The Money Expert: 5 Businesses That Can Make You RICH (Without a 9-to-5!) ft. Codie Sanchez

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Today's guest is Cody Sanchez, founder of Contrarian Thinking, one of the fastest growing financial media companies online with millions of followers, a former Wall street investor turned small business champion and the New York Times bestselling author of Main Street Millionaire, where she breaks down how everyday people can buy and build real businesses on Main Street.

I get in a lot of trouble on the Internet when I say, hi, I'm Cody San. Welcome to the burnouts. How did you originally start investing in cannabis businesses? Well, I feel like you're always, like, looking for the opportunity in a market where there's, there's like a window where you don't have to be as smart as everybody else. And in cannabis, I was investing in Latin America beforehand, and so I saw this, like, what I'll call, like, you know, this smart opportunity window where everybody else in the space, space, you know, it's a tough space. There are a lot of people who were in cannabis for a long time. There weren't a lot of professionals. There was no institutional money. So I was like, huh, I don't think I have to be as smart or work as hard as anybody else. And if I go in this industry, I can maybe have an unfair advantage. And so I started off by investing. That's what I usually like to do, like throw a couple dollars, see what happens in the industry. And then once I realized, oh, wow, you can actually make a lot of profits here. And I jumped all in now. My, my thought has sort of changed a bit on it. I stopped investing in the industry at a good time, thankfully, but they really optimized so much for milligrams. So it was like, could you imagine, like, getting a glass of wine and you're like, what I want is the one that has the most alcohol content. Like, that would be ludicrous. But that's what they do in, in cannabis. And so I, I, I don't really like how the industry runs now. I think it actually creates real problems for people who have overuse of cannabis. And really high levels of THC in the cannabis is not good. So anyway, so I kind of got out and was like, I don't think this industry is going the right direction. I don't, I don't like, morally align with it as much. Are there any industries right now that you're excited about where you feel like there is that divine window of opportunity where you have to be less intelligent than other people to invest in that you think others are overlooking? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think when you're young especially, you should go and look at the industries that everybody else thinks are unsexy or boring. And there's a lot of data that supports this. I mean, there's something called the Songhurst Matrix, which is basically the sexier an industry. The less people get paid on average, the more boring or uninteresting an industry is, the more people get paid on average. And you can think about it like an actor, for instance. You know, how many actors you know in LA who have three or four jobs, they cannot provide fully from their job. But if you've ever met an electrician or even a finance guy that needed three or four jobs to do it. Not normal, right?

Yeah.

And that's because it's a lot less interesting. So it's just supply and demand economics come in. So in my take, I'm like, you know, if you're a guy, you go to a bar and you try to pick up chicks, especially in New York City, and let's say they come up to either one of you and they're like, I'm a plumber, I'm an electrician, I'm a roofer, you're kind of like, huh, okay, that's not the sexiest thing to attract a mate. So people stay out of these industries. What's fascinating is you have more plumbers making $100,000 a year than podcasters making $100,000 a year. Although a podcast sounds sexier, Right? And so if you actually are optimizing for profit. You should go to the industries where more people on average have higher earning. And it's really easy to tell. But instead, I think we're kind of told to chase mimetic desire. You know, what our neighbors have, what other people have, what we think would attract a mate as opposed to going to where the profit is. So in my mind, I'm like, you got five. You know, if you want to go buy a business right now or start a business right now in 2026, it's very easy to see where home services. So cleaning, roofing, tiling, you, anything that has to do with your home. Second, professional services. So that would be like accounting. That might be actually podcast editing, podcast production. The third, I really like anything that has to do with the aging populace. So senior care centers, really, really big because you just see this demand explode. Anything that has to do with, like, you don't want to. It's hard to go and practices where you have to have a doctor to have the certificates and licenses. But there's a lot of people that need home care or physical therapy. Those practices are super interesting to buy. So none of these are sexy, but they make a ton of cash.

And if you're a young person, how many of those industries do you feel like require a college degree? I'm generally curious for your perspective on right now, how important is it for people to go and get an official college degree? Or would you recommend trade school? Just generally, how do you think young people should view that?

Yeah, well, I mean, none of the businesses that we own in our main portfolio, 20 plus of them, would require you to get a college degree. And of those businesses that we own, I mean, every CEO of those businesses, they're making millions of dollars a year. You know, we own one of the largest painting and home services franchise companies in the country. It's called Resi Brands. And we have 171 franchisees in something like 700 locations. But they aren't all open yet. Those people are making hundreds of thousands. Many of them are making millions of dollars a year without college degrees. So I think actually it's not necessary. The best business school is to be in business, in my opinion. Except if you want to climb the social hierarchy, then it might be really important if you could get into an mit, a Stanford, a Harvard or something like that. I don't think there's ever a reason not to go to the top 10. Those are really, really socially powerful. You'll have a lot of social capital and you Guys know that if it's going to be that you go to a state school and you don't get it paid for by the government and you have to go into student debt for it, the math seems to check that. It actually doesn't make a lot of sense these days. I mean, you see university costs have 3 to 4x just in my generation. So 3 to 4x simultaneously, the amount of money college graduates makes has decreased. So of course, we're all a little bit mad because a lot of people who went to general universities, not the Tippy top, they're paying more and making less. And so that math just won't shake out for very long, especially when the government is subsidizing most universities and they have endowments that, you know, they've become hedge funds. They're not actually colleges anymore. They're not places for education. And so I think it's a real tragedy. And if you're young, you can't do much about what's happening with the government, but you can go get a job that makes you hundreds of thousands of dollars as opposed to takes you hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

And do you regret getting your degree or are you happy you did it?

Well, mine was free. So I went to a state school, Arizona State University, Harvard. The last, really. And the, you know, more party in there probably than anything else. I was part of a sorority. I kind of messed around a lot when I was young. It wasn't that serious, but it was free. And so that was amazing. And. And I applied for, you know, grants and I got into the honors college, and that's fine. And so. And I was kind of like a young idiot. I didn't know what I was doing at that point, which I think college serves a purpose for that. But not knowing what you're doing shouldn't cost you $200,000 over four years. That's crazy. And then I went to Georgetown, but that was also free. My company at the time paid for it. So I did an executive program later on in life, which was great. But when I tell you that, like young people today, what will they tell you? They'll tell you, go to university. And they'll also say, listen, it's not for what you're going to learn. Right. What do they tell you? It's for the network. The network. Okay, let's play that out. You go to Georgetown for your executive program. That's a good school. Everybody else there also doesn't know what they're doing. Everybody else there also is looking For a job, the network is a bunch of other people who are exactly where you are. How is that going to help you? Wouldn't you progress better by going and working at a startup, going around other people who are already really successful trying to climb the ladder that way, or even joining entrepreneurial groups instead where some people somewhere have it figured out. And so there's not a single person that's helped me get a job from Georgetown that I went to. I didn't employ any of them. I didn't. I kind of keep in touch with a few of them. But like the network, I don't know. And so I think we should just at least push back on it. And if you got cash and it makes you happy and it's not going to put you massively in debt, go do it and don't feel bad for it. But you know, if you, if you're doing it because you think it's going to push you ahead in society, let's just check and see if that's true. I do think that some of the top ones, I would agree with that, except for the tippy top ones, because I'm be honest, like Stanford Business School, people don't usually go there like right out of college. Like they'll go have an entire career and then. Exactly.

It gets paid for.

And it's really just two years to mess around, have some fun and literally just meet people. I feel like that's one of the only ones that I've seen be advantageous. But I really don't think it's the courses. I completely agree. It's the network. Do you think we'll see a rise in people going into like trade schools and such? I mean, we're already seeing it, so. And one, I think it's good that you said exactly what you said too, which is we shouldn't be elitist and say like, you don't need college, don't worry about it at all. That can pull people out of a total different social stratosphere and economic stratosphere. Plus you get to learn the language. I mean, to really like dumb it down and say it sort of in a crass way. Rich people speak differently. You know, I remember when I was growing up, somebody would say, yeah, you know, well, we're summering in. And I was like, I'm some. Are we. Where do we summer? What happens in the summer? Is that something different? You know, or in New York they might say we're going to go out east. And you know, I was talking with Vivian too Yesterday, a friend of mine, and she's like, east, where? Like what side of town? You know, they're like, no, that means the Hamptons. So there is actual real value to being able to talk like the wealthy. And there is a different language. And once you can get into those circles, it's. I don't think it's always elitist. It's just a trust factor. So, you know, you speak the same language. You guys went to Stanford. There's probably like, you know, you might say, oh, well, at the Rosemont or whatever that one hotel is called. We always went there. Or, you know, I met all these friends or I remember you were part of this business fraternity. Would you? Weren't you? You know, most of business and money is a trust trade, right? And so you are fast, you're in the club and that's a real value. So I think it's important we say that. But if you're going to go to Chico State and it's going to cost you $50,000, that's maybe not a good trade. And it was fascinating is the data here kind of supports this. So I was looking the other day, 90% of Gen Z. Gen Z, yeah, 90 of Gen Z, they are interested in trade schools. They actually want to go and look at blue collar jobs. They're interested in going to trade school. The problem is only 5% of their parents are open to that. Because the American dream was this idea of like, hey, I owned a series of Laundromats, but I never want Sophia to have to ever have to step foot inside of that moldy, sweaty place again, right? Even though you owning a laundromat, learning how to grow that laundromat, adding technology to that laundromat, then expanding, putting brand on that Laundromat, maybe doing some sort of distribution deal on it, and then selling it is actually how real wealth is made. And so I think we need to push back on the thing that like my parents is, you know, my dad was an immigrant. He would have never wanted me to go work in marble and stone like he did. He didn't go to college. He had, you know, he just, like, he can't even imagine many of the worlds I get to step into now. And so simultaneously I'm like, dad, remember when I told him like I was thinking about leaving Goldman Sachs at the time, this was many, many years ago to go to start a business. And he was like, are you fucking mind, like, excuse me, like, what? This is it. This is what we want for every one of Our kids. And back then, Goldman was like, really cool. I don't know what it's like now. Maybe that would be like leaving the best. No, it definitely is still regarded that way. Yeah. Okay. And so anyway, he thought I was out of my mind, but. And then even like today sometimes he'll be like, do you really make that much money from those roofing companies and laundry? He like doesn't really believe it. And so I. A part of our mission is like trying to get young people to think like, listen, money is power. If you have more money, you can get into more clubs, you can get into more relationships, you could just, you have more optionality. And if you don't have money, everything's harder. At least up until, I think, you know, $500,000 a year, like everything up until $5,000 a year is harder until you make it. And once you hit $500,000, there's like, you know, diminishing returns. And of course there's these different plateaus, as you guys know. You've seen it on the inside. But like, we shouldn't feel bad for trying to go make a ton of money up first instead of climbing up some social ladder that everybody told us we were supposed to.

Well, it's so interesting because I had such a similar kind of college trajectory from the perspective immediately when I was applying to colleges, I should just find somewhere that will pay for my education. And so I went to Indiana and they were going to fully pay for it. But then I thought there would be a huge opportunity if I got into a school like Stanford where I would need to pay for it. But the amount that I'm paying will make it worth it because I will probably be able to get so much value out of the education. And so I rolled the dice and I ended up thinking it was the best decision that I made. But if I were to play it back, if I had not gotten into a school like Stanford, there's no way, I think it would have been the better decision decision for me to go to Indiana and just ride out a full ride. But my parents are also very traditional Iranian immigrant parents. And even when I think about our business and when we were originally starting fia, I mean, my dad still, sometimes delusionally, will say, you still want to go to law school, right? And I'm like, why on earth would I ever want to go to law school if I already have a business that is doing well and a very clear pathway for what I would deem a successful career? But it's, I think, a Lot of young people get into a rigid mindset because of their parents. So I'm curious what kind of advice you would give to young people who are kind of navigating that early career transition where they don't want to make what is arguably a stupid decision that maybe their parents are in support of.

I mean, I don't think your problem in life is ever really going to be your haters. It's going to people be the people who love you the most, who hold you back the most, because they do love you. I mean, if you think about it, the people who love you, they love you as you are now, not as the changed version you may become. And so there is a scary factor for the people around you that what if you leave them behind? What if you don't like it? What if, what if, what if? As opposed to if we can keep the person that I love here sort of the same, then we're more comfortable. And so I think we almost have to be more careful about the people who love us and the advice they give us than those that we think might have it out for us. Because, you know, I do think everything in life is contagious, and especially your aspirations are very contagious. And so surrounding yourself with a group of people who want things that are irrationally large will help you achieve things that are irrationally large. And with your parents, I always ask myself, you know, the question before I take advice, which is, does this person have the life that you want in order for you to take the advice from them that they are giving? Is this person an expert on the thing that you need, or is this person just in close proximity to you and it is perfectly okay to say, I love you, smile, nod, and go do what you want to do anyway? And so I think with parents, that's all often the case, because if you do what your parents did and you do what your parents tell you to do, you will likely have a life similar to theirs. And that could be incredible, but that also might not be what you want. And so. And then the only other thing I'll say about parents in particular is I think you really got to be careful about how fast the world is changing and how far your parents are on the mountaintop versus the valley. And so, you know, for instance, for your parents, like, they probably give incredible advice, but they're so far on the mountaintop that, you know, sometimes you need advice from the person who's just right up on the next ridge, not the one who has gotten, you know, to the Heavens. And simultaneously, you know, if your parents maybe like mine, were, you know, sort of successful in their own right, but never made it to the mountaintop, well, then at a certain point you might not even be able to take their advice. Maybe you could take ethical, moral advice, but you might not want to take business advice from them. And so it's. I get in a lot of trouble on the Internet when I say, don't take advice from people who don't have lives. You want, do not take advice from people who do not have the thing that they are giving advice on. But I think that's very reasonable actually, and we should be okay with it. Without being rude, I completely agree.

I actually said the same thing to my sister where I said, you need to take advice from people that you want to be like. But if someone is living a life that you don't want for yourself, why are you taking advice from them? Not in a mean spirited way, but just in a, a completely pragmatic way. You want to take advice from people that have the experience that you're trying to emulate. And so kind of from that vantage point, obviously I would say most people want to make a lot of money. And so if you're someone who's first starting out and you have this goal of wanting to make a lot of money, what are the first steps that you should take to set yourself up for success?

Well, I do think first you have to ask yourself, where are you? Because there's just levels to the game. I think the one thing you want to do in life is try to find your unfair advantage wherever you are. And so the Oracle of Delphi famously said, know thyself, right? And so I think before almost anything in the world, you have to say, what am I actually really good at? What are my unfair advantages? You know, I was just thinking about this the other day for myself. We're launching like this book, it's coming out later this year. And I was like, all right, well, I could play the game like everybody else does, but what am I uniquely skilled at? And I thought, well, we have a lot of institutional relationships, we have a lot of corporate relationships because I ran big asset management businesses for a long time. So I'm like, huh, I don't think that's ever been used in a book launch. So I really think, like, if you don't know where you're going and you don't know how to make money, first ask yourself, who am I? What am I good at? What do people come to me for advice on what do I do and lose track of time in completely when I'm doing it? Where do other people tell me, God, you're just so good at that thing, right? Like, I don't know what it is for you guys, but you seem pretty good at like branding and merchandising. You also seem very organized. I'm like, I'm gonna take a note on that. I'm gonna follow up on that. You might have like a really high degree of follow through, right? And so yourself that then whatever that is. I think if you want to make a ton of money and you have no connections, no anything, no nothing, go around rich people. Because it's a lot easier to make money when you're around people that already have it. And it sounds ridiculous, but if you think about it, when you're young and you don't know what you're doing and you go around a business that is making a lot of money with executives that make a lot of money, all you need to do is ask yourself when you're in the job, what is it that they want more of? What are the goals of my immediate manager, the managers ahead of me, the head of the business, as high as I can go, how can I help them get to their goals faster in whatever small way that might be for me? And how can I be more valuable to them every single day? And if you do that, I don't think you actually have to go to a startup and a lot of young people, I think in the beginning, especially if you don't have a cushion, go learn on somebody else's dime. Go steal your first 500,000 hours from somebody else. Go steal your first $500,000 of mistakes you're gonna make on somebody else's dime.

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That's joing E-L-T.com joingelt.com and you can do that very easily these days because I'm sure you see it. How many Like I could probably already tell you what the hardest part about your podcast is, which is it's probably not coming up with ideas or getting guests. What is it? It's probably finding highly competent people to do all aspects of what you need. Great editors, finding people who are incredible at marketing for your business, finding people who help get you podcast deals that you actually like, building the underlying business that you guys have. Employees. Competency is really rare. And so when you guys see somebody who's like, hey, what else can I do for you today? Hey, what else do you need done in the business? Hey, I noticed this. I already executed on it. What do you do with that person? Do you keep paying them more money? Yes. Why? Because it's so rare. Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. And we were actually, me and Sophia were talking about this and we just did our, like, our raise and we sat down. Sophia sent me this tweet that was like, if you raise in a company, if a company you work at raises and doesn't give you like, you know, a raise or a promotion, like quit. And that was really important for us because we had to look and be like, okay, who in our company can we incentivize more? Like, who is working super hard that okay, you know, maybe they need to step up or maybe they need a title change. And I think that's been really important for us, is actually learning, like for the best people, you need to compensate them fairly. And that's been a huge learning of, like, how do we make huge career trajectories for people within the company that we know are going to tend to exit themselves? It's really important. And, you know, I think for people listening that aren't business owners. Like, I think often people think, well, I just need to negotiate more. I just need to negotiate my salary. I need to go get a better job. I got a job hop or something. I'm not sure that's true. One of my mentors said the best line to me ever about making more money. I had done sort of a little embarrassing cringe thing in retrospect, which is I was really young, and I heard words like equity and ownership. And so I was like, I want to make this and I want this percentage of the company. And I came in kind of with a hard offer that was ludicrous and, like, made no sense, actually. But I didn't know how to negotiate yet. I was very young. I didn't have any mentors in this. And. And he said, I'm going to do you a solid. I want you to realize what you're actually worth to me in this company, in this role right now. He goes, here's your market rate. So here's what I could hire a replacement of you for right now. The market rate was a little bit less than he was paying me. So that was interesting. And then he said, here's how we make money off of your job. So for every. I don't remember was. But for every two dollars that you. That I pay you, the company makes three and a half or whatever. Okay. And then he goes, what's the profit margin of the business? I'm like, I have no idea. And the profit margin is pretty slow, small. And he goes, what's a good revenue per employee in this position? I'm like, oh, God, I have no idea. Right? And so I'm like, realizing that if you're gonna negotiate for more, you better know what you're worth to the company. You better actually know how much you make for the company. And then simultaneously, you better know what your skill is worth in the market. And if your skill is not worth a lot, amazing. Because he goes, all you need to do, you can get every piece of equity you want, all the upside in the world you want. You just go become more valuable, and you acquire skills. And I think in this day and age, we don't really think about all the skills we're acquiring. Especially. I don't know about your generation, but my generation would say things like, it's very annoying to me as a leader, but they'll be like, well, that's not in my job description, which is really fast way to get fired. By me. But I, I like will reframe them once and say something like, every time I give you something that you can learn as a new skill set in this company, that is a huge win for you because that means you get to go take that skill and apply it somewhere else. And if I don't give it to you, you should actually be concerned because that means that I don't think that you're going to grow here with me. And every time I give that skill to a vendor and not an employee, that's actually terrible too, because that means that that vendor is going to learn a skill that you'll never get. And so I think we have to push back on this. Like, I don't think you should do work forever. That is boring, doesn't teach you anything, doesn't help you learn, but you should take on more work in the beginning because you'll become more valuable with every skill you stack.

It's actually really smart because I would say that a pitfall that I've seen is a lot of people sit and wait around to be told what to do. And they don't realize that it takes so much cognitive load for your manager to actually have to sit and create ample work for you, when your job really should be to identify problems proactively and come up with solutions that are better than whatever would, would actually be requiring micromanaging on your manager's behalf. And so the kind of like, through that lens, I'm curious for you. What do you think are some of the best decisions that you made early in your career that helped you basically to ascend to a position of leadership at Goldman Sachs in such a short period of time?

I mean, if you want to make more money, help your boss make more money. Rule number one. And this is like, if we did a video on this on the Internet, you would get like three views because it sounds so uninteresting to people. They're like, fuck my boss, his boss, fuck the company. It's about me. It's about me. And it seems uninteresting, interesting to like help your boss. You know, that's just so anti culture right now. And I get it. But often the thing that doesn't make a ton of sense is the thing that is most often true because it's the rarest thing to do. And so in the beginning, I told myself, I will be the most valuable employee to every boss and every mentor that I have. And so if you guys were to mentor me in something, I would have no worries that you were Younger than me, I would have no worries that I had done something longer than you. I'd be like, okay, what can I learn? Even in this situation? I'm like, take. We were talking, like, candle. Interesting merch. I like that. Huh? You did this. What's that? I'm like, I want to be this constant student. And the way you become a constant student is you help the other person a lot. And when you help the other person a lot, especially your boss, they value you more. They don't want to lose you. I would never, you know, when I was young, I would never say, I'm not going to do that. I was like, give me everything. I can handle it. I'm young. Like, I don't have to sleep that much when I'm older, I don't want to work so hard. Now I'm going to work like a workhorse. And so I did that like crazy. And what's fascinating is the bar is actually set so low today, maybe even lower than what it was when I was coming up. Most people don't actually want anything they say they want as bad as they say they want it. And so they're not willing to do the hard thing, which is actually amazing because that means we can. You know, I think I had a lot of people tooth and nail clawing with me in 2008. That's when I graduated. The market was awful. Getting a job was really difficult. Entrepreneurship was not as normalized back then. And now I'm like, lord, you know, I see people, I've hired every single person who's reached out to me on the Internet with a really in depth strategic brief about why they wanted to work for me. Because there's been like five. And most of the time, you spray and pray, you send your resume 472 places, you pray that they pick you as opposed to sniper rifle them. So if you want to make your money, make your boss make more money, and then you get better at stacking your skills, and then you get to negotiate more money. And then if your boss still doesn't pay you more, then you go find a new job.

It's so funny you said that, because I was just talking to Margo about this yesterday, but I had randomly had this thought where we do a lot of hiring through DMs, because in the same way I felt like the best way to assess whether or not someone really wanted something was how badly they were going to pitch themselves for the opportunity. And I got so many bad DMs that were just clearly chatgpt slop. That was just 10 buzzwords. And so I made a post about it just because I thought it was funny on LinkedIn where I was like, Listen, most of your guys DMs are horrible. And I'm saying this from a place of love. I've sent so many horrible DMS in my life. Here's how I would fix your DMs. Literally, please make it two sentences. Send me your resume and explain to me how you're going to help me. Asking for my time is the most valuable thing that you can do. Telling me how you can help me and why you're qualified helps me to sift through garbage, basically. And so many people who had DM'd me really bad DMs re DM to me a much better version of their DM. A lot of them were still not amazing, but actually less bad version. I give it a C. But I was like, that's good that they're, they're learning and being proactive. But actually this one girl sent an amazing dm, so much better than her other one. And then I checked her profile. I was actually really interested. And now we're talking to her like we have a scheduled call. I have no idea where it's going to end up. But it was such a good learning. In my opinion, that kind of people's goal should be to be sponges when they're young and learn as much as possible and understand how they can help others to get further in their career. So I'm curious, like any other pieces of advice you would give to someone who is trying to kind of make the most of their time and opportunity at a company? Like, what other ways can you add value?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think when you're young and you're looking to get rich and change your life, you should also almost ignore all famous people, including us, because, and I wouldn't even say we're fame, but like, whatever, people who have notoriety on the Internet ignore famous people. Go after rich older people to be your mentors. The guy who started the sprinkler company, who lives down the street from you that has a really big house, you know, he must do something interesting. He's 65 plus. Nobody gives a fuck about the sprinkler company. He has zero DMS. If you DM'd him the worst DM that they DM'd you, he would probably reply. And so I think a lot of times people go after fame, they don't go after wealth. And so the people who already have money, but they don't have anybody asking for their advice. What do you start to think about when you're 65 + and you have a bunch of money legacy? You're like, what do I do next? Did it matter that I was here? Maybe their kids don't even like them because they weren't around much. They were working like crazy. They might need a replacement. Kiddo, right? This is your shot. And so I see it every day with the business owners that we help sell their business or that we buy businesses from. Their kids don't want to take over their business because they want to be dancing on TikTok, right? Even if it's a plumbing company making millions of dollars, they're like, no, no, not for me. And so if I was you, I would start looking for people who do not maybe have the fame, that want the aesthetic that you want, the. The outward life that you want. But their bank account is big. Their business is big, and bigger than you are at this stage. And you can go and learn from them and help them. And I think. I think people too often assume, one, that people who are pretty prominent have a lot of money. I mean, I was with a friend of mine, James Sexton, last night who's a divorce attorney for, like, celebrities. He's incredible. And we were talking about. He's like, let me take you through the tiers. He's like, the best tier, really rich, Nobody knows you. Second best tier, rich, also famous. Worst tier, famous, not rich. He goes, the worst thing in the world you could be would be famous, but not rich because you have no privacy. Plus you have all these expectations on you. Plus you have all these people pinging you. And I think a lot of people who are on the Internet and well known are not very famous. I mean, go look at Zuckerberg's number of followers versus, I don't know, Kim Kardashian. Kim Kardashian has a lot less money than Zuckerberg does, but way more followers and way more DMs. So, like, don't optimize for fame in the beginning, for sure. Or maybe ever. Fair enough. For our listeners who don't know, like, your career trajectory, can you walk through, like, Arizona State, going to Goldman, leaving Goldman, starting your newsletter and content channel, scaling that to a million, you know, readers, can you go through that timeline a little bit? Your work in journalism, winning a huge award? Well, I think, you know, if anybody was listening, I was like, I was a corporate girly forever. I mean, I worked for corporations for 12 years. I did, like, not dissimilar to you both. I had a more institutional path. So, you know, I was like, okay, well, I went to Arizona State. Cause that's really. I didn't. I was too scared even to apply to nice schools. I was so scared of failure that I was like, I'm just not gonna do it. Because if I don't get in, then what does that mean about me? I'm not smart enough. I had a lot of confidence issues when I was younger. And my parents were like, who do you think you are? In many ways, like, you're gonna stay home. You know, we're Latino, so they're like, you're gonna stay home. You're gonna be close to the family. Don't think about stepping outside. And so I didn't apply to any of those schools. I went to a local. My local college, Arizona State. And I did the really traditional thing, which is I got a career job right out of there. I worked for a company called Vanguard, and I climbed this finance corporate ladder for many, many years. Years. And I was just too scared and risk averse to go take a jump like you guys did. I mean, it took me. I don't. I think I was 30 before I stopped taking somebody else's paycheck. And that was. By that time I was making, you know, I was making millions of dollars. And I was still scared to leave for whatever reason. So if you're scared, that's okay. And like, you can also make millions of dollars working for companies. There is nothing wrong with having a job. You just increase your skill set and you get equity or you invest. That's. It's totally fine. I'm always yelling at my employees because they want to do these ads about, like, do you hate your job? Like, go buy a business. Like, stop it. Jobs are great. Like, Sheryl Sandberg had an incredible job, made a ton of money and a huge impact, and didn't start businesses, you know, totally fine. So anyway, so I climbed, you know, a bunch of rungs at financial firms and, you know, it was Vanguard. And then I went to Goldman Sachs, and then I went to State street, and then I went to First Trust, and then I went to a company called the eec, all in asset management, building up different businesses, but at each stage. And like, I think a lot of people find this, like, Tony Robbins has become a buddy. And like, he says a line often that I love that I'll steal, which is like, there's two of the most important days of your Life the day that you were born and the day you figure out why. And so for me, I kept hating what I was doing. I like and I thought it was the company. I was like, must be the company and boss. So two years in, I would leave the job, must be the company and boss again and again. And so when I left Goldman, I didn't really like my boss. I didn't like what I was doing at the time. I went to another, another finance company. But at some point, like, if you are entrepreneurial, you just have to take the risk. And so I got to a stage that, you know, you guys talk about the burnouts where I, I call it my you thermometer. There's like some thermometer level at which I think all of us are like, I can't handle this anymore. I'm way too hot. Tell me about a time you hit your you thermometer. Yeah, God, which one? But probably the one that made me leave was, you know, eventually you'll get enough confidence and you'll win enough where people who are small will try to keep you down. And I always, I started to say myself pretty early in finance that I will never make myself small because of small men. And so I had a small man who literally and figuratively was actually a small man. And I don't like to name names, but his name is Dan. And Dan was at first sight, Dan the small man. Dan the. Oh, that's fun. I never thought about that. We got to make shirts. And anyway, I had, I wasn't public on the Internet anywhere, but I was really young to be a managing director and I was a Latina and so those were, that was rare. And a woman. Yeah. And so I got a couple like news articles, awards, little covers in our finance industry. And one of them came out and it kind of like went on my social in a bigger way. And that must have pissed him off. And he was another managing director and he wrote me an email that, that I keep to this day that said, I hope you gained some followers today because you have dumbed down our company. And I was like this motherfucker. And I just remember thinking he was really close with the CEO. And I remember going to the CEO about it because I worked for him directly and it was, this is a big company. And he was like, well, he was just drunk and he didn't mean anything by it and whatever. Finance is a fucked up culture. And. And I remember thinking, I don't ever want to work somewhere where I have to play small because it Offends other people's egos. I'm out. I'm out. And so that was my fuck use thermometer that I. I went for a walk with my CEO at the time who I actually really like. The CEO, his name's Jim, but him and I went for a walk and he said, listen, he goes at this company like, you're on our boat and we're rowing left and you seem to want to row right. And so if you want to go right, you got to get your own boat. I was really pissed at the time. I'm like, we have a billion dollars in assets under management. I built this big company. What do you mean? But it was his chips, so he gets to play them how he wants at the casino. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna leave. And so I left the right way. I set him up correctly and the rest of the business. But I'm really thankful now for like whenever you come across those fu thermometers, I actually think it's such a gift, you know, because that gift of me being really pissed off is what finally pushed me over the edge. Otherwise I probably would have been an employee for somebody else forever.

I'm curious.

You talk a lot about, you know, like your successes investing in these alternative businesses like Laundromats and stuff. What's an investment opportunity you missed that you like? Is there any that keeps you up where you're like, oh shit, I should have invested in that or I should have seen this. So there's a couple that were really big. Like I had a chance to invest in Robinhood super early and that would have been. I remember looking at a couple years ago and I think it was like 11 million or 21 million dollars or something like that. If I put in 100k and now it's probably much more than that. I also had a chance to invest in what was the other company that we looked at? Well, maybe I won't say that, but basically I became comfortable with the fact that we missed on Robinhood because the reason I didn't do it at that time, I stand by, which is I don't think you should gamify stock market investing. I don't think it's a good idea to get us addicted to day trading. I don't think any statistics say that that's good and that's similar to like, I think it's a badass that the, you know, we have like one of the youngest self made women billionaires now with, with Poly Market or whatever. That's called, but like, is that good for society? And so I think one of the cool things we get to ask yourself is, you know, the companies that I missed the most money on weren't actually because I didn't see the opportunity. It was because I thought, that's not a way I want to make money. It's why I got out of private equity. It's why I got out of cannabis. I'm really flawed in many ways, but I think money is everywhere. You can make it doing fucking anything. I've seen people make money in the craziest things, in the most boring of things. So if that's true, then why don't you make it doing something good that isn't actually bad for society? And like, I want to push that on young people because I think there's a lot of like, yoloing or fast quick money schemes. And like, give yourself a little bit more credit than that. You're probably more competent and you could make money doing things that are actually good for the world as opposed to shitty. I'm curious, like, how you think about, like, learning from past investments that actually affect, like, future investment investments. Well, no. So I love the Warren Buffett line where he says, I never worry about the deals I didn't do. I worry about the ones that I did do. And so that tends to be my, my thesis. The ones that hurt are the ones I did that were stupid. Yeah, like, that's what I remember. I don't really like, okay, I, I didn't take that swing. Fine. But when you take a swing and then you slap yourself in the face, that sucks. And so I've definitely done that. I told you guys one, when I was walking in, we put, put. Oof. I don't remember how many millions of dollars in a company this was in the cannabis space back in the day. And it was, it was a cool company. I loved the idea, I liked the product. I only really invested at that stage after a product already existed. But one day the CEO calls me up. There's just a weird tone to his voice and he's like, I need some more cash. And, you know, we're growing really fast. It kind of didn't make sense what he was telling me. So I like, I'm going to fly out. I need to see what's going on. And so I get to Drake's office and I walk in the office and I hadn't been to their new office and we have millions in this company. And I'm walking down the hallway and it's like picture of him and somebody famous picture of him and somebody and this whole like fame wall. And I turned to my partner and I'm like, we're fucked. This company's going to zero. And I didn't want to be right, but I was. So I went back there and we went through it. And ego is like the enemy of all money, basically. And so that one hurt because I bet on the idea, not the person. That was the time I learned the idea. It's all about the human. So that one hurt and then the other one that hurt. It always hurts when you get defrauded. That one, he just was bad. He just made bad decisions. He wasn't a fraud. Maybe a little egotistical, but I had another one where we put $25 million into a company. Great company still exists, thankfully. But that company then called us. I don't remember how many weeks exactly. Let's call it six weeks later. So you give somebody 25 million bucks six months later, later they call their three weeks out of cash. I'm like, the just happened with our 25. It wasn't a big enough. Maybe it was 250 when they build the Taj Mahal. Yeah, like, what did you do with all this money in this time? So we fly out, we're like, what's going on? And we basically find massive fraud. I mean, almost impressive. Like he had not one mistress, but three. I'm like, you probably did have to spend a lot of money. This is like this chick's way too hot for what's happening there. And so anyway, we have to go and turn the company around. Around. But that one was a real. That's when I really learned it's called quality of earnings. And a real deep dive into due diligence. And so now when I look at a company, we go really deep into them because I think the Russian proverb like trust but verify is very important. I mean, 8.3 per mistress. That's a lot of money on a mistress. That's more than a top notch ML engineer these days. My goodness.

I mean it's, it's impressive.

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And I want to go back to something that you said and I want to play out the scenario of okay, I now understand, let's avoid famous but not rich people like the plague. And I need to go find someone who is very wealthy but low key and maybe doesn't have a lot of infrastructure. I can help them. Where do you go to find wealthy people that you can work with? I was reading something that you said that you were talking about golfing and all these different opportunities to network. But what would be your advice? I want to find someone wealthy that I want to add value to. How do I find them? Them?

Yeah, well actually, I mean, so we teach this. So I think you don't actually have to have a network to find these boring business owners, which is really lovely because they're not in the most high demand. What you have to do is be human, walk outside often and try to meet every small business owner in your vicinity. And so the cool part about small businesses, and you can even do this in New York, most small businesses, only 10% of businesses will ever get to a million dollars in revenue. Like less than 1% will get to 10 above 10 is like.01% or something wild. And so all around you are businesses where the person who's at the front desk is the owner. Everywhere, all around you. So in the beginning I want you to just go try to talk to a bunch of business owners every single day. Go to your local ice cream shop, go to your coffee shop, go to the hardware shop. When you're driving down industrial districts, go try to knock on the front door and talk to them. Because I think what we don't realize is like, what's the worst that's going to happen? They're like, get out of here, kid. What are you doing? On the other hand, if you're like, listen, I live in the neighborhood, this is a super interesting business. I'm trying to learn more about business. What do you do here? Like, can I take you to coffee for five minutes? Can you imagine the last time an industrial owner of a business had a young, curious, competent kid? Say, what you're doing is really interesting, I'd love to take you to coffee. He might not go to coffee with you, but we might be like, I don't know, come inside, work with me for an hour. And so it's really not that difficult. I just want you to knock on doors. And this is just a great life lesson lesson because now we only want to do dms, we don't actually want to knock on doors. So if you're willing, like I've realized in life there's this moat for like anything you want to do. If you can go one step further than the average other person who is your age, you will have an asymmetric upside and on like a huge upside comparatively. So instead of dms, don't do dms. Send a written note. Instead of a written note, go knock on a door. Instead of knocking on a door, go to the door with a written note and a little strategy plan for them. Just like layer up your level of difficulty. And I think that is often the way to get things without having to be smarter, richer, faster, better than anybody else.

Interesting. And what would you say is the way that you learned all of these things?

I mean the best teacher is, is life. I didn't have opportunity, you know, I, my dad was, is an incredibly hard worker. But you know, he didn't go to college. He was, he was an entrepreneur, but he never would have said that word. He was like a small business owner. You know, he built businesses himself. He worked in a slaughterhouse, he was a carpenter. My mom was a 30 year special education teacher. Like they didn't have opportunities waiting for me and so if I wanted them, I had to go get them. And the one, the couple things that they did were incredible though is, you know, my dad would always say, well, you could be princess or the president, you know, you pick, it doesn't matter, you can do whatever you want to do. And so they had this unreasonable belief in like what I was Capable. Capable of. And. And I do think the other thing that helps a lot when you're young is I took a lot of reps, so I got to watch my dad build his business and I got to be next to him a lot. And then when I was in school, I took every single opportunity. I was never allowed to not work. So really helps to have as many internships as possible. It helps to have as many difficult conversations as possible. I think there's a reason most of the top CEOs that we've ever invested in in. They're salespeople. They're not product people. And I don't think people like that story very much because there's. If you are a really smart product person, obviously you could be a top 1 percenter, but most people don't have to be this incredible brain or engineer. They could just be quite good at distribution and sales. And that's what most of them are. And so, I mean, you know, you even look at jobs, not the best engineer in the world, really good at selling you a dream. And so I learned a lot from doing sales super early on. And so if you don't have a lot of money right now, get into sales because you will learn how to sell a dream.

What's your best sales advice?

Get told no as many times as possible. Don't talk about how many. Like, don't. There's two types of dashboards, right? And two types of way to set up your life to see if you're succeeding or not. One dashboard is if you're trying to lose weight. You might go and say, well, I want to lose five pounds. Did I lose five pounds today? Did I lose five pounds today? That's an outcome based dashboard or activity. An input based dashboard or activity is. What did you do that is in your control. Control. So I want to lose five pounds. Okay? I walked 20,000 steps today. I went to the gym. I didn't eat processed foods, I didn't drink. Right? You can't control the outcome. You can control the input. And so as a salesperson, the best thing that I did in the beginning, one of my mentors told me every single day, I want you to keep a little tick sheet next to you. And this was back when I was at Goldman, actually. And I would do a little line for every time I got told no. So every single. And he's like, I don't want you to try to hit. Hit a million dollars in sales or whatever our goal was. I want you to try to get told no. 50 times today. You don't leave until you get told no. 50 times today. What does that do? It gets you excited for every no. So you're like, don't care, whatever. You know. I remember I would pick up the phone at Goldman to try to sell them. I think I was in the private equity group then at the time, a pep product, this private equity product. And they would be like, don't ever call me again. How did you get this number? You? And I'd be like haha, okay two, you know, and then I just go to the next question call. And so you can kind of build this armor of like it's really hard to get to me now because I've been told no so many times. Who cares? So go chase now.

And how do you turn a no into a yes? Or kind of more tangibly. I'm curious when you started to understand, okay, all these people are telling me no. Did you have this lesson of here's why and here's how you can kind of be the most convincing version of yourself?

Good question. You know, in the beginning, no, I just, I just was taking pain, which is okay, you know, I was like I think I will get better if I just swing the bat more. Which is true. Like you're, you gotta be pretty dumb to keep doing the same thing continuously and have no ability to get better. I also do believe actually that you really don't sell anybody anything. You find the people who are already predisposed to want what you're selling. And so you're much better off figuring out who is running in the desert desert, about to die from heat exhaustion and really needs a water than you are trying to go and sell water to a bunch of people who are in a swimming pool. And so I kind of, I. That's why I think it's really sexy. People on the Internet will be like, let me tell you this clothes that works 472 of the time, right? It's very hot in the entrepreneurial space. I think it's kind of. Because how many times like if you guys go to buy a car and they give you a hot dog, Law of reciprocity, right? They give you a Coca Cola, they give you something because the law says you want to give them something back in return, does that mean you're going to buy a car? Of course not. If they give you a special clothes on it and they try to pressure sale you into a car, does that mean you're going to buy a car? No, it means you just like kind of think the guy's a dick. Or if you do like, oh yeah, please give me that paperwork all and then you're going to refund later. So I think hard pressure sales taxics are short term focused and really bad to do. They ruin your reputation, they don't work long term and business right now is too transparent and we have too many options. So I don't think that's a good way to do it. Instead, what I would say is we have something called the trust framework. And so if you want to sell somebody something, all you're trying to do is get them to trust you. And by that trust you, what does that really mean? It's what Dale Carnegie always says, which is a sell is never about what they know about you, it is about what they think you know about them. And so if you really want to sell somebody something, we just talked about it with your DMs. Then if they, if they want to sell you, they don't really need to talk about themselves. You're like, whatever, long ass resume instead. What do you want? Hey, I looked at your podcast, the Burnouts. There's three spelling errors on the website. I saw this video. I think if you change this thumbnail. Did you guys see these? 15 topics I think would be perfect. Here are the next couple guests. Look at their outlier videos. Here's an Instagram. I think you should do it with this topic. They're showing you that they know you while also showing they're really good at strap strategy. So obsess on getting them to trust you by show, don't tell what they what you know about them as opposed to the other way around.

I mean, I'm gonna clip that, put that on my LinkedIn. And I hope that, I hope everyone takes your advice.

Yell at me and tell me I suck and don't.

A million percent. No, no, they definitely won't. And I kind of want to switch gears a little bit and focus more on kind of what we've been talking about around this idea of like making money, but more specific to talk about investing. So I'm curious. So let's say we followed your advice to a T. I'm now working for a rich old man who has no social media. I'm starting to make my first paychecks. What do I do with that money? How do I make my money work for me?

Yeah, well, there's a couple tried and true rules that I think everybody should use. The first is the 50, 30, 20 rule. And so when you come into finance, they teach you Something immediately which is you want to take 50% of your paycheck, you want to put that towards needs. That's your rent, that's your car, that's stuff you have to do to have. You're going to take the next 30% towards your wants, that's going out to dinner, that's cool pants, that's nice outfits, whatever. The last 20% you're going to put towards investing. So that is saving first to your. I typically like always to have a three month emergency fund, six month I think is ideal. Anything further than that, I think it's not really necessary unless maybe you have a family, then every dollar past that. I want to start investing in the very beginning. When you're investing, I believe, believe you're investing to learn, not necessarily to make a ton of money. And so I like to start really simply. So that would be put it towards your 401k if you have a corporate job, your IRA, if you're self employed. I want you to just put it in the stock market, see what that looks like. Do we understand stocks? Do we understand bonds? Can we put it in a 6040 vehicle that is just managed by somebody else? We want to have as much income that we are not responsible for, but we can watch and learn from. And by not responsible for, you're not picking individual stocks. I think that's really hard to beat the smartest guys in the world doing it. And so if you do that 50, 30, 20 rule and you pay yourself first, we believe this in business too. It's actually not very common. So only about 30% of employees pull aside their first, let's call it 20% of their paycheck and save it 30%. So what does that mean? That means you have to have more willpower than you have discipline. Discipline. Which means. And that willpower is actually a depleting resource. So every time you use it, you have less of it. Right. That's why famously Jobs is like I wear one outfit a day. Barack Obama says the same thing. I don't want to deal with my outfits because that's a silly decision. I'm going to have decision fatigue by the end of the day. So with your money you should take that 20, pretend like you don't have it, put it in a savings account, put it in an investing account automatically. You can do that the second that you get paid in your paycheck. And I did that my very first one. So a lot of times people are like, how did you get all this money and how did you make all this money and do all these deals so early. It's because I kind of forgot that I had that money somewhere. And so allow yourself to be disciplined instead of willpowered. That's what I would do.

Interesting. And then at what point would you get into what you've now done today, which is finding kind of these business opportunities, acquiring an unsexy business and making that kind of a career, at what point would you switch gears or kind of shift your focus in other areas? Areas?

Well, one, I think you need to learn today, right now, how to do deals. And the reason why is because you won't know how to negotiate equity. You won't know how to negotiate your salary. You won't understand how a business makes money. You won't understand your P L unless you understand how to do deal making or what we call acquisitions. I think it is the number one skill that I wish I would have learned when I was in school. That's why we made an education business about it. Because sure, you should learn savings and budget budgeting, but like, I just taught you everything you need to know about saving and budgeting. Don't read another book, don't do anything else. 50, 30, 20, apply it every day. That's literally it. Yeah, you could mess around with points. Yeah, you could, like do something specific with your IRA or your 401k that's so iterative, it's never going to change your life. That's all on the margin. So if that's all you need to know about budgeting, then what's the next step? Well, you cannot negotiate more if you don't know what you're worth and you don't know how to understand what a business, business is worth. And so I think you need to learn deal making and acquisitions really early. Now, I don't think that means you should go buy a business. So this is something that's been like, hard to teach people broadly. A lot of people come to us and they're like, I want to learn how to buy a business in one year, I'm in debt. I don't know anything about business. I've never run a business. I'm like, listen, you should learn how to do this right now, but you probably shouldn't execute on it in a year. What you should do is take this knowledge and go apply it and get like a little part of a business. And so here's when you should not buy a business. Do not buy a business business. Just learn acquisitions, but don't take action if you're in debt, don't do it. If you have a family and a lot of people to take care of. Overarching. And you don't understand a profit and loss statement, if you can't read a profit loss statement, if you don't understand how to read a financial statement, and if you don't understand what good versus bad debt is, you're not ready. You're ready to learn those things, but you've got to learn those before you should go buy a business. And the only way that I think that's not necessary necessary is if you are. For instance, you guys, right now. We're on your podcast. Let's say this young woman, I don't know your name, but let's say. What's her name? Brenda. Okay, Brenda, what's up? Let's say, Brendan, Brenda runs the production for your podcast and she actually edits and produces and she's a third party vendor. And you guys pay her $3,000 a month and that's what she does. She has a lot of other clients. You're one the of of them. You guys don't necessarily have to understand SBA loans, good versus bad debt, any of that to be like, huh, we pay her 3k a month. And I bet if we talked about her on the podcast, Brenda would get like five or seven more clients. Hey, Brenda, how. How big's your business? Oh, we do about a hundred thousand dollars a year. Huh. So if I was able to get her three more clients at 3K a month, well, now, did I just double her business? Yeah, I did okay with only three clients that she keeps for a year. Cool. Hey, Brenda, you want to do a deal where I take 25% of your company? You do distributing equity. So if you take money out, I get money out. But I only get my 25% if I double your business, so I increase it by 50% because that's only three clients. Brenda would be like, yeah, actually that's a great fucking deal. Okay, fine, then you could do a deal. And so those are called partial acquisitions, and I really like those. That's no debt transfer and is only done through milestones and other earnouts. And I think more business owners should do those deals. Like, I think you guys and anybody in, in almost any business position should be looking at all the things you pay for and saying, like, should we own any of these? Because guess what sucks? How fun is it to do you guys do like sponsorship deals, ad read?

Sometimes?

Yeah. Okay. Some of them are great, some of them are not great.

Right?

She Shakes her head sadly, looks down. Right. So there's like. So the problem with doing ad reads for other people is, like, they capture most of the upside. They're very specific. Oftentimes they forget that the reason they want you to do it is because you're good at it, but they give you all these restrictions about what you're allowed to say. It's kind of crazy. And so if instead you're like, what if I just make my ad reads only companies we own part of, and I get to decide what we do, and then we make money off of that. And that's contrarian thinking. I own almost all the companies we talk about or we have equity in them. And so, like, those deals are really interesting for business owners. And I think more people, you, you guys could learn everything you needed to know in 90 days in doing a deal. And then every time you see a vendor or you pay somebody something, you're just going to be like, oh, okay, I'm going to try to do something there. And then the cool part is if you're not paying a lot for them and it doesn't work out. And Brenda's like, hey, I'm enjoying my business. I don't want to grow that much. Now. We're doing $500,000 a year. You helped us get there. I'm kind of cool. And you're like, we have a $20 million company now. This is too small for us. Brenda, you just go, brenda, buy me out over the course of the next three years. Do it at a reasonable price. The company's all yours again. Like, there's so many ways to trade these businesses as assets, but we were never taught that. And so private equity steals our lunch.

That's fascinating because I think you're really right in the sense that most people don't think this way because they're so trained in such rigid ways of thinking that are like, one plus one equals two, that they don't understand. There's all this opportunity for upside in a way that, to your point, requires this level of contrarian thinking. And actually, one of the things I was really interested about when I was looking at some of your recent videos was you said that you would highly recommend in 2026, investing in your appearance and things like that. So I'm curious, what are other places where you would say investing money in, like, your appearance, for example, is something that people should do?

Yeah, well, I mean, you go to the math and you guys, like, I, I, you can send this to your boyfriends. All the ladies Listening online. But like with a fast, there's really fascinating studies on appearance, vanity and making more money. And so, you know, I looked at three series of studies and the studies across gender, age and industry, so what the person did for a living all had similar readouts. And the readouts is essentially this. Women on average make about 30% more money with makeup as opposed to without makeup, regardless of whether you're good looking or not. About 30% more when you're dolled up. Men, obviously, they didn't do one on makeup for men, but they did one on being well groomed. Women again, make somewhere between 33 and 40% more money when they're well groomed. So that like is well attired. Makeup outfits that are appropriate for whatever it is you're doing. And men make 15% more money. And so the data just seems to prove, which makes sense, that when we dress well and when we look good, we make more money. And if you think about it, we know this to be true. Pretty privilege is very real. And you can either say, that's not fair, so I'm not doing it, or you can win. And I think you either try to be right or you win. And if you're interested in winning, then who cares? Put on some makeup. I always joke, my joke is then people in the crowd sometimes get mad at me about this. And they'll be, there's always a woman that's like you. It's not fair. Why do we have to do this? And I'm like, honey, it's also not fair that we have to like tear open our lower parts to have a baby and a man just gets to shoot a seed once. Not fair, but real. So like, if it's going to make me more money to paint my face, clown me up, like, why do we care about that? Like, remove this, like patriarchal, da, da, da, whatever, just win. And then you can change the rules once you've already won, that's fine. And so that does appear to be true. And I'm sure you guys have felt it, like even this morning or I'm staying. I don't typically dress like this. We were talking about it before. I don't really like to get ready. I don't wear makeup typically. I'm actually not that into clothes. Could care less. But I found these studies. So, like, when I leave the hotel every morning, I'm pretty glammed up compared to what people look like normally. And so every morning, what happens, I get like three or five compliments. Like, you look beautiful today. I'm like, stop. You know, walking out. But what. What's. And do I really look that different? I don't know, but it's like this effort level. And so I think we gotta ask ourselves, like, if all we have to do is put a little attention or intention to our appearance, why aren't we doing it and, like, play the game?

I like that idea of don't complain, just win. Just win. That's.

I'm.

I'm taking that motto with me. And there was another podcast you went on where you said if you had a thousand dollars, you would invest it in a cold plunge or something like that. I don't remember. But I'm curious for other kind of recommendations you would have when it comes to investing in your health or your appearance. What else do you think people should pay attention to?

Yeah, I sound like such a tech bro now from Austin, don't I? You know, my husband taught me this. But I have found that life is hard. And so you get to choose your hard. I think it's hard to be employed. It's hard to be an owner. It's hard to be rich. It's hard to be poor. Like, all of it's actually hard. It's hard to get rich. It's not easy. It's hard to stay poor. So, like, no matter what you do, life is going to be harder than you die. It's very existentialist or nihilist, but, like, it just is true. And so if that's the case, I think you should do more things that are difficult early on in the morning. You know, Mark Twain famously said, if you're going to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning. If you got to eat two, eat the big one for first. And so my husband and I do hard things every morning, and that is a cold plunge. I hate it. I think it's miserable. I don't like it. I don't like being cold. He calls me coldy. Like, I really. We talked about it. I'm like, get me out of New York. It's too cold here, you crazy people. And so I do a cold punch because I don't like it. And I don't know about the science. We can leave that to Brian Johnson. But, like, I go and I do it. I don't like working out. I really don't. I almost bitch about it every single day time. So I go do it early in the morning. And if, like, you go do a really hard workout, especially for women, where you lift weights and I don't Maybe the science says something totally different, but in my experience, lifting a very heavy thing early in the morning, like throwing around the weight, physically, you just feel tougher. And so after I've gone in a freezing cold pool, after I've lifted a bunch of weight, I've broken some nails, I've gotten a little dirty. I'm like, what are you going to do to me today? Like, oh, the email was rude. I'm so fine, you know? So, like, I think if you could just, like, front load your pain, then the rest of the day has a lot more pleasure. Yeah, I'm down. I think that's actually a great conclusion. Holy. I love that clip. I'm. We need to start doing that. We need to do more boxing classes together.

We need to get back into exercising. That's. That's what this has. Has taught me a little bit. I think you were right. I kept being like, no, that's not important. We don't need to do it. I. I think think we. We need to do boxing in the morning.

Post it on Instagram, tell me and tag me in your ice bath challenges next time I come into town. We can all do an ice bath challenge.

I'm tagging my selfie of my abs, hopefully.

Dude, you already have them, though. Well, that is the other thing with women is we can be really skinny and look beautiful, as you both do. But are you as strong as you want to be?

Exactly. No, definitely not.

And by the way, I'm, like, pointing the finger right back at me. I'm the same way. I want to be stronger than I am. And so, my dear friend, Gabrielle Lyon, you should have her on at some point. She's my doctor. She's incredible. She's like this psychopathically strong woman. And she's five' one. She's. We call her the tiny Tornado. And. And I think that more women need to get comfortable with being strong because life's tough.

Well, it's like, you look good, but do you feel good? And usually the answer is no for so many of my female friends. And that's honestly really sad to me because it's hard to do your best work when you also don't feel good personally.

Oh, yeah. I mean, the last thing I'll say, she has this incredible video that I'm like, so good. But basically she's doing this back and forth between her and a friend. And I'm sure we've all heard our friends say this, like, working out should feel good, right? It should be easy. I want to be in flow, you know, that doesn't feel. My body doesn't feel right. It's my follicular phase. Like, we've heard all these things and they're. I think they're excuses that we've given ourselves as women. We don't have to be always in like, push state. But I do think we should get comfortable with that. We're like highly, highly capable and our bodies are incredibly resistant and you can do hard things. And so I don't think we should feel bad going and lifting the heavy weight and doing the awful, terrible workout every now and then. Like, it doesn't always have to be Pilates and yoga, you know, Although they're great too. Cody, thank you so, so much for coming on today. It's funny to have you here because me and Sophia have been watching your content since we were literally roommates in college, and it's been a dream to have you on. So thank you again. I've learned personally so much today. Yay. Well, thank you for having me. This was a pleasure. Can't wait to see it come out. I had that dream again. My small business needs to hire, but I don't use LinkedIn and I hire wrong. So then I'm doing it. And when I go to plug the servers in, they become sentient and they won't let us access our network unless we forward their chain mails and memes to more and more and more people. And then I wake up. Don't let hiring nightmares ruin your your dreams. LinkedIn jobs new AI assistant finds and invites best fit candidates to apply so you can discover talent you may have missed. Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com Pandora Start hiring today with LinkedIn for delicious meals. You could go out to eat or you could just make a Marie Callender's meal. Marie Callender's classic chicken parmigiana bowl is so good. It has marinara sauce that's made from scratch and creamy mozzarella cheese over pasta. It's delicious with no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives. And 30 grams of protein. Protein. You can find it in the frozen aisle. Marie Callender's what having it All Tastes.

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