually maybe made some tiny impact on the world from a totally selfish perspective. And so the media business is interesting to me because I get this feedback loop of people all the time saying, hey, I bought this business. This is incredible. Thank you for this. And I think at the end of the day, we're meant to labor and we, we are meant to be needed. And so when you are useful, you are needed and you are laboring. And I've realized my happiest moments are where I feel like I have a skill that somebody else wants and I get to demonstrate that, especially for men. That's why they say that respect is more important for a man than affection, let's say. Is that true for you?

I'm a bit soft, but yeah, if I had to choose one, it probably would be respect because I think that's a masculine form of receiving love.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think all of us are like that, whether it's, you know, a mom that wants to be needed by, by her kids or by her husband. And I don't think that's a bad thing. So that's the business that I love the most right now is contrarian thinking. The media business.

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I really like three types of businesses in 2025. I like home service businesses, so that's painting companies, cleaning companies, roofing, landscaping. I like professional service businesses, that's like accounting, law. And the third type of business that I really like is I like stealing somebody else's homework. And so I like franchise models. Not all of them. There's lots of shitty franchise models. But the one we bought I think is really interesting because if I've never run a business before, but I want to go start doing it right now, I want to steal a playbook for it. And so I think in the future our home services, our trade franchises are going to be like, cool. And people will think that it is kind of cool to own a painting company or a window washing company. So those are the three that I like the best. And I'm usually trying to put my money where my mouth is. So those are the three we're buying right now.

And do you think it's better to go to college? We call it university here and you know, get your degree three or five years, 50 to 60 grand in debt for a 26 grand a year job. Or do you think it's best to just start and be an apprentice and start working age 18?

Well, you know, here's what the data tells us. The data tells us that if you have a university degree, you earn more, anywhere from 30 to 40% more on average than someone who does not have a university degree. So that is, that is just what the data tells us. Now what's interesting is that the university cost has gone up so high, while the return on having a university degree has come down to the point where I assume in the next five or ten years, unless universities change, those two numbers will not stay the same and it will actually not make sense to get a university degree. I think if you can do it without debt and if you can do it as cheaply as possible, the data says it still makes the most sense to go to university. Here's what I don't agree with business school. Getting an MBA or a business school degree makes no sense to me and I have one and I spent the money to go do it. And everybody says well one you're going to learn. You don't learn how to run a business. You learn how to run a business by running a business or by working in a startup or working in a small business. Then they say well it's not really the learning, it's the network. No it's not. You're much better off being in a mastermind, being a professional organization than being in a university group with a bunch of people who also don't know exactly what they want to do next. University is great for people who do not know what they want to do next and they are going there in order to search for it or climb the corporate ladder. So I am anti business school in a traditional sense and I am for now pro undergrad university but as cheaply as possible as you can unless you can get into the Oxford or Cambridge Cambridge which are door openers for, for life still.

So I'm a little bit harder on the line of college than you. I agree with you. Although now it's taking graduates a lot longer to get a job nine months a year so that's going up in the UK in a three year degree you'll be 46000 in debt and you'll get a 26000 a year in pounds job which those numbers don't add up for me and I know any doctors, dentists, lawyers, etc but of course AI is probably going to make those less relevant. Here's one thing I would say though because I was listening to you about the kind of businesses that you're buying and I see a great opportunity in buying all these traditional businesses where the owners clearly don't know how to market the business. You know they now to get referrals and they've had the business for 12 years and they just get people given to them and they don't do any social media, they haven't got a media company like you, they're not very good at getting out there. So where I would defend universities, if you went there and got a marketing degree and got really good at marketing, you could just buy loads of businesses that are actually good functionally, they're just at marketing and then inject good marketing in them. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I agree with you. I, I think you really do not go to university to learn skills. Actually I think you go to university to get a bigger paycheck from a corporation theoretically. And you go to university to allow you access to a level of job that will not still currently take non university grads. If you, if I wanted to learn marketing today, I would never go to university. Could you imagine like Learning at university YouTube virality or learning like how to do SEO strategies that are like of the minute. You know these universities, they teach you theory, they don't actually teach you practical application and making money today. And so I think you could go do it that way and it would make sense. But I would probably learn all that on the Internet if I could. And you know what else is weird? Alex? That always bothers me. People really got a thing against online education businesses. We run one, I run a very large academy where we teach people to buy and sell businesses and to scale businesses. And we have been so programmed by the university system and by our governments to think that if we don't go through a traditional accredited university that costs us, what did you say, 46, $64,000 for a three year degree that then we're not really learning. I mean, you know what's fascinating to me is like God, if you, if you took somebody through an entrepreneurship and scaling group live, asked them to do it over the course of the year with an online education program as opposed to went and got a liberal arts university first year degree in college, who's going to make more money immediately if they applied it? Well, if you're a doer, it's going to be the person who learned the technical or tactical skill. If you are like a, a permissioned receiver AKA I only want to go work for somebody else, maybe the university is better for you. But I think in the next 20 or 30 years the university system will be completely upended by groups like mine and it sounds like yours.

Yeah, I mean if you think about it, you can start by following all the really good marketers online for free. You can start modeling their most viral videos and tweaking it to how you can make it work in your niche. You could probably get a one to one call with some of them for I know someone who does an eight figure business in America. My friend just got a consult with him for a day for a thousand dollars. So he's paid a thousand dollars and he's got access to a. I mean I charge more but I think that's too cheap. But still, yeah, it's really easy and quick together. You know you've got your Main street millionaire book coming out so you know, you're decades of corporate and business experience. A lot of that is going to be on a book we can read for a tenor or listen to on audible. So what are people doing still going to university?

I agree. And I think it'd be one thing if they taught you how to learn. That that made sense to me back in the day, you know, when we went to university, to figure out how do we take this universe of information that's all around us and how do we get it into our brain and how do we determine what's real and what's fake and. And how do we. How do we become a sieve for only the best gold? That to me makes sense for a university. It's not necessarily what to do, it's how do I become a thinker, how do I become like a competent individual? But we no longer do that. Now we sit in a lecture hall where people project at us for a period of time. And we call that school. And it hasn't really changed much at all. You know, there's a school here called Synthesis in Austin, and it's two hours of instruction a day. This is for, I don't know what you guys call like grade school for people, you know, who are 18 and younger. It's two hours of guided instruction per day optimized by AI that tells you what you want to learn and what you need to learn. And if you follow the curriculum and you've learned the curriculum, you pass through that two hour window and then you get to go explore your curiosities. So if you're like, all right, I actually got like calculus down. I've kind of handled this test, I've worked through it, I understand the problems. I'm gonna do that for two hours a day now. I'm gonna move on to this next thing and I wanna learn how to create an online profile. So now I'm gonna spend the rest of the day messing around with that. The teacher could come over and help me. Like that is how we should learn. You know, in our academy, I learned there's three things you need to buy a business. And this is from me. Being in private equity and running finance companies. If you really wanna get good at it. How do the pros do it? How do the billionaires do it? Well, they have an investment committee. And the investment committee typically gets together once a week. It's a group of people, smartest minds from their firm, who beat up deals. So they're like, huh, this business, that business. No, I don't like this. That doesn't look right what's so that's once a week. Then the second thing that you need is you need, you need a deal group. You need a group of people who will come together and help you close a deal. So like an accountant, an attorney, a subject matter expert. And then the third thing you really need is you need a guidebook. You need to basically say, here's our investment thesis. That basically means like I buy businesses that are in Austin, Texas that are less than a hundred thousand dollars a year that are home services business. So you need like your thesis and then you need to follow the criteria from your due diligence questionnaire and how you analyze them. And when I like pulled that from how we do deals in private equity, that's how we structured our community and also how I structured the so that people could learn how we used to learn. Like Harvard was all about case studies, remember that? It was like we learned through the Socratic method and we learned through case studies. Well, now you can buy Harvard's case studies for like 49 bucks a case study and learn through them yourself as opposed to going and having to do $100,000 a year. Although that is one school in which the network is probably worth it.

So let's say someone is got one year's experience in business, should they continue the startup or should they buy businesses?

And why when you start to do acquisitions, if you already own a business is after the business is profitable and sustainable and repeatable. So let's say you have a business right now, you're losing money, you haven't figured out your business model. Right? Right. Yet you don't have a team in place, don't buy a business. In my opinion, do whatever you want to do. But I wouldn't buy a business. I guess I want you to stabilize your business before you add complexity to it. Now after you have product market fit, you have profitability, you have sustainability, just mathematically the fastest way to grow is through acquisitions. There is not $1 billion company that I have been able to find that has never done an acquisition. If you want to play big, you acquire multiple things at once as opposed to an individual client one by one. And then if you only have one year of like you being in business, meaning you're just getting out of college, you got a year out of college. I think you will never regret the learning. You will make mistakes in the implementation. And so we always say there's no risk in the education, there's risk in the implementation. And so my belief is if you understand the language of money, it's easier for you to make more of it. And the language of money is really just the language of deal making. And so every business has the same core components, whether it is Tinder or whether it is a library or whether it is a landscaping company, they all have the same components. And you really just have to understand how that operates. And that's why I like learning deal making, because it teaches you how do you analyze a profit and loss statement. It teaches you how to determine if one business is better than the other. You're going to use that in every aspect of your career, so go learn about it. And then once you feel like you have some proficiency in your industry, then you do the acquisition.

So I've bought a few businesses over the years and I'd love your take on this, Cody, because I don't like to be skeptical. We had a chat before we went live and you said, you know, we tend to be a bit more optimistic in America. And I've always had mentors, certainly when I started who are American. And I try and be optimistic, buy and British. And I've done, I don't know, I must have done a thousand interviews. And I just think every candidate lies. And I bought a few businesses and every person that's trying to sell their business is lying to me. They're covering up their losses, they're covering up bad debt, they're covering up this and that. And course they make out they're really honest. So am I just being skeptical or do all people who sell their business line, you've got to figure out the truth.

I believe in the Russian proverb, trust but verify. And so the whole game, game of analyzing a business is figuring out what is the truth. Because people lie many ways. They lie directly, they lie through omission, they lie through ineptitude. So a lot of times they might be lying to you and not even realize it. You know, they might be like, we're profitable. You're like, how do you think you're profitable? Because you actually like don't make money or didn't in this year or you know, you have this debt outstanding that you didn't realize. And so the game is really figuring out what the truth is and going in with exactly. Like you said, you want the opposite of rose colored glasses in this world. You have to realize one thing. The seller always, always has an information advantage to you. And so when I'm doing a deal, that's how I start. I say, of course, like this business is amazing. Like you've built it for this long. It's been around for five or ten years. Like I. Congratulations, you have a very successful business. You've also, you've been very successful as an expert in this business. At which point they will say, thank you. Yes, I have been. Then I'll say, and obviously, given that you've been in this business for years and you're an expert in it and you know the ins and outs of it, you know that I am always going to be at a disadvantage of information versus you about your business. And they go, well, yeah, of course, but I got all these papers and I got this thing. Well, the thing about that information disadvantage is that the more we can decrease it, the more I can get comfortable with what I pay for your business. But all the risk is on me in the transaction. And because of that, we got to really dig into what's going on here and do a couple of things to make sure that is a good trade for both of us. And so I think if you set it up right with them, you set up the knowledge that, like, hey, this is, this is going to feel a little bit like a colonoscopy. Let's go on back and forth with your business. It's not going to feel that fun. But the beautiful part about it, it is we find out together what the truth is, and then we can structure a deal six ways from sideways to make sure you get everything you want and need out of it. But it's going to be a lot of me asking questions because I simply am not an expert like you are on your business.

So I own real estate. And people, especially when they start, they don't believe it when I say this, but it's far easier to find the money than it is a good deal. Certainly the longer you've been doing it, is it the same? Do you find it the same in buying businesses? What's easier to find, the money or the deal?

You know, you're a pro when you realize that money is not the issue. And this took me so long to realize because I grew up broke and not having a lot of money. And so I always thought that money was the issue. If you think that you don't have money, which you really don't have, is knowledge, you do not understand yet how to get money from other people, that's okay. You can figure that out. Out, that is totally figureoutable. But you're exactly right. The hardest thing to find is a deal. And also the hardest thing to have is the ability to structure a Deal. Those two things are the most important. There's actually deals all around you right now. But I talk about it like in the book. You haven't turned on your reticulator activating system. You haven't turned on that part of your brain that notices everybody who drives the same car as you drive, who just be. And why do they not? Why do you notice that? Because you've told your brain this is important because you just bought the car and you've been obsessing about the car. And so now after you bought the car you're like, oh my God, everybody in the UK drives a Jaguar. Not after this last commercial. Seriously, prior to that, everybody drove a Jaguar and oh my gosh, I, that's crazy. Do they all buy it at the same time? I didn't know. Your brain has just told you that it is important because you've been obsessing on it. Well, that's what happens with deal making. After you, you know, read the book, for instance, after you learn deal making, all of a sud, you see deals all around you. You're like, oh my God, they're all around next issue. I don't know how to structure them or talk to the seller. And then you get over that hurdle. But we, what I've tried to do is make the whole path to ownership easier. So I'm like, all right, somebody wants to buy a business, I'm going to write a book so they have a step by step playbook. Then I'm going to do a more in depth course in case they want to diy, go through all of it, steal my tools, templates, et cetera. Then I'm going to create an academy so they can learn with other people and grow. And then finally I was like, they're having a hard time finding deals. So I'm going to buy this marketplace called Bizcout and I'm going to build out what will be like the Zillow or Redfin for small business acquisition and search. And so you nailed it. Those are the four main reasons why most people typically get scared about business buy in. Because they don't know how to fix either the money, finding the business, structuring the deal and getting around other people that are doing the same thing. They are.

What's your most brutal life lesson?

You know the most. I mentioned this briefly, but I, I was a journalist before I got into business and I was traveling between really three cities. Ala Prieta, which was on the US Mexico border of Arizona and, and Mexico, and then Juarez and El Paso. Though, and I was young, I was like in my 20s, and it was my senior year of college. I was part of a, an honors program where basically the last year of school we went and we got this grant from the Howard Buffett foundation to go and cover human trafficking along the US Mexico border. And it's come up a lot recently with me because of everything we have happening in the US Right now. But I had never seen violence firsthand before. Like that period when I was down there. There were 10,000 people murdered in Juarez over the three year span of which I was there for, for a period, you know, there were daily killings of women, you know, brutally raped and mutilated. And it was our job to cover those stories. The Sinaloan and the Sonoran cartel were in a drug war and so mass violence and brutality against the two of them with, with atrocities, you know, that we covered happening weekly. And you know, I still remember what it looks like to see, you know, a mother looking at a wall covered with posters of her young child that she can't find. There are these like pink pamphlets and, and the sounds, you know, that a mother would make when they did find that young woman. And that changed my mind completely on money and made me realize that, that the real difference between me and, you know, those women that went missing or were brutalized in Juarez was my last name was Sanchez, similar to theirs, but it was that I had different socioeconomics. You know, I was middle classish in the US and they weren't. And I will never forget that because it's when I realized that money really is freedom and it is also protection. And that changed me forever in the way that I went after building a world that I think has more of that for everybody.

What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

You know, I think your biggest risk you ever take will not be a, a, an action taken, but a human chosen. And mine was choosing my husband. You know, you get one real partnership through life that matters just about more than anything, and that is the person that you choose to, to commit your life with. And I wish somebody would have told me when I was younger that it could actually be really incredible and that if you chose wisely and you were selective and you were really focused on bettering yourself, that you could be with another human who made your life more complete. And when you have that the sort of opposite to who you are, it's easier to achieve bigger things. I really think. You know, my girlfriend Shayna, who, who is single, she'll often say that to remind me, she'll say, you know, you know, you can go do in these. These big things because you have your husband there to ground you, and, you know, he's got your back and everything that you do. And she's right. And so I wish I would have known that when I was younger. I would have prioritized finding him sooner. Although we've known each other since we were 11.

Yeah, you can't start much younger than that. That'd be illegal.

Even here in Texas, that's illegal.

What's the most disruptive thing anyone's ever said or done to you?

The first time I got. I got stolen from by a friend. Really sticks with me. Me, you know. You know, it was a business. And we went into business together. I funded this business for a person that I really thought we were close and I thought we were buddies. And, you know, whether by them not being competent enough or them choosing to, they ended up stealing, stealing a lot of money from the company and very oddly, not ever admitting it. You know, instead sort of acting like we had done it. And it was at that moment I realized that, like, humans can rationalize anything and that the only thing you should be sure of in business is a legally binding contract. And that you have to be very careful who you partner with because, you know, not everybody operates with the same moral compass as you do. And so that was a really important lesson for me to learn early on. And it was expensive then, but it could have been much more expensive now. So I'm always grateful for those who wrong me, because typically there is a learning there. You know, we talk about that. This is in the Bible, right? This is. Jordan Peterson talks about this often. But this idea of, like, you know, you can learn much more from an enemy. Sun Tzu talks about you can learn much more from your shadow self than you can from your win ins.

What's the best advice you ever remember receiving?

It was probably from my father. And the advice was that you. You don't have to be smarter than anybody else. You don't have to be richer than anybody else. You just have to outwork them. And I know that's not that popular to say these days, but he. He always would say when. When somebody would say to him, well, you better watch out once Cody gets older, you know, boys. And he was like, they better watch out for her. And he just instilled in me this idea that, hey, if you're willing to do the unreasonably long hours, you could probably achieve just about anything. You Want, want. And that was really lucky because now the research tells us, like Angela Duckworth, her study on grit, that if you tell your kid that they are smart and they are brilliant, that you actually put them at a disservice as opposed to if you tell them, we work hard, we figure it out. You're the type of person that, that keeps going. And, and I think, you know, I got lucky that I had parents that always said, well, I don't know if you're smart, but I know you work hard. And that advice was exactly what I needed.

And what's the worst advice you ever remember receiving?

The worst advice is typically from someone who hasn't actually achieved the thing they're giving you advice about. And so, you know, I can remember many instances where, you know, you realize that it's much easier for somebody to tell you why something won't work than to help inspire you to believe that it can. And, you know, there's a real cost to negativity. And so that, that holding me back, not moving soon enough, I think was a byproduct of a lot of people that said that's not going to be possible. That's not possible for you. Oh, the person that got there, they didn't really get there. That, you know, you don't know the full story. All of these, all of these negative people are costing you money every single day. And so I cut those negative people out of my, my, my life relentlessly because it's too easy to say that you can't. And I always loved the line. It's actually the first line in our contrarian creed, which is our 13 core values. And, and it is that those who say it's impossible should get out of the way of those of us doing it.

Penultimate question. What's the most extreme change you've seen in business now from when you started?

Well, for the first time ever, we've had more businesses start in 2020 till today than in the previous 10 year period before that. So we've had this massive amount of businesses created, started, and yet we have the smallest percentage of businesses ever become profitable. And so it's a good reminder that it is very easy to start a business. It is not so easy to make money money in a business. And that is a new phenomenon since 2020.

So this show, as you can see, is called Disruptors. What does the word disruptive mean to you?

It means you do the rarest of things. You're a builder in a world of consumers. And I think there's nothing more disruptive than betting on yourself. And I hope more humans do that.

Amen. And where are you most active? Online. I mean, you're everywhere and you've got millions of followers. But you know, what couple of channels do you think people should follow you on the most?

I think they're going to want to follow along on YouTube. We're putting a ton of time and effort into YouTube and you're going to see it totally transform over the next three and six months. So I would follow along on YouTube and then anywhere else on the Internet where you follow people from Instagram to Twitter to beyond.

And if they just search your name, Cody Sanchez, they'll find all your channels.

That's right. You can't escape me on the Internet.

You actually can't. You are everywhere.

You're like, I wish I could mute buttons.

Well, look, Cody, this has been a great pleasure. Thank you for taking your time and I hope to see you on your UK tour.

Thank you so much for having me.

Right now we have a banking crisis, a potential global recession. If you'd like to learn how to cash in on the crash and not just survive, but thrive in challenging times, I invite you to join us at the Money Maker Summit Live. The link is robmore Live Money. For a video, very small upgrade fee. You can get special VIP tickets where you meet me personally. You'll get your book signed, there's a VIP dinner with six multi millionaires and bonus money mindset sessions, as well as the special three days on getting your tax bill down, your income streams up, my eight stages of building wealth, my formula for riches and much more content at robmore Live Money. The agenda, the D details, the dates and the speakers are all at the link. Robmore Life Money SA.