Codie Sanchez: How to Make Money if You Don’t Have Money (4 Step Process to Make Money Today)

we don't think of it like a relationship. And therefore it falls into the binary category of I'm either good at it or I'm bad at it. Today's guest has some incredible insights for each and every one of us. Wherever you are in your financial journey, this episode is for you. Today's guest is Cody Sanchez.

people rich? Kind of go to the data. I came from really middle class kind of we didn't have money all the time. I remember what it was like to not have money. I remember what it was like when my debit card. You know, I was a little worried stuff wouldn't go through at the grocery store, and I didn't like that feeling, and so I kind of started looking around and I was like, wait a second, where

do people have money? And after being in finance for whatever it is, fifteen years, I'm going to give away my age. I realized people that have money have one thing ownership. So the data is really clear on this. Seventy percent of millionaires are self made, which is interesting. I used to think maybe you just inherit it did they just get lucky? And then sixty eight percent of millionaires have some form of ownership. They have actually bought a business, or have equity in a business, or built

a business. And so when I realized that, I was like, the problem is I don't have a brilliant idea, Like I don't know how to make money. I don't have any money to make money. But at least you have step one, which is if you don't have ownership, you're probably never going to be free financially. You got to get some skin in the game. That doesn't mean that you have to become an entrepreneur. It's really hard to do that. It sucks many days. You know this very well.

There's fridays when you're never going to make payroll, and that is like a deep, terrible dark hurt. Actually, But if you realize ownership is the name of the game, then you should probably obsess on one thing more than anything else, which is learn the language of money. And back when I was young, I was a journalist, originally made zero dollars, and I realized that I had no idea why I had opportunities and ability to make some money.

And let's say the women I was covering at the time in Warres, who are they call it Laciel de Mote, right, the city of death, which is where women are mutilated and raped and brutalized and found murdered all over the city every single day, thousands of women a year. There were many that had the last name Sanches. My last name happens to be Sanchez. I was like, what's the difference between us? Is it that I'm American? Now, that's

not it alone. I think it's also that I had some financial tools, and like, money is a pushback against other people's architecture of your life, and it makes people care about you one way or the other, which is sad, But the truth of the matter is if you are poor, you have no power, and anybody who's been poor before knows that is true. You got to go where the

game is played. So the first thing I tell you is, if you don't have any cash, you need to find a way to figure out how to speak the language of money. And that probably means you maybe go work in finance like I did. You get with a company that has smart leaders like Jay where you can actually go and learn from them, and you obsess on can I become fluent in the thing that nobody talks about in the US because money is supposed to be the root of all evil.

we become harder to control. And when you're harder to control, big institutions and largely are governments, they don't like that. You know, you want a controllable populace by and large, And I think that is a big reason why people don't talk about money, Actually, that we have been programmed to be more malleable sheep in many ways, not because people are evil at the top, but because once we get power, we humans are a little funny. We don't like to give it up no matter who we are.

I would probably be the same, And so that centralization of power, we start to think I know better you poor person, let me give you some charity. You can't figure it out, And instead we should be saying you are just as capable as I am, and I would probably be you if I lived your life. And so instead, why don't I transfer some knowledge because that's where money starts.

So we basically have not made any more money. And in fact, this generation Gen Z is the first generation where at their same age as their parents, they're making less money, not more. Problem is their university degrees or three to four x more expensive. Oh, by the way, so is housing. Wait a second, inflation is at a degree in which my dollar today is worth even substantially less than even five years ago. On top of that, yeah,

we have all these jobs open. You know, seven million working age men supposedly are unemployed at this moment right now, even though the jobs report says that there's so many jobs. Are the jobs real, well, largely not. They're private sector. They're not private sector, their public sector, their government jobs. And so young people are like, wait a second, I

can't live, I can't eat. You know, grocery is more expensive, and that's real actually, And so the people that are making fun of young people in Tiktoks, you know, when they cry about their job being difficult, I don't. I don't really vibe with that because the math says it's hard right now and not just for young people. But I think it's important to talk about them. And the truth of the matter is though that in any market,

we can make money. And so although it's really difficult out there, there's like one silver lining that I've kind of been screaming from the rooftops for the past three years, and people, I think are starting to see it, which is that we are, thankfully, I think going to have a marriage between baby boomers and young people that would be very unexpected. So right now and historically young people have said, Okay, Boomer, you messed up our economy. Boomer,

you're not employing me. Boomer, you don't understand my life. You listen to the music that young people like. They don't like that generation in a lot of ways. Then the baby boomers are like, you guys are quiet, quitting, you're not working very hard. Get out of my basement. And so these two generations have been at war in

some ways, like a quiet war. And now I think with the transfer of ownership that we're seeing and we can talk about the great wealth transfer, I think we have an opportunity where the baby boomer generation, the richest generation that we have ever seen in the US, which has mimicked in all other countries around the world by

the way that are developed countries. This generation is about to sunset, they're getting ready to retire, they're ready to move on, but they own sixty eight trillion dollars in wealth in just the US. The interesting part is the young people think, well, that money must get transferred somehow, right, does that mean I get a house. Does that mean I get a car? Does that mean I get inheritance? The problem is that money is not tied up in just assets. It's not tied up in houses and bank accounts.

It by and large is tied up in small businesses because baby boomers owned sixty percent of all small businesses, and so I think we got to find a way for the young people to take over these baby boomer businesses because otherwise then we're in a really bad spot. Then we're Japan.

we should probably gamify our finances that way. And I think that's what's happened to young people. They're being told, I mean put in the stock market day trade, They're being told NFTs and playing with crypto monkeys. They're being told price speculation on crypto or even bitcoin. They're taking margin calls out on their stock portfolios. Then with a little amount of money that they have, they're trying for this get rich scheme speculation. And the shitty part is

that just never works. You know, the one sure thing I know about money is that you're never going to make it if your solution is, hey, I'm going to win at money, because that guy's going to lose. If you think that there is a lose win scenario and you are the one that's going to win, I hate to tell you you're the one hold in the bag. Yeah, And I wish people told us that more, that actually making money doesn't have to be lose win, it could

be win win. And that is when you know you've actually found a good opportunity is when you go, Okay, why would I make money on this deal, Oh, because I am solving a pain point that adds value to another human's life, and I've properly valued what my own skill set is. The problem is most of us don't even know what we're good at or how you'd value

that skill. And we could play around with some exercises so that any human could figure out, Okay, I cody know how to market something, how do I figure out how much is that is worth? And how could I transfer some of that to get a percentage of equity in somebody's company just for the skill that I have. The last thing I want to say there is like

more than anything. I think one, we think money's bad, and then two money's scary, Like I don't really know why, but I think we're scared of it, and we're scared that we might not be able to make it, and we're scared what if we lose it? And what if our self worth is tied.

the next thing, which is increase my skill stack. After I learn, can I increase my skills so that my skills are more valuable today than they were yesterday? And the third is how can I increase my income, So before you go thinking about investing in things overall, how can I just make more money currently with what I'm doing? And then finally we can get to invest. So after we do these three steps, the final one is how do I take my money and make my money work

for me? But in the beginning, you don't have money. You know, you don't really have skills, you probably don't have a ton of connections, and so what you actually want to do is use your sweat, equity and your experience and time as a really maybe hungry individual to get money to eventually be able to invest the money.

And I think that's the other thing young people are told that's a lie, is that you can go out as a young person and you know, you know Fendi, Gucci, Prada, Lamborghini, on the internet, make a bunch of fast cash and Airbnb, arbitrage or whatever. Man, I wish somebody had told me earlier on that's a terrible thing to do.

those are really different. And so I'd meet a lot of young people who sadly have spent so much money on their degree, are really smart academically, but then that skill doesn't translate into knowing how to make their company more money, knowing how to lead people really well, knowing how to build function systems, processes. And therefore it's like, well, wait a minute, I just studied all these years, but it doesn't translate.

top institutions bypass that. You know, Google doesn't mandate that you have a college degree if you're going into an engineering degree, actually, and I think that should be really liberating for us. It's basically breaking down this barrier, that's a six figure barrier that allowed for the few, the elites to stare step over everybody else, And now it's actually saying how bad you want it, and don't tell me what you learned, show me what you can do,

or even better, show me what you did. And so I think the resume of the future is actually if somebody came to you, Jay and they were like, I just graduated from Wharton. I am very smart. You know, I also did my undergraduate degree at Harvard. I now want to come work for you. You'd be like, what do you know how to do? Do you know how to market? Do you know how to grow a beverage company? Do you know how to increase our investment return?

spreadsheet for you. Here's the things they care about. Could I come work for you for free for three or six months, and if that works out, could we do something better and bigger. The problem that people usually have on the Internet when I throw out the word work for free is young people are like, remember that part where you told us that we were broke and we

don't have any money. So I'm not trying to dismiss that at all, but I do think we have to be honest about the fact that when we're young, you're gonna have to work harder than you think, longer than you think, doing stuff you don't like with people you probably don't like, until eventually you get the right to do something really interesting. But like, you don't die in your first job from it being really hard and challenging.

You die from the apps, monotony and the low level tasks you have to do for basically pennies on the dollar.

people ask for your opinion on this? Could you actually get jobs in this space if it was me, because I'm kind of unemployable, like you don't want me to work for you, Like I got my own ideas. I want to do things this way. If she's like that, then what you want to do is you want to try to partner with somebody where you can be the

solution to their problem. And because you understand what I call deal making, which is really the language of money, you can negotiate an ability for you to own part of a thing in order for you to have one of three outcomes. If she can figure out if she can help a business grow its revenue, make more money, if she can help a business cut its costs, or if she can help decrease the pain of a business owner. You can negotiate your way into a business and have

equity in it and upside. And I wish somebody had taught me that earlier, because this is what consultants do, this is what private equity firms do, this is what some of the largest institutions in the world do. I call it expertise to equity. But if I was her, I'd say, don't go find another job. And if you don't have a brilliant idea that you're like, I would die for the want of creating this thing in the world. If you have that, please go do it. But if

you're like I don't have that. I just want to make money and I want to feel respected, and I want to feel like my skills fit somewhere and I'm able to have an outsized income. If that's you, then I think you should try to value your skill set. Then you should try to negotiate for an upside deal with somebody, and you should try your hand at this game called ownership, which is where you say, hey, small business, I know how to market. Can I help you market

at the side while I'm working on this company? And because I help you grow your revenue by fifty percent? Could I keep ten percent of the fifty percent I grow? Do you think a small business owner would say yes to that? Of course they would, because there's no downside. And I think more often than not, we think that the only risk you can take and making money in business is putting your own cash down. That's a risk, or starting a business aka dedicating your life to something.

The last part I'll get a little statistic on us is ninety percent of startups fail inside any rolling ten year period. We know that statistic. Most startups make zero dollars for the first three years. After that, the average entrepreneur makes about forty six thousand dollars a year, which is great, but not when you've been making zero for

three years. And then on top of that, we've got this nation of people who have all these bills to pay, and they're betting on hopes and dreams as opposed to realities. And so my commentary is, can you figure out how to value your skills so you can negotiate a little bit more upside for that day where you can't work anymore.

Head to Jayshetty dot me and get yours today. Yeah. Definitely, E. I'm so happy to hear such like smart, honest advice because I do think you're so right. For so long we keep telling everyone like follow your passion, like just quit your job, like jump over, and you know it's it's hard because like you said that business may not work, your skills may be better off here. You might not be an entrepreneur, you might be someone who's gonna work

with an entrepreneur and build. I wanted to address something though. I do find a lot of leaders and a lot of founders of small businesses or up and coming businesses to also be quite resistant to recognizing the value of sharing. So I'll give an example of what I mean by this. Like, when I was starting out, I remember speaking to people who are much more established than I was, and I said, Hey,

I've got a person i'm going to work with. I'm gonna split things seventy five twenty five, and they're going to get twenty five percent of profits. I'm going to keep seventy five because they have a skill set I don't have, and it will be complementary. And I remember everyone telling me it was a really bad idea, because I'm like, Jay, like, no, you you're building a platform. You should earn one hundred percent of it. And I was like, but no, they're going to manage stress for me.

They're going to manage teams. I want to see them grow. I want them to feel like they've got skin in the game. And now you know, eight years later since that decision, I'm so much happier and I have a great relationship with my one of my business partners. We have a great relationship. He's as invested as he is as he was then. Things have grown really well, and I'm like the people that were trying to hold on to that last five to ten percent, yeah, actually haven't grown.

And so it was really interesting to me though that I see that again and again and again, where even founders and new leaders are actually scared of parting with something. How would you encourage them to think about that differently?

definitely not going to make it. I don't think I'm I don't think I'm capable, like it took me a long time to get there. And so what I did is, I'm all about risk mitigation, which is like a fancy, you know, financy word to say, how can I just make the outcome so in my favor that even if I'm not as smart as I think I am, it's almost like a win win no matter what. And so in that instance, I would probably say tell the make the founder a deal so good that they would feel

dumb saying no to it. And so if if I was coming to you Jay and Jay was just starting out, I wouldn't do this to somebody who has a big platform. They have way too much, too many resources. You need to go with somebody that's more accessible to you, that doesn't have a lot of resources. It's more on your level. But when you find that person, you go hey, win win deal. Don't give me a cent unless I provide X value, like literally nothing. Don't give me a percentage

of the company right away. I never give a percentage of my companies right away anymore. I did once cost me a million bucks. I was pissed. I didn't do it again. So you can do. It's called an urn in or milestone based deliverables, which I know sounds like a little maybe boring. If people are listening the.

business if you it's either duration or it's execution. So either you're here for one, two, three years, which is called cliff based investing. Or you're here for the first million that you helped me get in, and then the second, second million, and then the third million, and if you help me hit those milestones, you get the equity. If you don't, I wish you well, you wish me well. But we've already signed a prenup and this is how it works. And so I think we need to start

thinking like that. And it's very non American. We're not so used to negotiating. Probably non British too. Actually, Indians incredible at negotiation, same with a lot of people in the Middle East, but British and American people not so good at negotiating. We think that it's like a low level signal on average. So like when I was young, my mom, we call her the pipule. She's amazing and

she would always negotiate everything. My dad's an incredible businessman, like totally pull himself up by his own bootstraps, but my mom would go negotiate. And I don't know if you ever felt like this, but I remember sometimes, you know, my mom would be like negotiating for a different price. I mom, oh all the time, like please stop, you just pay it. And she would look at me and she would say, like, once it's your money, you pay it, but it's my money, so like, get out of here

if you don't want to deal with this. And I used to think it was so embarrassing, and now I realize, oh, that's very smart, and it's actually the thing the wealthy do more than anything else that the poor do not, which is the wealthy negotiate everything and the poor take price while the rich set price.

you were saying you were stuck for twelve years. And the reason I want to talk about that is because now when I see you, and whether someone sees you online or writing your book or you know, you're on all these awesome podcasts and you're talking so confidently and you're so clear that to hear that you had doubt and it took your long time to get over it. Walk me through what was going on in your mind during that twenty four month period, twelve month period before

you actually managed to quit. What was going inside Cody's head?

Then you and I couldn't do what we do if we didn't have people who also wanted to build a vision with a team as opposed to an end of it. So one you can make a ton of money, whether you're an employee or whether you are the founder of the business. You just got to get a little skin in the game and upside. And you get skin in the game and upside when you have more value. You don't just ask for it. You've got to be able

to earn it. And so when I was thinking those last two years in the business, I was running a business in Latin America. I had taken the business from zero to a billion dollars in assets under management. I had done it for in a place that I had never lived, in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru. I didn't have contacts there. I'd like built something from nothing, and I

was really proud of that. But I wasn't very good at doing deals back then, and maybe that's why I'm obsessed with it now, because I did a shitty deal with a guy that I respect a lot, but he was just better than me, and he ran the company and I built up this huge thing. But basically I had no way to take the assets of the business with me. The only thing that I could do is stay at that business and continue to get partnership until they eventually sold. I was like, gosh, I don't want

to be here for thirty years. And at the time, again I respected the CEO a lot, but we didn't believe in the same world. Like I believe in a world in which we can all get rich together. He believed in a world in which he told me, we get rich quietly, and he believed that if you told people that you were rich, they came after you, which sometimes they do. And because of that, he wanted to protect himself and be quiet. And I said, I don't want to live in that world. And so we thought

about that. I thought we should run the business this way. He thought we should run the business that way. And so for those last two years, if he hadn't finally taken me on a beach for a walk, him and I went he runs a multi hundreds, hundreds and hundreds billions of dollar company. We're still friends this day. But he essentially gave me an ultimatum. He said, listen, I want to row left. You want to row right. The problem is you need to get your own chips. You

got to get your own boat. You're on my boat and you're trying to row this way and we're going this way. So you got to make a decision. And at the time I was so mad. I was like, I built this from nothing. You guys can't even speak space. I'm down here, do it. Like I was mad, I was super entitled that I realized, Cody, did you put any of the money on the table to build this business. No, you know, did you take the risk?

things that you want to eventually earn from. So I knew I wanted to get into some venture capital like things. So I started investing in some venture capital firms. And so when he finally gave me that ultimatum, I jumped ship went to another company, and I didn't even have the balls to do it by myself. Then I was partnered up with a few other people, and man, like a lot of terrible things can happen to you when

you don't believe in yourself. And I think the universe like it will tell you kind of what you need to do. And then if you don't listen, I'll annoy you for a while and then at some point I'll just kick you in the face. I'd like, that's my experience.

last time I did a better deal. And so I said, you guys have to pay me out for what I did, and I'm going to go do this new business and I want to take some of our investors. And so if somebody hadn't pushed me out of a company, and if somebody else hadn't also said no, we don't want to do this with you, I never would have done

it by myself. And so I think it's it's okay if somebody is listening and you're stuck in a corporate job quote unquote stuck for a long time, that's okay, and it's also okay if it takes you a few tries. And I don't think that the only way to make money is to go be an entrepreneur and founder and do it all by yourself and never work in corporate America. I'm very grateful for the money that they spent on me for decades.

to become an entrepreneur. I've got to learn how to invest. It's like, no, no, no, this is it. This is what it is.

which is working. And if you have what we call an owner's mindset, so the type of human that's like I'm putting like respect and dignity into what I do every day to the point that I start to value my own worth and I understand why I'm valued, then you will finally be able to negotiate for the only thing that nobody can take from you. Somebody can take a job, somebody can take a salary, nobody can take contractual ownership in a business. And I think that's really

important in today's world because it really allows you. Then when somebody that you work for does something you don't like, you just go, yeah, I'm not doing that, you know, and you become it's what I call my que fund and my lady like fashion, which is like, hey, I have a certain amount of money, and because I have it, I will never compromise on a few things. But the

owner's mindset is kind of rare, you know. And so I think for young people today so often, and I was one, it's like my boss's bed, my job sucks, you know, I don't have upward mobility, And if I could tell young Cody one thing differently, it would be like, what would the opposite side of that story say, and which one do you think would make you more money? And I'd be like, probably the one in which you're like, hey, this is all kind of in my and if I make some serious changes in my life, I bet I

could be richer than I am today. And I wish more people thought that way.

this is weird, hippiece, Like what are we doing? So I was like I don't know, you know, and you can't see me, but like I was like throwing out my hands, I'm like, okay, money, I like it, Like give it to me, keep it going, you know. Those are like my internal monologue, right, yeah, like I'll take some. And so I'm chilling. I'm like this, like nobody's looking. And then they're like, now, don't move, but open your eyes.

And when I looked out, I was like, whoa. Because the rest of the audience, not the rest, but let's call it eighty percent were like this. They're like they were tight to the chest, they were like kind of like maybe small arms to the side. In some instances, I was like, it looked like they had been hit, they had been harmed, and I thought that was so fascinating.

And then they let us shake it off, and I was like, oh, man, if your representation of money that you feel in your body is closed off, you know, kind of scared whatever, I don't know, might be hard for you to earn it. So I think for some reason,

being in finance helped me realize. You guys, if you met some of the guys who were worth a hundred million dollars that I did in finance, you go, I could do that too, Like that guy did it really, And so I think once you meet a bunch of those people, you go, oh, like this isn't this isn't as impossible as people say it is. And so I learn a lot from not seeing people achieve it and

going how could they? How could they? It's instead going wow, that guy didn't want to think if you could do it, I could do it too, And that taught me to keep going Okay, he did it.

how you're born, where you're born, real things. But if you're living in a first world country in today's day and age, with the Internet and what we have at our fingertips, I think you're in a better position than you've ever been in order to make a lot of money today. And I promise you only one thing, which is you'll make less money if you think you will.

so what is that mindset shift? Because I think we're good at looking at other people, but often we eat the full prey to being envious instead of studious of them, Like instead of envy, instead of studying them, we envy them, or we end up being condescending of them of like, oh, well, you know, he's not even that small. Well they're not even it's not even that great, right, we kind of justify that. So how do you shift that? Because I think that's at the core of what you're saying.

I just ask them a lot of questions continuously? And it was funny because I was talking to I think another mutual friend of ours, Jesse Eisler, the other day, and Jesse talks about how he used to go to a hotel here and he would just ask questions in the lobby or at the lunch table. He was like living not in a nice place, he had no cash whatsoever, but when he saw people that he thought looked rich

or interesting, he would just ask them questions. And I think with the Internet, sometimes we think that questions don't matter anymore, and we go to the internet to get answers, and if instead you can make a human connection and get curious about them, they'll give things to you. And so one of my I played a game when I was really young, which is I kind of started collecting mentors who never knew they were my mentor. And I

think this is a really clever thing to do. And I remember one in particular, Bob Kendall, and BKA is what we call him. He was super high up at I don't know if it was gold Men or Credits Suite at the time, one of the companies, and he was so like out of my range, like you know when somebody else is in a company, and I was

basically the intern and he was the big dog. But I got a couple of chances to interact with him, and I would just ask him questions, like very simple ones like oh, you just took over this area of the business, like why what did you see there as opposed to this other area where a lot of people are going. I would just kind of beque curious. And then I would do a thing that I think probably helped me make more mentors than anything else, which is

I would get their contact information. I would never ask them for anything. I would largely just say, Hey, that piece of advice that you gave me the other day that was really useful and I applied it this way, thank you for doing that. Or i'd see if his name was written somewhere he had done a research paper or something. I might send it to him, like with a couple highlighted things like these lines were incredible, Thank

you for doing that. Then after I had done that a few times, I might give them one question like, hey, you know, I'm thinking about going into marketing or sales, and I'm trying to figure out how do you decide which career path is more interesting to you? Do you have just like a one sentence about it, or do you have one book that you'd like to read, like really short? And I remember I sat down with BK years and he was like, you know the funny thing about you? And I was like, oh, what you know?

And he was like, you like somehow made me your mentor but you never asked. And then I started caring about what happened to your career but I kind of never meant to, which is like a very aspergerzy finance thing to do. And he's like, did you do that on purpose? And I was like, I get, you know,

I don't know. I was young then, so I don't know, but maybe that tiny transfer of Hey, I have advice and somebody actually takes it, uses it, continuously wants nothing from me for it, and then gives me a positive feedback loop that I'm making change on their life is so rare, so right.

did this. How do I discover my purpose? And it's like and it's like the person on the other side has no idea how to compute all of that algorithmically and give you a really profound answer back that they genuinely be will help you, which means they probably won't respond, or if they don't respond, it will be extremely short, and then you feel disgruntled and upset that they didn't value your whole life story, and then now you probably

lose touch. Whereas your advice was just so perfect because the idea that you were sending them their own work with a couple of highlights, one sentence question, one piece of insight, and then that person, like you said, becomes invested in your life. Such great advice, Cody, I've really, really mean that. I've never had mentorship advice better than that.

And the last thing I'll say is I totally disagree with the advice today that a lot of like kind of well known people give, which is, once you outgrow people, leave them behind you, you know, and a lot of people say like, well they were my mentor, but I've superseded on my mentors. Oh no, yeah, And I hear

that often from like the business community. You know. It's like you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with, so make sure there are awesome and it's like yeah, but also don't forget how you got there because you never know. Mentorship has like multi layers to it. You can get mentored from above but also below, I mean your team teaching us beforehand. How do not sound

like boomers? Right? So, like there's that, you know, you can also have somebody that's a higher that like, for instance, I think a lot about the idea that like Peter Teal, whether you like him or not, really rich guy gives money to Mark Zuckerberg, right, whether you like him or not, Mark Zuckerberg then goes to become richer than Peter Teel. Now is Peter mad because Mark made more money than him? I highly doubt it, because Mark made Peter a ton

of money. And at one point, you know, the imbalance was Peter was way up here and Mark was down here, and now it's probably flipped. And how cool is that that? Like somebody who used to be sort of below you, you've helped in some way get above you, and then

you get to like value transitfer the other way. So I will say, like, maybe if I gave one other piece of advice on mentorship, it would be collect and keep with you the people even after you've superseded them, you know, yeah, and try to be their best mentortely like I mean mentee, I always try to like them.

I want them to be able to brag about me. Yeah, Like, no matter what you teach me, I want to be the best mentee to the point that they're like, hey, look how smart I am because of that, And I want to give them all the credit on it.

I took your advice. This is as you were saying, And I think that's so core to what was different about mentorship, where like you're saying, now, in this TikTok Instagram world, I think there's just so much advice everywhere that we're not really getting the opportunity to digest it, put it into practice, and then report on it as well.

And I love your idea of gratitude. I mean, I remember when I joined the company as an intern years ago, and I was only there for like a summer internship, but they put up the pictures of the founders of the company and then they were like, yeah, but we don't care about them, the old guys anyway, And I remember realized, like I was just like, wow, that's really ungrateful because none of us would be here right now

if it wasn't for them. And yes, they're not alive anymore, and yes that was a long time ago, but I fully agree with you that. And also, you just don't know when you're on the way up when you're on the way down. Your mentors, generally, if they're older than you in the beginning, even if you become more successful than them materially, I believe they have so much more

spiritual wisdom to give you over time. Like I've got mentors same way who helped me out when I was in my late twenties, and today there's so much more helpful when they talk to me about what it feels like being a dad, Like I'm not a dad right now, but he's been a dad and his kids are in their mid twenties and he has a great relationship with them. I'm like, I'm not there at that level. So mentorship also takes across not just financial, but relationships, you know, emotionally, mentally,

there's so many other areas. Oh yeah, so leaving someone behind his terrible advice.

don't know why it got to me. Somehow it bothered me. And you know, this was a while ago, and I remember telling him for some reason. And often it only bothers me if I feel like there's a kernel of truth to it. So if they like really nail my imposter syndrome, or they really nail like, you know, is she as smart as she thinks? She like something that I'm like that I worry about too. If they get that, I'm like, dang it, I'm paying attention now. That's not good.

But I remember I said to him, like, you know, I'm just bothered and I want to do something about it. And he was like, are you going to listen to me? And I was like, maybe, what what are you going to tell me to do? And he's like, I want you too, picture this guy having all the success in the world. I want you to wish him so much. Well, it becomes like a bit bizarre, and I want you to actually feel it. And again I'm not that touchy feeling.

I'm pretty spreadsheety. So when he told me that, I'm like, fine, but like, I don't think there's going to be an outcome here like that. And he's a wonky, very smart guy, so it's not anyway. So I did it, and I like really thought about it. I was like walking in New York, and I was like, you know what, I do wish this guy well, because I bet it is sad if you are, like, if you're in a place where all you're doing is hating on somebody online all the time, I bet you are kind of sad. So

I started like empathizing with him and thinking about it. Anyway. Not two weeks later, the guy does a public apology for like and does this long dm to me. You know, my husband has like a long memory, so it's like, not, you know, let's get that guy. But I was like, I just learned such a lesson and maybe it doesn't always work like that, and maybe there's still me in you.

Later but I really think sometimes you learn just as much from your haters as you do from your mentors, and so don't underestimate not only the same where we kind of get all hot and bothered, like, you know, if you don't got hate, you're not doing anything maybe, but also, wow, you can learn a lot from the type of feelings you get when people doubt you. And

I think that's just as important. And I wouldn't be where I was today if I didn't have some big haters that I felt like I needed to prove wrong.

how you're getting people to think differently about ownership. You had this video that I remember watching that got like eleven million views talking about this vending machine business, like, what are some of the most unusual businesses you've seen people make money from? Because I think it goes back to what we were speaking about earlier. We're all after this sexy, shiny money and most people are making loads of money through really un sexy random things, vending machines being a

case in point. Walk us through some of us unusual businesses. You've discovered people making money.

my family when I was growing up. I meant I interned for a woman who is my brother's friend's mom, and they were worth what I thought was a bajillion dollars back then, and it was from an equipment rental company, so this guy was worth somewhere near fifty million dollars. From one idea, I buy some landscaping equipment, some tractors, et cetera, and I don't sell them, I don't flip them.

But I realized that construction companies only want to use them part time, so I actually rent them out and so this guy would make the cost of a piece of equipment back inside of ninety days, and so instead of getting whatever difference is between him buying the equipment and selling it for a little bit more, he would make the entire purchase price over every ninety day cycle.

And I remember, like thinking back the day when I saw that you can make money doing anything, and in fact, you probably make it more often in the things that nobody thinks about because you have less competition, because it also sounds really boring, and you know, the Mark zucker brote Bergs and brilliant minds of the world, they don't want to mess around with equipment rental. But people like me who are maybe like kind of smart but not that smart, could make a lot of money doing it.

And so there are three types of businesses that I obsess about. I call them overarchingly mainStreet businesses. So the ideas, basically, what if all the money is actually made in community businesses that we use every single day. Your roofing company, your podcast production company, you send outsourced editing clips too. You know the cobbler that actually cleans up shoes on the corner store. All of these businesses. When you see

that they've been in business for thirty years. It's not because they were making money or because they were losing money. And it's not because they got venture capital, because they didn't. So these things actually are profitable, which is kind of rare, so main street businesses. And then underneath it, I call them three different types. The first one is the gateway drug business, which basically I use that as a little

bit of a joke, but it's like a vending machine. Well, everybody understands how a venue machine works, right, You get the machine, you take the cash out, you input the things. It's a straightforward business. It doesn't need a lot of people, and I think it's a great place for like young people to start because you learn the game of business. A similar one might be what I call a people light business, which might be like a laundromat. So a

laundromat is like, in some ways a slightly bigger venue machine. Right, you put clothes in, the clothes get washed, you take the clothes out, you put coins in and return, right. And that doesn't have a lot of employees, and they're not super super expensive on the scale of it, and so you go, okay, we got gateway drug businesses. We got asked, we've got people light businesses, and then finally we get into what I call the trades businesses overall

or boring businesses. And these are things like we own a company called Resi Brands that has a window cleaning company called Pinks, a roofing company, a painting company called that One Painter. And what's wild is with these businesses. If you were to look right now jay At, like the Forbes one hundred list of the richest people in the world, and you were to see what they made

their money from. They're not celebrities, they're not singing songs, they're not doing YouTube like, we're not even touching the amount of wealth they have. What do most of them have in common more than anything else, finance and business ownership, and the businesses they own are largely boring businesses. Richest woman in the World Kim Kardashian no roofing magnet, literally the richest woman in the world. This was as of twenty twenty two, so we should see if the numbers

are updated. But is a woman who started a very large roofing company. And so, you know, I wish somebody told us this when we were younger because instead, you know who knows this, the private equity guys. And I don't mean to villainize anybody I was in private equity. I know plenty of good people in that industry, but again, centralization of power. Private equity companies in two thousand owned four percent of the companies in the US. Now they

own twenty percent. It's almost one out of every four companies in the US is owned by private equity. You know what they're buying, like crazy, the trades, the service businesses, the boring businesses, the print money that service our community. And I think this is our chance to take those things back.

entrants in there. When I hear you say that, the thing that comes to my mind is what skills and talents to people need to be able to run those businesses. How much industry knowledge do they need? What business skills are core and important, because I think the mistake is again with the kind of world we live in right now, someone goes, I love what Cody saying. I get it.

I'm going to go buy vending machines, and then all of a sudden you've got a garage full of like twenty vending machines and you don't what to do with them because you don't understand business. So what core business skills are needed and what should we be developing in order to run any of these businesses? How much industry knowledge do we need?

amount of up front time learning. I promise you'll make more money that way, you know. I kind of think about sometimes people go, well, why don't I use x amount of dollars I have instead of learning, just buying the business and I go, Does that ever work out well? Where we don't know what we're doing, but we plow a bunch of money into it because we want to just go do the thing, it doesn't work out, So

spend your time learning how to execute first. Now that said, I really think there's just three key skills that we need to learn to grow a business. The first one is deal making. We got to understand how to do a deal. The second one is really a mixture of grit and endurance. So it's actually not tactics, it's how hard am I willing to work? What am I willing to sacrifice for the things that I want? And for

how long am I willing to do that? And so Angela Duckworth famously University of Pennsylvania popularized grit is the most important thing to measure success. So it's basically like how much pain can you tolerate? And if you can tolerate a lot of pain, turns out you have a higher likelihood of making money. Business is really just like elongated periods of low level pain. Sometimes you have like what's called an acute or like a big jump in pain.

But for the most part you know this. It's like what is what is running a business or starting a business. It's like, well, you're looking at your statements pretty much. Often you're like messing around with marketing. It's kind of like low level pain. And so that's the second point. And the third point is actually maybe a little rare too, which is just a lot of people obsess on how so what skills do I have to have? Exactly? How do I start a business? How do I tax? Structure,

structure at the business? How do I get my first customers? All important and good questions, But the real pros know you don't ask how you ask who? Who can I go to who already has ten thousand hours where I can steal their homework. So now in business, if I go, hey, I don't know how to do our taxes, I go find somebody else who has done taxes for us. And it doesn't mean you have to pay for them. It just means you have to talk to them, and often

people will help you. And so I am I who second, and then the third tier is buy So the really really rich when they have a problem, they don't think, how do I fix it. They don't think who can fix it? They think, how do I buy the solution to my problem? Because if I can buy the business, if I can buy the solution, then it's almost it's a higher guarantee of winning. And so that last one

is really about your connections. And so I think if you understand deal making, you are honest with yourself about how much work you're willing to do one where the other, and you are willing to ask people for help. I think just about anybody can run a business. Now. Can anybody run Amazon? No, of course not. Could anybody run your businesses which are quite big, No.

And in business you basically want to have your little deal box of what you want. So do you want income of x amount? Do you want it to be located in la? Do you want it to scratch an artistic itch and make you money? And you sort of fill out this box you know what you want, and then again you know the universe. I think a lot of times wants to help us out, but we don't know what we want. So how is it going to help us? Because we can't tell it one way or

the other. And I think it's the same with business, you know, because we could go fifteen ways from sideways on, Like we have something called the nine p's, which are like the nine ways you scale a business to nine figures. But I don't want to stop people. I want them to start small and reasonable and know that the biggest thing in between you and the thing that you want is the knowledge on learning and the language of money, on getting after it kind of intensely, and then on

asking for help. Like if you have those three things, you can at least start. And I don't want people to stop because they don't have XYZ leadership skill, Like I believe in your ability to figure it out.

little business together. If it doesn't work out, it's not going to murder us. It's gonna hurt, but we're going to learn a lot, and we're gonna diversify our risk amongst us, and we're going to do it together. Or maybe you partner with your dad, or maybe you partner with your dad's friends or your mom's friends or whatever. And so don't think that you have to do this game of entrepreneurship and acquisition by yourself. You don't. The big boys in private equity don't. You don't have to either.

often come to you. The thing is, though, when even when we have a higher level of skill, we often don't really know what to do when it comes to us. We don't know how to do zero risk deals to us. And so I like learning deal making even if you have a ton of skills and a ton of money, because you can do a deal that seems unfair, but because you recognize your value, the deal is incredibly fair.

In fact, the richer you are and the more audience you have, money you have which I call capital, the more coding ability you have aka like tech Jeff Bezos, engineering capability or labor you have access to, so employees or people that will work with you, the better deals you can do. And that's like the two two three oh three level. And anybody who's listening who actually has access to money and capital, you are crazy if you're not thinking about doing deals and learning it because it

is the ultimate positive form of leverage. So I wish that we learned this earlier. This is how so many celebrities get screwed by the way, and you know, they get screwed because they do a deal, they don't understand the terms they signed. Their agent understands the terms they signed, Their agent isn't actually insteentive aligned with them long term, and so they end up getting screwed. It broke my heart when I watch that documentary with Val Kilmer, like,

oh God, first of all, you would love it. It's beautiful. The documentary is beautiful. He wrote it, produced it and directed it and started it and it's just a beautiful piece of art. But also he lost everything. I mean he has basically no money now, no way, uh huh. And the reason why is because of a series of deals that he did where other people made it and he didn't. And so even if you have a ton of money, you got to be really careful about how you structure things in order to keep it. And the

bigger that you get, the bigger target you have. And so it's important to think about that. And like the Russian proverb trust but verify, which is like trust nobody. I'm sorry, trust everybody, but verify that they are actually on your best terms, which is why I always doesn't count unless you've signed on the line that has dotted in the words of Alec Baldwin. So if you don't have deals coming at you because you don't have massive you know, fame or money or whatever like a normal person,

and then the easiest way is to find deals. It's called a nation and private equity. So in private equity, if you think about what they do, they go around and they cold call small businesses. So they literally will cold call a plumbing company up all over the Midwest and ask like, hey, you guys want to sell or I get them all the time because I own these so our small businesses, Hey can we buy your landscaping company? So one one way you find deals is called on

off market deal searching. So you basically turn on what I call your reticular activating system, which is basically just a system inside of your brain that is trained from the African Savannah to say, if I keep repeating this thing brain, it means it's important and I might die if I don't pay attention to it. And so in real life, what happens to you is once you play the game of business enough, then once you like deals, Like have you ever gone into somebody else's podcast studio?

And because you probably are obsessed with podcasting, you walk in and you're like, hmm, that's an interesting way to do that set up. I don't think I would do that. Oh I like that they did that. Let's steal that, right. Your reticular activating system is so turned onto podcasts that you cant help. But notice all around you things you would do differently or that you like the same thing

happens with business and deals. So now when I go into like a corner store, or when I go into a restaurant, I go or Jim Jim's get me for some reason. It's like you have me, you have my credit card, you have recurring revenue. I come in here every single day, sell me more shit? Why don't you sell me more things? You definitely should. And so one I will say, as you learn deal making, I can

promise you only really one thing. When it comes to you becoming a better deal maker, your reticular activitying system comes on. So what's going to happen in deal finding? Yes, you could cold call, just like private equity, but instead kind of steep yourself in the type of deal you are looking for, steep yourself in what skills you actually have, and then you're going to see them all around. You won't be able to turn it off. It'll be like when you buy a car. All of a sudden, the

car's all over the place. After you bought it, You're like, did everybody was it a sale? No? Your brain starts making you notice it. And so the best way to find deals is you start just having conversations with guys, because again cash Love's curiosity. Every time you go into a small business, you just go like, ah, amazing, you go, I mean, LA is full of them. You walk into a cool retail shop. Oh that's cool, man, this's your store. It is I mean probably fifty percent of the time

it's theirs. And then you say to the guy like, how long you been doing this? A while? Do you want to keep you want to keep doing this?

and these were all like new books. They're all newly published the Beautiful and I bought a ton and they were just like And then one person at that store just said to me, oh, by the way, like, do you love books. I was like yeah, And I was like, I'm really looking for vintage books though, be cool to own some like antique books and things like that. And she said, well, oh, there's this random store around the corner and it's like a printing press, like an old

school binding book. But I've seen books in there before when you go check it out. So I literally go walk into this books and basically, actually, first of all, I walk outside. It looks like no one operates it. It looks completely run down. You wouldn't walk past it and think oh cool shop. You'd walk past it and not even you'd think no one, no one's inside it. So I'm kind of looking around. I'm like knocking on the door just to see I do see some books.

And this lady opens the door and she's got like an old school binding press in there, and old school you know, all the old school tools that how books were bound in the past. And then she's got this bookshelf and I said, oh, I heard you might sell books, Like could I take a look, and she was like, oh no, I just have these books because I got divorced a few years back. My husband owned a bookstore.

He left me with like fifty thousand books or something crazy, and she goes most of them at home, but there's probably like I don't know, a thousand yere or whatever it is. You can take whatever you want. And I was like, I'm happy to pay you, but sure. So I spent like two three hours and I was like getting really you know, I loved it. It was like it was literally like being inside of a secret cave of

books and I was like finding all this stuff. So I got a stack of maybe like twenty books and I was like, hey, look, i'd love to pay you for them, Like you know, I'm good for it, and I'm grateful that you've even allowed me in. And I forced her a little bit. She finally took some money, and then there was one book while she was going through and she's like, I've been looking for this book for like five years, and she goes, I can't sell this one to you, and I was like sure, like

I'm never gonna, you know, have it. Whatever. Anyway, I come home and I started checking all these books out online. They were all worth like at least one hundred dollars each. I probably paid like five to ten dollars each for them. And it was just a really good example to me of like this random place that and I wanted the book,

so I kept them. But it was just this random place that was like this treasure trove of all of this great material and had someone wanted to go in and buy fifty thousand books and sell them online or sell them anywhere, there was a real business there and it was a smaller It was a very simple example of just how easy it was to come across something that that I wouldn't even I wasn't even looking for it.

nobody sees me. And like one of our copywriters, she was so lovely, she said a thing to me. I was like, oh, she died or her blue And I was like, Marcella, looks great. Like she's an older woman, probably like mid fifties. And I was like, looks great, Like you know, what was the impetus? And she's like, you know, as you get older, I realized that, like nobody would talk to me, and I feel like they

were looking through me. And she's like, so she's like, so I was with my one of my little nieces and I we dyed our hair little strips of it pink together, and she was like, And I was walking across the street and this young man kind of yelled over to me and he's like, hey, mama, like the hair. And she's like, I can't remember the last time a young man talk to me. She's like, so I anytime I now feel a little out of it, I die

my hair blue. And to be fair, like in the past, sometimes when I saw people do that, I was like, really, what's going on here, Like, what's what's the move? And then I realized, oh, like, just because we value something one way doesn't mean that everybody else values it the other way. And so in order to break your frame and to see businesses all around, you don't assume that the same things you value other people do. It's like, I've never really believed in the Golden rule, which is

treat others how you want to be treated. It's like buy and large, treat them how they want to be treated unless that breaks how you want to be treated. And I think that's the same with business owners. I mean my uncle Eb, which is one of the main reasons I started publicly about business talking about businesses online. He had a business did a couple million dollars a year in revenue and you can it's called eb Holmes Plumbing.

It was in Phoenix, Arizona, and he got sick with cancer and decided he wanted to shut the business down. You know, he's in his seventies and was like, you know, I'm ready to be done. And what he didn't know at the time is that a business that is doing a couple of millions of dollars in revenue and a couple of millions of dollars in profit is worth millions

of dollars. And so this man who spent his life building up a plumbing company that probably would have thought, honestly, like if he was here, he would say, Cody, I couldn't have sold that thing like that. That wasn't really you know, it was sort of And this is what most baby boomer business owners think. They're like, who's going to buy this? Because how many times have you had a business where you didn't want to be in it before? Have you ever had that before?

What happens, everybody's up, not one. If you go down and I go liars, I laugh because the truth of the matter is, you haven't been in the game long enough if you put your hand down. But if you've been in the game long enough, you go absolutely. Now, I wouldn't sell every one of my businesses, but there is at some point one business, and if you cove he here the right day, maybe I would. So I think we have to like change our programming to realize

all around us, every business has a value. That book selling business that shut down. I bet there was a value in the lease that they had. It might have been in California. Sometimes they have leases that are locked in. There could have been value in just the lease contract to transfer it. There could have been value in the assets, the books. There could have been value in the employees because you can do an aqua hire. There could have been value in the website listing. What about the Yelp

and Google reviews? There could have been value in the IP. What about the logos and the brand and the name. What if they had one of those old school original you know, Cody dot com websites before, like we now have to have websites that are like four hundred and fifty two words, right, And so every single business has some value. And if you can find the business where the value to the owner is not as much as the value is to you, and then you got a really good deal.

you wish. And I think I really appreciate you nailing it by just saying it's grit, right, that's what's required, that's deeply required. What's a skill that you think you wish you'd known you had to develop at the beginning of the journey, that you learned too late.

so I was sort of struggling. And I remember one day the teacher was getting really frustrated with me, And teaching is a hard job, so I get it. But he looked at me in front of the class and he said, man, I think Helen Keller would have a better shot at winning an archery contest than you would at winning in finance. And at the time, I was like heartbroken about this and like embarrassed, you know, and did it in the way teenagers do, just like I

don't care whatever. But I was like very sad about it. And then I love my parents deeply. But my parents always used to say to my brother, you're so smart, You're so smart. You're so smart, You're so smart. And to me, they would always say, you work so hard, you work so hard, you work so hard, and at the time it was kind of mad, like I'm also smart, what about me? And they would always be like, well, Cody's not very good at math, in the same way that they would say I'm not very good at singing.

The singing is true, I'm not good at that one. But that math thing stuck with me for a long time, and so I always thought that it was big and hard and scary to be quote unquote good at math. And when it comes to making money, the math is really simple, guys. And I'm bad at making math, so bad that Helen Keller would be better at archerie than I am. And so if any part of this skill is scaring you, I think it often starts with like, oh my god, I look at a spreadsheet and I panic.

You know, I have to calculate something, and I panic. I look at a calculator and I panic. And I would say, just like, lean into that slightly, because I think in finance we do a very sneaky thing, which is, I think we try to make it seem really scary and hard for the average person to become rich. Why Because if it's scary and hard for you to do it, guess what I get to do. I get to charge a lot of money for it. And so that's why most of us take our money, and like, think about

it for a second. We take our money and we give it to other people to take care of. Now, when you give your kids to other people to take care of, one hundred percent like their opinions about that, people say, no, you got to take care of your kids, you got to grow your kids. But with wealth, we can just say no, no, I don't understand anything. I just give it to this guy or year he figures it out.

That's really not how we should treat money. And so the main skill that I think you should think about is one of my mentors said to me, money is a cruel mistress. She'll leave you if you don't pay attention to her. And I think about that a lot, Like, just give the money a little attention, give the math a little attention. You're more capable than you think you are. And it's really not possible to be bad at this type of math. So if your head you think I'm

bad at math, I'm bad at spreadsheets. It's really not possible. I'm bad at calculus, but you can figure this stuff out.

I want you to go grab a copy if you've enjoyed today's discussion. This is one of those books that I hope you read with your friends, share insights. Maybe you'll invest in something together, build something together. It's a great book to pass on to a family member or a friend who's been struggling with money thinking about it. Please do not hesitate with this because it's so easy to keep pushing money off and keep having it be

a source of anxiety in your life. And I think Cody's broken it down and make it really simple based on how to overcome your fears and go create something brilliant. So Cody, thank you for putting your heart and soul into this work. And we end every episode of On Purpose with a final five. These are a fast five where you have to answer each question in one word to one sentence maximum. So, Cody Sanchez, these are your

final five. The first question is what is the best financial advice you've ever heard or received.

invest in me. And here's why I think you should be the one to invest. That's called a one sheet or a tear sheet. The second one is a pitch deck. From Golden I learned something called a three piece, which is people process performance, So I do that in all my pitch deck, which basically is like why us, Why should you bet on us? Because at the end of the day, if you're asking for somebody's money, it's about the opportunity for sure, but it's really like, do I

want to invest in Jay? Do I believe in Jay? And then second is process, so like what is the opportunity, what is the way we're structuring this, what are we investing in? What is the process by which you're going to take our money and go bring it back with friends? And then lastly is performance. So if I give you this, why do you think that I'm going to make money? How much money am I going to make? And why should I invest in you instead of all these other things.

So if you have those two things, that is the like typical one on one for raising money.

ideas are just not the thing that works. Like you know, you were talking about like Google was like the twenty first search engine, Like they weren't the first search engine. It wasn't a unique idea. It was just that they had a great way of executing and why they've evolved into this mega, mega megabusiness now.

Why Because it's actually quite hard to break. And so I think also if you can show a history of winning, and that's a narrative you can frame, you're more likely to get cash to that's great.

So what your sauna and cold plunges? And I think I bought mine on Amazon for literally like a thousand bucks each, Then that's money well spent.

you have on your first dating with somebody. You're like, the thing is, we're in love and we're meant to be, and that about six months later you're like, also, no, and so same thing with business partners. Give yourself a nice twelve month window. It's hard to hide who you are for a year. The second thing when doing business deals is when you partner with somebody, you don't actually want to partner with somebody that's just like you. It's

the same with marriage. It's why dating apps are so tough. I mean I was talking to Sean rad about that, the founder to Tender of the other day. I was like, the thing is, you don't realize what you did, but you allowed people to self select for people that are just like them. And it turns out the statistics all show that we do not last in marriages as long or relationships as long when our person is just like us. They actually we actually have to have this like creative

difference between the two of us. There's a ying to the yang in everything in the universe, and so the studies tell us you need two different types in order to succeed long term. You can some overlap is necessary, obviously, but you don't actually want to date yourself. It's the same with a partner. Make sure that if you're a great salesperson and a parent with another salesperson, you've got a great operational person and a great salesperson. Maybe that works.

And the last thing about great partnerships is everything else is figure outable if there is enough drive. And so, but my father says, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink, And so I always overoptimize on this idea of desire, like why do you want to partner with me? And do I believe that that why is so big that we can overcome anyhow? And if your why is like I kind of want to make a couple dollars on the side, but I might do this, but I might do this, but I

might do this, I call you a tow tepper. You're actually not all the way in. You're not fully in with me. And so at our company, we just had one of these people the other day, a young kid's a stud but he came to us and he was like, yeah, I want to do this job with you, but I also have these other things. And you know, once you've interviewed I've interviewed thousands and thousands of people by now, so you know I can kind of get to the

heart of it. And I remember Tanner was sitting in the interview with me, and Tanner's face was just falling as he was listening to it because I was kind of faireading out a few things, and the young guy was like, well, I have this channel and I want to grow this and I want to do that. And I was like, why do you want to be here? Then? Like, if you want to do all those other things like no, no, I want to do this too, and we can do

it all together. And I said, the thing in life that I wish somebody had told me earlier is when you're starting out, you can never be excellent at multiple things at once. Eventually you can have excellence in multiple things because you can attract top talent. But in the beginning, you're either all in or you are a barely concealed series of distractions. And so a partnership make sure they are all in and their why is super super big. Otherwise they should go find their why and it's not you.

about taxes. It'd be like, don't allow centralization of tax power above a certain amount, and the reason why is kind of technical, but basically, we want to give as much money as possible back to you, the builders. The only way that money and thus freedom is created is from individual humans who build things. Governments cannot build things. Governments can take capital from somewhere else and they can allocate it to other things and equalize. And that is

great and wonderful and necessary. But I would be really careful about what I see as core to our society today, which is, are we allowing too few of people to control two money much of us? And it starts with our money. And I know there are lots of other things we could care about when it comes to politics, and that's very important too. But I was in Argentina when they closed my business and made it illegal overnight

because they nationalized it. And I have seen countries fall apart at the floor of tax station and nationalization, and so I guess it would be a government is never allowed to nationalize, and a government is never allowed to overly tax, and every chance we get, let's believe in the builder and the individual and not the big huge entity like you guys can figure out you don't need them all the time.

And I want to thank you for doing the work you do and really appreciate how practical, tactical and access that you're making this world of money that's been so hidden and kept aside. So thank you so much.

own a business, three percent. We need more of you builders out there in the world, and so everything we do is to try to create more humans who have skin in the game, who are creating things with your beautiful brains and your hands, and like, I'm an awe

of you. So every time I meet like the laundromat owner, the car wash owner, the entrepreneur that's building something inside of a business, like I just hope you know there's so much dignity in the world and it's because of the work you do, and without you, you know, it's actually not good to go back to the stone. Like we have all the things we have today because of each of you, and that includes you and building this business. So thank you for having me.