Escape the 9 to 5 and Build An Owner's Mindset | Codie Sanchez

24:42That's sort of like the 303 level. So I think, you know, level one operators or level one, level one people who even think about money, they think I have a problem. How do I solve it? Level two is like, I have a problem, who can solve it? Level three is I have a problem, how can I buy an almost certain likelihood of solving this problem? Which is where acquisitions come into play. And the moment that I thought that way, my life sort of changed. It was either maybe I was actually buying time with consultants, or maybe I was buying the entire consultant's business, or maybe I was buying software to integrate into my business.

25:18And so I think there's like five different ways I think of acquisitions adding value to individuals. The most common way people think about it is income. I buy a business because I want to make money. And that is one way. But you can also buy a business because you want more customers. You could also buy a business because you want talent. You could also buy a business because you want to vertically integrate. You actually want to increase the profitability of your business by doing more things inside of your business. You know, you could also do an acquisitions because you have competitors that you want to squash.

25:50And instead of beating them, you buy them. So there's so many reasons why to learn the game of dealmaking. But I think it still is intimidating to people, which is why I won't shut up about it on the internet, I suppose. Well, along with that intimidating factor, I think a lot of people who are in the nine to five feel safe. Maybe they don't feel they're earning as much as they could, but there is a lot of safety. And I punch in at nine, I punch out at five, I have my weekends back and then they see the startup, which seems to be the more predominant view of entrepreneurship is starting from zero.

26:22And they just see all the hours spent, the sweat equity, the time spent away from family, and it intimidates them from getting in the game and really making the transition to ownership mindset. Yeah. Well, I think we should be honest with people. If you want to achieve something big, it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be fast. You're not going to be able to do it in a four hour work week. And if that's what you want, you know, we're probably not your people. I do think though, that being an owner is not easy, but it is worth it. And even if you don't want to leave your W-2 and be an employee, I actually think that's fine.

26:55Some of the richest people I know are private equity partners. They don't run the joint and they make more money than any quote unquote CEO or founder who's all over Twitter, including me. You know, some of these guys make tens and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year working in somebody else's business. But what's the catch? They know how to get equity ownership and deals. And so my recommendation for people is it doesn't mean you have to go be the person who is in charge at the end of the day, you don't actually have to do that. What you do need to understand the language of money, because that way, you can learn how when your company that you're at is talking to you about salary negotiations, how can I negotiate for a higher percentage cut in what I do, you can talk to the small businesses that you work with and say, hey, I don't want to work with you full time.

27:42I'm happy in my corporate job. But if I helped you increase your revenue or decrease your costs over here, could I get a pro rata percentage of what I give your business in equity for me? Would that be possible? And so again, it opens up this matrix of opportunities where you're going to start seeing deals all around you. And, you know, I always make the joke that Sheryl Sandberg as a W2 employee is more valuable than just about any of us. And yet she knew to get equity. She knew to get warrants and options. She knew the language of money. And so I want that for more people, even if they don't want to put their name as CEO on the door.

28:17Yeah, and they don't have to leave the W-2. So we started this business. Johnny and I had real jobs. We were doing W-2 and this was on the side. And then all of a sudden, as it started to catch momentum and we started to gain followers and clients, it was like, oh, now the math is shifting. And actually, if I spend more time on this, I make way more than I do in my W-2. But unfortunately, a lot of people see it as like I'm making the leap and I'm giving up the W-2 for good. And that leads them to never make the leap at all. Exactly. I think the travesty of you have to do one thing, you have to go all in, or you are not committed is complete and utter survivorship bias.

28:58That is told to you by people who were the 10%. They slept on floors. They lived miserably for a while. they barely made it. And so they tell you that that is the only way to make it. And I think anytime somebody tells you that is the only way to make it, that just means that they're very much in their own sphere. They can't see their own biases. I have made money in lots of different ways. My first million bucks was an employee. I made my first million dollars working for somebody else. Anybody can do the exact same thing if you have a higher enough skill set. But the point that I'm making is at some point, you want to figure out how to get paid when you're not working.

29:34And And the only way to do that is not some passive income mailbox money bullshit. It is to figure out how to get equity and equity that distributes some cash or capital. And so I'm with you guys. I think it's one of my biggest pushbacks, even with my internet entrepreneur friends, because a lot of us, I mean, I'm probably one of the only people in my friend groups on the internet that talk a lot about businesses that worked for big corporations for like 10 plus years. You know, I worked for Goldman and State Street and Vanguard and these huge behemoths. And did I work at them for too long? Probably.

30:07I probably should have left a little bit earlier. But they also paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, if not millions at certain points. And they also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training me. And so I could take that money and do smart things with it, which is a great thing to do. So I'm the opposite of the like jump all in, the water's warm. I'm more like a let me tiptoe in a little bit. And then once I've made enough money to cover my costs, I'll go up to my hips. So Cody, what are some of the indicators that our listeners could use to identify some promising business acquisitions that others might overlook?

30:47Yeah. Well, the first thing you want to do if you don't know which type of business to buy, but you want a business, is remember this rule, which is we don't buy hopes and dreams. We buy profits and realities. And so please don't buy a turnaround business. Don't buy a business that isn't making money today because you think you're brilliant and you're going to make the business make money. That's a great way to lose your shirt. The second rule in buying businesses is that you always want to make sure your first deal can't bankrupt you. And so I like to start with smaller deals. And the reason I like to start with smaller deals is because then I learn the muscle of dealmaking.

31:22And I can turn around and sell a business later. These are sellable assets. But at least I don't have some crushing weight of debt on top of me if I've never ran a business before. And then the third rule of buying businesses for the first time is you're already learning the game of acquisitions. Try to do it in an industry where you have an unfair advantage. So if you're an accountant, maybe you're buying an accounting business. If you're a landscaper, maybe you're buying a landscaping business. If you're a graphic designer or marketer, maybe you're buying a business that needs some marketing component.

31:54And so that can be your unfair advantage to it. So I like to say first, it's not about what type of business to buy. It's about leveraging who you are and avoiding the main reasons why businesses fail. There's like, I could rapid fire 10 businesses that I really like right now. There's also in the book, a big appendix of a bunch of lists and tools and calculators because I'm a little bit of a spreadsheet nerd. I like to see it graphically. Like I want to see exactly how much I'm going to make and exactly how much it's going to cost me. And I don't want you to explain it to me. I want to look at it.

32:25And in the book, there's a list of 130 businesses I like to buy, but like 10 off the top of my head are, I love home services businesses. So I own a bunch of those right now. Like there's this one here. This is Pink's, a window cleaning company. I own part of that company. So I like window cleaning. I like roofing. I like cleaning companies. I like landscaping companies. I like handyman companies. I like painting companies, rehab and addiction centers, single family, not huge centers, small ones. Same thing. I like that same thing for senior care, not a lot of inventory, but a lot of demand. I also like professional service businesses.

33:02So that would be businesses like accounting. If you're an attorney, a legal business, because only attorneys can buy legal businesses in the US. So you have a built-in mode. So home services, professional services are two of my favorite types of businesses to buy. And then I also think the more boring the business, the higher likelihood you're going to make money. So if you want to go buy an agency for Hollywood actors, that's probably really tough. You're going to have tiny little margins and a ton of competition. But if you want to go buy a port-a-potty sanitation company, you're probably going to have higher margins because you have less competition.

33:39In a lot of your examples in the book, especially starting out, you recognize that marketing was your zone of genius. And for those listeners who maybe aren't in their ideal job and maybe they don't even know their zone of genius, is there some guidelines or some recommendations you can make to really figure out how they can find that unfair advantage if it's not obvious at first? Yes. I mean, this is the most crucial part. We call it the deal clarity portion of business buying. And it's really important for you just in life to basically sit down and ask yourself, what do other people come to me for, even if it's not my job?

34:12So maybe that means that people ask you for branding advice consistently. They ask you to look at their accounting. When the check comes, everybody hands it to you because you're kind of the math guy, right? So you're starting to look at, okay, where are other people coming to me for things consistently? Two, what do you get paid for right now? What do you do right now? And how valuable is that skill set for you? Three, what would you do even if you didn't get paid for it? Like, what are you just obsessed with? Because obsession is hard to beat. And then four, I like to think about what is your network in?

34:42So let's say you aren't great at math, but your husband is an accountant and he could be incredible at helping you analyze a business, but your benefits marketing, his is accounting. The two of you together have a pretty useful skill stack. So those were four questions I might start with if I wanted to figure out what type of business I should buy. I know Johnny and I can speak to the downsides of partnership, but you mentioned in one of your answers that you've had businesses that you've invested in with other people that your partner's in business. So how do you approach partnership if maybe you're too afraid to do it all on your own?

35:14Well, one, I love diversifying risk. So one of the best things that you can do when you buy a business is think about how could I buy a business with as little of my own cash and time as possible? And you don't want to do unfair deals. You're not trying to take advantage of anybody, but you do want to try to think about how can I not be fully on the hook? So if you're going out and buying a business, that's why I like things like seller financing where the seller of the business allows you to use future profits to buy the business. I like SBA loans because the SBA can loan you some capital to buy the business.

35:45I also like thinking about how can I do a deal where I might bring on third-party investors. So I might own most of the company, but I might say to John, like, Johnny, you look rich. You know, you got any money that I could put into this business? And here's the return that I might give you. He's shaking his head. No. Oh, I think yes. Fireworks. And so you want to go and bring on some other people's capital sources that allows you to diversify risk on your first deal. Likely, your first deal is not going to be your best deal. You're going to do more that are better and better as you get better at this.

36:17So I don't think you have to be greedy with the financials on the first one. That said, your biggest mistake in business is always going to be a who, not a how. And so be very careful with partners. I have a whole section in there dedicated to all the things I messed up with on partners. I have a whole section in there on how many people screwed me at different times, business speaking. And the idea is really, if we're getting into business with somebody, One thing we know for certain is that probability is most businesses break up at some point. And so we've got to start with the end of the mind, which means setting business expectations just like a prenup and a divorce.

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40:47But as a business grows, you know, we've been around for 20 years. We've evolved quite a bit. And there's been times where my skill set was really applicable. And then I didn't have the skills. And we had to hire. And we had partners who wanted to be involved and not want to be involved. And over time, you recognize just how difficult it can be, especially the more partners you add to keep things afloat and keep things moving forward. What's the best lesson you guys have learned on picking a partner in business? Well, I think for us, I'll speak for myself. I don't want to label Johnny here. Maybe he has a different answer.

41:18But I think what I learned coming out of this experience was that a lot of times when you go in with the best intentions and you only focus on the positives and the skills, you don't think about how they handle conflict or what potential conflict amongst you would look like. That was a huge blind spot for me. So now when we have brought on partners or even joint ventures, the first thing we do with our lawyers sit down and go, okay, how does this dissolve? And how does this dissolve without us being in a courtroom or a public fight or cash exchanging hands? Like, how do we make this that if it's not working for either one of us, we can go on our way and the business survives and those who want to stick around can stay and those who want to leave can leave happily.

41:58And we spent far too much time in front of lawyers and mediators and trying to duke it out. And unfortunately, if we were in that service-based business, I would love to be the lawyer on the other side because they're the ones who make all the money. Yeah, I think that's really good advice. Yeah, I mean, I have like a whole section on it if people want to get crazy about it. And I think it's like sort of helpful to learn from other people's mistakes. So, you know, wherever I can, I don't want to be the first person making the mistake. And thankfully, I don't think that really ever happens in acquisitions.

42:28But like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have this funny saying, which basically, I think it was in one of their annual updates. and Munger was reading about a letter from Benjamin Franklin. And the letter from Benjamin Franklin was from like the 1700s. And he basically, it's called, it's like advice on getting a mistress, which is like not that appropriate today, but you wouldn't think that would be that applicable to a business partnership. And yet I thought the advice was so transcendent. He basically said, Benjamin Franklin in the letter said, if you're going to get a mistress, Get an old one.

43:02She'll be more grateful. She'll also have more experience and you're going to need it when you're starting out. And Munger and Buffett also talk about the fact that they both had experience in sectors that were totally different from each other. So one was an attorney, one was a deal guy, and they both were eternally grateful for having this partnership. And so I always liked that idea of if your partner is always kind of grateful for having the extra hand and you have a lot of experience in what you've done, that's a better outcome for a partnership. But that one always made me chuckle a little bit because I think it's true for mistresses and partners.

43:39Well, that brings up a great point around that experience. So it's amazing that you set up this community that like-minded people who are thinking about buying a business or bought businesses can participate in. How do you view mentorship and seeking out support after you've made the leap and maybe you couldn't find that community or you don't have anyone internally in the business who can support you in that way? I think you will not find a rich private equity guy that does deals by himself. It just doesn't exist. They all have a team around them that they do deals together. And I looked at that model and I said, why can't we replicate that in our community?

44:15So I think there's three things that you need to do a deal well. One, you need that investor committee. And this is a group of people. We put people in cohorts. So they get together in a cohort of, let's call it eight to 20 people, depending on the cohort size. And inside of that, you're going to have a few accountability buddies. You have a two to three X higher likelihood of achieving an outcome if you're working on it with somebody else from trainers all the way to deals. So you want to have this investment committee. The point of the investment committee is actually to do something called a deal review together.

44:45So it's just at bats. That's how you get better hitting a baseball. It's also how you get better at doing a deal. The problem is you can hit a baseball a thousand times with no repercussions so you can get the swings in yourself. When you're doing a deal, you literally just can't get enough deals done to get good at it. And so we do something called a deal review, which happens every Monday night. And people bring their deals to the call and we beat them up live. And we go, wait, this business says they make 50 % profit in laundromats? No way. Those things make 15 % profits. Let's dig into that.

45:16And when you have this collective group of people all beating up your deal, your likelihood of getting a good deal goes up. And then the third component of it is having a deal team. So your deal team is typically your accountant, your attorney, and a subject matter expert. So if I was going to buy a podcast, I'd probably want to spend some time talking to you guys. I'd want to spend some time talking to other people that had run a podcast. You would know how you make money. Is that reasonable? How much money they say? Is it actually as little work as they say it is? That's your subject matter expert.

45:46And typically in the community, there's one for everything. It's like, oh, you go to Robert, he bought landscaping companies. You go to Fred, he owns manufacturing companies. And then your attorney and your accountant are important because a lot of the money in deals is made on tax savings and also on structuring properly, like you said, making sure you control the downside. So we have a vendor database where people can share, how I use this attorney. He was good. He was not so good. And you can steal other people's 10 ,000 hours again. That's sort of the goal. There's like 11 million small businesses for sale right now in the US and Canada, which means we have so many more businesses for sale.

46:24Maybe some of them are jobs. Maybe some of them are not profitable businesses for sure. But we have so many more for sale. And every time one closes, I think it's a tragedy because there's some value there that's not getting transferred. And so whether it's a client list, whether it's a lease, whether it's office furniture, whether it's a few transactions every year and recurring revenue, let's transfer those from one entrepreneur to another instead of letting the big companies just continue to steal market share. So with that, I think many of our listeners I know from experience talking to them, they don't know of these databases.

46:59They don't know anything about buying businesses. So what are some of the ways that you found are successful in uncovering these gems? Because there are certainly websites you can Google where they're listed, but everyone's kind of picking through there. What are some of the gems that you found finding businesses that might, they might even not be for sale publicly, but that owner might be really happy with the right deal to let it go? Yeah. So one of the biggest reasons people don't go to buy a business is because they don't know where to find them. So I actually started looking aggressively, like how could we help people buy businesses and solve every issue in the, let's call it the supply chain of buying a business.

47:36So we bought a business called BizScout, which is a business buying and selling marketplace. And in it, there's two types of deals. There's one called off-market deals, where you could go in your area, AJ, and you'd be looking around in, I don't know, Los Angeles for a podcast production business. And you could see what are all the podcast studios located in Los Angeles. You could see what are all the video production studios located in Los Angeles. And then you could go and you can reach out to those people individually and you could see, hey, are they interested in selling their business? Those are called off-market deals.

48:09On-market deals, we have something like 68 ,000 listings on BizScout of businesses right now today that want to be sold. So that's like your Zillow, your Redfin for small business. You kind of got to cull through a bunch of trash. We're working on making that process better, but it's not perfect right now by far to find your little diamond in the rough. And then the third way that we teach and I talk about in the book quite a bit is your center of influence strategy, which is like, you know how like before you got your first sponsorship deal for the podcast, you probably had other people that you could have gone to for sponsorship deals.

48:42You just like didn't know what that looked like. You didn't monetize it for a while. Now, typically what happens is when your opportunity is limited by your ability to see it, and most people cannot see the opportunity because they don't actually know how to define it. And so is it reasonable that before you got your first ad or sponsorship deal, let's say five years ago, for the other 15 years that you guys have been running the business, is it reasonable that there was nobody sponsoring podcasts? That didn't exist? That wasn't an option? Of course not. There are other people doing it. You just didn't know how to see the opportunity to go, oh, wait, this is the CEO of that company.

49:19Hey, can I talk to you for a second? You want to sponsor our podcast? And so it's kind of the same with doing deals. What you're going to start seeing when you learn how to become a deal is it's going to be like an iceberg where at the beginning, just a little tip stands out. So you're like, all right, I can go to BizScout and I can start searching businesses and I can see the businesses here. And then you're going to learn more. And so the water is going to recede, recede, recede until the iceberg is fully exposed. And you're like, holy crap, there's so many deals around me. Now it's just, I got to be selective on the right deal for me.

49:52And that is what I want for more people. And then they can sell their business to me when it gets bigger. So what are some of the critical aspects of due diligence that you focus on to mitigate the risks when buying small businesses? Yeah, well, we have a red flag section, which is really important. We want to make sure that when we see the opportunity, we know it. And when we see a potential problem, we also know it. And one of the first red flags is pretty straightforward, which is when an owner says something like, hey, the business isn't profitable now, but if you do these five or six or 10 or 12 things, it will be in the future.

50:26So you should probably buy this business today. It's just, it's all, there's all this opportunity, but I just haven't had a chance. But if I had a chance, I made so much money. So no, we don't play that game. Another red flag is now you have to realize that business owners are running a business. They're busy. They're not going to be able to get you everything you want when you want it. And it's probably a bit of a mess, the financials in the back end. But you need somebody to play ball with you. So if the business owner is not willing to share their financials, if they don't want to share their tax returns, if they're not answering any of your questions, you know, if they're saying like, oh, that's not important, or we'll get to that later, probably a red flag, move on to a business that's a little bit more straightforward, they're ready to transact.

51:08The third that's most important to me is a line my dad said, which is you can't do a good deal with a bad guy. So for your first couple of deals until you're really good. We just want to make sure that you like the seller. I want you to like the guy and I want him to like you. And I want you guys to feel like you're going to have a relationship even after you buy the business. It's not a one-off transaction because you're going to miss things. You're not going to be able to find a password. You're going to have a door that's locked that you can't get into for some reason. And so you need that person to be invested in the success of the business, even after they've sold it.

51:43Now they don't have to work in the business, even after they've sold it, that's unreasonable to think that they're still going to work hard. They won't. But you need them to care about you and the future of the business. Yeah. I'm curious to hear the negotiation standpoint, because I think a lot of times we think of negotiation of the price is listed. OK, maybe I can push back and forth on it. But I know there are creative ways, even if the price listed on BizScout seems really high, that you can find value. So how do you approach the negotiation once you've identified research and now you're really excited about this opportunity.

52:16Yeah. Well, here's a secret weapon for you if you want to negotiate down a business price. One is when you go to buy a house, what's the first thing your realtor does? He pulls comps, right? So here are the competitive houses that are in a similar area, size, style, et cetera. And so you can say, well, Mr. Seller of the house, I know you want a million dollars, but everything around you is 250. So what's going on here? And so we have something at BizScout called Scout Sites. And basically what it is, it's like the Zestimate. You know how you have that at Zillow? It's like this house, Zillow estimates is worth this.

52:50So we have a scout site, which is really important because business data is not transparent. Like, you know, you don't go around to your friends' businesses and go, hey, sup, Fred? How much money you make this year? Awesome. Like, I made this much. Yeah, revenue and bottom line. Let me just tell you the difference between the two. Of course not. And so businesses are the same. So we pulled a database of tens of thousands of businesses and for equal size sector geography businesses, we have like some scout sites, which is like recommended multiples. Oh, which I really like. And so that's one. You want to do competitive pricing.

53:22The second thing that's useful is to know this broad ranging valuation, which is most small businesses under$10 million in revenue sell for two to three X profit or what's called seller discretionary earnings, the money that the seller takes home. And if you go to Google right now and you search, what do small businesses sell for less than$10 million, you'll find this normal range. And so a thing you can do with sellers is say, hey, Mr. Seller of a Business, I buy businesses like yours in this size sector geography. And typically, I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Those businesses sell for somewhere around two to three X profit.

54:02I'm sure you're familiar with that. You can show it to them like this. Now, of course, your business could be worth slightly more or less than this, but I just want us to be reasonable about it. So you're not thinking you get a 20x profit or something like that, because that's not what businesses of this size typically sell for. And so you can sort of price anchor people a little bit lower by just saying, ah, I wish I could help. But like Velociraptor hands, it's out of my control. This is the market price. I think the transition in ownership is another sticking point and concern. And I've heard horror stories of being excited.

54:38You bought this great HVAC company, 25 employees. They've been working there for 30 years. They love the owner. Now they don't want to show up and work for you. So what does that transition look like upon buying the business and the ownership actually changes? Because there's culture, there's obviously structure that's in place that you might not agree with and you might think, oh, if we did it this way instead of that way, we'd be even more profitable. How do you approach that? And what does that period look like? What are you looking for for the transition to feel like it's going to be successful?

55:09This is so important. I read this story, and I won't name the name of the company, but about a CEO that took over a company and got on Zoom after the acquisition and basically started talking about how, hey, at this company today, everybody has to come back into the office. You know, 100 % employees have to work long hours continuously. You know, everybody's happy about it. In fact, you know, Matt over there, you know, he's so dedicated to the company that he actually gave up his brand new dog because he couldn't be there to take care of him. And that's the type of company we have. And he kind of quickly realized, uh-oh, that's probably not a great thing to say that I'm making people give up lifelong pets in order to come back into the office.

55:53And so there was hysterically viral, you know, they clipped this guy everywhere and I don't think he lasted long at that company. And so I do think that people will remember what you said and how you made them feel when you take over a company. And it's super important when you take over a company that you know the current ownership and what is called the key men, the few people inside of the organization who drive the culture within the organization. It's not usually always the owner. There's usually in a company less than 10 million in revenue, let's say, somewhere between three and probably eight people at the company that are core.

56:31They're like, there's the cheerleader, there's the executor, there's the wizard, there's the leader. And each of these individuals is somebody that you have to go get buy-in from. And this should be part of your transition and your offer docs. And you should say to the seller of the business, hey, I'm happy to pay your price if everything we find is right in the business. And if all your key men stay for X period of time, and they don't have a fall and how much production they do. And so you're basically diversifying away from just the single seller. And a good seller will work with you on that, because they'll say, oh, yeah, Bob's amazing.

57:10Hey, Janet's kind of hard. So let's let's spend some time with Janet. Let's get her on board. Here's what she cares about. And that's the type of conversation you're going to want to have with the seller of the business. Yeah, I think it's so key. I know we went through a little of that, even with our acquisition, that it was just like a completely different environment. And some people had to move fully remote and they weren't quite thrilled with that. And we didn't anticipate that in their conversation because we were so excited to get the IP and so excited to bring on what we thought would be this great product.

57:39And And then we did lose some people along the way. And it was frustrating not thinking about that. I think in a business, we have something called downside cost calculators, which is basically, I don't assume when I buy a business that I'm going to do a better job than the guy who's been running it for 11 years. I actually assume the opposite. I go, you know what? I bet the first year we're going to lose 20 % to 30 % from top line, from what he did to what I did. Can the business sustain that? Am I still happy with the acquisition price if the business falls slightly? And so we have this little graphic that kind of shows you how much the business could lose and you could still be making money because that's going to happen.

58:18You're going to have maybe some employees leave, but you're probably going to have a few that you're like, you got to leave. Like you're not a great fit here. And so regardless of the two, you just want to make sure there's enough buffer that you don't really feel it. You know, it's like somebody punches you and you're wearing a sumo suit. You're like, yeah, that doesn't really bother me very much. And so we got to make sure we have enough fat in the sumo suit inside of the business for it to not bother us so much. And I think the main reason business transactions go wrong is they're too lean.

58:45Everything's just a little too tight. And cash is king. Cash will protect you from a lot of hits. I think in closing for our audience, now that they're so excited to hear about these opportunities and to understand the ownership mindset, what are some mindsets that they need to start adopting to be successful in the ownership role? Yeah, I mean, the best advice I ever got was from one of my mentors, Bill Perkins, who said, your bank account is a direct reflection of how fast you move, how much risk you take, and how much value you add. And so the faster you move, the more money that you make on average, as long as you are having positive action and learning from every single mistake.

59:23And I really took that to heart. And it's interesting. I had one of my old employees reach out to me yesterday. His name's Joe. He's great. And he was like, I learned a lot at your company. But the number one thing I learned was speed. And he's like, speed cures almost everything. And it drives employees crazy, too. Because, you know, as founders, we're always like, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, right? And they're always like, we can't do more, we can't do more, we can't do more. And there's this like tension between the two. But once you've run a business, you realize that we don't have to be smarter.

59:53We don't have to be richer. We don't have to be better if we are faster. And so if you can decrease your speed to action, you can make a lot more money. And I think that is the main reason why people don't succeed in life. You don't have to go all in, but you do have to get started. I love that advice. And I think it's a great place to wrap. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can our audience find out about the book and the community that you've built? Well, thanks, guys. It's called Main Street Millionaire, and it's at msmbook.com or codysanchez.com. And I'm on all the socials. And then if any of your people buy a business, I want to know, I want to hear about it.

1:00:30We have this little ticker scorecard where we tick every single person who buys a business and then we count the total number of revenue dollars that they make. So that just makes me happy. I love that. Thank you again for joining us. This is a lot of fun. Thanks, guys.

1:00:53That was a fantastic episode. And now to showcase one of our X-Factor Accelerator members. Take it away, Daniel. My name is Daniel and I'm a manufacturing engineer. My overall experience with the X-Factor Accelerator program has been excellent due to effective teaching and a supportive community of like-minded individuals. Since joining, I've cultivated deeper connections with my friends, family, and colleagues by implementing the conversational techniques learned in the program. These deeper connections have made my life more fulfilling, both personally and professionally. I would recommend joining the X Factor Exciter program because the excellent teaching and consistent accountability ensure you will grow into the person that you want to become.

1:01:39Daniel, it was a pleasure working with you, too, and good luck to all your future endeavors. If you've enjoyed this or any of our podcasts, head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show. It means the world to us and it helps others find the show. If you've listened this far, you're probably somebody who understands the value of building meaningful connections and expanding your network. Well, do we have something special for you today? Imagine a world-class networking program that helps you grow your social capital, not just through random handshakes and business cards, but through your general interests and core values.

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1:02:54Don't miss out on this opportunity to transform your social life. That's theartofcharm.com slash SC for your free social capital training. Elevate your network, elevate your life with social capital. Before we head out, A huge thank you to our producers, Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery. Until next week, go out there and crush it.

1:03:37That's your taste. I'm back on the yesterday. Yeah, but I remember you. Oh, yeah. I remember you. It was my bad day. But I brought you away.