Codie Sanchez Reveals 4 Profitable Business Ideas Men Are Sleeping On

26:04But yeah, I mean, the problem is I didn't get to actually do it. So I don't know the true numbers, but that seems reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Fair enough. Okay, so Halloween store, interesting. You have a couple other ones on here that I just don't know anything about, but I want to hear what you have to say. You wrote the words, fantasy, werewolf, romance, novel. What are you talking about? Yeah. So we have a group where we all buy businesses together. And this one lady comes on and she's like, I bought a romance novel book company. So they write them, they distribute them, and they market them, sort of three levels to the business.

26:43I was like, that's fascinating. and she started explaining some of the titles. And then she's kind of a funny character. And so she was like, the thing is romance, werewolves, huge category, like biggest growing category. And I was like, okay, talk to me about that. And she basically said of all the titles that she has, I can't remember how many she had, but let's say like 25, 30 titles that she bought, the outselling ones, the 80-20 rule for her 25 to 30 book business were this fantasy romance category. And then because I'm a woman and I also read books, I was like, let's look at my thing. Like, do I ever read this category?

27:21And it turns out I'm a fantasy reader and some of them have werewolves in them. So I was like, this is weird. Am I weird? Is she weird or is this category? And then I went and researched it. And I think you guys have covered this before, but there's like$1.3 billion are sold of romance books a year. And it's huge. It's like almost in some cases, you know, a quarter to half of the entire industry. But the part that got me the most was realizing romance is growing hugely, but it's with like, we're the target audience my age. So like somewhere in the realm of 18 to let's call it 45, which used to be like the long-haired Fabio romance novels.

28:02That used to be the deal. And I guess now this fantasy level is taking over. And what's interesting is you can kind of tell because if you look up the best selling books of all time, Harry Potter, 500 mil, Twilight, 160, Fifty Shades, 150. There's like kind of morphing together. And so I'm curious to see what happens next, but I kind of like this industry. I can't really see you writing a werewolf fantasy novel, Sean, but maybe. Maybe it's a stunt. You know that Sam wrote a romance novel once. You know that story? Oh, I forgot about that. Did he write it or did he write it? They like ghost wrote it.

28:38So basically same sort of observation. He's like, you know, when people are like, oh, Amazon bestseller. And then it's like everybody and their mom is Amazon bestsellers. Like, what does this word mean? Actually, you know, it's like in the bottom of the power rankings of meaningful titles, it's like Forbes 30 into 30. And even below that is Amazon bestseller because it means nothing. And so what he found was that to be a bestseller, you basically pick some niche category. And then for a day, you sell a thousand copies or something like that at 99 cents. And you've become a bestseller. You screenshot that.

29:13You're a bestseller. You get the flag. Some version of that. So it's a very gamified thing. There's all these subcategories. So you're trying to just get to the number one inside health and wellness inside by a new emerging author or whatever. There's all these subcategories. So he found somebody who had done this. So they were they were baking good money, like tens of thousands a month, I think, selling romance novels on Amazon, on e-books. And so he commissioned somebody to write one. He wrote like a couple and it was like boss and it was like a boss and a secretary. And another one was like a werewolf and a something.

29:52And he commissioned somebody to write it and then they wrote it and they did it. They hit the Amazon bestseller. It's out there somewhere. You can find this. Now, does he still make money on that? No, no, no. Not anymore. I think they took it down. That's incredible. Well, I mean, honestly, if you go and you... By the way, the blog post is called Confessions from the Scammy Underground World of Kindle Books. And so his book was called Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin. Jesus. Sometimes that guy... That's incredible. That is incredible. He has way better historical business shenanigans he's done than me.

30:31Oh, wait, wait. No, no. Sorry. Sorry. I got to clear the record. That wasn't his. That was the name of somebody else's. His was called Captivating Claire. And the cover is this really ripped black guy and then this secretary. And it says, a first-time billionaire romance. Okay, there we go. I'm like, okay, that's slightly better. I like the other story better. I think we should cut this part and just tell everybody the other one was his name. I think that's the move. But you know what's fascinating is when you go to like, so if you go to your bookstore and you look up top charts free, I mean, this category is everywhere.

31:06And then to your, the point that I thought was interesting is the move, I didn't realize the Amazon bestseller thing. That's why they put it up for 99 cents. The reason that I thought, and this lady was telling me, is you put one up for 99 cents or free. You get it on the top free list and then you hammer these things out. So you have 472 versions of Fabio the Fantastic Werewolf. And the likelihood that people are going to buy all of those in the series is apparently incredibly high. And so I thought that was fascinating. And a lot of these authors, like if you look at them, they have 50 books out, which must mean somebody's ghostwriting for them.

31:43So I don't think you could do it any other way. Yeah, or like chat GPT. By the way, you know the story of Fifty Shades of Grey? Not like the book story, but like the backstory, how it came to be? Uh-uh. Oh, this is crazy. So I don't know if you've ever seen the big fan fiction site, Wattpad. It just sold. It's like a Canadian company. So what happened is Twilight comes out. It's a vampire story. It's great. And then somebody goes on Wattpad and writes a fan fiction version of Twilight, basically. And that was the early V1 of Fifty Shades of Grey. People liked it and then somebody picked it up and they re-branded it as its own thing instead of as a Twilight fan fiction as its own brand.

32:30And it became like, you know, whatever, the third or fifth or whatever bestselling book of all time started as a fan fiction blog on Wattpad, I think. Well, it makes sense, actually, because it's all just sort of copywriting in some way. You know, Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey, right? And everybody basically uses that from the Bible to Star Wars to, you know, Twilight, etc. I mean, the other thing that I remember, so I actually went to a high school that was right next to, and so we were close with the high school of the woman who wrote Twilight, Stephanie. And I remember when it was going wild, that wasn't my category.

33:05And so I like reached out to her and was like, hey, like, congratulations on your first book. I'm so excited for you. you know I just wanted to let you know like I bought a few books for you you know to help out and then retrospect and then I like looked at her say I was like oh cool cool cool anyway

33:27no I don't know I don't think she did but you know what Stephanie I was here for you from the beginning yeah actually not from the beginning though that's the bad part it was already successful um that's really good okay so let's um let's do one more that's in this uh the segment that you called gets messaging this bitch have we gotten enough estrogen i don't know we got to get one more idea in here you go okay how about one that i think could be a billion dollar business but i don't have the how so the mfm listeners are super smart maybe you guys can figure out the how um you know lots of our friends and i don't know if you experience any of this sean but getting pregnant these days is like hard.

34:05You know, when we were young, I remember it was like, yeah, if you look at that guy sideways, like pregnant, you know, shake hands, pregnant, everybody's pregnant. And then as you get older, apparently it's like now impossible. And I've experienced this firsthand. It's like expensive. You know, you go to the doctors and then you have these different apps and then you're tracking 472 different things. And the whole experience is like awful and expensive. And so I think there's a huge opportunity to do something in it because once that little box gets checked, like a woman is ready to have a baby or whatever, like, I don't know, we turn into crazy people.

34:40We'll do whatever it takes. You know, you guys have, Sam was telling me some crazy stuff he was telling Sarah. I'm like, I don't think that's true about how to get pregnant. And anyway, so for instance, there's this company called Mira and And it has this little like egg-shaped tester. And this is like a little TMI, but like you pee on a stick and it tells you how fertile you are, whatever. And the, Sean, I kid you not, when I open the app, and I'm not a total idiot, like I can't tell what I'm tracking. And I can't tell what's happening here. There are no notifications. There are no gamifications in it.

35:14And they charge you, it's like$50 for the sticks that they send you. And then it's like, somebody should check my math on this. I'm definitely wrong on the number. but it's like 150 to 200 bucks for this tiny little plastic egg that has to be created in China. And that's it. And I never saw an ad for this. It's all like word of mouth referral. So I don't know what crazy ideas you have, but I feel like the people from MFM should solve this. Okay, let's brainstorm on the fly here. So first of all, when you started saying there was like this little egg-shaped thing, I thought where you were going was, like you said, like a sort of a smart device.

35:51So you pee on the stick, it tells you kind of where you're at in your cycle. But how cool would that be as a little bedside replacement to your alarm clock when it glows? Hey, it's time. It's time to get busy. And you can see based on the light. So that's a little more tasteful than these apps that are like your ESG levels are spiking right now or whatever. It's like, let's just add a little bit of romance to this process that becomes very, very clinical. And so I'm thinking bedside egg, bedside replacement to the alarm clock. Okay, that's idea number one. Idea number two, have you ever heard of the Flow app?

36:28Yes. I think it's Flow.health. It's the most popular pregnancy period tracking app in the world. Their website gets like 8 million uniques a month or something like that. Crazy. Last I had heard, they were doing something like 30 million-ish in ARR, which is pretty bonkers for a mobile app. And way more than you would think a niche mobile app like this would do. That was like five years ago that I heard that number. I would not be surprised if Flow was doing, you know, like 100 million. I'm just going to search the revenue, see if it's out now. Yeah, and how much they're worth. Because I couldn't also figure out the valuation on these companies.

37:08Like, Mira's got to be. Can you imagine? You get me at a point where you're going to know the second that a woman is pregnant, which is the highest likelihood of purchasing intent you could have. Right. And what would that data be worth? And then also you could sell the data to every medical provider imaginable and have add-ons and affiliate deals for X supplement, X thing you got to drink or whatever. Yeah, I agree with you. It's an extremely valuable sort of stage. That's a time-bound stage where you become pretty price insensitive, as you've noticed. So yeah, Flow, over 300 million people have downloaded the app.

37:50Revenue is over 100 million for this app. It's a billion-dollar app that started off as a period tracking tracker app. It started off as such a simple little mobile app at the time. So props to these guys. I think they're in Europe that built this thing. so I think the mobile app space was obviously you know kind of like one winner in this other ideas that I think are interesting so somebody said this to me the other day and I know nothing about this I had put it on my list of like to research but I haven't gotten around to it so I'll just say the 1 % of the idea that I have ready which is she goes somebody was talking to me she goes do you know how hard it is for a gay couple to adopt a baby and I said sure don't I have no idea how hard is it is it very hard she's like nearly impossible and she goes if you if anybody created a company that just helped gay male gay couples um adopt babies uh you know because they're usually that's like a very rich segment is like uh gay male couples it's like one of the highest like sort of average uh like household incomes uh obviously super high need or like no price sensitivity when it comes time and convoluted low nps um process and so i think if somebody just went interviewed like 100 couples that we're trying to adopt right now, I bet you could find a$500 million to a billion dollar business out of a hundred interviews of those couples.

39:08And I don't know what that idea is yet, but that's enough of a map for somebody to go find their own immunity idol, to use my survivor references. It's a good point. I mean, I've been messing around lately thinking about levels to the game of business. It would be interesting to categorize all businesses as what level on a, let's call it just a multiple and margin level. If you just say like, what multiple could you get for this business? And how high of margins do you get for this business? And maybe like how reasonable would it be for you get to, I don't know, 10 million or 100 million, whatever your goalpost would be.

39:41And I think like a level one business, a lower tier business that would be probably profitable on like day one to 30 would be helping just on the consulting aspect of that. Because you're right. I have a friend that paid$25 ,000 for help navigating the adoption process in Texas. And they, I should figure out what the name of the thing is that they asked for, but they paid a huge chunk of money just to help them figure out how to get higher on the lists for adoption in Texas. So if that exists, there's got to be 32 different ways to do consulting for adoption in this space. yeah yeah basically anybody who's like uh clear like in the airports but for all life processes not just lines at the airport so it's like uh somebody's doing this right now i saw for h1b visas they're like again like if you're an immigrant in the united states applying for a visa is literally like one of the like two things that keeps you up at night um and so there's people that are like we're just h1b like concierge um like we know this process inside out you don't.

40:43You're just sitting here Googling, reading forums. We know how to expedite some timelines. We know where you should pay money. We know where you shouldn't worry because it's just, this is normal. This is part of the standard delay. We know when you put together your application, like how to, which order to staple it together so that you have the best chance of success. And I find that like for these really complex workflows that are high ticket and high desire, like adopting a child, like getting your visa, people are willing to pay, you know, whatever 10 grand 20 grand in order to do it um obviously it's you know the richer segment there but but that that's and so you could go buy the lead for this you know you could advertise and get the lead for this uh you know through google for maybe two grand a lead but you're making 20 grand per person that off that comes out of that funnel that's smart well even we both invested you invested in hone health too right yeah i invested in them also and part of the stuff that I think is really smart with what they're doing is just, it's such a pain to get access to those type of, you know, TRT and different things that men want and do it in a legal way and really be able to trust what you're getting.

41:52And so there's probably a bunch of that inside the women's space too. I keep telling them they should launch something for women because I think it's a really underserved market. And if you think about it, you know, men sort of dominate most of the dieting trends in general. So you had like Tim Ferriss normalized keto. And so I tried keto for a while. And then I went to, I now have a Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who's a stud. And she's like, the thing is that doesn't work as well for women. I'm like, no, I read the book. I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan. And it just turns out a lot of that stuff, males, men and women are biologically different.

42:25And so, yeah, I think there's lots of cool ways to play in that space. Also like with stuff like peptides, although those are getting federally banned. So maybe not the best idea right now peptides getting federally banned yeah we should check my homework on that but that's the word from the husband is it like a peptide well my understanding is most of the reason why peptides are getting banned is because they are hard to uh patent and so um because of that there's you know conspiracy theorists like big pharma doesn't like that and so they're getting a lot of push back but my husband's like number one advocate thanks everybody should be on peptides should do research on it.

43:03Yeah, so semaglutide, which is Ozempic or Wegovi, that's the generic name. Semaglutide is a peptide. But, yeah, I don't think that can get banned. I think people will riot in the streets right now if Ozempic got banned. You also just will close out this section. You wrote life slash partner hack from a woman to a man, dot, dot, dot. What's your hack? Yeah, well, this also comes from my husband. Yeah, his hack is that the best money he's ever spent on being in a marriage is a subscription to flowers on a monthly basis for your wife. And I totally stand by this because it's cheap. There's this one I would use called Farm Girl Flowers.

43:42I don't have any affiliation. I'm not an investor. But it's like beautifully little burlap, tied, bow, et cetera. And comes every single month. You don't have to think about it. You get auto gifts for your wife. And I'm pretty sure I'll take almost any guarantee that there will never be a wife that would be mad if they got this on a consistent basis. but husbands are just not going to remember consistently. So do yourself a solid and just buy some flowers on a consistent basis. Okay, this is interesting to me. So first of all, what's the deal with flowers? Why do girls love flowers so much? Does it do something for you?

44:16Is it just like a mood brightener when you see it in the room? What is the actual appeal here? Because if I see flowers, nothing. Needle doesn't move, doesn't do anything for me. Like a candle. Like if I smell a candle, I'm in. you know if I don't know if we buy like a nice little piece of art I like it I see it it does something for me flowers I just don't get it what is the why what is the is it the flowers or is it this man loves me is that what it is it's just like reassurance it's definitely not the love part it's actually the flowers it's that could be balls no I think when you're in a relationship yeah it's lovely you're just like oh you know it's such a low if you think about high ROI low ash pain, number one winner, like number one winner.

45:02But I think it's actually just, we like plants and flowers. I don't know if that's a pre, you know, genetic disposition or if, you know, society's patriarchy is upon us, but like women like flowers. And so I don't know what the thing is, but also the fact that like, I remember when I was younger, Sean, like, I don't, I can't remember if you've ever said one on here, but when I was young and I had no money, there was very low-hanging fruit things for what a rich person would have. And one of them was like, one day, I'll have fresh flowers in my house every single day. And that'll mean I'm super rich.

45:39And so I think there's a part of it that's also just like, this is such a luxurious moment. Right. And this is just for me. I can't speak to anybody else. But now when I see them, I'm like, oh, it means we're doing okay. You know? And even if it's on a subscription and you know, he didn't think, He thought about it once three years ago. It doesn't matter. You just want the flowers. No, still love it. Okay, good. You just want the flowers. Okay, I'm going to report back. I'm going to try this. Report back. And I'll report back. But don't tell her I don't care and I just set it up on subscription three years ago.

46:06No qualifiers, okay? Well, no guarantees with me. All right. So let's go to the small business acquisition stuff. So first, explain your business model. So you got a media business, which is you create content. And your output is insane. Like I put you, Pomp and Sahil, I feel like are so consistent and so omnipresent everywhere and so consistent with your message. It is unbelievable to me. I can't imagine myself even doing that, even though I call myself a content creator in comparison to you guys, I'm nothing. I'm just a guy who talks to his friend Sam twice a week. So like the way you guys do it is crazy.

46:50That's a media business. that can be profitable on its own. People maybe advertise, subscribe. I think you have like a paid community or something like that that people pay for. I think that's pretty lucrative, right? Like that's a big moneymaker for you? Yeah, well, a couple of different things. One thing that's interesting of those three people you picked, what's the common denominator between all three of us? We were all in finance, which is categorically a fucking miserable industry to be in for the most part. And we all, I think, all of us did private equity or investment banking, which means that we had crazy, crazy hours for a long time.

47:21And so anytime somebody talks to me, I always kind of giggle when the creators are like, I'm burnt out. I'm like, from filming TikToks for a couple hours, I think we're fine. That tweet fatigued you? Yeah, it's totally, we're going to be okay. And so I think probably we're good at output because anything that can be mechanized, systematized, and replicated consistently, finance people are usually pretty good. So you have the content business and then you have your buying businesses stuff. Is there a third part of what you do, like just passive investing or anything like that? Or are those the two things that you do?

47:56Well, I guess we have sort of three different businesses now. So one is the content business, which is the one that's super public. And we kind of stumbled into that, I think only two years ago. So that would be like the latter part of 2020 is when we started creating a business around content. And I was in private equity at the time when I started that. and then um that today is comprised of like newsletter we have a community we have a bunch of different media channels and now i guess a couple newsletters uh we have a course on buying businesses and we do a little bit of ad sponsorship stuff but i don't i don't really love that i think we're going to change the model to only talk about the products of the businesses we own and our own products so i'm kind of messing around with that looking at like how the daily wire does it for instance.

48:47And then the second business we have is what was the family office, what's now Main Street Holding Company. And that is like the small businesses that I talk about. So we've owned everything from podcast production businesses to graphic design agencies, to laundromats, to car washes, to HVAC. And this is your own money? You've raised money? What happens? My own money. So it's your own money you're using to buy these. And so that's a portfolio. You said there's three businesses. What's the third? And the third is we have a venture capital fund. And then we also have, I guess, you know, alongside that, my own passive angel investments or whatever.

49:23And so those would be like Hone Health. We did in the venture fund. We invested in Andrew Wilkinson's media companies. That was just a personal investment that I did. It didn't go into the VC company. So that's where like our minority investments go. Okay. And when did you get rich? Was it after all this? Were you rich before you started all this? What was the like, where was your kind of like, like, okay, the podcast called My First Million. When did you make your first million? Was it in the private equity investment banking world? Or was it after that when you went on your own? No, I made my first million when I was working for other people.

49:54I'm like the opposite of you. I'm not really as, I was, risk scares me actually. So like I could have never gone and done what like Sean and Sam did, which is start a business like Sam did, have no money, sleep on a couch like Hormozy. And then like hope that business turns into 160 million. That like scares me too much. I'm a wuss. And so I worked in corporate for a long, long, long time. I ran a bunch of the businesses. I became a partner in them. And so I made millions before I ever really ran my own thing by myself. And I was actually so scared to leave the big corporate, I don't know, canopy that I bought businesses while I was still working for somebody else.

50:34You say you bought businesses. These are like the like I bought a car wash laundromat type of thing. or what type of businesses you're buying? Yeah, well, I bought some back in the day that I bought, but they didn't make me any money. It was like, I bought a website. I bought a fashion styling marketplace. Those threads were fine back in the day. I bought another one called Selling South. But the ones that started making me real money were the boring ones. I tried the sexy things, websites, and I wasn't very good at them. And then it was, oh, wait, if I buy a laundromat, I have a hard time fucking this thing up.

51:03I can make some money on that and I can have somebody else run it. and if I pay that somebody else and then we have three or four or five of them, that's enough money for them to make a good living and me to make a good living. And then maybe we could do that exact same thing in a bunch of different sectors. And I just, back then when I was doing that, that was not cool. Now I feel like it's kind of cool. The holding company thing is cool on Twitter. Right. In fact, I didn't tell anybody that I own laundromats. One, I thought I might get fired because it could be considered a conflict of interest.

51:34So I was concerned about that. And then secondly, I didn't think it was that cool. At the time, I was running a Latin American investment business. And so we had a billion dollars in assets under management. I built the thing from zero for this company called First Trust. And everybody thought that job was really cool, including my parents. They're super proud. But I hated it. Was going through divorce and was working 70 hours a week and on red eyes to Chile, basically weekly. And so I bought the businesses to get the fuck out of corporate. And then when I finally replaced my income is when I thought, oh, well, now I'm going to take a jump and become a partner at a private equity fund.

52:13And then finally, I got the balls to go do it all by myself. But it took me a long time to get there. Yeah, that's, everybody's got their path. I always joke, like, you hear these stories like, oh, Mark Cuban, when he was six years old, started a newspaper route, then a lemonade stand, and then hired his friends. I'm like, dude, I didn't even know the word business until I was 19. You know, you definitely don't need to, you know, everybody's got a different starting point. So that's for sure. So you, let's talk about the laundromat thing. I've told the story on the pod before, but I was at a dinner once with this guy who was a CEO of a public company.

52:44And he was like, he was like fast. He's like, you know, people are like really busy. They don't use social media. So he's like, he's trying to relate to me. So he's like, oh, you do podcasts? What's the name? but I mean I can see he doesn't even know where the podcast app is because he's like does real work for a living and so he's like um he's like I'll definitely subscribe can you show me how how do you subscribe to a podcast I've always wanted to know and I'm like wow this guy's like you know just getting going and one of the things he said he's like he's like you know I see these people on Instagram talking about laundromats and he's like are we all just fucking stupid and we should just be buying laundromats or are they stupid and they think laundromats are a great business he's like it's what who's stupid he's like I'm worried I'm stupid and that I shouldn't be doing all this like stressful work running this like company with thousands of employees do i just need to go buy four laundromats and chill like is that actually the answer and so he was uh laughing about it he's like it can't be that good and i was like dude i honestly don't know what to say i've never bought one of these boring businesses don't intend to own a laundromat in albuquerque or whatever like that's not my my jam but it is for some people and you obviously are an advocate for it so this is your opportunity so so educate me drop some knowledge on me okay what is this deal with buying, you can pick either.

53:55Actually, do laundromat, not car wash, because I actually know the car wash business a little bit, but let's do laundromat. Yeah. I call these gateway drug businesses. So basically, no, if you're a billionaire, you shouldn't go buy laundromat. This is a terrible idea. The reason I talk about it is because I have a belief that I think a lot of people don't have, that almost anybody could have a business that they currently work as a job, let's say, and have some ownership in that business. And in fact, the world would be a lot better off if we all had a little bit of skin in the game. That's like my little hill that I want to die on.

54:27And so when I first started talking about this, I was like, the thing is, I've been in finance. I went through all the levels. And we want everybody else to think that we're smarter than them when we're in finance. And we're actually not. Because the worst part about running a laundromat is not reading the P &L. The worst part about running the laundromat is like, the machine breaks. What do you do? There's a homeless person there. How how do you handle that? Somebody breaks into your laundromat and breaks the glass door. And like, any human could handle that. And so I talk about laundromats, one, because that is one of the first businesses I bought.

55:02So it just was, you know, recency bias. And then two, because I think if you can't understand taking a coin, putting it in a machine, getting out clean clothes or dry clothes from it, and running that business model, you probably should run a business. That's like a very simplistic business model. But this is why I've been obsessing on levels of the game. The problem with laundromats are they're a terrible business if you're really good at business. So if you're good at business, the laundromat, I invested in one laundromat. It wasn't one that I owned complete control of that did$3 million a year.

55:33That's the biggest laundromat that I've ever seen individually. That's revenue? What is that? That's revenue. So$3 million a year. Okay, let's get out my calculus. So is it like one of these like jumbo, like, I've seen some of these laundromats that look like full on shops or something like that. They're like huge. Yeah, it's a very big laundromat. So it's doing like eight grand a day. Yeah, they do 15 % margins. And the way they do them is actually through the wash and fold business, not the walk in laundry business. Okay, gotcha. And so the real business where the higher level customers are and where you make more money is, you know, single mom wants to put her bag of clothes outside of her door.

56:14You pick it up, you wash it, you drop it back off. It requires cars and logistics and some oversight. It's more complex. The average laundromat makes somewhere around$100 ,000 to$500 ,000 a year. Like, that's what a laundromat makes at 15 % to 10 % to 15 % margins. And there's like not that much you can do once you have a laundromat to get a lot to get a laundromat that's doing a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand it's really hard it's location dependent or what's the bottleneck there yeah location dependent also just demographics of of your you know segment so if you're in a poor neighborhood wash and fold might not be as much of a driver right for you if you're in a higher-end neighborhood it could be um competition so those are making you know Oh.

57:03Between$20 ,000 and$50 ,000 a year for the owner. Yep. That's right. So you got like, you know, you have to do multiple of these. Otherwise, if you own one, you're working the job of an owner, but making the wage of a minimum wage employee or something. So you want to own multiple. That would be the play here? Well, I think it depends. This is where I think business acquisition gets interesting. It's like, who are you and what do you want? Everybody always asks me, like, what's the best sector to buy? And I'm like, that's a dumb question. The best sector to buy is like the one that's uniquely aligned to you.

57:33So what was it for you? What was it for you? The reason I bought the laundromat is because I had an operator that already knew how to run laundromats and had found one that we could buy for very cheap. And I was like, I don't like a lot of risk. I could front a hard K, okay, buy this. And then if we run that and that works, let's get three to five of them and get rolling. But like a lot of people that I talk to, you know, maybe you're a teacher and you have six months off during the year. And then why wouldn't you own a little laundromat? And then I like to compare it versus houses or like short-term rentals.

58:06So like the average short-term rentals, we should check my numbers, but does somewhere like$120 ,000 and$160 in net income a month. And you put up$250 ,000 on average for one of those homes. So like compare a single family home for$250 ,000 versus a laundromat for$100 ,000. And this one's making you$30 ,000,$50 ,000 a year, and I'm sorry,$20 ,000 to$40 ,000 a year, and this one's making you a couple thousand dollars a year, that's actually kind of a good, that's a better risk reward trade-off. And so I think it just depends. And then the other thing I think is you start with one business and not a lot of Americans are probably like your listeners.

58:48A lot of Americans haven't run a big business before, wouldn't know what to do with a tech business. And so them starting with something pretty simple in their local community. And then they go, okay, I know how to run this. I made 20 to 50K on it. I didn't risk my house by buying too big of a business or starting too big of a business. Now I go and sell this to somebody else and do a bigger endeavor. At least that's how I think about it. So the first business you bought was a laundromat or was it something else? My very first business was a website back in the day. So you bought the website stuff, then you went brick and mortar after that.

59:19Yeah, brick and mortar. Laundromat was my first brick and mortar business. What'd you do after that? After that, we bought a couple of them. So we bought multiple laundromats. And then we kept buying laundromats. How many laundromats did you buy? In total, I probably owned like 25 or 30 laundromats over my career of laundromatting. But that first little portfolio was probably seven or eight. Okay. And I was working full time at the time. I was at a company called First Trust then, mostly in Latin America. So I couldn't do too much with it back then. All right. let's take a quick break because I gotta tell you a story.

59:53Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes and then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money.

1:00:20I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. And give me the best deal you ever did and the worst deal you ever did. The best, let's see, the worst deal I did. we had one business entirely go under. So we invested in a business where we got lied to, stolen from, that was a small business that supported other small businesses from a tax and accounting perspective.

1:01:04So they didn't do the taxes, but they did bookmark, bookkeeping and kind of funny that they would be the ones to do the stealing. Right. But that's the biggest issue in buying small businesses. And I think I lost, I probably lost a couple hundred K on that deal. And the biggest issue with buying small businesses is that you run out of cash because they either lied to you about the business that you bought and how much money it has in it, or they lied by omission. They didn't quite realize that they needed to share this with you, or they didn't actually track their finances very well. And so you ended up buying something you didn't want.

1:01:39So that one I got stolen from. But a lot of times, the small businesses do not actually have the finances that I think they do. What about the best deal? Yeah, the best deal that I've ever did was probably mostly from the land acquisition. So we basically bought a big plot of land that had an RV park on it, also like a series of vending machines, also like a little area for people to camp and go into nature or whatever. and that business, the appreciation of the land ended up being what paid the most for it. So that business made us a few million bucks, which was kind of cool. And we definitely didn't put that in.

1:02:19And maybe the other business that I think will be my best deal ever is a series of car washes we bought because ever since this company called Mr. Car Wash went public to the tune of billions of billions of dollars. Multiples went up. Oh, fuck. I mean, we've got offers that are just wild on these. So I don't want to knock on wood that that one actually goes through. But we sold out of a bunch of our laundromats at great multiples. And I think we'll sell a lot of our car washes at really, really good multiples. But I don't always talk about my best deals because it's like, I don't think you should get into these with an idea that you're going to have some crazy exit.

1:02:53Like you're going to cashflow. That's the goal. You cashflow. And if you want to have a crazy multiple exit, buying these tiny businesses, unless you scale them up in a big way, is probably not going to be the way to do it. And me and Ben were debating this the other day. we were talking about like, what's a good, on the finance side, what's a good North Star goal? And we were saying, we threw out a bunch of ideas. Two of the ideas were, should we build up$10 million a year of annual cash flow as the goal out of this whole co? Or should we just try to build $100 million portfolio value that's realized portfolio value in roughly the same amount of time?

1:03:31And of course, if you have$10 million of cash flow, you could probably sell it for$100 million. So it's not like these are totally different, but you would maybe buy different things. Because if you're just trying to get to$100, you might not buy things. You can buy things that don't cash flow. You could just start a business if it doesn't. That's not about cash flow. But if you need cash flow, you have to go a certain route. I'm curious two things. A, what would be your opinion on that? And B, what's the goal for you? What do you set as your kind of North Star, your summit that you're trying to climb up to?

1:04:01Yeah. Well, what do you mean by realized value? You mean you actually want to sell it and then get$100 million from it, or you want a third party to mark it up and say that it is worth$100 million? The way I thought about it there was that it's sold or sellable in a kind of more bulletproof way versus like one business that on paper got marked up by one investor. Right. But, you know, not really a liquid, it's not a profitable business. So, you know, you couldn't actually exit for that amount, which is often like the Silicon Valley. How do you get$100 million valuation, but you could never sell that business for$100 million type of thing.

1:04:31So not that, not the paper valuation, but either it's exited or, you know, if you ran a process for 60 to 90 days with 80 % certainty, you could get that value. Yeah. Well, for me, I have an issue, which is that I'm pretty ADHD. I like to do a lot of different things. Like if you look at my work history, I think the longest I ever stayed at a job was like five and a half years or something like that. And I was moving from different investment firms every two years or so. So I kind of like the portfolio approach because it allows me to be ADHD in a bunch of different businesses. And so I get to like pop in and pop out.

1:05:07Theoretically, if I wanted to build a billion dollar business, you could argue that if I have a great idea that I really, really love, that would be a better way to get to a billion dollars. I just haven't had an idea that I was that obsessed with and I thought was fun that I still need to do because I, you know, I'm pretty comfortable. I have enough cash to do sort of what I want now. So I think our goal has always been I kind of buy my own bullshit, which is for a long time I thought I was going to just build a bunch of boring businesses into my little tiny version of KKR or Berkshire Hathaway.

1:05:44And I was going to build up this thing. And then, you know, I did that for like 15 years working for other people. And then I did it for a couple more years by myself. And I got to this point where I was like, I actually do not think it is good for the really, really few people to own everything. I think it is much better experientially and just for society when you go to a local coffee shop than when you go to Starbucks. Nightmare. I refuse to go to Starbucks. We have like a company policy. You're not allowed to buy from big corporate chains. And so I kind of thought, man, if I go and build this thing that I...

1:06:17What happens if someone does walk in with a Starbucks? What do you do? You just hit it out of their hand? Just smack that shit onto the floor? Actually, Tanner is here right now, knows that. He walked into my place in California. We lived there for some of the year with two Starbucks. And I just looked at him and I was like, what are we doing here? And he was like, and then the next week, because I have a good team, I ordered Chipotle on accident. And so then I had to pay for my own Chipotle. Tanner said the F word. What?

1:06:47I don't know. I think once you start making enough money, at some point you're like, I want my money to mean something and I want all this work to mean something. And so I was like, I don't want to own a billion dollar portfolio of small businesses and become everything that I talk shit about. That doesn't feel that great. And instead, what we'll do is we're starting to buy a lot more businesses in the three cities that I'm really involved in, which is San Diego, Austin, and Phoenix. And so I want to own where I live. That seems to make sense to me and feel good. And then I cash flow off that.

1:07:18And then the second thing I want to do is I'm going to go really aggressively all in on. I'll ask you and Sam about it later, what you guys think. But we're going to plow a couple million bucks and we're going to raise a couple million bucks on one bet, which I've never done before. I've never raised for any of my... I've raised for some of my funds, obviously, but never for a single company. So I'm sort of nervous, but I think we have an opportunity. Like to start or to buy? I bought the company already as an MVP, and then I'm going to build something on top of it, and I'm going to put in a new CEO, and I'm working right now and recruiting that CEO for this business.

1:07:55And I'm guessing, can't talk about that right now? Not yet. I mean, not that anybody really cares on the internet, but you guys, MFMers are doers, so I feel like if I do, there'll be 37 copycats by Monday. Hell yeah, there will be. That's what we do. We destroy all the margins for all of us collectively. We destroy alpha left and right. All right. So that's the game you're playing. Wait, so sorry. You told me the game you're not playing. You're not playing the private equity, build the next KKR game. You're building the own businesses where I live. I got that part of it, but that doesn't seem like the complete picture.

1:08:30What's the rest of the game? And how does like... Well, we have a portfolio that you could, I mean, it depends how you value it. But let's say it's worth about$75 to$100 million in portfolio value right now. A lot of car washes. That's a lot of soap, baby. And then, so we have that. That's cool. Really cool. Young Cody would be like, that's fucking wild. The next game we're going to play is a really big single bet. And so we'll have those two things. And why? Why not just retire and be trad wife and pumpkins and live, laugh, love? Dude, honestly, I bought those pumpkins and I was painting them and it brought me no joy whatsoever.

1:09:13It brought me zero joy. And I remember I called my husband afterwards and I was like, I feel nothing and I must be dead inside. And so I have to buy this pumpkin company for this to have been worth it as a hobby. Yeah, exactly. It's like something's wrong with me. I also think you do like, do you have hobbies? Yeah, I got hobbies. I got hobbies. I love to play basketball, but my hobbies are things that fall into really specific categories. I don't have niche hobbies. Some people are like, oh, I love studying duck calls, and I have all these little duck kazoos or whatever the hell. Mine are not niche like that.

1:09:49They're very common things. I like playing poker. I like basketball. I like working out. I like shit that everybody likes. I'm like the basic bitch of hobbies. However, I like to do them in a certain way that makes them more fun to me. So for example, I got a lot of joy building a home gym and having a trainer who's like my boy who comes over and we work out here. And then friends who we meet will come drop in for workouts with us. And so I get to like hang out with my friends when I do that. So I try to build a lifestyle around it. Or like basketball, instead of just going playing pick up basketball at 24 Hour Fitness, we do this thing called Camp MFM where we rent a house, rent a gym, fly in a bunch of awesome founders or kind of like celebrity people who love to play basketball and an NBA trainer.

1:10:28And we spend the weekend pretending we're NBA players, right? Like we cosplay. And so I will try to take the hobbies, basic hobbies, but do them. Common hobbies in an uncommon way is what's done it for me as far as being a fun thing to invest in. I like that. Well, yeah, I need hobbies, basically. I have none. I like to work out. I like to hang out with friends that literally have the most boring hobbies imaginable. I really actually like working a lot, which is probably pretty sick. But my husband is like Captain Hobby. He's so good. He's like a fucking black belt in jujitsu or a purple belt or something.

1:11:03And he's, you know, former Navy SEAL. So he's amazing at shooting. Him and Sam are always hobbying. And I'm not. I'm surprised Sam hangs out with him because Sam wants to always be able to eat and kill everybody in the room or whatever he always says. And your husband would eat him as an appetizer. Sam is tapas for him. Like, this is nothing. So I'm surprised that Sam allows himself to be in the same room. Sam does try to fight him a lot, which is like a very Sam-ism, you know? Yeah, like a son to his dad. Oh, let's fight. And then the dad's like, okay, sure, let's play wrestle. So I'm going to tell you one tip for hobbies.

1:11:37Yeah, tell me. You want to get hobbies? There's two things that will force any person like us to get hobbies. The first, hang out with people that are completely post-economic. So people who are literally wealthier than wealthy, because when you go to dinner with them, they don't want to talk about business deals. They're like completely, not that they're over, they're still in the game of business. It's just not interesting to them. It's not what makes for a new conversation or it's not like it's no longer part of the status game because they're also only with other people who are all very successful.

1:12:09And so the status game then becomes, oh, my Burning Man camp was like this. And oh, my new hobby is to do this. And oh, I'm doing this crazy health kick where I'm like, you know, taking blood from my feet and putting it into my arms. it's crazy. It's like, you got to do the crazy thing outside of business because you've already like hit the ceiling on business craziness. Like, you know, the only one they want to talk to about business craziness is like, what is Elon doing or whatever? Like that is genuinely like gets the pulse going for them on the business side. Whereas most things don't. So that's one way.

1:12:44Cause I remember sitting at many dinners and feeling completely generic where the things I'm interested in the things that my brain has been working on to them are like yeah we know like we've been doing that for 20 years now like that's not something to talk about right it's like talking about the weather. You're like did you see my Twitter ad for my newsletter? Yeah exactly I'm like I got the CPC down and they're like wow like I remember used to care about those things so that's one way to do it and the other is to go to a place where like hang out with like artists or Hollywood people they're here with like actual artists for whom like the art is the goal and not the recognition from the art all they want to do like you tell them what you're making and they're like oh that's cool like do you think that's cool and you're like no this is fucking cringe and they're like so why are you doing it and you're like cause it leads to outcomes and then they're like oh you know like you're like it's like you value things so differently than an actual artist two ways if you want to like round yourself out is immerse yourself and then the embarrassment will fuel you to find something that is a non, it's not about the Ebeni.

1:13:55A non-work hobby. Yeah. The thing that I have found about that is I don't actually care that much what people think. And I find that hanging out with a lot of really, really rich people, like you and I both have, I think, a bunch of mutual friends that are super rich. I'm like, I don't care about your polyamory orgy at Burning Man. Like, good freak. Dude, I'm so excited that you were such a nerd in high school that now we're compensating for it with lots of free sex. I think you should go wild. But I don't think it's that fucking cool, actually. So maybe I do maybe have one hobby, which is that I really find like the political movements in the country interesting, not like Republican versus Democrat.

1:14:34But maybe that's my that's my toxic trait hobby. That's your Roman Empire? Yeah, yeah. Like, I think we're part of this think tank called AEI. And those people fascinate me. Like, have you ever been around big thinkers that like, you know, like Arthur Brooks? Do you know who that is? You guys should get him on here. I wonder if you'd like him. None of the words you just said the last minute even mean anything to me. You said political movements that are not Democrat Republican. I'm like, what the hell is she talking about then? The second thing you said is I'm part of a think tank. A what tank?

1:15:04And then you said AEI. I'm like, that's a wrestling league, I think. And then you just mentioned Arthur Brooks, who I think might own the Atlanta Falcons, but I'm pretty sure that's not him. So can you go in reverse order? What are political parties, not the Democrats and Republicans? So American Enterprise Institute has this one idea, which is that all ideas should be in a competition. There should be a competition for the best ideas and the best ideas should win in order to determine how we rule our lives. What are our regulations? And so they're bipartisan. There's Democrats and Republicans in it.

1:15:36and um and i'm part of a group that donates every year and we go to a couple events for them and so that might be a hobby of mine i suppose something like ubi or something is that what you mean like is that the idea like like they'll have dick cheney and um michelle obama on a stage together and they'll be like ready go you know and they'll kind of compete their ideas and and it's closed doors and you can't video it. And you can't talk about the specific things that were talked about inside of there. So it allows these politicians to be perhaps more realistic than they would be on the news sites.

1:16:16So I find that to be really interesting. That's kind of cool. Yeah. I think you guys would like it. And then this guy, Arthur Brooks, who would be incredible, he used to run AEI and was fascinated because he actually was like good friends with the Dalai Lama, which That's impressive. But then simultaneously was able to pull together more funding. I think he raised tens and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for AEI and really changed regulation on both the Democrat and Republican sides. And he is, if you can imagine what this is like, you go to this event, most of the leaders of the free world are there.

1:16:50You fly into a private airport in Sea Island and you go to this private hotel. There's all these securities. It's like a little mini UN. And the guy who runs the think tank is talking to a lot of, since it's free markets and competition of ideas, there's a lot of conservatives there. And he gets in front of the biggest conservative donors in the world and starts to talk to them about love and why love is the most important thing in the world, which for conservatives is like non-normalized at all. Nobody wants to talk about that. They want to talk about how all the Democrats are crazy. and so um i really have a lot of respect for him he has like a best-selling book with oprah now and uh and a documentary out about capitalism and so wow this guy uh yeah i see him posing with oprah uh okay this is interesting and so you go to these like private um private events how much what's the what's the absolute minimum one has to donate in order to be invited to the private thingy i I think it's 25 or 50k.

1:17:48Okay. All right. But you go through a screening process. They're going to realize I don't know anything. Don't give a shit about anything. No, I think they probably like that. They did. I remember the first time I went, they're like, you do what? Where? Like they thought this whole internet, because I've only been doing it for like probably three years. And so I told them that I did little, I wrote little blogs on the internet and they're like, well, that's, huh, cool. It used to be my secret that I like don't care. Don't vote. Don't watch the news ever. Like not as like a general thing. Like just don't.

1:18:21And I used to just not say it because when I did, people would look at me like, oh, so you're just like it's some combination of you're dumb or selfish. And they're like, you're some combination of dumb and selfish. I don't really understand. And I never really knew how to put it into words because I was like, I don't know. I'm just focused. Yeah, I'm on a focus on myself, but not in a way that's selfish. I'm not trying to take anything from anyone. I just put my attention on the things in my life. And then somebody said this to me, they go, they go, yeah, you're an extreme in any one position, you know, just being all consuming, watching the news 24 seven or never, ever caring or paying attention to the news.

1:18:57Neither one of them is probably very good. But towards your end of the spectrum, they go, you know, I think actually the world would be a better place instead of worrying about the government, learning how to govern yourself. and I really took that that like resonated with me because I was like oh that's exactly it I realized I can't even fully govern myself whether it's you know I shouldn't eat that and I go eat that or I should wake up early and I sleep in or you know I want to text my friends and stay in touch but I forget about them and become consumed with what's going on in my life I've yet to even govern myself what am I worried about what's going on 3 ,000 miles away with other people I can't control at all, let alone myself who I can't.

1:19:37And so that was the first time I heard something that made me feel good about that. I previously just felt a little embarrassed, but not to the point where I was going to change my behavior because I was like, I know intuitively this is right. I just have no words to justify it. Well, I always liked that. I think it was Jordan Peterson that said, before you clean up the world, clean up your room. So I think there is actually a true component to, So, man, if we actually all just took care of our own things, and our own things could be our family, our friends, our community, life would probably be a little bit better.

1:20:09So, I support you in your purple, non-blue, non-red nature, Sean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And somebody also said this about relationships. They go, the wrong way to think about relationships is they'll take care of, I'll take care of you and you take care of me. And then you're constantly feeling like you've lacked some care from the other side. instead it's I'll take care of me for you and you take care of you for me and I think that's just a much better mental model for how to be in a relationship is I will be the best I'm going to become the best person I can be for you and you do if you do the same then we're both going to end up in great shape and we both are focusing on the only thing we can control which is ourselves yeah yeah I love that well also I mean why you got to tell other people how to live that's my biggest complaint.

1:20:55I'm like, you do you and I'll do me. And even if you don't like it, I was still going to do that anyway. So, uh, you know, thank God for freedom in that way. Okay. I want to ask you about content. So you have built, um, a big content brand across newsletters, social media, Tik TOK, YouTube, you're, you're everywhere. Um, give me the kind of, can you do a rant on like, what is your approach? Like you were Cody Sanchez, but at some point you created Cody Sanchez, the brand. And can you explain to me what went into that? Because I think most people don't know what goes into that. I think a lot of people try to take an aw shucks mentality and say, I didn't really, I didn't think too much.

1:21:38I just, it just all sort of happened organically. And anybody out there who would like to do the same is like, great. So I guess I'll just hope it all just happens. Whereas I think that most people do have some thought that they put into things and a strategy maybe that they put into things or took a different approach than what they saw others were doing and it paid off. I'd love to hear your version of that. Totally. One, I hate when people do that. I have never met somebody that after you dig in a little bit, didn't systematically try for the thing that they have created in any aspect of life.

1:22:11Like, don't fucking buy it. So that's one of my big pet peeves. for me basically what happened is I think I'm the opposite of a lot of people that are public now so I raised a bunch of money before for my funds and built these big fund families right where we invested a lot hundreds of millions raised billions of dollars over my career not just for me when I was with other companies and what I kind of realized is that's a little bit like giving a man a fish as opposed to teaching a man to fish. And I was with a CEO of a company that I worked for back in the day, and I was starting to do a little stuff online.

1:22:48This is like six or seven years ago. And I remember he took me on a walk on the beach at the Monarch in, or the Montage of the Monarch in California. And he was like, the thing is, Cody, we get rich quietly here. Like we don't build the I, we build the me, all those things. And at the time, I didn't really like that answer. and in my self-righteousness, I was like, well, he doesn't get it and the internet's going to be so powerful and steak dinners and strippers, which is how a lot of people in finance raise money, doesn't work and isn't going to work in the future. And so we should actually build a media presence.

1:23:22But I realized quickly, like he had built a multi-billion dollar business. It was his, I was playing with his chip. So he had every right to say, hey, no, not at my time. And so at that point, I kind of realized that I think what I actually like doing is I like watching other people grow and build based on the ideas I share with them. Like my little ego likes when somebody tells me that one of the things that I did works for them. And I feel like that's like kind of a cool legacy, makes me happier. And so I started realizing that originally just by speaking with some nonprofits we worked with.

1:23:55I would go and speak and I was like, oh, I kind of feel good. I feel better doing that than when I close a big transaction, actually. And so I started doing that more and more. And then I was like, huh, I think we should scale this because I just think I have that sickness in my brain that anything I do a little bit, I want to do giant. Probably not that dissimilar with you in basketball. You're like, I could go play a pickup game or I could invite Mr. Beast and also LeBron. You're like, well, let's do option two. And so I was like, I just started writing a newsletter for a while and didn't realize it was a business.

1:24:25And then the first thing I did that I would tell anybody to do if you want to go and build a content machine is you should steal people who have already built the thing. It seems so obvious, but nobody does it. Everybody tries to do things by themselves. And because I had built a lot of businesses by now, I was like, oh, this is just a normal business. We need a head of ops. We need a head of, I would have called it marketing back in the day, but now we call it a head of content. We need a head of finance to figure out how much we should budget and how much we should put into all of this stuff.

1:24:55And then we also probably need a bunch of Indians underneath the chiefs. And so I basically hired those first three things. I always hire first at the top, and then I do a sliding scale down. And after I had hired those three people, because I was funding it all myself from what I had built before, then I started to go niche specific. So hire one person for TikTok, hire one person for Twitter, hire one person for Instagram. and it doesn't mean that they would write it all in their ghost writing. I would just say, I'm stressed about these three platforms. I'm going to remove my stress from me into you.

1:25:31And so you shall now stress all day about TikTok and Twitter and Instagram and a newsletter. And I will not. I'm going to stress on this portfolio of businesses which nobody else can run. And so that's how I started. And do you do one for the other? Do they feed each other? Or what's the plan with the content? How does the content fit with the portfolio of businesses? Why do you do both? Why not just do one? Yeah. I mean, I think maybe you've talked about this, but the flywheel of content is the most powerful thing I've ever seen. I mean, Naval talked about it with his, I think he talked about three levels of leverage, which was people, capital, and then code.

1:26:14And then I think the current one is audience. And audience is the only permissionless version. All those other ones, you have to have banks, you had to have employees say yes, you had to actually understand code. But audience is so your favorite word, democratized. Anybody can. Put a quarter in the swear jar before you leave. Yeah, exactly. Anybody can do it. And so I was like, well, this is fascinating. If I could get, like, for instance, yesterday in one of our YouTube videos, we put a lead magnet to the newsletter. And we got like 2 ,500 newsletter signups. and let's say the newsletter signup on average costs us one to two bucks well that was you know that's five thousand dollars i could have done through ppc or through organic i could just get it from audience content yeah yeah and so um they all influence one another but how i originally thought about it is i'm going to talk about content about buying businesses because i talk about buying businesses what's going to happen a bunch of people are going to want to sell me their business so now i'm going to buy more businesses that they want to sell and I'm going to buy them at better prices and faster than anybody else because they feel like they already know me and they trust me.

1:27:23And so I'm almost indexing on trust. I'm going to tell them exactly how I value it. I'm going to tell them exactly how I buy. And then they're going to sell me their business. And then once they sell me their business, I'm going to build that business through my audience. So I'm going to funnel more of the audience into said business. And then finally, when I go to exit the business, I'm going to have a community of buyers that want to buy this business. And then I'm going to do it again and again and again. And it sort of ended up working out like that, I would say most often now it's that I get referrals to businesses that I want to buy.

1:27:53It's not so much cold outreach. So maybe it was slightly off from what I thought the thesis was going to be. Right, right. And okay, so I want to give you a chance to address what I view as good criticism. So what's good criticism? Good criticism is, so bad criticism is this person's full of shit. Good criticism is, um, uh, it's, it's not all perfect, right? It's like, that's like a good version of criticism, meaning you're in a good position if somebody says that. So for example, I want to give you a chance to, uh, do, to answer this in two ways. The first is every criticism I believe has a kernel of truth.

1:28:31When I go read the YouTube comments and somebody says, uh, blah, blah, blah about me, it might be mean it might've been rude, It might have been uncalled for, but it's usually not completely baseless. There's some kernel of truth in it. And the same thing on the good side. Somebody compliments me. It's usually not as good as they say, but there's a kernel of truth. And that's what led to that sentiment. So here's some of the things that people would say about you. Cody Sanchez, her real business is in creating content, getting you to pay her to teach you how to buy a business, not in the businesses she's bought herself.

1:29:05In what way would that be true? and in what way would that be false? Yeah, I think you're right. One of our mottos is question everything. So I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning any of that. We'd make more money categorically from the businesses we own than from the community that we own, for instance. So like numerically, categorically, that's just the fact. Now, would I be upset if all of a sudden we're doing 25 50 100 million dollars in a community and and this my idea of an mna for mb like an mba mna if i could actually create that and i could supplant what we're getting in institutions and education systems i'd be fucking thrilled so the second that i make way more money with communities and courses i will be shouting it at yes like we built the best fucking thing ever we're doing tens and tens of millions of dollars and you're welcome like happy um the second like what would be true about that is yeah we're really good at this like it is a big business it does millions of dollars a year uh i think we have really quickly supplanted anybody in the industry like we are the name if you want to go learn how to buy a business soon we will be the name if you want to learn how to sell a business and my goal is we will also be in the name if you want to learn how to build a business.

1:30:31So we will own the entire ecosystem. I'm in talks right now with University of Texas and University of Austin, which is Joe Lonsdale's company, to do a program with them where we can push back on what I think is awful education that's taught at most institutions. And instead of telling you what to think and a bunch of political nonsense, we're just going to teach you really smart financial tactics that you can apply whichever way you want. And so it does like, I'm sure it's the same with you. What bothers me when people talk about me online is if I feel like there is a kernel of truth or we fuck up.

1:31:10Like one time we did this tweet thread and it was a seven instead of a two for the number of years that I was at Goldman, which is like, you can see it on my form U4 and my LinkedIn. You can see how long I was at Goldman. And I had all these people be like, I knew you were just a fucking secretary and you were only there for you know two years at seven and that one actually bothered me a little bit because i was like we were wrong and so fuck that's that's a typo who cares um yeah you're wrong but like don't beat yourself up over that right like that's nothing yeah um it's true another way to think about or another like i guess thing to to react to um so we get less criticism i was wondering this i was like why do we get less criticism so i was worried i was like are we just less popular or less good than these other people and what i realized is actually no there's one difference which is when you do a podcast um podcast because they're long form it sort of naturally filters a bunch of people out second it gives you a chance to breathe and be yourself and people tend to once they get to know you and understand you they tend to not uh not feel the same way about you uh not have like that sort of reactionary uh takeaway against you uh the third is that you're just not everywhere and the vibe is i'm talking to my buddy sam you're here listening as a fly on the wall versus you go on Instagram or TikTok and you're staring down the barrel, looking at the camera saying, you should do this.

1:32:30All of a sudden, you're a business guru. All of a sudden, you're telling me what to do. All of a sudden, guard the walls go up. And literally just because of the way you're, which way we're pointing. When it's me talking to my co-host is very different than somebody who's picks up their phone and says, you know, I'm so great and here's what I do and you should do the same. So that's what I realized is actually the way that the reaction gets really big. now I'm wondering how you think about like distancing yourself or do you just not care about like the whole like business guru kind of like Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez.

1:33:02Like there's like this whole thing that I personally don't want to necessarily be associated with. I don't necessarily think that they're bad in any way. I just don't want to be bucketed in with that group. Um, and I can see how there's like a tension between the more you come out and talk about business and how to make it, the more you can be bucketed as business guru. How do you think about that? Do you think you do fall into that trap or how do you avoid that? Yeah. One, I think I'm a big ethical moral compass type person. So if I feel like I'm doing something wrong, that's going to bother me a lot more than what other people think about me.

1:33:40And so that doesn't bother me too much. I also think, and I would be curious your take. I want to do a math model on this. I so much of what we are told in today's society in my opinion is The opposite. It's like it's clown world. It's we're told this one thing and it actually makes no sense for instance If I went out right now I've never ever raised money for any of the businesses that I invest in from my audience ever not once not once have I asked For a dollar for that now we have a venture fund that's tiny that I say do not invest in if you don't want to lose money because this is like a very small it's a 10 million dollar fund and it's Who knows?

1:34:18Who knows if venture works? And I think that there's a legitimacy that comes with asking people for money to invest in your funds as opposed to teaching them how to do the thing, which in my mind actually makes no sense. Because if I went and raised another billion dollar fund family like I did, I'm going to make so much more money than I ever will teaching people how to do things online. So much more money. But then they don't actually learn. So I think I have like a, I have like a chip on my shoulder about it that I want to push back on it. And I also think, man, young Cody would have really liked to learn this earlier.

1:34:57And wouldn't it be nice if somebody would have actually showed me their homework back in the day? Like I would have liked that actually. So I think, I think that's how I, I remedied it. Now I hate comparisons to Grant Cardone or Tai Lopez because I'm not talking about those two because I don't know them individually. But I looked at some of the fundraising docs on Grant Cardone's stuff, and I don't think it's that great for retail investors. I think it's pretty one-sided. And I think Tai Lopez is very like Ferraris, women, get rich quick stuff. And ours is sort of the opposite. It's like, this is going to be hard.

1:35:33It'll take longer than you think. It'll be harder than you think. and maybe it'll be worth it if you actually keep going past the point in which it's comfortable. But yeah, I think at some point you just have to give up what people think about you on the internet one way or the other, because there's always going to be, you know, if you think about it also, Sean, like, so if we have a hundred million views a month or 5 million followers, like 1 % is going to be fucking nuts for sure. Just like categorically. And so anytime something it happens, I go, well, that's the 1%. Unless we're doing something wrong.

1:36:06And then I go, well, that was a typo. That's our bad. Right. Well, I'm hoping that people who listen to this, I guess I believe that, like you just said, the most important opinion is the one you have of yourself. The reputation with yourself is the one that matters. I also believe that people should come to their own opinions once they have the opportunity to hear you speak, which is why I asked some of these questions to you because I wanted to hear how you would answer them myself, But I also know that for most people, they're not really going to get to hear you talk on this really anywhere.

1:36:38So as far as I've seen. So I hope that people come to whatever opinions they want on that stuff. That's on them at that point. I think that the ideas you shared at the beginning and the model that you've created here around buying boring businesses is fascinating to me. I am almost jealous that I don't want to buy a boring business. I'm like, oh, well, you know, like what's wrong with the chip in my brain that wants to buy exciting businesses? Like I only want to buy exciting businesses. And I think that is probably harder, higher degree of difficulty. But, you know, you get to choose the game you play.

1:37:17That's the game I want to play. Or you just invest in Xavier's thing, which we both did too, you know, and you support small businesses that way. I mean, and the only other thing I want to say is like, I think it's really cool what you guys are doing here. Because although you might not call your businesses boring, you are actually doing the thing that most people in industry hate, which is you're taking complex ideas and you're skinning them down so a lot of people can execute on them. And not a lot of people want to share their homework like that. So while mine might be boring and yours might be more sexy, I think we're both doing something really similar, which is here's what works for me.

1:37:51Here's some relatively complex stuff. Here's how I think we could really simplify it. And then you go do you and go build something. because I think that's the only thing that makes the world a little bit better are the builders. I invested in the same company you did, Shop Genie, which is like the perfect example of a boring business that can be pretty big. And so these guys make like, if you go to an auto repair shop, if you need to go get your car repaired today, you basically have to drive it. It's only like walk-in essentially. You drive in or you call, nobody picks up the phone. You drive up and then they're like, ah, it's going to be a couple hours.

1:38:22You can just like leave it here and like go home on foot. And you're like, ah, shit. Like, damn, I wish this was like, I wish this worked like everything else in the world worked. Meaning, I wish you could go online and book an appointment and show up and drop off my car and be done and pay you online. Not like, you know, not like, you know, in cash here or whatever. And so they made this like basically like a booking software for auto repair shops. Is that a good way to explain it? That's how I think about it, at least. Yeah. Well, and now that you're talking about it, I'm sure this will happen for them again.

1:38:50But what's cool about when we get to invest in these types of businesses, like we did a little tweet for them and a little announcement of investing in them. And they got like 30 franchise users who have multiple franchises underneath them. And so the ability to help somebody scale with a podcast like yours is really cool, which makes sense because you did support Shepard. And I think that's like a similar model. Yeah. And so Kieran, the founder of it, he told me about this business. I was like, that's a great idea. I don't want to do that. That sounds boring to me. But it's not boring to you.

1:39:20And that's all that matters. And investing is the easiest way for me to like ride along that ride. And the funny thing is he told me like back to the content idea. He's like, oh, we have this guy I never heard of. This guy, Aaron Stokes. Do you know who this is? Yeah. He's like, you know, the whoever, you know, the Gary V of the auto repair world. And so this one guy, I'm pretty sure this guy is making like$30 million a year just creating content for people that own auto repair businesses. And he's like, he has just conquered this niche. And he's doing the content marketing stuff, but only for a really, really narrow thing.

1:39:59But then for them, he's probably the only talented content person that's creating anything for them. And so when he hosts the event or he has the paid group or whatever, I don't even know this guy's full business model, but I know that his revenue is up there, sort of like 20 million plus. And he can get a thousand auto repair shop owners to show up to any event that he, a conference that he throws. And I was like, wow, this content game can be like niched down into the, even though the boring verticals in a very interesting way. Yeah, we should own more of those, huh? I mean, I think a fun game, like a great content channel that I was talking to Chris, my husband, about was like, what did he call it?

1:40:38He called it like CringeCon. And it would just be like you going to different niche industry conferences and watching their keynotes. Like the keynote from the self-storage industry conference. And like the keynote from, you know, because one of our friends owns a small self-storage company that we're going to invest in. And he was like, yeah, I went to a self-storage conference. And the keynote speaker was like, they use words like hoarders. We use words like customers, you know. And you're like, I just want to see this. So there's so many ways to make money. It's a giant compilation of every like niche conference.

1:41:16Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I know. I'm going to speak at Balaji's conference next week about, like, they use all these words, Shaw, that you probably know because you're smarter than me, like ACC slash EE in parentheses on your Twitter bio. Dude, I don't know what the hell that is. I've seen that everywhere. Yeah. That's what I told him. I'm like, I need a dictionary to speak here. And what I thought was fascinating is I'm like, you have this whole world that nobody else knows about. And you guys have all made billions or hundreds of millions off of it. So, so many ways to make money. And that to me would actually be boring.

1:41:49Like I don't, you know, acronyms, I don't need all of those. Yeah. I've told the story before, but we got the idea for Milk Road, uh, not the idea, but the like trigger to launch Milk Road was at a farm con. We went to a farming conference in Kansas city and like, same thing, you know, we get, we go in and the, the panel is talking about, you know, corn and wheat futures. And I'm like, I was stunned. I was like, these guys know what futures are. And secondly, like we're talking about corn futures. and then one guy was like, I'm all in on beans. And I was like, hey man, brother, I'm all in on beans too.

1:42:20But I think for different reasons. So like it was such a wild experience that I just really had no like, it was a totally different world. Like, you know, literally like 2000 farmers in a room just talking farming. And, you know, I think it's really good to get outside your bubble and kind of like, you know, for a guy from, he lives in San Francisco, talks to tech dorks all day. Like that was a totally different experience. I should do more of that. But like, that was my one kind of like my one trip last year. It's like, I don't go to Burning Man. I went to FarmCon, which I think is actually more extreme experience, all things considered.

1:42:54Dude, that's going to be me next week. I already told Balaji, I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to understand half of this. He had this idea too, that I was like, I think actually this is a terrible idea. Categorically, he's like, wanted to do five minute speeches, like five minute little speeches. And I'm like, one, that's hard. Like, you know, okay, we can do that. And he's like, so I want to do a bunch of them. And I was thinking in order for some of them to be really fast, what we'll do is we can pre-record some of it so it's really good. And then we'll walk up on the stage and we can press play.

1:43:24Like a DJ. I was like, Bologna, you are the smartest man I've ever met and also know. He's like, and then instead of coming to the conference, everyone just stays home. And actually, they just listen to it on their own in the podcast app. It's a podcast, actually. This is, yeah. I mean, thank God humans think differently. But I'm really curious to imagine if I could carry a conversation well with a lot of people here. I'm just going to tell them the thing is, if you want to know about laundromats, I'm your girl. That's about it. And they're like, we don't. We don't. That's that. Next. All right.

1:44:00Cody, this is great. Sorry I took you so far over time. Not at all. This is a blast. Thank you for guest hosting while Sam is out. And that's the pod. Oh, where should people follow you? Where do you want to send them? Cody Sanchez on all the socials. pretty straightforward. All right, that's it. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

1:44:39All right. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of and then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive and you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

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1:45:32For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.