Codie Sanchez: Your Blueprint to Financial Freedom

24:34and then how seldom they are chased. I think the number one problem, if you can't find a job right now and you want one and you can't find a high-performing job right now, is are you applying like a shotgun or like a sniper rifle? And, you know, I remember, for instance, one of my employees that came to work for me, she really wanted the job. So she applied for, I think the job at the time was like maybe my chief of staff. She applied for my chief of staff normally. You know, you fill out the resume, you fill it out, you wait. That's all most people do. But that wasn't going to be her. She also was like, hey, I imagine you need a lot of newsletter writers.

25:10This was in the beginning. So she wrote an entire newsletter for me kind of in my voice and just sent it to me like, you know, didn't ask for anything else. Then she said, I also see you're hiring for these other roles. Here's a couple of other candidates I thought might be interesting. I kind of pulled some profiles for you. And then she said, you know, I imagine you're really busy. You're hiring this chief of staff role. I just read these two books on assistance. And I wish I could remember the name of the one book because now I give it to some of my employees, but basically on making a top performer, a higher performer.

25:40So she was like, you're already great, but here's a couple of books I'm reading to figure out how do I make great people even greater? One, she's giving me a compliment, a little ego stroke. And then two, she's saying, I think I understand what you need, which is like, you don't have enough time. And what if I just solve problems for you? So of course I hired her. I'm like, yeah, this is great. And so most people don't even, when I tell a lot of people in my email inbox, they'll ask me for something. Sometimes an email really stands out. And so I'll respond and say, hey, you want to learn about fundraising?

26:14Okay, great. Read, I don't know, venture style or something if you want to learn fundraising. And then come back to me and tell me what you think. How many people do that? Nobody reads. Nobody. And so it's like, if you really want a thing, be obstinate in getting it. You will be shocked how few people go to that level. And I would say, I've done this multiple times in my life. So when I wanted a job, I wanted to head the Latin America business at Credit Suisse back in the day, which was a big finance company. I was totally, I really was not credentialed enough for that job. It was a private equity job.

26:51I was going to be building out the region. And I went ham. I think I traveled to, I went to Europe. I went to LA. I went to New York where the headquarters was to interview in three different places on my own dime. I heckled the head guy there, Ryan, who I'm still friends with to this day, with all these different ideas for the business, with contacts. I gave him leads from people I already knew down there until finally, you know, I was in the final running with one other woman. She ended up beating me out. I was sad. But Ryan came back to me about six months later and was like, she's not working out.

27:22Do you want it? But by that time, I had already gotten a position heading another business in Latin America. So it was cool. But that's also how I got my first job at State Street. I think I did like eight interviews and sent custom gifts to a bunch of the corporate heads then. Because just a little bit of effort shows you're such a decrease of risk as a new hire. I mean, most of the reasons that people don't work out when you hire them is is not capability it's effort and so if you can decrease the likelihood that you won't work hard for them you have a much higher likelihood of getting the gig i used to test people because i would get these inbounds being like i want to work for you i wanted i'm like no problem like let's grab lunch and they're like oh i'm not in ottawa and i'm like oh well if you're ever here let me know do you know how many people ever showed how many none not one one person was ever like i will hop on a plane and i'll grab lunch with you and i just thought it was like this excellent filter which is like well if you're not willing to do that why should i invest my time that is a great filter yeah yeah auto was useful and now yeah because it's so hard to get to right it's like so inconvenient nobody ever flies there how do you think is it effort is it follow-up is it determination is a result like what is it because certain people seem to have it and certain people don't, but I also think it's totally learnable.

28:45Winning is probably one of the most learnable skill sets out there when it comes to business because the only thing that really differentiates most businesses from winning and losing is giving up. You know, when we go and invest, I don't know, in 20 or 30 startups a year in our venture fund, the research shows by and large, the reason why Silicon Valley wants two founders is because the number one risk for investing in a company is that a founder gives up. Number one. And so if you know that it is really just grit, like Angela Duckworth's study on grit, then that is what you want to test for. You need to have a good idea.

29:20You need to have the foundation. But we really want to try to figure out how much pain can you tolerate. And the more pain you can tolerate in business, the higher likelihood you'll succeed over time. It's just shots on goal. And so I think people should be really liberated by that. I was. You know, I'm like, well, you know, I don't really have to be smarter than anybody else. I don't have to be richer than anybody else. I don't have to be better connected. I just have to be a little bit aggressively relentless. And that is something anybody can do. It's not comfortable in the beginning, but you can do it.

29:49So when we go out and we look at, okay, should I give a couple hundred thousand dollars to this company or this company? The number one thing we screen are the founders. How do you screen them? I want to best predict your future behaviors past behavior I think so I want to see a history of winning in some way shape or form so also hard to beat a losing streak as you know in sports so a lot of times I want to see yeah I came to this startup the startup was growing really fast I outgrew the position and I was ready for my next adventure as opposed to I came to this position the company kind of failed I was bored you know it didn't work out so I want that the second thing I want is I really want, we do a specific type of interviewing with founders.

30:34It's basically just takes them through every single company they've ever been at. And you ask them why they went to that company and why they left. And those two questions at least seem to tell us a lot about, do they give up? Do they chase things? Do they allow things to come to them? And easy enough system to games. You'd probably be smarter at coming up with fancy questions but i imagine like you also people divulge like i love questions where you unintentionally give people to divulge things in this case one of the things that strikes me people would divulge is like i didn't like my boss it was like the hours were too long they wanted me to work on like they'll just passively slip up and some of these things you know like red flag red flag well and the beautiful part is i think with having a brand on the internet um how can of people know what they're getting into, you know?

31:24And I tell people, listen, if you want to go work nine to five, have probably little to no stress whatsoever outside of work, not have to work a ton, be able to take vacation days, have a low likelihood of getting fired, go work for Vanguard. Like they're great at that. Like they love people to stay forever. They pay bottom of the pyramid. But because they do that, people stay there for a long time and And there's not as much exterior stress. Now, I was never more stressed than when I worked at Vanguard because I hate being held back by arbitrary rules. Like, no, you can't make more money until the three-year mark.

32:03It's like, what? Why? I don't like that. I magically have the skills that, you know, two years and 364 days, I don't have them. But then all of a sudden, I have them. Yeah. And they just have a very militaristic way of, at least when I worked there, how they hired. And so I didn't like that. I liked the gold men. you go eat what you kill and if you suck you're fired and if you're good you're gonna make more money and I was like okay well at least like I kind of can get benefit from working harder but I think a lot of people these days in particular like the hustle culture thing they don't like it which I get but I don't think you have to do it forever but you should do it when you're young and if anybody is getting triggered thinking about well I wouldn't want to work for Cody because she's super tough and she's going to make me work really hard.

32:52I think it's a tragedy actually. I think there's something sort of spiritual about working hard on something you're obsessed with, with a group of humans all working towards a goal of getting better. Like where else can you get constant feedback in business, be with a team of high performers and figure out what you're really made of? Did you see that Tom Brady, Baker Mayfield thing where Baker came in, And he's like, well, you know, he implied that Brady, he was there to like lighten up the locker room. And Brady sort of replied, this isn't kindergarten. Winning championships is fine. And I was like, oh, man, like that's crazy.

33:30Winning is fine. It is fine. And, you know, once you figure out the game, you want to win. And if you lose, you want to learn a lot. And you don't ever want to not win because you didn't go hard. and you know what's fascinating too is you know it's never fun to fire an employee i've had to to do that many times over my life less fun to get fired for sure um but one of the things i've realized is most often people self-select like they kind of know when they're just not a culture fit and when maybe they don't want to run so hard anymore and when it's not their obsession and when the thing you do is no longer your obsession and you're no longer learning i think it's perfectly cool to go move on to the next thing.

34:12And that's happened to me multiple times when I was working at big corporations. And I just but I did it with hopefully a good amount of grace. I think what goes sideways is when you turn yourself into a victim. You know, they didn't promote me, the company sucked, blah, blah, blah. Instead, it's like, listen, you've taught me so much. Thank you for letting me work here for this period of time. I hope I've been high value to you. I'm ready for my next evolution. And I want to make sure you have a smooth transition. How can we do that? And if you'll do that, I'm pretty much friends with every single boss I ever had back in the day, minus two.

34:46I did burn a few bridges. But for the most part, I'm friends with most of them, even ones where I really disagreed with what they were doing in the business. I thought I should do it my way, but it wasn't my chips. So I had to go get my own. If you're a boss, manager, owner, how do you determine if somebody is interested or obsessed? Mm, that's such a good question. I always think about what can you not sleep for the want of doing? You know, again, I find business to be sort of spiritual. And so I think when you felt that flow state in business before, it could be writing emails for me. Like when I am writing a really good email, and I am in the zone, and I am focused, it's maybe the most beautiful thing I do.

35:29It's my favorite thing in the world. And I'd rather do it than go out and drink beers at the bar. and so um i like to ask people a couple questions one of my favorite questions is when was the last time you you pulled an all-nighter you stayed up all night working on something that you loved and a lot of times you can tell if somebody is an interested versed obsessed person by the fact that they're like fuck i've never done that you know yeah um or they might say the opposite you know what i don't i don't work as well at night but god i remember like a couple weeks ago we had this problem and i was just up at 3 a.m thinking about it so like i got up and I just got the chalkboard out.

36:04What I figured out is this. And so I really like that question. The second one is thinking about, I'll ask something like, when do you, when was the last time that you really believed X was the decision for the business, but one of your colleagues or somebody else wanted to do Y? And I just want to see how passionate they are about it. Now, a lot of times the answer for that is something like, you know, I wanted to get a raise and I I didn't get a raise or something like that. But a good answer sounds like, well, they wanted to launch a new product focused on Argentina. And I told them that was a terrible idea because right now the government in Argentina was XYZ.

36:47And if we focused on an Argentinian bond fund, we were going to get slaughtered. And I put together this PowerPoint that kind of explained why. And I thought through these frameworks and I looked at these historical models. I'm like, that was the reason why. And, you know, and it turned out, you know, I was right. And either I wish I would have presented it more convincingly or I realized that my opinion, you know, wasn't going to carry weight there. And so I wanted to go somewhere and take my own risk. Like that's what a great answer looks like. And whether you're right or wrong, it's a great answer.

37:17Right. Because if you say I was wrong. Yeah. But I did all the steps that I was supposed to do. I learned from that. Now all of a sudden you get a different sort of tell. Yeah, that's true. Because a lot of times it's just I want to understand how your mind works. Because what we're always searching for is like examples where we're the hero, right? Where we're sort of like saving the dead. But it's really, I think, interesting when people point out I wasn't the hero. Yeah. I was totally wrong in this situation. But I did make an argument. I did sort of like outline my thinking. And maybe we were lucky or unlucky because nobody corrected my thinking.

37:53Or maybe I learned because I missed this huge thing. Yeah. And like what did you do after that? Like I remember I ran a business where we sold money market funds to big pensions and sovereign wealth funds. And overnight, my business was eviscerated. I mean, I'm talking about billions and billions of dollars in assets under management. It was at State Street. So it wasn't like all my money. It was their money. But overnight, it was totally killed. And it was because of government regulation that did this silly technical thing called they took away stable NAV. I won't get into what that is, but they basically changed the way accounting for this type of product worked.

38:29And that meant that the pensions and sovereign wealth funds couldn't use it anymore. So I went from selling billions and billions of dollars of this stuff to, oh my God, massive redemptions. They were like, give me all my money back. I was like, oh, this isn't great. And in that moment, I realized we had built a business that was technically pretty great, like incredible sales team, great customer support, great brand, great product, great team. And we didn't think of like our biggest risk, which was the government regulation. And so that business basically became like unprofitable overnight. And my next decision was I went to Georgetown and I got an international MBA.

39:10And I went to Georgetown in particular because I realized I didn't understand anything about government regulation and oversight, like nothing. I was so finance markets investing and I didn't realize that the government is probably one of your biggest risks often. And so I ended up doing that executive MBA for two years while working at the company and opening up a Latin American investment business that was a different type of investment. But like that would be a great example of like I lost awfully. And so then what do I do about it? you know do i go curl up and die or do i go learn again so i don't make the same lesson twice hopefully you had another mistake that stands out for me which was you lost 12 million dollars on a cannabis deal oh yeah in like three months what happened there yeah well that one we didn't screen the founder very well i mean this was a this one was a scary deal because we didn't have that big of a fund i think our fund was like 60 or 100 million bucks back then and uh cannabis was raging.

40:07You know, it was like straight up like hockey stick like growth. And the fund before that, this was our second fund. So the fund before that, we killed it. It was like three to five X return over a pretty short period of time. Investors got their money back. We looked really smart. Well, the second fund was really happening during COVID. And COVID almost cratered a bunch of cannabis businesses. And the market started drying up. So no more capital to fund cannabis businesses and capital is the lifeblood of businesses. And especially for these businesses, they were almost like venture businesses where if they didn't keep getting more cash, they weren't profitable.

40:44So they weren't sustainable. So this business, we had put in like$12 million into this business. And it was like, it was a products business located out of California. And basically, like, I can't remember, but it felt like two weeks later, after we put the money into this business, we get a phone call from the founder and the founders like we're basically out of money we don't know what we're going to do next and we need more cash and we were like excuse us like we just did this huge analysis you told us these numbers we confirmed in the bank account well it turns out he had all these historical payments that he was paying through you know massive fraud you know total malfeasance across the company that we just completely missed and sometimes that happens um and we were like well fuck you know is this company going to fold.

41:34And so thankfully we have on our team a guy by the name of Joe, who's our turnaround guy. And he had to fly out to Oakland and basically over the course of the next four weeks do massive cuts and restructuring and some smart turnaround stuff in order to save the company. But I thought we were going to go under. And that was one of our murky investments that we had made like two weeks prior. And my biggest lesson learning from there is, well, two things really. I remember when I met the guy. And now I have learned to really trust my gut on the first interaction with somebody I'm going to invest in.

42:07I just didn't really trust him. He said a couple things that were a little flashy. He drove a flashy car, which is always to me a red flag when the company's not yet profitable. And a little too excitable, a little too laissez-faire, but my partners loved him. And so I didn't really raise my hand and I didn't put my foot in the sand. That was my fault. That the first red flag. And that's happened to me multiple times of partnerships. It took me like three times of having sort of bad partnerships like that happen. Started listening to you. Yeah. If I don't like it on the first go, then we're waiting a year is our new rule.

42:43So if I feel any sort of anything, doesn't mean I'll never do a deal with a person, but I'm going to watch them for a year. It's kind of hard to fool somebody for a full year. So that was one. And then the second thing was, we now do forensic audits on most of these businesses, which basically means you get somebody would get in there and you get really deep into the numbers because even if they're not committing fraud, a lot of entrepreneurs aren't the cleanest with their books. And so, you know, you can commit fraud on purpose or by accident. Both suck. And so I never wanted that to happen again.

43:29FlatEx. Besser. Richtig. Handeln. Investieren birgt verlustrisiken. Bedingungen gelten. Externe Kosten fallen an. It's almost like people don't realize, like if you're the only shareholder, yeah, you can sort of like do what you want that's legal. But if you're not the only shareholder, now all of a sudden you're spending other people's money. 100%. And so there's a huge difference between the expense accounts, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times they get, they've never before raised capital. So they get a bunch of money in. And just like I would, if I had ever raised capital for my independent businesses, you're like, okay, now let's grow.

44:02But you don't really know how to look into the future with that kind of money and say, if I do this action, will it make me more money? Because you've never done this game before. Right. And so I think a lot of times that's a danger point in startups. I also joke that anytime you see a startup founder who takes capital from third parties and they start like doing Twitter threads and writing blog posts, it's like a red flag. Unless they're like, unless they're a media company, it's like, no, no, no, stay focused, you know? How do you think about focus when you see somebody, one of the intuition things I'm imagining is sort of like they're distracted.

44:35They got like 20 things going on. When you're investing, I would imagine you want 100%. Yeah. Well, it really depends. First, is this their first rodeo? If it's the first rodeo and the first time you've ever run a business, do one thing really well until that thing is profitable, self-sustainable, and you don't have to focus on it 100 % of the time. That's my rule. if it's not your first rodeo and you've already had a successful exit or two then i think you can get better at layering and so you know one of the things i'd want to see if i was investing in founders a good example would be like brett adcock who started figure the robotics company so he um had before had a company that was uh drones that company did really well they exited that company big exit then he started figure he raised a ton of cash now the company's worth more than a billion dollars.

45:23Well, Brett also started another company after that. And that company is focused on like security inside of schools and public areas. And typically, if Brett was a first time entrepreneur, I would be like red flag. You know, we should watch why he's starting these two companies. Since he's a multi time founder, less concerned. And then the third thing to think about is, are they accretive or not? Like, does one plus one equal three? And so if Kim Kardashian would be a great example. So Kim Kardashian has her big media empire, right? You could say, just stay focused on that, Kim. Well, she's looking for better ways to monetize that audience.

45:59So she has Skims, right? Plus she has Sky, her private equity portfolio, plus she has whatever Kim calls her cosmetics company. But they're all sort of accretive because they use her media platform and she gets to sell similar things to her audience and increase her overall basket size. And so that's how I think about our businesses today. I'm like, Cody, you're not allowed to start a beauty company because that's not a creative. It has to be like BizScout, which is our business buying and selling marketplace. It has to be Resi Brands, which is our small business trade franchises. It needs to be like right now we're focused a lot on helping our businesses scale, not just people buy a business, but okay, you bought it.

46:44Now let's get 10 million instead of 1 million. And so it has to really ladder into the same portfolio. Otherwise, you're distracting yourself. What are some of the biggest lies or misconceptions that you hear about money? One that it's hard to make. I do not actually think money is hard to make. I think it is hard to get a skill set that is valuable. And once you get a skill set that is valuable, money can be very easy to make and people confuse the two they say like money's hard and it's like no no you just haven't obsessed yet on having a skill set that people will pay enough money for but you can do that and then money can become easier um i also think it's a very freeing idea like if you keep telling yourself making money is hard making money is hard making money is hard well it's going to be hard but if you keep telling yourself no it's actually not hard i just haven't done what is necessary yet to get what I want.

47:39That would be first. And then the second is that I think money is a cruel mistress. So I always say money likes attention just like a mistress does. And if you don't pay attention to her, somebody else will. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of benefit early on in your career to sort of obsessing on race to your first 500k and feel no shame about that. It shows that happiness increases post 500K in income or up to 500K in income. After 500K, there's sort of these plateaus and it's not really materially different. And then the second thing on it is really obsessing on money on a daily basis.

48:18Like, are you looking at your bank account? Are you looking at the bank account of your business? Are you looking at how much you make or sell in products? Are you taking one action every single day to make more money, a money related action. And I think if you do those things, you'll kind of be surprised at how you can compound over time. Are there different skill sets between acquiring and sort of maintaining or keeping your money? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's always, in my opinion, easier in the beginning to save, but easier in the long term to earn. So you can only save your way to zero. You know, there's very there's limited downside, but there's unlimited upside.

48:57And so I do think that, what do they call that? They call that like spending creep, lifestyle creep. And so there's certainly that. The more money you make, the more you spend, and then all of a sudden you realize that you've totally outspent your income. That is a big problem for many people. But I think on average, we've been told that we need to save a lot more. And here's why. One, if we're saving consistently, what does that mean? It means that we're putting money into third-party investment products. It means that we have money sitting at banks. Like, if we save, we're helping a lot of other individuals make money.

49:34If we earn and invest money in our individual businesses, we are actually giving money back to employees. We are giving money back to local economies. Like, this benefits a few really big guys, saving. Earning benefits a lot of little guys. And so I understand why society has pushed us to save more as opposed to earn more. I also think by and large, money equals freedom. So the more money you can make, the more decisions that you can make by yourself. And most people, they don't want free people. You know, the people on high really want us to follow rules and to think in terms of safety, not opportunity.

50:17and so i think we should obsess on making money and you should obsess on making money because then you get to push back when people tell you things that you don't want to do and then you have freedom yeah like ultimate freedom in terms of you call it fuck you money call it whatever you want but it's like no i don't want to do this thing yeah 100 now i can opt in or opt out yeah i mean and and you know in society today it's totally doable i think it is it's very hard these days to make a profitable business. I think there's never been a harder time to make a profitable business. Never been an easier time to start a business.

50:51That's kind of why I obsess on buying businesses because you just know it's already making money. It has a history of past performance. So best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. It's not a guarantee, but it is a higher indicator. And so because of that, I like buying businesses because then you can operationalize them you can increase the growth um and so you know i i also think people listening you know before i made quote unquote a lot of money um if you would have told me that i would have a nine-figure holding company or that i would have all of these small businesses i would have thought you were crazy and it just wasn't part of my psyche that that was possible for a normal human being and even though i get shit about it on the internet i like to push upon people that it's actually very possible for you to have a lot of wealth.

51:41Now, I don't think most people want a nine-figure holding company, actually. There's always something going wrong. There's always challenges. There's always mistakes. It's a lot of stress. But I do think everybody can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year over time if they focus on earning it. I do think that's largely possible. It's almost like people, they want the outcome, but they don't want the trade-offs to come with the outcome. We look at the gold medal, but we don't see the training days that are like 4 a.m. constantly, the injuries, the recovery, the lack of family time. We don't see everything that goes into making that possible.

52:14And if we do see it, we often don't want it. Yeah, I think that's true. Is there a difference between like a rich mindset and then a broke mindset then? Many things. I think a couple of things. Rich people overall, they really don't believe in that word impossible. You know, they're not like, if you said to a really rich person, hey, it's just not possible for you to start this next business and execute on it, kind of doesn't injure their psyche. So they have what I've always thought of as like an armor of no's. So rich people have gotten told no so many times, they've been rejected so many times, that it almost just bounces off of them.

52:53They kind of go, yeah, I'm gonna do it anyway. Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to try it. I think poor people, they have confirmation bias of no. So when stuff has happened to them that's bad or when stuff hasn't worked out, instead of an armor of no, they're wearing a coat of no. They're like, yep, just let it in. Let's just build some more on this coat. Let's make this cape longer. And I think if you can kind of visualize it like that, a deflection versus an accumulation of no's, that's the difference between rich people and broke people. And in my career, for a very long time, I think you want to be around people who often tell you, do more, go harder, keep going, as opposed to people who say, that's not possible.

53:35It worked for you, but it wouldn't work for me. And I think that's the difference also between allies, those are people who want you to win, and friends, who are people that want you to stay with them, whatever level they're at. Go deeper on that. so um i think most friendships if you just think about human nature like i saw this cool thing i wish i had like a it's kind of like this so um there's a monk by the name of don de pondy sorry if i fucked that up but something like that and he talks about how as you get rich um you sort of and i'm gonna hold it like this you sort of rise up like this and let's say your friends your family you know your colleagues your husband or girlfriend or boyfriend or something they're sort of these corners.

54:17And as you start rising in wealth or success, what happens? They're like, wait a second, you're leaving me behind. I love you. I don't want you to leave me. You seem to be superseding me. This is scary. Natural response. But what they don't realize is right now, as you're rising, they're not really rising. You're just getting further away from them. But as you get higher, you pull the rest of them along with you. And so with most friends, all they see is this bottom part of your journey. they don't actually realize forward looking you're going to take them with you now the people who do see this are your allies those are the people who want you to win no matter what and those are the people who see oh okay if Shane keeps winning and then he takes us you know with him to some of these events and we meet these people too and I share his podcast and he kind of shares my new newsletter we're all gonna win this is oh man Shane did it I can do it that's an ally oh man Shane's gotten kind of too big for his britches.

55:14Oh man, Shane thinks that he's better than us. I never hear from Shane. I miss you, Shane. Friend. And I think in our life, as we're in our growth journey, obsessing on a few more allies is helpful. Do you lose friends as you go up? What's your experience with that? Yes. I think that success by and of itself these days is sort of a lonely pursuit. And that when you are focused on building something, you know, you're not boring, you're building. But you are in an era where if you don't have focus, you won't win. It is definitely a relentless grind in order to build something completely new for yourself.

55:58And so, I mean, I had a, like, I remember I had a series of girlfriends in college that I was quite close with. I think very highly of them still to this day. But I remember, you know, I posted this one picture on Instagram, really sort of like flippantly. I didn't think anything of it. And in the picture, we'd all been drinking. So we kind of looked goofy. We were these young college girls, you know, so we're like, I think they look cute. I look a little crazy. And, and I posted it like something like, you know, I've been there partying just like you have to, you know, you can, you can do both, something like that.

56:32And, and I remember one of them, you know, texted me and was sort of like, how dare you, you know, you think so little of us, we're just, you're partying, you know, shithead, drunk friends. And we were never the same again after that. So I apologized profusely. I was like, I don't know how you could have seen that. That is not at all what I meant by it. In fact, never even injured my consciousness. And of course, I'll take it down if it makes you feel uncomfortable. And from that moment, we've never been friends again. And this group of girls and I have never been friends again. And at first, I really couldn't wrap my head around it.

57:06But I do think what happens is when you become really successful, you are a mirror on the things somebody else could have been. And so you are a reflection of every decision that they made that was short term as opposed to long term. And so I've lost many a friend by the mirror. And I think that is, I always openly welcome them back and wish them well. But I do think that you won't succeed very far if you stay around the same people that you started with. I never thought of it like a mirror before. That's a really interesting way to frame it. Yeah. Do men and women think about money differently?

57:44I want to add one other thing. So one thing I don't like actually is I have noticed a lot of people on the internet saying things like you know if they're not above you if they're not in front of you you've got to leave them behind and if if you know they're not moving as fast as you are then you know they will you don't need to be friends with them anymore and I totally disagree with that and in fact the research really shows the opposite Arthur Brooks does an incredible series of studies about having what he calls worthless friends. And worthless friends are the friends that you have no transactional value you want from.

58:21You don't want anything from them. They don't want anything from you. They want to hang out with you. They want to go on a walk with you. They don't want your email list. They don't want access to your money. They just want to have a beer on a Friday night. And these friendships end up materially increasing our happiness, these worthless friends, whereas these transactional friendships actually end up in many ways decreasing our happiness. And so I think when people say, hey, if they're not on your level, ditch them, they don't actually understand the research. And I had a friend here, actually, who I saw get really, really successful on the internet.

58:56And I saw the most fascinating thing, which was I just started meeting people who had done business with this person before. And every one of those people, as this person superseded them, had sort of a negative story to tell about them. Oh, interesting. And it was like, yeah, the second that they got bigger than I did, I became irrelevant. The second that I was no longer useful, I was – after five or six of these stories, I thought, wow, I don't think that people realize the repercussions of not allowing other people to rise with you. And in fact, your reputation is one of your most valuable assets.

59:35And people often think about their reputation online as like, to the masses, am I a good person? It's like, nah, to the guy at the grocery store, are you a good person? To the person that you did a deal with who was your last employer or partner didn't work out, are you a good person? And if you're not to those people who are worthless to you, then it will come around. And I truly believe that. And so I just want to say that because I've thought it before too, like, hey, if they're not on your level, keep going. I don't actually think that's true. And I think it will catch up to you. And I've seen it firsthand.

1:00:05One of Buffett's filters, I think, if I remember my reading correctly, is that he was super friendly with people. But if they asked him for a favor, it was an indication that they weren't necessarily friends in the other person's eye. And I thought that was like an interesting sort of, not like the common favors you would do with your friends. Oh, my husband needs a job or my wife needs a job, those kind of favors. I thought that was an interesting thing and I never thought about it again until this moment. I think I've had a lot of screens over my I've only been on the internet for like three years or something like that you've been playing this game a lot longer so you know you're just your spectrum is so much wider and more vivid than mine is oh you play it better you have millions of followers well do I play but I like gamifying things and I think you like deeply understanding things is sort of how I perceive you at least and so I find growth to be really fun that's like one of my favorite games.

1:01:00So I obsess on growth. And sometimes to the detriment of deep understanding. And I think that seems to be one of your skill sets, which is really beautiful. But in the time that I've been on the internet, I think everybody's my buddy. So like, you know, when I meet people, I truly am like, no, he was so nice. We did a podcast. We're like best buds. We're texting each other. And I've had to realize, oh, like they're just really charismatic. We're not that good of friends and that's okay. And so to your point, I don't know, on the favors thing, I guess I'm always curious how people are going to be when people lose money or things go sideways.

1:01:40Totally. When people are talking shit about you, when it's inconvenient to be your friend, who will be there? And so when those moments happen to me, one of my favorite mentors always said, allow, accept, thank you, let it go. And so when something tough is happening, I'll go, okay, this is happening. I accept it's happening. Thank you for this happening. Now kind of let it go, like whatever it is, move on. And, and I'll kind of see who there checks in, who there speaks out. And that I think is really valuable feedback. It's not that you're judging them. You're just saying, how much am I going to give you long term?

1:02:16Like how much of me do I want to invest in you as a fellow human. So I do believe in choosing sides. And I think I want to find people who have at times done a really inconvenient thing for themselves because it was the right thing to do, or they thought it was the right thing to do. That's a great indicator to me of a human with moral integrity. Do you have that mindset based on what you just said? It sort of brought this, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you're either with me or against me? no but i have a mindset of can i trust you can I trust you in my darkest moments? you know like i i joked the other day i had a little um incident with a girlfriend and i joked with her about it i was like man wait until you meet the real me you know like if this pissed you off whoa wait until you wait until you really get to build me you know and um and we joked about it and then we were fine but i do have that belief that like you know i want friends who will hide you in the basement you know when you need to and chris and i who's my husband he and i talked about that a lot during COVID because there was so much craziness happening in the world.

1:03:29And I remember thinking, if we have an unpopular view, who would hide us? Not because they even believe what we believe. I don't think you need to do that. But because they're like, you're my people and I love you and I'm going to be there for you. And so, no, I don't believe in moral absolutism. It's actually interesting that at our company right now, for the first time ever, we have something so beautiful I've never seen, which is we have really, really conservative people at my company and really liberal people. And we talk about it. And in fact, we often jokingly label each other. Like we'll be like, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, the commie and blah, blah, blah, you know, the, the, you know, right of the right of Rush Limbaugh, you know, and, and what's interesting about that is with these groups of people, they start to respect each other as humans and realize that political views are like maybe the most uninteresting thing about most people.

1:04:23And I've never had that at a company before and I really like it. And so they have this curiosity about one another as opposed to judgment. I have a theory that part of this whole work from home thing is actually amplifying political divide. Oh, I believe that. We go to the office, we have to work with the person who thinks opposite to us. And all of a sudden it takes the power out of that position. It takes the, oh, they're a nice person. They might believe something completely different. But now all of a sudden, like it just tones down the emotion. But when we don't go to work, we're on a laptop and we're commuting.

1:04:57The whole world just looks like us. Our friends probably vote the same we do. They make the same amount of money that we do. The world starts to get insulated. Yeah. It's a beautiful view. I mean, some of the research shows, one, higher levels of depression and anxiety with work from home. So I actually think that was a great lie. It was a big, beautiful lie that sitting in our sweatpants in our house on Zoom meetings all day would actually make us happy and give us more freedom. Hard disagree. I do think that sitting in a cubicle, you know, under fluorescent lights is a form of like mental insanity over the long term.

1:05:31And I have no interest in doing that again. But but I do not think that we humans were meant to be isolated. And there's much research that supports that. And to your point, it's so much easier when you're an anonymous troll on the internet to hate everybody and to think that they hate you. And another thing that I learned from Arthur Books, who's become a friend of mine, and he wrote a book called Love Your Enemies. And I remember I have this one Twitter troll. And like, Shane, when I tell you like, I mean, almost every day, like tweets about me, weird stuff, like she's a dude, you know. She was a secretary at Goldman Sachs.

1:06:09just, um, she never even worked at Goldman Sachs. She owns no businesses. She, um, I don't know what else. And all these things. And it was annoying me, to be honest. I was like, like, do I need to be showing my tax return? Like, I want a picture of me in a bathing suit. And, um, and at first I remember wanting to clap back. And then I thought, nah, don't feed the trolls. That's not very useful. and then second i was like very judgmental of this person i was like what a fucking basement dweller you know blah blah blah this person this person and then i read uh love your enemies and talked to arthur and he was like just try this thing for me he's like just like very sincerely wish this person well like anybody who is in your mind your mind okay in your mind wish this person well um like send them like good good vibes and hope that that they are wonderful and and he said because wonderful happy people don't do things like this and i was like meh and then i did it and i will kid you not this is my woo-woo because we're in austin crystal center of the world they publicly posted like two weeks later a hey sorry cody sanchez i actually think you're really you seem like a really good person like out of nowhere and dm'd me like a dissertation sort of apologizing.

1:07:30Oh, wow. I know. No, I don't think the universe does that every single time. But it taught me a lesson, which is like, every time like I get hate, I just try to send back a little love because I think it's hard to combat. And I think negative emotions are really draining and a lot of work. And so instead, I try to not have that. The temptation, I think, in that situation is to like go tit for tat, right? Like to reply to every post to like, and then you get angry and then you're sort of like defending yourself. Why didn't you do that? Arthur really helped me. Simultaneously, I think another truth is like, especially with the internet, if you mute, block these people, ignore, they don't exist in your sphere.

1:08:11They're not in the room with you ever. They're not in your business. They're not in your friend group. You're not shaking hands with them. So the only way they exist is if you allow them, which is actually a fascinating sort of phenomenon to think about. But if you don't look at their stuff, how do you even know what's happening. You could say, well, other people could send it to you. Tell people to not send it to you. Don't look at the comments. Ignore the DMs. And the only times that this really gets to me is when I think there's a kernel of truth. So if we made a typo on a post and so somebody was right about that, or if we get something wrong, or if we write a story and it wasn't the right one you know then i'm like okay that bothers me but for the most part they don't exist in my sphere because if they're online it's only if you let them like mark andreason famously who i'm a fan of and have grown to respect like he uses the block button pretty consistently because he just doesn't want to engage with those people so does nuval ravikant he's like wish you well but out of my sphere because it's my energy is like too precious to protect yeah i think it's an underutilized feature for anybody who has a large social media following yeah i think so too i want to circle back to reputation i want you to go deeper on reputation like what what do you see as the advantages disadvantages like how do you think about reputation as a concept first of all buffett said the most important thing which is what did he say exactly it was something like um he said if an employee makes a mistake and loses us money i will allow that but if an employee makes a mistake and hurts our reputation, they will immediately be fired.

1:09:54And I think that's quite true because it's very hard to get back your reputation. And especially if it's your fault, like you did something that is out of sync with who you say you are publicly. When I think about reputation, I try to be as transparent as humanly possible on all the things good, bad, and otherwise that are true with me. So for instance, we know that a lot of female founders get a hard time and get like, you know, business insider pieces written on them for being too harsh and too whatever. And there's sort of this phenomenon of this happening to female founders. And, and I think sometimes that's because they portray themselves as like sweet, kind, you know, I'm here for other women, whatever, and I'm always nice all the time.

1:10:40And so I don't do that. I'm like, I'm tough. I'm tough sometimes. And, you know, and we work really hard. And if you don't want to be a part of that, don't work in my company. And so I try to say the quiet part out loud as often as humanly possible. And then we do what's called inoculations against reputation, which is basically, can you say things a few times that you think are very, very true, but you know will be very, very unpopular. And if you do that so often, then people don't get that surprised by what you say. And I think Joe Rogan's a great example of this. You know, he often says the quiet part out loud.

1:11:13He says things he knows will be quite unpopular. and because he does that people one think he's telling the truth more often and two his audience is inoculated because the people who really hate who he is and the things that he does they just bail like they leave and so every so often I do kind of this culling of our audience because I don't want to have to deal with trying to be a perfect person I'm very flawed and with our company contrarian thinking we're very flawed we're all just like a bunch of you know sort of two bipedal monkeys running around trying to figure it out

1:11:50right like we all have flaws we all make mistakes we all have bad days we all but there's no tolerance for that yeah because you're you're cody sanchez like you have millions of followers like you you can't have a bad day yeah it's it's weird um i also think that i think your reputation is also it can be cultivated and so you know it's this series of small decisions you make every single day that becomes the person that people think you are. And so I try to really have congruence between that. I mean, you'll see, you know, if you worked for my company, I'm not asking anybody to do anything I wouldn't do.

1:12:28That would be very hard for somebody to claim. It would be very hard for somebody to claim that they work harder than I do. I don't, you know, I work quite hard. I wouldn't really allow that. There's no world in which I say Chris and I, my husband and I have a perfect marriage. You know, we fight all the time. We try to figure it out. So I do try to say all of those things. But I also remember that I asked for this. You know, I got on the internet. I got obsessed with this idea of growth. That is on me. And so I think it's one thing if people get famous sort of by accident, maybe, or they're a CEO of a company and they're just trying to grow a company and then they get slaughtered.

1:13:03But if you're going to try to be an influencer, if you're going to try to be a celebrity, like it comes with the territory, I think. So that's a decision you have to make one way or the other. but one thing I am shocked by that I don't think people are honest about is people who are very famous and well-known on the internet they're obsessed with their reputation and brand it is never by accident this shit is cultivated it is created it is mocked up it is powerpointed like I always like to use the rock who I think really highly of but when you look at the rocks Instagram, for instance. Count for me next time, just for shits and giggles, how many of those pieces of content are an ad for like his energy drink, for his face cream, for his next movie, for his XFL, for WWE?

1:13:53Almost every post is. I would say somewhere between 80 and 98 % of the posts are. How could he get away with that? Because he has such a strong brand and every single thing that he promotes is so tied into his brand that it feels effortless, but it is absolutely not effortless. And so give yourself some credit. I think anybody who's trying to make a brand online or you're trying to build a business, like nobody gets famous by accident for the most part. They all cultivated, even like the Hakhtui girl or whatever that chick's name was. She's got a whole team behind her. She's got agents now. She had people doing her filming for her the second that she went super viral, people creating her, people funding her own content creation process.

1:14:36And so I think we all need to be a little bit more honest about that because people are like, oh, I just grew because it just happened one day. And you're like, nah, you didn't. That's not how it works. So as I was doing research for this, I was watching some YouTube. My kids are totally on YouTube. So we're watching YouTube. We're like, come across some of your stuff because I'm trying to research this. My kids are interested in business. How old are they? 15 and 14. Oh, that's amazing. You look young. and so thank you i don't know i feel old on the inside some days uh and one of the shows we used to watch was undercover billionaire yeah so my youngest son was like ask cody what she would do if she was dropped off like grant cardone was and i forget the other guy's name and you know you're in you get a hundred bucks you get a phone you get no contacts you're the same age you are now you go to this random rule town and he wanted to know the answer to this question it's a great question um i'd go find the most expensive thing to sell that i could sell uh i think the fastest way to make money when you have no money is find other people who already have something valuable and sell it to other people and so i remember i think i watched one episode of the one that grant was on and he was in like philadelphia or something and it was sort of like a manufacturing town um in that instance i think i would go apply for his i mean you go to the library because you don't have a phone, right?

1:15:58And you maybe have a car and gas. I can't remember. You get a cell phone and you have a car and a full tank of gas, but you have no place to stay. You only have 100 bucks. Yeah. That would be the very first thing I'd do. So I'd probably go to the library, get on the computer at the public library, and I'd start looking up in this geographic area, or because remote sales happens now, I would go figure out how could I get something where I could sell something as fast as possible and with as high of a price tag as possible. And the reason why is that's just a game of, that's a numbers game. And so, you know, especially with my skill set already, I know how to sell things.

1:16:35And if somebody already has a market where other people are paying for it, all I'm doing is slotting myself in. And then once I had done that, I would probably find a business where I could get a cut of the business for the sales that I brought in. So especially because the goal is to like get to a million bucks, right? Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Three months, 90 days to build a million dollar business. Oh yeah. I mean, but I wouldn't build it. That's where I'm probably different than Grant. I would go and I would negotiate a portion of the business. I would basically go and I'd say, all right, you're selling.

1:17:03What would be, what would be, I mean, I probably do something in the online space because I play around in that space so much right now. So I'd go to a bunch of businesses that were online businesses that sold things online. I'd probably try to broker deals between B2B companies. And, and I try to close a couple of those deals and then say, can I get a percentage of your company for all the deals that I brought in. But if you didn't have that skill set to negotiate deals to start, you'd just start with selling as much as humanly possible. And even if you did that, if you did that with a boomer-based business, where that boomer wants more sales, needs somebody young and hungry, you could negotiate part of that business just to apprentice for them and take it over over the long time using seller financing.

1:17:46And that, I think is so underutilized today because you've run a business before. How many times in your varying businesses have you been like, somebody came to me with the right price and the right terms to sell? I could take this thing. Take it. And so business owners have that all the time and people underestimate it. So there'd probably be a lot of door knocking. I'd be going door to door saying, have you ever thought about selling your business? Have you ever thought about selling your business? Have you thought about buying selling your business? And using seller financing to basically acquire the business with very little rest to you.

1:18:20A hundred percent. That's a really interesting approach. Nobody on the show did that. The reason we watch this, what I loved about it, just being a parent, is it's just the mindset of the people going in. It wasn't the person, it wasn't how they went about it. It was the fact they were rejected over and over again and they just kept trying new things until something stuck and then they would like, oh, I'm going to go, I'm going to do more of this. This worked. Now, okay. Now I can feed myself. Now I can sort of like get a hotel. well, now I can start building a business. Now I can get a base. I can build an agency.

1:18:49I can convince other people to be my allies. Yeah. And I just love the mindset that people, and I was like, this is the mindset you need as kids. So true. I mean, I should play around with that a little bit more in our content because I think one of the things I like to try to push upon people is you're way more capable than you think you are. Totally. You just haven't done what is required. You've done what you wanted. And if you were honest with yourself about that, you would realize that if I worked 10 % harder than I'm doing right now on a thing that I really do not want to do very first thing in the day, I would build up willpower that would allow me eventually to do the things that most people are not willing to do.

1:19:26And when you're willing to do that, you can win over time. I mean, even small things like I have a friend here. He's a really good guy. He's very quirky, but he, you know, he's, he's one of the guys where when I wasn't on the internet at all, I was running a finance company back in the day when I first met him. And I just I reached out to him randomly. Now, mind you, I had a lot of money at the time. I knew nothing about the Internet and like a lot of money, meaning like, you know, I was doing OK. And I reached out to him because I wanted to understand the Internet. I thought that in the future we might sell investment products and build investment businesses with the Internet and not with my old method, which was like going to pensions and sovereign wealth funds, door knocking, steak dinners, all that stuff.

1:20:04I think I was right. And I've proved that. But back then, I wasn't so sure. I was like, how do newsletters work? Like, what does email look like? Like finance, we're so, we're dinosaurs with that. And he was the master with Sumo Me, right? Exactly. And so he had a conference or two that I went to. And I was just like, you seem really good at emails. You sell things with emails? Like, how does that work? And I reached out to him and I sent him, I did research on him online. And I found out that he was into tacos, like weirdly into tacos. And so I bought him a bunch of socks that had his face on it in a taco.

1:20:40And I sent them to him with like a note that was like, hey, I'd love to learn from you. You know, love what you're doing. No need to respond if you're way too busy. Like, because I think that's important to, you know, the pay, you don't have to respond. Anyway, for whatever reason, he did respond and we became sort of friends. And then he helped teach me a lot of things. And if you don't have money right now and you don't know how to make it, one of the best ways to start is just to learn to negotiate things that you don't want to which is like he has a famous thing where he goes into coffee shops even starbucks and like orders a coffee and then goes i'd love a discount and then shuts up and i'm like what there's no discount here and he's like well i just love one like if that was at all humanly possible is there any way for me to get a discount and often he is rejected but sometimes he is not and just those little lessons of like if i was on undercover billionaire i'd be going to hotels and saying like hey how could i negotiate to stay for x dot could i do work around here to do that what do you need help with like you're on your shift right now what if i take over a couple hours of your shift do you think i could stay in an abandoned room like i would just be trying to negotiate every single thing i could because you'll be shocked how seldom americans in particular do that yeah we're brought up not to do that it's like the price is the price the price whereas a lot of other cultures it's sort of like the price is the starting point oh my god we have this guy that works for us in our investment team his name is Kareem and he's Egyptian.

1:22:00And I think learning from other cultures on negotiation is such a life hack because they do it like a second language. If my first language that's most profitable is money, the second one is negotiation. And Kareem will do it with this huge smile the whole time. That's a big key. So every time he asks for something, there's a big smile. And he's like, well, you know, he's very diminutive. He's like kind of shrugged his shoulders like, well, we could do this, but like we could do that. Like, what do you think about that and the whole time you're negotiating with him you like the guy yeah and he kind of weasels his way in to getting you to consider another perspective and uh and he jokes that like that's just like Egyptian dinner conversation that that's it's nothing and he's not that special but um having people on your team and learning from friends from other cultures is really powerful and so any chance you get to to play with other people who have normalized this idea of barter I think is a great way to get better at making money.

1:22:57The key is like the first no is really the final no. Yeah. Right? Like if you stop at the first no. That's a great line. Right? Like you're done. But like most people are not going to go past the first no. So you've already differentiated yourself. I do this with the kids. Like I live in Canada. We get snow. So I make them like knock on doors and shovel driveways. Wow. And we got to a point where somebody would have a driveway service. So literally they're paying somebody to come plow their driveway. And the kids, they'd be like, no, I pay a service. And at first the kids would walk away. And I won't negotiate.

1:23:32I'll just do labor. But I'm like, you go to the door. I want you to get rejected. I want you to learn sales. And then they eventually get to this point where they were like, yeah, but who knows when they're going to get here? And they're probably doing like 100 driveways a day. We're doing like 10. Who do you think is going to do a better job and take care of your beautiful car out there? And they would get to a point where they would actually, the person would be like, yeah, go do the drive-by right it's like the first no is not the final no that is such a good line and what a good way to try so one of our portfolio companies is called resi brands and they have um that one painter which is a painting company and pinks which is a window cleaning company and uh so i was going around with the ceo steven for that one painter and they were painting one house and every time they paint a house they ask their employees to door knock for an hour.

1:24:20So while somebody's inside painting some of it, they door knock. And so I'm like, let's go do it. Let's go knock on a bunch of doors in Texas. After about, I can't remember, six or eight doors, one of the people that we knocked on was like, oh, actually, I've been needing this and this and this. And that's a$5 ,000 purchase. And so in the span of 20 minutes, the company made$5 ,000 from six or seven door knocks. And so how often is money sitting right in front of you, but you're just not doing what it takes to grab it. And I think asking and rejection is one of the biggest reasons why we don't.

1:24:53I love that. That's awesome. I don't like being in the house when I get these door knocks because you get them all the time. 100%. What's the difference between a good business and a bad business? In my definition, good business equals profitable, cash flowing, what I call a cash flow versus cash suck business. So you get paid upfront for a service, not after you provide a service. Sustainable, it can exist for a long time. Historical, it has existed for a long time. Understandable, you can explain it to grandma really easily. And you have what's called the Lindy effect, the likelihood of the future continuing to cash flow just as it did in the past.

1:25:35Those are my parameters for a good business. A bad business would be a business that is unprofitable, hard to understand, hasn't been around for very long. You have to provide the service before you get paid for the service. That is a business that is just much harder. That's a harder game to win. And so as often as possible, I want to have the lifeblood that is money come to me in my businesses. And that way I can make more mistakes as an entrepreneur, because I have a trampoline that has a lot of give to it, as opposed to I think of cash suck or bad businesses as a concrete floor that has no give.

1:26:11You're going to jump out of the window sometimes and fuck things up. And so it can help if you have cash flow in it because that allows you to jump like a trampoline. A lot of businesses think they have a marketing problem when they really have a product problem. How do you, going in looking at acquiring a business, determine if there's a marketing problem or a product problem? Because that's going to make a difference for you as an investor or owner. Yeah. Three things. Three numbers you need to look at. If you want to figure out if you have a company that needs to sell more things or needs to create better things, you need to figure out, one, what's your referral rate?

1:26:45How often do your customers tell somebody else that they need to buy something from you? Two, how often do your customers repurchase from you? So your repurchase rate. They come, they buy one water bottle, not enough. You need to buy two or three. And the third is churn. How often do the customers, once they have you on a subscription plan or they're continuing to buy from you, bail out of that plan? And those three numbers can tell you if you have a healthy product business or if you just have a great sales team. You can have both types of businesses, but it is just so much harder when you have to continue to resell your customers again and again and again.

1:27:19Much easier to keep them, find new customers, keep growing. 100%. I think it's always easier to sell your same customers more things continuously. Then you can sell your customers more expensive things continuously. Then you can get your customers to refer their friends to buy more things from you continuously. And then you can ask your customers to say nice things about you continuously, aka reviews. And so those reviews, referrals, retention, and reduction of churn are sort of the four main R's in a good business. One of the things that a lot of people listening to is hire people, whether they're hiring within a company or they're hiring as a small business owner or maybe even a large business owner.

1:27:59if you could only have two questions to ask a candidate, what would you ask them? Well, first, if you're going to hire somebody, the first question is, who are you and what are your strengths and weaknesses? Meaning you yourself. Oftentimes, your first hire in a business needs to be somebody who can do the opposite of what you can do. So it's actually not about them. It's about can you define the problem first? I think most of the reasons why good hires do not work out is because the person and the problem set has not been clearly defined. We tend to like people that are like us. We shouldn't always hire people that are like us.

1:28:36In fact, we often should not. After we've determined, okay, I need this type of person to solve this type of problem, the question is, how can you figure out are they that type of person and can they handle that type of problem? I think a couple things that we, our cheat codes, we use something called the Colby test. And so Colby is actually allowed from employment certifications for people to figure out what type of personality they have. And so it's basically like what fills your tank. And so there's like four characteristics to it from fast implementer. So like we do things right away. I'm sorry, fast action to implementer, which is like, I like to do things consistently over time.

1:29:16I am high fast action and low implementation. So I need to have an implementation person often in my business. I don't need a bunch of ideas person. I'm kind of an idea person. I need the opposite of that. It's also what EOS calls the visionary versus the integrator. I just think the word visionary sounds gross. You know, who's like, no, I want to be the integrator, not the visionary. It's a weird, I don't love that terminology. So the question that you need to be asking is how can you get to the root of whatever the problem set and persona you're looking for is defined? And so it's really going to depend.

1:29:51If I know that I need an implementer, I'm going to be asking questions like, one of my favorite ones that I did the other day was, you know, I'd love to see how you organize your calendar. Can you show it to me? So real time, pop up on Zoom, what does our calendar look like? If they're an implementer, it's probably highly detailed. It's color coded. It's assigned specific timelines. If there's, if it's kind of all over the place or there's mismatched things on top of it, not an implementer. that's a very easy one to tell. Another thing I might do if I'm looking for fast action, basically, is I would, I might say to them something like, well, hey, we're in the business right now.

1:30:29This is our problem. What would you do about it right now today? And I want to see, can they think quickly through what the next steps would be? Well, I would do X and Y and Z and X and Y and Z. And then I might say to them, how long would that take you to do something like that? see how quickly they could calculate what the timelines are. If I already know what the job is, I know if those timelines are reasonable or not. And so I know how good they are at calculating their own time and how speedy they are in that regard. And the third thing I do is I probably have some sort of follow up. So I'd be like, all right, you think we should do X and Y and Z?

1:31:03I'd love to pay you a thousand bucks to do a project scope for me. That would be amazing. Like how fast could you turn around a project scope for me? And if they're like, oh, a week, I'm like, oh, that's not my guy. It needs to be a 24-hour window. It doesn't need to be hyper-detailed, but I want to see sort of like a one-page brief, and then I can see what they think. I'm not a good enough interviewer to not need like an exterior tell. I really need, show me what your brief looks like. Show me what your calendar looks like. I think some people just can tell by communications. I can get persuaded by somebody.

1:31:36I think it's really rare that actually people have good intuition over hiring. I love what you said because it's hard to fake. Like, Zach, show me your calendar right now. I can't make it look good. I have to do it on the spot. And the same is like, what would you do? Like, it's harder to fake that you know something in those cases where so many people are taking credit for, you know, I worked with Mr. Beast and, you know, I know YouTube. And it's like, well, what did you do with it? And you can't really verify it. So it's sort of they have so much and then they get in and you're like, oh, God, like what?

1:32:08No. 100%. Yeah. I mean, I think if you want to make a lot of money, you've got to figure out hiring. That every problem is a people problem. Every additional profit is determined by people. And so that's been a hard one for me to learn because I do like to go fast. And a lot of times I like to do it by myself, you know, and I can execute fast. So I kind of go. But once. And then you want to hand it off to somebody else. Right. But once I've really gotten good at leading a team and bringing more people in, I've realized like leadership, I get now why there are so many books on leadership. I didn't used to.

1:32:42You know, when you're young and starting out, you're like, just tell me how to make more money. Just give me the playbook. That's a wrong question. That's the wrong ask. The right ask is, how do I create a vision so big that other people think their vision is bigger with me? And the second question is, how do I become so good that they want to be with me and work with me because they think that I'm better in some instances? And if you can't do those two things, you'll never attract top talent. And then it's how do I become so good of a leader that I'm constantly helping somebody become a better version of themselves?

1:33:16Because if I do that, it becomes addictive. And people love to be around other humans who will help them become better if they're high performers. Totally. I actually am not so good at like, I forget my own birthday. I forget my husband and my anniversary. I'm not, um, I'm not the best at like high empathy, touchy feely stuff. I don't know why. Um, and, uh, and so I think some people think, well, to be a good leader, you got to know their kids' names and that's probably a good one, but like you, you have to go really deep with them. You have to know everything about that employee. And that's just not how I lead.

1:33:49Um, you know, I lead by being like, what do you want to achieve in life? What are your big goals? Because I bet you're an amazing parent. I'm not a parent, so I'm not going to tell you how to be better at that. I'm sure that you have incredible hobbies that you're good at. You can go do that by yourself. I'm here to help you make more money, become a better version of yourself, and achieve what you want in your career. If that's interesting to you, you should come work with me. And I'm going to do it in a genuine way to you as a person. 100%. I'm not going to fake that I'm interested in X, Y, Z when I'm not.

1:34:16or yeah i got murdered on the internet once because i said it's one of my dear friends who's been an employee of mine for a long time but i was like uh i did not want to hear about your child's soccer game and uh and i just i can see why that would go oh just murdered on the internet and i was like no i stand by it i actually do not and i think that's incredible that you care about that for your kid but what i'm here to care about for you is like your career and sure people can pretend one way or another to care about that but they don't actually care about it you get those casuals like how is your weekend and somebody launches into more than a sentence and you can just see people's eyes like i used to answer like oh i thought people were genuine when they were answering this i was like i did xyz and like i can see the gloss in their eyes yeah and it's like they don't really want to know no well and like how interesting are those stories you know it's like um i think as a society somehow we've lost like uh the ability to be honest and we think that um being nice is the same as being kind and i don't think that's true talk to me about that being kind to me is when you see somebody struggling on the side of the road with a uh you know with a flat tire you get out and you help them with it you know being nice is pretending to listen to somebody's story about their kids and thinking that, you know, they'll like you more because you pretend to be interesting.

1:35:43Being kind might be like, I'm so excited for that for you. Like, hey, you know, I got to go do this other thing and work right now. But when you need help on that thing so that you can actually leave to go hang out with your kid this weekend, I will help you with it so you can get out faster. Kind. As opposed to nice, which is like, I'm going to project this sort of performance on you because I think that it seems like a nicety in society. Niceties are sort of like sprinkles. Kindness to me is like, will you help somebody bake the cake? In your inner circle, how quickly do you recognize underperformance and how do you deal with it?

1:36:15I need to be faster. I mean, the good thing for anybody listening is you don't have to be perfect. Oh man, the more rich people I meet, the more I realize how achievable it is for most of us. And so I am highly flawed in hiring. I am highly flawed in letting go of people or changing things when I need to in a business. I, even though I sound kind of tough, I almost always defer on the side of like, I wait too long. I think too much about the person. I want to make sure they're okay. Something I'd like to get better at. I think it is the peak of ego to be like, oh, I shouldn't let this person go because they have it better with me than anybody else.

1:36:57I don't know. I believe in their individual capacity to go and do something great that lights up their soul. And if this isn't it, then let's move them on to the next thing. And maybe the reason why is one time at my, let's see, company, two companies before I started my own, I had a CEO whose name was Jim. And Jim is a badass. I mean, he's like a billionaire many times over. He's very intimidating. And I remember I was running a business in Latin America then. We were crushing it. We were growing like crazy. I was running it for him. And he called me to a hotel we were at, the Monarch, and we were walking on the beach after one of our conferences.

1:37:35And he was kind of like, listen, I can tell you want to run the business this way. We do business this way. Like, either row my direction or get out of the boat in not so many words. And I was devastated. I was so mad at him. And I disagreed with him. And I felt like a victim. And I wanted to yell and scream. And then I realized, like, it's not my boat. so if I want to go row in a different direction I got to get my own boat and Jim you know essentially in some ways pushed me out of the company you know it's like we're not gonna do it that way so they're like get out of here if you want to do it that way or do it my way but he did something there that a lot of people won't do like he was just direct with you instead of like subtly like I'm gonna give Cody less opportunity I'm gonna push her I'm gonna constructively dismiss her whatever the term is.

1:38:25He actually approached you head on and communicated with you that hard thing. He was kind, not nice. And in that moment, he let me leave in a way that changed my life forever. And then I went and built a giant company and had massive success. And I never would have. I would have waited a long time if he hadn't done that. I would have stayed painfully at the company for a long time. And so I always remember that when I'm thinking about letting go of an employee, I'm like, man, you might go achieve something so much bigger than me if you lean into the thing that you actually should do. So go do it, you know, because I can tell you want to, your heart's not in it here.

1:39:07And I just had a conversation like that with an employee today, literally today. And I was nervous about having it. And this employee was like, I'm so glad you brought this up because I've been feeling it, but I wasn't sure how. And I think that is also the mark of a good leader is you have a lot of conversations with your people who are not aligning in your company perfectly. And you're like, and so they're never surprised. You know, I don't think I've ever let somebody go or moved in two directions from somebody where they've been like, what? Why? It's always been after a few conversations. And that is, I think, a respectful thing for employees.

1:39:47Do you rehearse that conversation in your head before you have out with them or do you just walk in? Yes, definitely. I rehearse. Yeah, I try to put myself in their shoes. How would they feel in this situation? What would they want out of this communication? I mean, Sun Tzu has a great line, which is give them a golden bridge on which to retreat. And he talks about his enemies in this way. And I think, you know, giving your employees a golden bridge on which to retreat is lovely too. You know, if you've ever worked at a company and somebody gets fired at that company and then the boss talks really badly about that person, it doesn't actually make the boss looks better.

1:40:22It makes you think, ooh, so when I eventually leave, they're going to talk about me like that. And so I try to never do that. Now, I'm honest. I might say, hey, we have a culture here that mandates X. Y wasn't happening. And so for that reason, we've parted ways. I'm not going to sugarcoat it or pretend that something was there that wasn't, if that's the case. But in most instances, you know, unless there's fraud or, you know, something reputational, most times it's just that you two have been together for a period and that period has passed. And that's totally okay. Do you do performance improvement plans or are you just like, no, like that's never going to work.

1:41:00I'm not going to invest in that because now that's an investment on your part too, right? It's like I've already invested months, time, salary, money. And now like to do this, I have to do more. Like, how do you think about that? Typically, we do performance improvement plans for employees, not at the executive level. You know, if we have executive level people, which is usually the people that I am hiring or firing now, those people, we start with the end in mind. So when people come onto my company, a hack to never have somebody be surprised by being let go is to start with a 30, 60, 90 day plan with every single person that you bring on board, even a new assistant.

1:41:37And those 30, 60, 90 day plans have very specific outcomes. And if those outcomes don't happen at 30 days for your first check in, first red flag, they don't happen at 60 days, second red flag, third red flag, you're gone from the company. And then we have that on a quarterly basis, too. So we have, you know, KPIs, key performance indicators. And if you're hitting those, then we're good to go. You keep motoring. If you have a quarter where you're not hitting those, okay, we've got first red flag. depending on the position. If you have another month or sometimes another quarter of it, that means that you let go.

1:42:08And so there aren't, I hated when I was at a company and I didn't know where I stood. It's like, am I doing a good job? Am I not doing a good job? Why did this person get promoted? Why did this person get fired? It's so confusing. And so I always wanted something where it was like, just let me know where I stand and how to make more money and how to be successful and how to not. And I think a lot of companies could do that better. We're by no means perfect, but I'm working on it. That's such a big unlock, right? Just sort of being clear. Because if you're not clear, you're sort of like floundering, you're throwing darts at the wall, and you're like hoping something sticks.

1:42:40And if it's inconsistent, you just give up eventually. You're like, well, yeah, this is too taxing on the mind. Meanwhile, if you could focus my energy, we're going to get somewhere. So one of the key traits you mentioned, I think of high performers was the kind versus nice. And the ability to communicate clearly and in a way the message is received even though it's not always sugar-coated. What are the other traits that you've learned from people that you would say are high performers? Yeah. If you want to be a high performer, one, you got to be around other high performers. So try to find a group of people that look like the life that you want in one shape or another.

1:43:20Second, if you want to be a high performer, you want to make sure that you always do the things that you say you're going to do. And I think that is probably one of the most underrated ways to win is simply say you're going to do a thing and follow through on doing the thing. That is very rare. In fact, sometimes it's rare for me. I project manage the shit out of myself because I'm forgetful. I have too many things on my plate and I want to be a human of my word. And so I have like a notion task list that has databases and priorities on it. And every single day I look at that task list and I say, did I promise something to somebody?

1:43:57And I check off the things that I don't. Or I forward expectation set. Like even with you, I was like, fuck Shane, you know, I have this thing I'm going to do this weekend. And I let you know ahead of time, I'm like, I'm a little worried. What if I can't do it? Do you think we could push it back? You know, we like over communicate almost, which sometimes can feel like too much, but lets the person know, like, I'm taking this really seriously. Like I told you that I was going to do this thing with you. And I want you to know I'm really, I'm thinking about that. And I'm making sure I do everything I can to prioritize it.

1:44:23and if I can't prioritize it, you're going to know why. And so if you say you're going to do a thing, do the thing. You'll beat 99 % of people. The next thing that I've found in high performers pretty consistently is they are helpers, not Yelpers. And I think about this like, you know those people that go to a small business and there's something wrong at small business and they get on Yelp and they're like, right? As opposed to the people who see something wrong in a small business and they go up to the owner or they go up to the person and say, hey, by the way, you know, my food was a little cold.

1:44:57I didn't get this. You know, I know it's hard. I just want to let you know. I wanted to let you know personally. I always find that high performers are the helpers and they're never the yelpers. Because when you're a high performer, you realize things like the average small business needs 20 positive reviews to overshadow one negative review. So every time you do that to a small business, you could be crippling it with the one thing that happened in that small business. So I think about that. And the last thing I'll say with high performers overall, they're usually quite giving. And so I think a good indicator of if somebody is a winner or not is do they overgive almost?

1:45:41Because they sit from such a place of abundance and mutual winning that they do not think that if Shane wins, I can't win. You know, if he gets this, that means that I'm less than. And don't get me wrong. Like if you're sitting there ever thinking, man, I'm a little jealous of that or I wish I could do that. I have that all the time, too. You know, there are times where there's somebody on the internet and, you know, they're growing faster than we are or their business is doing better. And I'll feel that little twinge, you know, in my stomach like, shoot, gosh, why aren't we doing that? What am I doing wrong?

1:46:17And that's human nature. And I might just mute them for a little bit and just not play the comparison game. I'm like, wish them well, but like I'm not evolved enough to not feel a little bit of that. But then if I was ever to engage with those people, I would be like, you're killing it. I'm so excited for you. And I hope you keep winning. What do you spend money on that would surprise people? Oh, God. I'm really into lately matching sets. This is such a girl thing. But I love outfits that match because you don't have to coordinate them. That's such a nerd move. So like a shirt and pants or a dress and a shirt that matches.

1:46:56So then you just get to like go off and go. so I probably spend more money on clothes like that than I used to. The second thing I spend a lot of money on is learning overall. So like if you were to see where I spend probably like I mean houses, cars, I don't really care that much about that, trips, those probably cost a lot of money but something that might surprise people is like how many books am I buying? How many random courses am I taking? Like I'm taking one right now on Notion automations, for instance, because I want to get better at just prioritization of that. I'm taking another one right now that I'm about done with on AI integration for small business.

1:47:36Like how could we integrate those a little bit better? So I spend an odd amount of money on learning how to get faster and better. And I love doing that. And then probably the third is hiring. Like every chance I can get, I try to think about where can and give somebody an opportunity for them to be in their zone of genius, but also help me. And Tanner, who's my creative director, always gives me a hard time because people want me to say something like a private jet or like something. And like, yeah, sometimes we fly private, but I would rather, I would rather hire a couple more chiefs of staff.

1:48:11I would rather buy another business than spend on a liability. And so I don't do that a ton, but I do really want to farm with goats and many horses and chickens it's just i can't figure out exactly how to take care of it all without getting stressed out about it there's like a an expansion surface area right when yeah yeah it's like should i just go rent one a couple weekends if i really want to but uh i have a dude who's become a friend jesse eitzler and he's like i bought a farm and it's the best fucking thing i've ever bought i was like god now i want one so maybe we'll do that eventually i think for you part of That would be sort of like your weeks are busy, they're stressful, and this is like getting away, taking myself out of a familiar environment, relaxing so that I can come back on Monday and do it all over.

1:48:59Definitely my husband and I are good at spending on experiences more than things. Like it's not like, I mean, I have maybe a couple nice watches, but I don't really wear them that much. I don't wear a lot of designer stuff. If you see me on Instagram, a lot of times the stuff I'm buying is from small businesses and stuff like that. But I think it's sort of a sign of – actually, I don't want to judge. Just for me, labels and big logos, I've never really gotten off on them. I do think there's a bunch of research now. I saw this thing the other day. I don't know if you saw it. There's obviously something called the pretty privilege, right?

1:49:36What's that? Well, basically, women on average – there was a fascinating study showing that women who wear makeup but have the same attractiveness pull in a group of people. Okay. So everybody, so we're all sevens, let's say. But a seven who wears makeup versus a seven who doesn't wear makeup will earn 15 % more over the course of a year. Oh, wow. Crazy, right? Then for men and women who both, I can't remember how they measured this one, but it was some measure of how they dress, like their put-togetherness, but I can't remember the indicator of like how they determine that. Women earn on average 30 % more.

1:50:13not just for their facial symmetry and whether they're pretty, but how they're put together. And men earn 15 % more. And so I do think there is a reason to dress like a pro so you can earn like a pro. I'm sitting here in my sweatshirt and shorts. I think you look great. You put your branding on. I mean, there's definitely the cases where it's not true, but on average, it shows you earn more money. Why do you think it is? And I mean, I do suppose that we make, you know, they say that you make a first impression in less than blink of an eye. Right. And so historically, we were predetermined worth based on, you know, mating capability, probably like protection if you're a man and fertility if you're a woman.

1:50:59Right. And so we're trying to determine is our mate going to protect us or are they going to provide us babies? And so prettiness or whatever was an indicator of health, which was an indicator of fertility. Right. And so I think for a lot of reasons, it's like our Africa Savannah brain basically saying, is this person going to be a good fit for me or not? And I should have a higher indication of a value for that. That would be what I would assume. And then maybe today it's also due to the fact that you have a historical bias, like the people who do dress better historically have more money. And so your prior interactions with people who have more money look like this as opposed to this.

1:51:37So you take them more seriously. Yeah, could be. What do you think? that would be my sort of guess right is you form a snap judgment unconsciously like not consciously that this person is and you can probably prove this like if you were to walk into a Porsche dealership and you're wearing a fitted suit versus you're wearing sweatpants how people interact with you just on that I want to come back to your husband for a second because you guys do this thing I really want to talk about but before that you mentioned books what have you learned from business biographies? Oh, yeah. Well, I think that you learn more from biographies of billionaires than most self-help books.

1:52:14I think, you know, I just went through a list of a bunch of business biographies that I thought were really useful. And the reason I like to learn about billionaires' lives, and even like in my book, I open up with the story of Wayne Hazinga, who was the founder of Waste Management, one of the biggest garbage companies in the world. And what's fascinating is he started off owning a, sorry, not owning, he started off driving a garbage truck. And what I think is interesting about that is he goes from owning a garbage truck to working for a small garbage truck company to saying, wait a second, this guy is running this garbage truck company.

1:52:51Couldn't I do it? Why don't I buy a series of garbage trucks and then a series of garbage companies and then compile them into this big, huge thing. And so if I can see a model that works, then I can reverse engineer how to get there. And so I often find with biographies of billionaires and lessons from billionaires, there's a model in how they did things. And you can sort of reverse engineer it your own way, as opposed to at times, if you're following like a self-help book, it's a lot of theory or frameworks or ideation, which could be useful, but maybe you don't have the practical application.

1:53:28And so I like to see like Tom did X plus Y, which got Z. If Cody does X plus Y, likelihood of getting Z. And my brain sort of thinks and not in numbers exactly like that, but equations like that. I think that's fascinating, right? But what I'm hearing is you're filling your brain with this repository of ideas, furniture, if you will, that are the raw material for when you run into a problem. Now, when you're searching this, you're sort of like, oh, this reminds me of this situation. Maybe I can handle it this way. Is the environment different? Can I apply it? Yeah. Well, I think I don't have the big, huge type of brain that finds completely novel solutions and runs with it.

1:54:10So my brain is in Colby what they call a fact finder brain. So I first kind of like probably because I was a journalist, I look at the landscape and say, how have people done this before? What does the data tell us? If I get 10 instances of this? What happens in nine out of those 10 instances? Okay, now I have like some examples. And then I'll go, okay, here's my problem. How do I apply those examples to my problem? And that just helps me feel a higher degree of confidence that'll work. So if you work at my companies, you'll often hear me say, like somebody will say, this is a good video. I will say, what does good mean?

1:54:42And they'll say, well, I like it, or it feels good, or whatever. And I'll say, well, I can't really quantify that. Could you give me some different metrics? And so now we'll have definitions with metrics for almost everything. Because when you use the same words, then you're actually having the same conversation. Often we aren't. Like good is too squishy. You can't tell what it means. And so a lot of what we do at our companies is figure out words mean things, different things to different people. What's our exact definition? And then once we have the exact definition, what's the playbook we can use with those words?

1:55:14I'm also really big on playbooks. I think they help. What's your problem with rich dad versus poor dad? Oh, yeah. First of all, he's a genius. And I think he changed. This is Robert Kiyosaki, the author. I think he changed a generation of pure W-2 employees who had never thought about climbing the investment ladder to be allowed to climb the investment ladder. my problem is man sheryl sandberg became how rich being a w-2 very rich i mean the ceo of google one of the richest men in the world from being an employee i think that we have bastardized this idea of being an employee and we've said it's bad and it's less than you should be a founder an entrepreneur and so in rich dad poor dad he has this quadrant where he basically has a w-2 employee at the low end of the totem pole and i don't believe in that i think w-2 is just your tax status.

1:56:08And actually, it doesn't matter. Are you not smarter than the average entrepreneur if you are a W-2 employee and you use the wages earned with zero risk because you're working with somebody else to invest in assets that then increase your income stream, but allow you to still make money using somebody else's risk? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So that's my problem with that framework, which is called the cash flow quadrant, I believe, because I think that we have made people feel bad about being a W-2. And I remember one of my friends came into, we run a community of business buyers, right?

1:56:43And so it's an academy where you go and learn how to do M &A. And one of my friends came into the M &A academy and this person was making like$600 ,000,$700 ,000 a year. And they were making$600 ,000,$700K. They wanted to buy a couple of businesses on the side, but they loved what they did. And somebody said to them, oh, you're just a W-2? And I was pissed. I'm like, first of all, how do you expect to be a business owner one day with just W-2 employees? You're not going to have any if you treat them like that. Second, why does that matter? It doesn't. It just means we need to be able to do what we love and have a backup plan in case that doesn't work out, which is some investable assets.

1:57:21So that's my problem is I think it creates a series of people who think that they're better than or somebody is worse than because of their tax status, which makes no sense to me. What are the different types of income streams that are available to somebody who's a W-2 employee, like working for somebody else, getting a paycheck every week so that they can build financial freedom? I think one of the best times to invest in assets that can provide more income is when you're employed, because you have an income stream, which means you have less risk. If you're going to go and start a new business, you probably shouldn't diversify right off the bat with a bunch of investments.

1:57:57You kind of need to focus and make sure that you're going to grow your business or invest in other companies inside of your business. You could do what's called strategic M &A. But when you're a W-2 employee, I mean, gosh, we have probably, I would say like 40 % of our community and there's thousands of business buyers in there are W-2s who largely want to keep their W-2 salary. They probably are pretty high earners. And they're doing things like they're buying series of hotels or Airbnbs and running those simultaneously. Then they're buying property management companies that run those airbnbs so they have 20 that they take back in them you know they're buying laundromats and car washes so what i call um people light businesses so you don't need a ton of employees for those businesses um they might be buying vendors for um people that they know and use inside of their w-2 so you know maybe they buy a studio like this because they work for a podcast company and so they can cash flow on it so and then of course traditional things like investing in funds and the stock market and REITs and all of that, which I think the other thing that's a little funny about today is there's a lot of people who don't like the stock market, who don't like bonds, who, you know, think that you shouldn't invest that way.

1:59:12And I think that's bizarre. Like the best money managers in the world have diversification to some way, shape, or form for longevity over time. And so I think you're crazy to not want to have multiple ways to protect the downside. You and your husband do this thing, the team thing. Can you explain this to me and how it's helped your marriage? Yeah. Yeah, we've added on to it. So I don't know if you have this, but you know when you keep sort of bickering with your spouse, like little things. And they kind of compile and you look back on a fight and you're like, why was that so dramatic? It was about, you know, a book left on the table.

1:59:53It was about a water stain somewhere left out. What a dumb fight. And so we were having some of those. And so we have a coach that we use because I believe in coaches in almost every area of your life that you can. I want to steal other people's 10 ,000 hours always. And so Brandy was basically like, we do this thing called team, which is at the end of the day, I want to say every day, but we don't do it every day. So often sit down and it goes like this. You touch. So the first thing, maybe you're like holding hands. Maybe you're sitting next to each other. The second is educate. So you sit down and you're like, what did I learn today?

2:00:25Oh, I learned this cool thing from my conversation with Shane. I share, he shares. Then appreciation. So it's like, hey, I really appreciate honey. If it's a bad day, it might be like, thanks for taking out the trash. You know, that's all I fucking got today. But I appreciate that you did that. The only rule is you can't keep using the same things. Every day you got to find something new to appreciate. And then finally metrics. And metrics is like, I wish you did this better today. You know, today you, uh, you didn't take care of the dog. You didn't feed the dog. And I wish you did. And you said this to me and I wish you would have said it that way instead.

2:00:59And so we keep the small things for a period in which we're not elevated. And that is when we are at our best. And so, and at the end of that, we might also have something like expectations. So that would be like, now we're really busy and we're both running businesses. He runs our portfolio. And so we realized even if we did team, like maybe this week you're traveling here and your wife's home with the kids and you know, you're going to be in the studio six hours a day and you're not going to be available. And when you're done, you're going to be so tired. You're not going to want to get on the phone with her.

2:01:35You're going to want a quick call with the kids, but you're going to need to go to sleep afterwards. And when you come home on Friday, even though you're going to want to like, she's going to want to go to dinner and you're going to want to, you're going to be so tired. You're not going to be able to. And so we do an expectation meeting now on Sundays where it's like, all right, what's going down this week? I'm traveling here. You're traveling there. We got this. We got this. The kids need this. I need that. Okay, cool. What do you, what's your expectation level of like energy? Is this a brutal week for you?

2:02:01Yeah. This week's awful. No, this week's pretty light. so we go okay if it's an awful week I know you're probably not gonna be at your best right you might be a little sure with me you might need a little bit more love I got you this week or we're both kind of it's a brutal week for both of us so let's tread easy this week let's let's try to not nitpick each other so much and I just think um you know you do that with your teams you're like all right guys we got a big week this week so like everybody needs to be in the office here you know or let's take Friday off half day because we got too much going on the rest of the week.

2:02:35But why not do it with your marriage? Because otherwise I think life can run you down and you don't realize you're not even fighting because you're mad. You're fighting because you're tired and beat up and you got nothing left and you're just trying to survive. And so it really helped us. That expectation thing is really fascinating. Often in couples, there's one partner who's maybe working harder than the other and it could be a female surgeon and a guy who works a nine to five and it could be the other way around or somebody running a business and their partner is more their job is more defined yeah how do you handle like a mismatch between you know my day is 12 hours your day is like six hours or vice versa right my day is six hours your day is 12 hours when you get home i'm like full of energy and i can't wait to see you and you're like oh i'm drained yeah well we we compromise so mine might be like all right i'm in my season i'm in a build season and it's going to be brutal because I'm in my residency for the next three years.

2:03:32And we know that. And so it's not on a week basis, it's a three-year basis. So let's have some expectations setting about what these three years is going to be like. All right, you know that I'm going to be exhausted all these days, but you know what? You're still my top priority. So on Saturdays, I'm going to make it up to you. We're going to have a date night. I'm going to plan it. I'm going to handle it. We're going to do a vacation like three or four times a year. I'll make sure to prioritize that. If we do those things, does that fill your cup enough? Right. I think a lot of times these things happen in marriage because we aren't honest about the fact that we don't have full tanks all the time.

2:04:09Yeah. And, you know, you're going to have a build season. And if you can tell your partner, hey, I just had a baby, you know, this next this next year, I'm probably going to be tired and I'm and I'm not going to go to the gym as much as I want to. and I want to know you're still going to love me and whatever fears you have, then it takes a lot of the edge off. Because a lot of times we're not even acknowledging what the real problem is, right? Which is like...

2:05:05I am just really tired. Compromise is in January, February, and March, I'm not going to do any speaking events. Like I'm just, nope, zero. And so stick with me for three months. Then, you know, come into the year, we're going to chill out. There's a light at the end of this tunnel. Exactly. And so you got to find whatever your compromise is. Otherwise, I think if you're always like, well, I always work 12 hours and you always work six. Well, that might not a happy marriage make. And I like how you're sort of setting expectations, which is like, hey, you know, it's going to be busy for the next three months.

2:05:37And then there's like this light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, my husband totally taught me that. I was terrible at it. I'm not a great communicator, actually, interpersonally. I just go, go, go, go, go. And he was he's the one that's like often like, all right, stop. Let's talk about this. Let's be really clear. What do you really want? So I have to give him all the credit in the world for that. We always end on the same question, which is what is success for you? For me, it's two part. Long term, it's, you know, Emma Bombeck has this quote, which is, when I stand before God at the end of my days, I want to feel like I used everything you gave me.

2:06:11I have not one drop left. And that's how I want to feel. I want to feel like I'm wrung it out, like I just left it all in the field, every piece of ability that I had. And then the second part is I want to feel peace and like I'm enough. Like no matter, even if, if I don't want to wring out those last couple drops, that's okay. And so it's this balance between what am I capable of and no matter what I achieve is enough. Little child of God, no big deal either way.

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2:08:03Thank you.