The Money Expert: From $0 to Millions In 2 Years Without Any Hard Work!: Codie Sanchez

23:43And if you're in the content business, don't buy a boring business in the traditional sense. Look around you. It's something I call my personal P &L review. So I'd basically look at, what do I spend money on already? If you're in content, you probably spend money on ad purchasing, right? You probably spend money on video production. You probably spend money on maybe you rent a set space. You have all these expenses around you. And what if you could turn one or two of those expenses into an asset, not a liability? Thing that So, I did a deal back when I was doing more video production in my last company where I bought a podcast and video production company.

24:25And I did that deal basically for zero dollars. I think I put $10 ,000 down for that deal that ended up doing about $300, $400 ,000 a year because I just said, I know like five or six other people that could use your service. I'm going to like double your revenue by introducing you to these people. And I pay you, let's say, $3 ,000 a month now. What if we're just going to wipe that out if I can hire these other people and you're going to give me 25 % of the company or whatever percentage it was? That's what I would do if I was you. So if you're young and hungry, look around you and see what you pay for and what you currently utilize already and then try to get a percentage of that business if not buying the whole thing.

25:04And that's sort of the pro way to do it as opposed to car wash, need to go learn totally different market. You can do the second. It's just a little bit riskier. So I'm working in content 25 years old, $7 ,000 in the bank. I realize what you've just said. And I go, you know, I'm at a marketing agency. We book a lot of studios. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to approach a studio space, try and do a deal with them. And then I'm going to send clients their way. Yeah, you could totally do that. That'd be a SWAT equity deal or a REV equity deal, revenue equity deal. So, for a studio space, I mean, I think the probably pro way to do that would be one, you'd approach them and you'd kind of get an understanding for their business.

25:51You'd be like, how much revenue do you make? Like, how big is this? You'd figure out if you were material to their business. So me doing 3K a year with my video production guy, I was material to his business. He was only doing, I don't know, you know, $100 ,000 a year or something like that. And so if my 3K went away, that was, you know, that's like 20 % of his business right there over a yearly basis. So if you go to a studio production company and they're like, yeah, we're doing $7 million a year and you're paying them 3K You're like, all right, cool. Anyway nice to chat with you. Or you could say, you know, who's the owner?

26:22How long you've been doing this and you could dive into it and the other side of the coin is you might find out that the Orno 70 and you become buds with the owner and the owner loves when you come in because you're kind of like young and you learn about what he does and then you ask who's going to take over the business. And then you might say, hey, you know, I do this other thing, but I would love to sort of be in an apprentice to you in a way and potentially buy your business using future profits and you can sort of like stay on and we can stair step our way into this. But would you be open to that?

26:53Like leaving your legacy to somebody like me. And so you could do it that way too. But I think it is learned, it goes back to kind of the smart question you asked, which is like the two avatars are who's listening to this right now? And then that's the same question to the people listening that you're going to ask the owner, what sort of avatars the owner? And how can you become the solution to what that avatar is looking for? How can you become the son to the father? How can you become the buyer to a really anxious seller? And then you can get your deal done. Why do you think most people don't ever reach financial freedom in their lives?

27:30Do you think it's a psychology thing, a mindset thing. Obviously, let's take the very practical elements out of the equation, so severe hardship poverty, all of those kinds of things. But people that are in that middle layer that are comfortable. Why do they never, some of those people never really reach a point of financial freedom? I think humans defer to the paths they've seen before them. I think so often, and we follow in our fathers or our mothers footsteps. And that's why I think the internet's really powerful as you have an opportunity to now choose the family footsteps you want to follow into.

28:13So I used to think it was just a knowledge gap, but then I went to this event, and I was talking to my friend about it, and she said that the facilitators did something really cool. It was a group of women, imagine like 40 women are real, right? and they're there to talk about finances. And in this room, they said, okay, everybody close your eyes and I want you to picture money, picture money right now. And then I want you to turn your body into the shape you feel when you hear the word money, right? And so 30 women, all eyes close, they take whatever shape. And she goes, now open your eyes and look around.

28:50And my friend was explaining to me how most people in the room were like fetal position, they were like holding, they were like really close somewhere on the ground, you know, somewhere covering their eyes. So in a room of 30 relatively successful women, their reaction was like, attack, shame, guilt for money. She was like, you know, she was standing there with her arms open wide, like, you know, give me the money. And when I think about my relationship with money, it's the same thing. I'm like, if I think about money, I'm like, yeah, it's over here. Like my hands are up. Like I am here for it.

29:21But most people have this weird emotional attachment to money. And so I used to think that people on the internet like, not I like Tony Robbins, but like Tony Robbins or whatever who do a lot of the motivational stuff, I kind of didn't get it. I'm like, just give me the tactics. Skip the other thing. And then I realized that most people have really bad stories that they tell themselves about money. And you could tell, I mean, to be interesting, your next speech, you could try it. But I tried it at one of mine, same thing. Men and women holding each other. Like they're being beaten when somebody talks about money.

29:51The average human feels that way. And so I think it all comes down to what we believe, which is hard for somebody in finance like me to say, you know? Typically I would think, well, if you knew what to do, you could just do it. But that's not the case. It's you have to believe that you can do it. And the only way I can figure out, to get more people to believe that they can do it, is to show more people who are super normal or in fact below average doing the damn thing. But if I had the answer to that, that'd be the million dollar question. I read a stat in the US that only one in 10 people dies wealthy in the US, that most people die broke and young.

30:34And I thought that was fascinating because we're at economic high times, like lower poverty levels than ever before, but still, most people die, at least without extra cash to pass on to the next generation. Why do you think people don't reach financial freedom? Or most people die without a lot of cash? I think, um, obviously, it's a very complex topic, but I think I really resonate with the emotional, psychological side of things that you described, you know? It's the same reason why most people don't go to the gym or eat healthy. Money is inherently emotional. When I was, when I had no money, I was reckless with money.

31:16All the gambling shops are in the areas where people don't have money. There's something deeply psychological about money. So I would, if I, when I was working in those call centers, if I got paid £1 ,000 at the end of the month, I would, the same day, go and buy a TV or an Xbox, like a PlayStation, for about £6 ,700. I would not pay my rent to go and buy that PlayStation. And sometimes I'd buy the PlayStation without having a TV. There was just something psychologically attached to the dopamine rush or the sense of self worth that I got from owning the shiny thing. When I got money, my relationship with money became amazing.

31:57I stopped buying designer things, I stopped wasting it, I didn't feel the need to show off or buy Rolexes or whatever. So I was able to preserve wealth more. There's a really interesting relationship with money on both ends of the spectrum. when you have less of it, it's often because of certain psychological things and certain people. I was one of them. It's harder to hold onto. When you have more of it, it feels easier to hoard and more broadly on the subject of why people don't reach financial freedom, I think the modern world tells us that we can get rich quick. When you think about how people build wealth, we think about the Warren Buffets of the world.

32:39It's so boring and slow. And who's gonna buy that book? You know, get a billionaire at 87. Fuck what? I'm not gonna be able to dance in the Michael Ab87. So why do I want a billion then? That's why the NFT thing in the crypto scam, this whatever, is also appealing to people. Because it's quick. Yeah, it's true. Well, you know what's, I actually was reading somewhere a story about in South Africa, in the slums, they have the highest concentration of the largest televisions per square foot of the house. So if you've been there, and I've actually never been, so I can't validate, but you will see very small little rooms with huge televisions.

33:22And I thought that was interesting, but it actually makes sense because maybe it comes down to a belief that people don't think they're ever going to get out. And so they think the only chance of getting out is going into whatever the short term pleasure is. It's like if you never think you're going to escape your everyday reality, which is actually kind of miserable, then you're going to buy the PlayStation because why wouldn't you? Why would you save and try to get out when you've never seen anybody else get out? But what does the PlayStation mean so much more to you in that moment than PlayStation?

33:53It means it's your itself worth. It's one tiny token that you are successful. That you can show your friends or that you can just even fear and self -esteem. It's so much more than a PlayStation. The thing that invalidates you in this case money will be the thing that has the greatest chance of making you feel valid. And so if in my house, the lack of money was always the thing that caused my shame. So the minute I got any of it, I would overcompensate by trying to buy some shit to show people. And then when I had loads of it, he gave a fuck. That void was almost filled. Yeah, it's true. I also think it's hard.

34:33I remember many times where I remember checking accounts always being overdrawn and seeing the little negative pin on my email and cell phone that there was nothing else in there. When I was in college and trying to figure it out before I made money, money. I think I'm in like 37k in my first job at a college. So I definitely remember all that. But I think if you can have this belief and you can get around other humans who have had success or are striving for success, your aperture just opens in a different way. And then maybe the commercials and the ads and the things that make you feel like you want to buy all the everyday stuff go away.

35:14Like I don't really like, I kind of viscerally get mad when I see people who have wealth showing images of them in their bent leaves or rolls, voices or I mean I have a nice watch but like you don't see me show that shit anywhere. Like when people are show themselves in their private plans or whatever, I just think they're missing the whole boat and then what they're doing is they're perpetuating the PlayStation situation. They're doing it again and again and they're doing it because it doesn't make them happy anymore to have it. That's not enough. I have to show a bunch of people I got it. And what they should actually be showing is, man, I just invested in my first stock.

35:49That's fucking cool. Look at my, I mean, if you look at my stuff, it's like, I've laundromats and car washes behind me all the time in them. Because that's the stuff that you should try to strive for. You can actually pass it down. It can pay you back. You can buy as many PlayStation as you want. But I think to your point, the other thing is we are all, you know, I've never felt, when you're around other people and they're sort of negative or they want to talk about people the whole time and like how that energy feels. It's like it's draining, right? Even if you kind of get caught up in it, it's fun for a second.

36:20At the end, you're like, that was it. I feel kind of gross for having a combo. I think it's the same with ads and stuff that we take into us. And so they're basically creating our stories for us and social media by showing all this fancy stuff. And then we start to have this mimetic desire, this external desire and belief that we actually that we want it, that we need it. But we don't. We're just becoming a replica of the people that we're surrounding ourselves with, which are now social media. There's no, even growing up, there's no laundry mats and 50 cents videos. Yeah, that should be. It should be.

36:50It's all sports cars and mansions and stuff. So that was my North Star as a young black man. It was like, how do I get a mansion and a sports car? And in the first page of my diary, 18 years old, it says, four things I want to achieve before I'm 25. Bear in mind, I was shoplifting pizzas at the time. And I was a university dropout not speaking to my parents with two CCJs, which is like when the court is coming for you. For deaths, I wrote, a range over sport will be my first car. I didn't have a driving license, so I was 23. I'll make a million pounds. I'll work on my body image again, because I'm a very small kid.

37:23And I'll get a girlfriend. Those were my full goals in life, and they were totally influenced by the outside world. That's why my book is called Happy Sexy Millionaire, because I thought if I became a sexy millionaire, then I would become everything I needed to be. And I was so wrong. I mean, I don't regret the decisions I made because you can't really in hindsight, but I wish I had better influences to say the least. Yeah, I mean, I think that's why content's so important. You know, I think about Warren Buffett's annual shareholders' meeting, right? Which you can go and attend if you own stock and you don't have to own much of it.

38:00And I think, you know, people made fun of me when I started creating content online. Because they're like, oh, big, successful private equity person. Now you're taking your own money. And if you really had companies that made $80 million in revenue, that means you're worth a couple hundred million bucks. And if that's the case, why would you be making Instagrams and TikToks? And that doesn't make much sense, right? And my reaction at the time was, I think we should make it just as entertaining talking about stuff that makes us money as we do stuff that costs us money. I think probably that'd be good.

38:31And if we could do that, that'd be a worthy mission. and also it'd be fun to try to do it. I don't know if we could do it. But yeah, maybe the next wrap videos, I mean, and now, now, for honestly, my favorite deals to break down are the celebrity deals because they're fascinating. Like the rock, have you ever looked at the rock's content from a product perspective? Brilliant. So the rock, if you look at his content, so let's just talk Instagram. If you go to the rock's Instagram, I want you to count how many pieces of content He has that have product placement in them of companies he owns and the answer is close to 80 percent So almost every single post the rock does is an ad But what do we really see we see sexy tequila we see abs we see him with his beautiful wife like we see these other things But we don't realize that every single one of them is an ad and so what if we could flip that around like wouldn't it be cool If the rock talked about the deals he did to and how he did that now he goes back and he talks about how he stole stickers bars are similar to you with pizza.

39:32But I think even for celebrities, they don't want to talk about the deals that they did. They just want to talk about all the money that they have. It almost seems like faux pas somehow to talk about the deals and how good at deal making they are. Like Reese Witherspoon, billionaire now. Why? Because Reese Witherspoon, little sweet Suzy Sunshine and Pink basically took a book club and said to authors, I'll give you part of my platform for you to talk about your book because I'm lovely. It's free. You're going to sell a bunch of books. Tiny insignificant detail. I'd like the future rights to turn your book into a movie and I'll pay you some sum or I'll have a write a first refusal, okay, I get the right to buy it before anybody else and I'll pay you then for it.

40:19The author goes amazing. Reese, of course. Perfect. They come on Reese basically AB tests, so tests out which books do best, and depending on which books do best, Reese buys their movie rights and makes movies that create, you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. But Reese doesn't tell that story. Reese tells the Suzy Sunshine story of her selling the books. I think the other stories are more interesting and more people can learn from it. So when I hear these deals and when I see these big success stories, we've got Kylie, we've got the Rihanna's of the world, we've got Ryan Reynolds, the rock, Reese Witherspoon, the question that we must always be asking ourselves, I certainly ask it is, was that them?

41:02Or did they just have a great advisor? A financial advisor that came along at some point and went, by the way, you don't like this and you'll make fucking these shit loads. Yeah. Well, my question is, who cares? I still want to know the secret sauce. Yeah. And so she's, none of them are that dumb where they don't know what the deal was, right? Like, even if somebody was smarter than them, which could be, Reese may have a genius behind her, the rock too, probably Danny Garcia, his wife, his manager. Kylie, yeah, the goat, you know, which is weird to say about the Kardashians, but, you know, behind them, the mom, for sure.

41:35But they're, you know, they're smart enough when you create that much wealth and you do it continuously multiple times, like Reese is done with Draper James too. You definitely know what's going on. So I think like sharing those secrets would be cool, but that's usually where people go people go Well, they're famous. So it's easy for them or you know who did the deal and I'm like, yeah Maybe it's Scooter Braun behind the scenes, but I'd like I'd like to know how they structured that The reason they don't tell you though is because it feels like it's the opposite of the authenticity that I'm trying to Maintain so if they came out and listen the way we did you on that whiskey deal I got 50 % my job was to post it with the abs every week and you guys fucking bullet and mouse worth a billion dollars.

42:17I is the how to, they can't do that deal again because everything they touch, I'm gonna think, oh it's a deal. Well I think you could do it in a way that was real. Like you could be like, we did this business and maybe you could give some of it away. Like you could be like, you know, if the rock makes a billion dollars off of Teuromona, couldn't he then say we would never have done a billion dollar deal unless you guys bought it. Because you bought it, we're going to give you some equity. We're going to allow people to buy into equity at the company at a lower valuation and have access to it. I mean, that's kind of what venture capital and crowdfunding does, right?

42:53So I mean, they can do whatever they want to do, but I think there's so many ways to get around it. And maybe there's nothing but downside because people these days get mad when people make money and so maybe people would hate that. But God, I think it can make a lot more humans rich for people to be honest about how they got there. You know? I reflect as you were speaking on a conversation I had with a cab driver in the UK. He said to me, you know, I know that I ever see a guy, I listen to your podcast in the cabs and, you know, I'm working three jobs. This is one of them and I'm trying to, what he was saying was I'm trying to find financial freedom.

43:25I'm working this cab job. I'm doing this other little thing on the side, but I'm trying to find the way. I'm trying to find the way to get out of this life and to, and he was scrambling around. He who's saying to me, you know, my friend does some stuff in Africa and Ethiopia and he's got something there with properties where I might go there. And there's this other thing I might do, those people, those are the ones that I'm trying to speak to today. Those ones that are like looking for the way out. Well, first of all, cab drivers and Uber drivers are my people. I always, yeah, I always chat with them.

43:58Well, and they always listen to my stuff because they know small business. Like they have a friend that owns a laundry mat or they have a friend that works inside of a car wash or owns a car wash. These are like blue collar businesses, right? But usually what I would say to them is something I actually said to one of the guys that's with me today, I'd say try to break your frame entirely. Most people look for individual next tactics. So they're like, what can I do over the next one, two or three years to get here? One thing I think is really helpful to do is say, okay, you have a three -year goal, break the frame.

44:31How could you achieve that goal in six months? What would be something so different, so out of the box, so big that the goal that was going to take you three to six years is now going to take you six months. And I want you to spend some time on that. Spend a week, spend a weekend deeply thinking about that idea. Because what you're going to do is you're going to come up with ideas for the person that could be the impetus for your financial freedom. Or for the business risk that's super smart, but you haven't been wanting to take it. And I think most people, they like, they wade in the shallows of life and you cannot have massive change by going shallow.

45:09And so I like to say when people want an answer, I like to ask them a question because I think they know. I think they know deep down inside but they get scared just like I did and so they wait years to do the thing that they knew they should have done earlier. And I don't think you need a guru or a podcast to tell you that. I think you've got to break your frame and say, I'm super capable. If I was going to do this crazy thing in six months, if anything was possible, if I really believed in myself, what could I do? Who could I go to that could make an unfair advantage for me? Then I do think that book, Who Not How?

45:42People usually read it as leaders because it's a lot about hiring, but I think it's actually about life. And I think usually your answer to freedom is a who, not a how? Because often for hustlers and people who are gonna work hard, you know one or two people who are a very well -thought -out or who run big businesses, there are a few people in your ecosystem that you could go to and become their hustler for them. And that can lead to fantastic financial reward because most people are not relentless in the pursuit of the things that they want. If you can be relentless, you can accomplish way more than the average person.

46:17And most of us, you used to phrase earlier on in this conversation, which really stuck with me because I've used this phrase with my friends over and over again, you said you got to see behind the curtain. And I remember the first moment in my life where I really felt like I got to see behind a curtain that I didn't even know was there. For anyone listening to this podcast, there's a curtain on my right. For anyone watching, you can see the curtain on my right. Behind that curtain, there was actually a room in there. And there's actually another studio in there where we record some content, kind of like a standing up studio.

46:46We've got some backdrops and stuff like that. But the analogy that I'd give you is in life, you never know how many other rooms there are behind the wall. And there was a point in my life where I started understanding deals and the public markets and how certain high net worth individuals were playing what I called money games. They were basically not doing much work, but they understood the laws of money. So they could buy things at an arbitrage or flip things at an arbitrage and make, put them on the public markets and all of these crazy money games that no one had ever told me about in life.

47:20I thought the way you build wealth is by working. And And these fuckers, the richest people I know do very little working and they do a lot of money games. And they live behind the curtain that I didn't even know was there. And I was thinking about the cab driver there. There's so many, what is behind the curtain? Behind the curtain is a bunch of information. That's essentially what it is. You know, a bunch of people that have a bunch of information. What I might say to that cab driver is like, who can take you behind the curtain? Even if you have to go get a shit job for six months. Yeah. Like, you are alluding to it there.

47:53Like, is there a guy or a woman that I could go just shadow, just make the fucking tea and get behind the curtain and figure out how they do it? Yeah. Like, if you wanted to be the best podcast in the world, or you wanted to be a good podcaster, you come, go host your rogue and if you can go clean the floors. 100%. You know what I mean? A lot of people don't want to do that. They want to work their way there, but so much in life is about information, right? And the information you don't even know that you don't have. Oh, yeah. When did you see behind the curtain? You worked in finance, that's unfair.

48:23Yeah, I think it is a hack. I saw behind the curtain for the first time when I had managers and bosses who were making tens of millions of dollars a year and I realized how little they worked, like you said, but also how average they were. I saw these largely middle -aged dudes who were no more impressive than I was and they were crushing it. And instead of having an envy or hate for that, I was super curious. I'm like, ah, this guy can do it. That means I can do it. And then I think that's a huge unlock, actually. I was talking with another friend the other week and I think one of the secrets to success might be when you see somebody who has more, who is doing better, who has more money, realizing that means that you can get it as opposed to, I hate them because they have it.

49:19If you can flip that mindset, on the other side of that lives nothing but opportunity. And it keeps, I keep finding new rooms in the house, new curtains behind it. And I'm not sure that will ever stop. I mean, I was talking to my friend Bill Perkins the other day who's a hedge fund manager. and Bill is very successful, huge compound house. We're walking around out, I'm like, this place is pretty nice. And he said to me, Cody, do you think that you, because you've been around small business for so long, small has infected your thinking? And I was like, oh God, I don't fuck, I don't know. But then I realized to him it had, because he's got way more zeros than I do.

50:08And so, like those zeros become unlocks to the curtain. I mean, the other day I was flying home yesterday, or flying here yesterday, and I sat next to Jeffrey Kent, the CEO and founder of Abercrombie and Kent. And he built that business up to multiple billions of dollars before selling it. He played polo with the king, is quite close with King Charles, and, you know, also has traveled the world, came from nothing in South Africa was in a town in South Africa where there are only 100 white people just fascinating. Like mostly was barefoot all throughout his childhood and created the luxury travel market essentially.

50:46And I was just sitting next to him on the airplane and I kind of looked at his watch and I was like, that's a nice watch. And I sort of looked at his mannerisms and I was like, I just have a feeling this guy is worth a lot of money. And so I started chatting with him. I just said, you know, hi, like I'm Cody, you know, why were you in town? What were you doing in Khan? And he lives now in Monaco. And what I thought was so interesting is when I talked to him, I said, what do you think the secret is? Like you're a billionaire. Like what is that? How do you become that? And he said, there's really one ingredient to success.

51:18And that ingredient is the thing that everybody has, but everybody was. Time. Time. He's like, I ran my company for 61 years. 61 years running one company. He goes, can you imagine what the compounding looks like? In 61 years, focused on one thing. He goes, this generation cannot imagine. And then we went a little deeper. And I said, you know, what do you think is the biggest difference between entrepreneurs today and entrepreneurs when you were really in the game? because he's in his 80s now. And he said, well, back then, we were explorers of the only frontier that still existed, which was business.

52:01They were the privateers asking money for the king and queen to buy a ship to go to the new land, except he was doing it in a business sense. He went to China in 76 and was the first person to open up the Chinese market to travel. You know, he broke so many bones playing polo that he had to retire at a young age. Like, they were hard men. And I think about it with us today. I think that we've become a generation of vitamin D deficient, all birds wearing, computer programming, alternative milk drinking softies in many ways. And some of my most successful friends who are worth so much monetarily, their health is not very strong, they don't adventure and they don't have true difficulty.

52:53And I think that's the difference between his generation and ours and between true success and not. Is this idea that I'm sort of playing with like a third degree human, somebody who has a strong mind, a strong bank account, a strong body, those three things altogether. And where we don't just take other people's risk, meaning take other people's money to run our business, but we take the risk ourselves. And I think his generation really did many things wrong. I don't want to glorify it, but I think they did that right. And how much more interesting is it to do these big, huge things? And maybe if you do that, you break the frame entirely.

53:30And every time I meet with a billionaire, my mind just kind of, it expands a little bit more. And I think it's the same way, like the first time you met, like my parents weren't millionaires when I was growing up. So the first time I met a millionaire, I thought, whoa, like this is what is this magic land? You know, this person has so much money. They don't know to do with it And then you meet the first Deca millionaire and then you've meet the first hundred million there And at each level not that we want to worship money or that money that is all there is But it is a scoreboard for a game that a lot of people are playing in the society And I think it's interesting to try to get in those rooms and these days those rooms are open You know back when we were first doing our businesses a billionaire didn't write a book, you know?

54:12Or do a podcast. Or tweet. Or go shake your hand at a conference. That was unheard of. And now they're all around. What have you noticed in billionaires? What's the trend? You know, people haven't met quite a lot of billionaires now and there tends to be some similarities. Yeah. They all get there by different routes and different paths, but similarities and character and philosophy. Yeah. One is I've found most billionaires I've met have a mission so big it dwarfs the pain that comes with building because I do think it's more comfortable by and large. It's more, it's like the low dull pain is being in a job.

54:59You know, that's like kind of like having a little ache constantly being in a job. Being an owner, an entrepreneur, or trying to strive for billionaire status is a rollercoaster ride of extreme pain at some points, or maybe you'd say extreme pain at some points, extreme pleasure. You kind of go like this, right? You have to be able to wade through that. And so I find that most of them are the opposite of what I thought they'd be. I thought they'd just be like Scrooge McDuck, like swimming around in their riches. They'd be kind of shallow. Maybe they'd be super self -interested. They'd only be focused on their own thing.

55:29They wouldn't be nice. I wouldn't want to meet them. And actually what I find, this is gonna sound like a gross generalization, but most of them Really want to help you up when they realize that you're hungry. Like when they see the hunger paired with the ability and willingness to take action They want to help you. It's so rare. Like if you're listening and you have that desire But you actually do the hard things, you're rare. You're actually really rare because everybody says they want it but nobody really wants to do it. I mean, I knew I had to fire one of my employees back in the day, which made me really sad.

56:02The second that that person told me that they had a bunch of debt, they were working in the business with me, obviously. They had a bunch of upside in the business, but they decided to take some of their cash and they were gonna invest in a day trading thing in the stock market. And I said, I really don't think you should do that. I think if you want to take that cash and buy a business, us, we should talk about that. I can help you if you want to focus more on a secondary business that increases your income. But if you want a day trade, which you're telling me, so if you want to get rich fast and you want to speculate that you want to get lucky, you don't want to earn it.

56:40And anyway, they cut a laugh and then they did the thing. And that was in that moment I knew you don't have what it takes at this level. Maybe you could change. But if you're going to make that decision now, you're telling me you're a short -term player. And long -term games with long -term people like Naval RavaCon said is the goal. So that's what billionaires have. They think long -term. I was actually just talking with a member of my team on the taxi on the way over here. And there's a close to a billionaire that I've become friends with here. And I was like, why do you think he's invited us to do this stuff?

57:08You know who this is? And I was like, I'm not a big enough name for this. There are other people, what's the thought here? Then then what I think I realized is that this guy is taking a bet that I might keep growing my social platform and I might keep spending on it in two to three to five years. I might be a really big name. Because he associates with me now, when he needs something in two to three to five years, I'll be really big and he'll have a like a remember when moment here. He could go get a Damien John and pay to do something with a Damien John, but then he doesn't have the remember when moment because Damien's already at the top, right?

57:47And so that billionaire, almost billionaire, is thinking three to five years out with a potential call option, aka a maybe possibility. How often do we do that? I don't even do that enough. So that's where I think they're different. It's just this different scope because probably they see many curtains. With that long -term view, they want to water some seeds, right? I can totally relate to that. I've often say been perplexed in my life by why extremely rich people wanted to give me a hand. Right. Especially when I was like 18, kid with an idea, all the enthusiasm in the world, you know, but, you know.

58:24You almost don't trust it, right? It was so weird. Yeah. I've described it as being so unusual over and over again, every year for the last 10 years that when I was 18, 19 years old, and I stood on those stages and I went around, again, stealing the Chicago time pizzas in my spare time to feed myself. But all of these really successful people wanted to give me a hand. Like wanted to introduce me to someone, you know, invest in my business even though I had no credentials. They just saw something in me that I never understood. That would be an interesting thing to try to break down. What is it that you see in another human?

58:57I mean, one of the things that comes to mind for me is how many people reach out to you every single day, a DM, You know, I'd love to meet you, Stephen. Could you help me with this? Could you, I would get a guess a lot. None. I'm taking it. I was just saying that seems like that doesn't track. But okay. So probably a lot. But what I found as interesting is in the beginning when I was starting to be a little public, I would respond to almost all of them. Almost every single one I would respond. But I would respond like this. I would say, happy to help. Read this book and then do XYZ thing for me.

59:31Something very small. I'm like, read this book first. do this small thing. Do you know how many people did that? Fuck all. That's a great saying. I'm going to use that. Fuck all. Not a single person actually did that. And then if you compare that with, I think I've hired five team members now who all reached out to me with value. They gave right away. One of them did this deep analysis on my business. Another one basically wrote up this whole piece like she was me. And it was incredible. And for those individuals who actually asked nothing of me, I gave them a job and opportunity and many of them make six figures plus.

1:00:06And so there might be a secret there that just the humans who do are the ones who follow up. The DM tells me everything I need to know about the person. And I can give you every example of every DM that I ever get and how I filter them, how I know from the first DM whether they are someone that I should be connecting with. Let me give you the one side of the spectrum. The one side of the spectrum which I often get is any jobs going in that you've told me everything I need to know. Because not only could you have checked if we had jobs available on our many websites where we list our vacancies, you didn't even have enough effort to like go check out the job site.

1:00:49Didn't say hello, poorly structured message. You think that we hire over DM on the basis of no pitch at all. That's the extreme example, but it happens you wouldn't believe I will get any jobs going once a day without fail on one of my inboxes and sometimes I've never said this before on the very rare occasion. I'm saying once a year. I'll click on the person's profile and I'll Care about them so much that I'll send them a voice note So because I look I click on their profile. I remember this one kid and he kind of looked like me And he was a young kid and I remember thinking, I really, you know, I could just ignore it, it's easy thing to do.

1:01:29The hard thing to do was try and give them some feedback on like, please don't do that to more people. Please don't send them any jobs, go in, question mark. So I remember sending one particular kid, like a voice and it's saying, right, listen buddy, I'm on your side here, here's some advice. And then on the extreme end, the good old. What happened? What happened? The response was, he was thankful. Oh, that's good. But when he responded, I realized why he was the type of person and that would send any jobs going. Maybe a bit of a maturity issue there. Sure. And then on the other end, you have the perfect reach out.

1:02:01Where someone realizes that they can't give you what they're asking to take from you. So someone wants maybe an hour of your time. They know they can't give you anything worth an hour. They can't give me 50k, they can't nothing. Nothing they can give me worth that hour of my time. But they do two things, maybe. The first is they realize that. And so they realize that they should offer something of value. even I'm not never gonna take it. They put the gesture itself. It's like someone pulling out their card to pay. The gesture itself matters. It does. The third thing is they realize the world that I live in and that I have no time and they acknowledge that.

1:02:33So they might say, listen, you get thousands of messages like this. I know how busy you are. So just by them saying that, I go, okay, you understand. Could I just sit? So I see it as an equation. Ask for as little as possible and give whatever you can. Could I just sit in the room one day when you work means a lot to me. The third point there is research the person, because that's a huge show of care. I know you're a big Manchester United fan. I know your dog's called Pablo. In exchange, I will, I don't know, fucking, I will, I've made this jacket for Pablo. I've sewn it myself. If someone said that to me and people are gonna do this, I'm gonna do this for you.

1:03:13Pablo does not need a jacket or coming into summer. He likes being naked. But just showing you, you made an effort, oh my god, it's the keys to my heart. Yeah, that's true. And then ego is a great thing is what everyone has an ego So just acknowledging you've done your research on someone is another huge way. Yeah, and I think the sneak to If you're listening is like skip the famous people they get enough like forget it like yeah, just skip them all You know even like sort of famous people like skip all that and go to the people with money because often they're quiet People can't find them. They don't get a lot of reach out And so if I was young and hungry, I would skip the flash, skip the Bentley's, skip the Rolex's, skip the fame, and I would go straight to like, who's the richest sprinkler owner, you know?

1:04:00Like, who's the guy on your block that has the biggest house that does something that sounds so boring to you? Because you also learn the most from like the level like closest to you, and if you can kind of like level up a little bit, you know, if you go from you right now to billionaire, And billionaire goes, the thing is, you got to work hard, kid. You're like, fuck, I don't know what that means. You know? But if you go to the next person and you're like, no, the thing is, you have to send this exact email, which is what I sent to this person. There's so much closer to your climb. You know, they remember the steps.

1:04:30And they want to meant, they want someone to mentor. They do. Yeah. They'd be most flattered by, you know that I have 300 sprinklers around London. Like they would be blown away by someone taking such amount if FN care to research them. Exactly. Yeah, and, you know, and they probably had to do really interesting things to create their wealth that weren't single events. You know, if you reach out to somebody who was, now I know about the show, on Love Island, like, what are they gonna teach you? Like, yeah kid, be charismatic, kind of hot and get on a TV show, right? He's application form. Yeah, exactly.

1:05:01Like, that's not okay, and then have a bunch of money and get famous. But if you reach out to somebody who built a toilet business here, like that's, there's probably a lot they had to do continuously over time that you could learn from. But it's not that sexy so people don't do it. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast.

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1:06:10That's netsuite .com slash barlet. Why is it important for you now? The last two years you've started making content. Why do you think everybody should make content? What are all the upsides you've seen in your life? Some of the unexpected ones too, please, that have resulted from you becoming a content creator? What's the most unexpected one? I wanted every single person that I wanted to reach out to to pick up my phone call. Like, I don't ever wanna be the person standing in line at the club, I wanna own the club. I wanna get the invite. I'm actually another good example. I was just with my friends in Khan and they were like, let's try to get into this party or this party.

1:06:50I was invited to this one, I'm gonna go to this one because I don't like doing the hustling to try to get into the, I don't like it. I've never liked it. It's probably a, like, I should get better at it, I should get over myself, who cares? But I was like, I'm not gonna try to like finagle my way in. That's the short term game, right? Right. And it feels gross and it feels thirsty. I don't want to be thirsty. And so creating content is a way for you to have unfair access in a world. You know, these days, how do I become friends with billionaires? Because they watch my weird content on laundromats and car washes and they see something in it.

1:07:21And so that, if we truly believe that money is power, I think the way you get money is usually people, which is like a theme We've kept coming back to most people on the internet. I think try to explain how smart they are and what I hope to express is like I'm not that smart. I just found people, you know, and I think we can all do that. So that was one I don't I don't want to be standing in line in the club trying to like finagle my way in. I want to find that what's the What's the back door that nobody's talking about where they invite you into it? That's one You know the second is It's poison that yeah, I think that's it's that's not just a nightclub analogy.

1:07:58That's that is a philosophy towards every facet of your life, being the magnet or the peacock instead of the daughtered or sales person. Like, you know what I mean? Like, even all my companies have grown on this basis, all of my companies have grown on the basis. This is maybe my biggest, one of my least shared business secrets is that all of my companies don't have outbound sales teams because we make content and we know, I know that 99 % of my competitors are going to go the daughtered or salesman route. They're going to go network at events. You will, in the last 10 years, you have never seen me swanning around a network event.

1:08:37Content is networking. You will never catch me. I would have a business card. I'm not going to hand it to you. I won't even be there. On stage, out the back, meet people. Hello, hello, hello, out the back door. Straight back on to LinkedIn. Yeah. To start making content. People don't realize that. And it's much much easier, it's a much more sustainable, more cost efficient, long -term strategy if, you know how to do it. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you actually want to see me like sweat, it would be having to go network, small talk, like, oh god, I want to die. And I had to do sales for so long in finance, you know, finance is just all sales.

1:09:14We used to have Goldman. We had like a spreadsheet that they would track every single day how many cold calls you made when we were trying to sell a deal. And it was awful. I remember one time I was pretending like I understood golf and so I'm like, oh, that was great. How was the game yesterday? Did you get the goal? And they were like, what the fuck are you talking about? I don't know anything about it. It's miserable. It's like a fishing rod versus a net, isn't it? The fishing rod can only catch one fish. Yeah, it's true. But if I throw that fucking net out, which is making a banging video about the subject matter of the industry, I could catch 300 fish.

1:09:48That's exactly right. It takes same amount of time. Yeah, I mean, it's push first pull. Do you want to have, do you want to pull people to you? Or do you want to have to push and, you know, scream and what? I just am not interested in that. So that's why I think content, so, so powerful. The other thing about content is you find your humans. I mean, it can get, it can get a little lonely, you know, having built a bunch of stuff and had some success. And I've had many times where over the years, the person that I've become is not the person that the people I love, loved, you know. And so I had to I had to move past that.

1:10:21Yeah. And it's it sounds, you know, everybody, I will often tweet things that are things to myself. It's like notes to me and that happens to be in a tweet form. And one of them is like, you know, you get in a room with people who are smarter than you, and then you leave when that's no longer the case. And that's not saying that you get rid of friends, but typically they'll get rid of you. Like when you're outgrowing people, it's uncomfortable for the people that you've outgrown. They don't like to see that you are moving forward at such a fast progression. I wish it wasn't that way. But, you know, I had a girlfriend that I was friends with for fucking, you know, now I'm feeling old.

1:10:58But, like, you know, almost 20 years, like 18 years. And when I started getting, like, kind of notoriety on the internet, I didn't realize it bothered her, you know, but it did. And so, you know, at one point, she's like, you're posting about all your other friends and not me. And I was like, oh, I only post business stuff. I didn't, I didn't, my parents are not, there was no personal stuff on there. I keep that pretty private. So I didn't realize that was important to you. And this was a rift that just like never healed. And so I think that happens continuously, but I like content because then I find the humans who actually want you to win.

1:11:33Like get super inspired by that. When you find those people, I think it's worth more than the winnings. Amen. Amen. There is a shedding. People don't talk about this enough that when you start putting yourself out there, especially when you start becoming a quote unquote thought leader. Yeah. The people that knew you before, look at you and think, you know, fuck does he think he is? You think you'll Gandhi or Martin Luther King Steve. Yeah. Like come back down here with us. Right. You know? That must have happened to you in a big way. Yeah. I think definitely, I almost think of my life as being in school, leaving to go to university, dropping out of university, being pretty much alone and having a chance to reinvent myself, and then emerging as who I really was.

1:12:15Yeah. And I have no current friends from school still, well, no one that I speak to from my school days. And I have no one really, even from that university phase, everybody has been since, because this is what I'm into. And so it's a new person to resonate with or not resonate with. So it's, I think that's actually very, very true. I think, can't, like, if you had friends that were super excited for you still at this point and were curious and growing, and they don't have to be monetarily growing. It could be totally different. They could be obsessed with MMA. And all they want to do is do do Jitsu, but that's their area of expertise.

1:12:51You would respect that and value that. And you guys could stay friends. But what typically happens is when you grow a lot, it's like holding a mirror in front of somebody else and saying all the time, why aren't you doing the things that you can and the things that you could be capable of. And when people see that mirror non -stop, they start to look at you and think, I don't like what I'm looking at. And so I've really had to come to terms with that too. What my path is is not perfect, it's not right. I mean, sometimes don't you wish you could just like actually Netflix and chill, like you didn't wanna achieve all the time?

1:13:24I certainly do. I'm addicted to achieving, I love it. I wish I could slow down sometimes. There's a big difference here actually, because you said you started on this path at 30. Yeah. So maybe the reason I didn't experience it as much is I started at 18. I hadn't built a career and I hadn't built social circles around me when I started to make content and started these businesses and started talking on the TV about business and whatever else. So I didn't have as much to shed as much of a built up identity to shed. How good point. But I do, I meet people all the time that are, you know, 40, 50, that are thinking about making an identity pivot that are like trapped by the identity and social circle they've built and the expectations that comes with that.

1:14:06It's a good point. It's hard to, the bigger the walls you've built in terms of identity, and the more established your identity is. I think that's a really good point. Yeah. I mean, I think I had to get divorced, quit a job, move a city, and change a lot of things that weren't who I felt like I was. Are you happy enough? Way happier now. Yeah. But, you know, it's a miserable thing, leaving another human behind, you know? Like, you know, I don't wish divorce on anybody. I don't like, whenever I meet somebody who's divorced, I always say, I'm sorry and congratulations because it's kind of both. Was your decision?

1:14:51It was my decision. Yeah. We just want a different life, you know? He was very happy in a white picket fence country club life. and wanted a couple kids and wanted to stay really locally based and kind of wanted me to not work. And so when I thought about my life, I was like, I want to live all around the world. And I want to build something so big that I can't sleep because I need to create it. And I want to leave a legacy that is not managing director at a private equity firm. And I'm not ready for kids. And I'm I'm not sure I want to have kids with you. And he really wanted me to change. And I'm not sure that we should ever try to change somebody that we're with.

1:15:38There's gonna be thousands of people that have heard you say what you just said and think, fuck that's me. Yeah. I'm in that job with that partner in that city. And I just know I'm unhappy. I can just feel it. There's this like sense of, you know, there's a signal inside me telling me that I shouldn't be here. And I can hear it sometimes. I justify it away or I try and drown it out. But I know, what would you whisper to that person? What would have been words helpful words to this Cody at 36? To whisper to that Cody at 29? Two words my dad said to me, which is exit tax. So when I left, it was expensive both physically and emotionally.

1:16:28And I told my dad about it and he said there's always an exit tax to freedom. And that stuck with me because I was like, oh, this is just a toll. It's just a payment. But once it gets paid, what's on the other side? That word freedom. And one thing that really helped me actually when I was going through this, which all this is funny because I don't ever talk about this stuff. But I got a little place, like I had the big house, all the stuff, whatever before, and I got this little tiny townhouse right afterwards. Actually at one point, like I couldn't get into my bank accounts and stuff. And so I didn't have much, but I got this tiny little townhouse that I rented.

1:17:07And that tiny townhouse, nesting in a place that was just my own that felt really safe was one of the weirdest unlocks that I've ever had. I now think about it as the power of place. If you can just have somewhere else that you go to that is just yours. That's my biggest recommendation for people that go through, let's say, a divorce or a really tumultuous, you know, change in partner, is there's something about like a glass of, you know, I would have like a little glass of wine or a cup of tea in this tiny little townhouse, but it was mine. It was like, nobody else's. I didn't have to share it.

1:17:43I didn't have to compromise. I could just be me. And from there I could sort of recreate again. And I've heard that now from many, many, many women at least, who have been divorced, that like that next little tiny place is really important. And I think if I could do it again, I'd go back and buy that place and I'd like, maybe I'll buy a few, and I'd give it to women. Like, or men, right after they get out of their thing, because it's almost like you need to stand on your own feet again, you forget how to. So I would just remember there's an exit tax to freedom and then on the other side Don't you know, I like to say like Yeah, I don't think you shouldn't strive for divorce You know, I think marriage is tough and relationships are tough and there's a huge benefit to working through things with one human for life I take that very seriously But if you are in fact in something that is unhealthy and that you should not be in Realizing that the other side And it's so much better than I ever could have imagined.

1:18:43I mean, I would not have the life that I live right now, which is a pretty fucking great life if I had stayed on the side of easy. And now, when I told my mom, she cried for days. And you know, question did and you know, it was like, how are you going to do this? And now she's the opposite. She's like, you know, yeah, it was such the right decision. I'm so happy for you. And we'll say things to me like, you were so brave, which is weird for me to say it out, but that you did that because most people would stay. So that's what I would say. There's definitely freedom on the other side. Do you set goals?

1:19:18Yeah, definitely. How do you set your goals and what goals do you have? Well, one of the ways that I figured out how to get divorced was actually, I set a date on my calendar. So I was like, I'm going to commit to fixing this and therapy and all of this stuff. But if, and here's what we're going to do and here's a plant, and if we can't fix it, and this is like my drop dead date, because I was such a wuss, I couldn't do it unless I put on a calendar. So I'm a big calendar person. I really like having a deadline when I was started writing this book, my due dates in like four weeks or something like that.

1:19:52And it's not like I look at it frequently, but it's just out there. It's really? Yeah, it's just this thing that gets put in your psyche and somehow you can work backwards so much easier from a date. So it sounds so silly, but most humans will say, well in one year or three years or five years, I'm like put it on your calendar. Like, whatever that actual timeline is, and then try to work backwards. And then for most goals, I believe in short -term goals, 100%, maybe daily, weekly, monthly, annually, but three or five of your goals, who knows? I mean, you wouldn't have thought you were doing this two years ago.

1:20:27I wouldn't have thought so either. So like, I might have a really big vision for 10 years or 20 years. But as I get closer, I might realize, oh, god, actually, nope, that's not what I want. So allowing yourself with that freedom to not want to be the hot sexy rich Millionaire with Bentley's and instead say oh no, what I actually want to do is I want to talk about what I want to talk about with who I want to talk about owning companies I want to and having no master That's what rich looks like for me and if you had stuck with your original goals that wouldn't have been the case You got team members yeah employees.

1:21:00Yeah, so over here listening, bro And does it not feel like it's a bit of a contradictory message in some ways where you're trying to get them to stay? But part of their job is to get, produce content with you, to get other people to leave their jobs. Yeah. So I have a really important differentiator between equity and ownership in a business and skin in the game. I do not think everybody wants to be a founder of a business. I don't think everybody wants to be an outright owner of a business. I think everybody should have ownership always. And so the way that looks in our business is basically every single person who works from me even all the way down to my admin Get skin in the game.

1:21:38So that means that if they do X and Y and Z They see how they can make more money directly if they come on to my team They can all source us deals and get a percentage of the carry which means equity in the underlying companies I know you know that but for anybody listening Everybody on my team always has had that and then you know the the other members of my team and businesses before like Like my last number two, I then left the business to her. She became the CEO of the business. So she has ownership of the business. I don't, I should be really careful about the fact that if anybody on my team, and they already know this, we just sent a message yesterday.

1:22:17Somebody asked for like a testimonial from me about work that they had done, but their work wasn't very good. So I wasn't going to give them a testimonial. And I said to the team, any one of our high performers, if you ever want to leave this company and you're great at this company. One, of course, I'll open every door for you and I'll write any testimonial or whatever you need. And in fact, if you want to start your own business, I hope I'm the first phone call because I would like to invest in you. I want to be that guy that saw that in you. No doubt every single time. But that's not for every human.

1:22:50Some humans want to be in a business like my number two, my CMO. Chris, he doesn't want to run a business himself, but he does want ownership. So he has skin in the game from both a revenue perspective and from a followership perspective, same with my head of content, same with Christian and our ad sense and our YouTube channel. So I think it's really important that you make sure when you continue to work harder, you make more no matter what. So many people have philosophies towards money, you know, people will say, oh, you've got to save more than you spend, you got to not have the Starbucks coffee, that's how you'll get rich.

1:23:25What is your overarching philosophy to building wealth and money, do you have something like a philosophy, a mantra? Well, first I think you should have the fucking coffee. I think that is terrible advice. So I like Dave Ramsey, I get where he's going with it, but I think you cannot save your way to wealth. You can only earn your way to wealth. But my mantra overall is that I think every human on the planet should understand the language of money, which is finance. If you understand the language, then you can speak it fluently and when you can speak it fluently, you can become an expert and an expertise leads to a bunch of cash.

1:24:03And so everything we do is to try to normalize deal making or the language of finance. We're like the duo -lingo to finance on the internet. And I think, I mean, we have a goal if we want to create 100 ,000 small business owners in 1 million financially free people and we track how many people tell us they bought a business and how much revenue and profit they earned. And so my goal is before we're done with this, however long that's going to be. I want to hit those two goals and I think we'll hit them in the next five years, maybe seven. But that's that is that is the gold star for me. That and my new mantra, which you might appreciate, which is my 2023 mantra is like no more B players.

1:24:42No, my god. Because that was my 2021 mantra, my 24 mantra. I'll be my 2024 mantra. Do you have you seen those stats where it shows about sitting next to B -plit. Oh, this is so good. My friend Vanessa Van Edwards showed this to me. So there's a study done across hundreds of individuals, might be hundreds of companies. It's a big study. And essentially it shows if you sit next to a high performer, so if you have your team sit next to a high performer, or you do, you will outperform by 15%. So a high performer just in your proximity will increase your performance by 15%. If you sit next to a low performer or under performer, it will decrease your productivity by 30%.

1:25:30So every B player you bring on board is not just decreasing their productivity by 30%, it is that energy transfer, which is that everybody around them becomes a little bit less productive. And I think one of the reasons people want to be owners of companies is because they feel that. People want to stay at companies where there's a bunch of winners. It's why I liked Goldman. I was like, these guys are so smart. I'm learning so much. I want to keep going. When I was a Vanguard, I was like, oh my God, these schleps are just schlepping around the office, not doing anything. I'm not learning anything.

1:26:01And they're by, you know, design sort of pulling you back and down. And so I keep that number on a notepad next to my computer for me to one, not be the underperformer. And two, it's not just about getting rid of underperformers for you as a CEO, it's not good to do to your team. So, you know, we've definitely have had them in varying companies of mine, but we push relentlessly to either make people better or help them find the thing that they can be in a performer act. Do you know who's very sticky in companies? Who? B players. Oh, God, I know. C players will get fired. B players will hang around.

1:26:35That's exactly right. And A players will probably leave. Yeah, and B players will leave if you keep B and C players. They're gone. They're not interested. B players will hang and they will think that you owe them more is what I found. Yes. They are the ones that ask for the most, they're the most entitled, and they're the most dangerous in a company. It's like a cancer that you need to cut before it spreads, which sounds like, okay, Rellie, but it's actually true because your employees are choosing to spend their life and their time with you. And so every B player that you associate next to them is actually decreasing their time and that's not a fair thing to do to somebody in a company.

1:27:15It doesn't make firing people easier. It's never easy. It's never easy. But it's important. Yeah. What's the most important thing you think we haven't talked about? You know, we talked to the start of this conversation about who's listening and you gave me the three personas and we talked about that person that's maybe in that job and they're trying to find their way out. What is the most important thing for that person that we haven't made? Maybe just one of my team members was saying this on the way over their big fans of yours. They're the fun of all your stuff. And they A -players are looking for jobs.

1:27:48Actually, one of them lives here and is freelance. Of course. So he could work for you. If you've touched my other one, I'm gonna have to be overseas. Which ones are the A -players? They're both A -players. Oh, we were pretty good. I definitely wouldn't travel around with B -players. No chance.

1:28:07So, the... And he said something that I thought was really good, which was, he was listening to your podcast and he liked one in particular where you talked about

1:28:18like all the failings of people who are successful. And so the only thing that we haven't talked about is the fact that, you know, we say all this stuff like don't keep, but he players around, get rid of them, you know, do this, get better. And on the flip side of that, like, there are many mornings where I'm up at eight or nine and not five in the morning. And there are many mornings where I'm stuck in a TikTok Instagram K -hole and I'm not doing the thing that I'm supposed to be doing. And I think normalizing the fact that people who have achieved things also are awful fuck up. Don't do the right thing every single day is important to me because sometimes I get on these and I'm like, I don't want people to perceive that I'm on some high horse.

1:28:59It's incredibly capable and productive. That's not always the case at all. I have many periods where I have not done the right thing where I've messed up on business deals where I am the worst in the room. And I think that's okay. It's natural, we're human, we're going to mess up. So just making sure people know that, listening. You don't have to be perfect to do any of this. And in fact, I'm sure you would agree. We're both so flawed that if I configure this stuff out, I think any working John can figure this stuff out too. I'm no smarter than anybody else. I went to a party school, I didn't go to Harvard.

1:29:34I probably did more beer bongs than I did, you know, honors classes in college, and I still figured it out. And it took me until I was 29 or 30, but that's still pretty young. So we have a closing tradition on this podcast, where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. I love this question. They said, When was the moment you were most afraid if they don't want to answer it? Who's your favorite member of one direction? That's great, but you don't tell them who the person was. That's fine. I couldn't even name that, so I'm going to have to answer the question. When was I most afraid?

1:30:14Actually, they are comedian. I'm going to give it away. Okay. When was I last most afraid, or when was I most afraid ever? This is sort of silly, but I hiked a mountain called Mount Baker. and it is a technical climb, so you use ice axes and crampons and it's freezing. And I didn't really know what I was getting into and I don't like the cold and I don't like heights and I don't like camping. And so three days hiking a glacial mountain, that's very high. It was like probably not my best idea. But I did it and I hated it. Like for three days I was with all these other women and they kind of liked it and I to be fair I like kind of thought I was tougher than them, you know, and they know this so they can hear it But you know a lot of them I have this big career.

1:31:08I I come off as tough I can you know get out there go do it and then here I was on this mountain. I'm fucking miserable I'm scared of the heights that I'm gonna fall off and tumble to my death I'm freezing I have to sleep on top of a glacier. I can't sleep. You're carrying your your feces in a bag for three days, which is another fun little side note. And we get up on the second day, it's so vertical that you have to be roped in to each other on the climb. And I'm at the end of it, too, which is awful. So I, all I, you know, I'm the one that sees behind us, the guides in front. There's like six of us or four of us on a rope or something like that.

1:31:44And we get up after climbing for two days, I'm so miserable and mad that I said yes to this. And we're on this crater because there's a volcano crater. before we climb up what's called the wall, which is an ice wall before you get to the top, where you have to step like this with your ice axe to get up the wall. And I'm like, I almost want to cry. I can't think of anything I want to do less than this. And everybody's preparing to go up. And I'm just like, I don't think I'm going to, I'm not going to go up anymore. And I had all these ideas in my head, But if you don't sum it, then you're not tough.

1:32:23And you gotta get up there because these other women are gonna do it, and then you're gonna feel bad in whatever. And as I thought there, I was just like, what am I trying to prove? I'm pretty happy. Life's good. I don't have on my bucket list that I want a summit melt baker. I just kind of said yes to this trip. And it wasn't even the heights that was so scary or the cold. It was like, am I a failure by not doing this tough thing that everybody else is gonna do? Am I gonna be the one person that says, is like, I'm out, I'm going down, I'm tapping out, I'm done. And I like, I have this whole dialogue with myself.

1:32:54And then I told the guy, and there were a few of them, I was like, yeah, the thing is I'm gonna go back down. I'm gonna chill at like base camp, I'm not gonna sum it. And my girlfriends came over and they were like, let's talk about this, let's get motivational. And I'm like, no, totally fine. I just realized up here that most of my life, I've been trying to like, please a bunch of people to goals I don't care about with things I don't really want in order to achieve some ridiculous thing. And like, I don't wanna climb up there. I'm gonna be pissed if I fall and break my neck doing this thing.

1:33:20I don't even want to do. And so I tell the guy, he's like, cool. I've never run faster down the side of a mountain. I get down to the bottom. I'm happy as a fucking clam. At that point, I realize I have altitude sickness. So I'm like tripping balls in the tent, which is really good that I realize that because then when I was climbing the wall, I might have gotten dizzy and that wouldn't have been good. And I didn't realize when you've got altitude sickness, it's hallucinogenic. So the tents like moving, I mean, I wasn't lying in it, but I'm great, because I'm back in the tent on the second peak area.

1:33:49And then on the way down, like two of the women blew out their knees. It was like a six hour evolution. And I just remember thinking, fuck, like, what if I had done that thing I was so scared of? Just because everybody else told me that I should have done it. And I felt like it took more courage for me to not do the thing than do the thing. So many people are right now climbing a mountain where they don't even care about seeing the view. Right. You know? Right. Why do we do that? So yeah, I think sometimes, you know, they say everything you want is on the other side of fear. And it's like, if the thing that you want is the thing on the other side of fear, it's not every fear we have to charge into.

1:34:30And so I guess choose your mountain wisely, right? Amen. Thank you, Cody. Thank you for your time, your wisdom and your entertaining captivating storytelling and insights. It's really, really valuable to our audience. There's not many people like you out there. So it's so wonderful to get to speak to someone and the mission that you're on is such an important one. I love it for so many reasons. I love it because you glamorize the unglamorous. And I often think in so many facets of our life, the easiest way is in fact the boring way. It's the way that isn't going to get the likes and the applause on Instagram.

1:35:05And there's not a market for that, right? there's a market for the quick, shiny, six pack abs in three minutes, all that stuff. There's a market for that, all the NFTs, the cryptos, the get rich quick schemes. You present the important counter narrative and you do it as an incredibly powerful, honest, willing to be vulnerable, woman in business. And we need more of that because business and the crater world, the entrepreneurship The penorship community is heavily dominated by men right now. And that is not a bridge that many people can relate to, those stories and where they've come from and the battles that they face.

1:35:43So you present the counter narrative and it's a very important one. So I also bet on you, like our mutual friend does in a big way and I can't wait to see your evolution as you climb that worthy mountain over the next couple of years. Well, thank you for having me. This was a pleasure, totally different podcast. I can see why so many people listen to you. So thank you for having me today. You're very kind. Thank you, Curly.

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