4 Profitable Business Ideas That Men Are Sleeping On | ft. Codie Sanchez (#512)

Shaan Puri

I just got a text message that says let's get some estrogen in this bitch that's right we have a guest host today sam is out he had a baby congratulations to him but we have cody sanchez here to take his place and cody texted me because she says I got a bunch of ideas for dudes who don't understand the women's market and they're not playing these games there's less competition but these are big opportunities so she said she's got 4 ideas that are blind spots for men but that the women will understand so for the 4 female listeners out there this is your day today is your day the moment you've been waiting for it only took us 500 episodes to make an episode that is catered around ideas for the the market for women I can barely even say it I don't even understand I'm excited to see what she says the second thing that I'm gonna do is cody is always on social media talking about buying laundromats and I'm gonna ask her I'm gonna ask her cody do you really buy fucking laundromats and do these make money and why are you buying these things so that's what's coming in the second half of the episode and at the end I'm gonna ask her about her content game because she's built up a following got millions of followers now she said she does a 100,000,000 impressions a month across all her channels and this is all kind of in 3 years so she's built an amazing social brand but with that comes a bunch of haters and people saying that she's just like a a business guru or a grifter so I'm gonna ask her straight up I'm gonna say hey what's the deal cody are you a grifter and what's your response to that address the haters and we're gonna ask her to address the haters so that's what's in this episode hope you enjoy this episode with our guest host cody sanchez okay what's up we got cody sanchez in the house guest host congrats to sam he had his baby he's out on on daddy leave patty leave whatever whatever people call it nowadays he is going skin to skin he is swaddling he is diaper changing I'm sure he's doing all those things haven't actually asked him because gotta give the man some space but I decided while sam's out I wanna have guest hosts so not just a guest but a guest host and what I mean by that is here's the criteria somebody who I already know and like so a friend friend of the house number 2 is they gotta know the vibe so they live listen to mfm they know that what this podcast is all about is talking about ideas opportunities or interesting businesses that not everybody knows about so they gotta come prepared with that and it's like a host so you're taking the role of sam cody how does that feel are you are you ready to be sam

Codie Sanchez

do I have to drink hose water yeah if I also cohost is that

Shaan Puri

You know Sam really, really well. You hung out with him in person, so I feel like you got his vibe.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, totally. Sam is a dear friend, and so is Sarah. I think they're gonna make hell of parents, so I'm stoked. But yes, those are big, huge, giant shoes to fill, and he's a giant man. I'll try to do the best I can.

Shaan Puri

And for people who don't know, give us like the 30 seconds, you know, who are you? So that people understand, you know, who they're messing with.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, well, I run something called **Contrain Thinking**, which is probably how people know about me on the internet. That's a newsletter, actually, slightly inspired by Sam and our other friends at Morning Brew. It's got a couple hundred thousand subscribers now, hoping to get to a million by the end of the year. That media company overall gets about **100 million views a month** and has **5 million subscribers**, which is kind of cool. I talk on the internet about boring businesses and stuff that I've invested in for a long time. So, for forever—I'm old for the internet—but for forever, I was in investment banking and private equity, buying small businesses like private equity people do and then just holding them. I guess the real way to say it would be a family office, and then that became bigger. So, we turned it into a holding company, and now we buy what I call **small, boring businesses** and then talk to other people about how to do the same.

Shaan Puri

So you sent me this Notion doc that can only be described as prolific... epic. It's got like 30 genuinely interesting ideas and opportunities in this. We're not gonna get through all of them, but I bucketed some of them into categories. Opportunity #1, you called "Let's get some estrogen in this pitch." Go ahead, I'll give you the floor.

Codie Sanchez

I feel like, because I am a legitimate fan of the pod, I know my fellow pod listeners. The idea was that for everybody on Twitter, who typically listens to this podcast, maybe there's this segment in the market with a little bit more estrogen than you guys have that we could tap into. There are all these businesses that I would love to see more of. Since people in the pod actually go out there and do things and build these businesses, we'll give you some ideas. I don't know where you want to start, but I was basically joking with your producer. I asked, "Is this legitimate or is Cody crazy?" She said explicitly, "I feel like you saw into my soul." So, it's safe to say women everywhere will likely appreciate these ideas, or you'll tell us if you hate it on the internet.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I've known Producer Ari for... she's been with us for like 2 weeks now, maybe 3 weeks, and I've never seen her smile this hard. She's so excited for this segment. So, I want to do the one that stood out to me right away. You said "the traditional wife movement."

Codie Sanchez

oh yeah

Shaan Puri

I think the best business ideas start with a behavioral observation. It's about noticing a behavioral phenomenon. You see people doing something, or you notice the pendulum swinging. For example, people used to feel one way, or the popular sentiment is one thing, but you notice people starting to gravitate towards the other end of that spectrum. That's usually where there's a real opportunity. So, what's an observation here that you have?

Hubspot

Yeah, so if people don't know about the **trad wife movement**, I find it fascinating. Basically, how I came across it, as one does, is I was on Instagram scrolling my life away. I saw this beautiful woman in a flowy dress, no shoes, running through what I could only describe as a field that was her house. Overlaid on top of it, she had a little child in front of her, and it said, "Girl boss? I wanna be a hobbit mama." I was just giggling kind of ridiculously at this. Then I thought, well, I kind of feel that. We know from COVID that everybody wanted to go be a gentleman farmer, right? I think you guys talked about that. But this is like the 2.0 version. So what happened from this one video I saw is that Instagram realized I watched it longer than I guess I do other things. I got served up all this stuff, and boy, before you know it, Sean, I buy some white pumpkins, some flowers to press onto them, and I'm gluing pansies on a pumpkin. Now, you actually know me, and I don't have hobbies. All I do is work; we run a bunch of businesses. I'm not that fun, and I'm sitting in front of the TV gluing pumpkins. That's when I realized I think this is gonna be huge. So I looked up the TikTok views for the search term "trad wife," and it was 187 million, which was wild. We could play with a bunch of different ideas, but then I thought maybe this is the counterculture movement to the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, which used to be at the top of the charts. It looks like it's come down from the top 1 or 2 podcasts to the top 20 or 30 on the charts. So the idea is, how can we play to that market? Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.

Shaan Puri

I think

Codie Sanchez

I love our new CRM. Our software is the best: HubSpot. Grow better!

Shaan Puri

So first of all, do you feel threatened? I feel like you're the "girl boss." You are in the top ranking. If somebody said, "Oh, name like 5 girl boss people," I'd be like, "Oh, Sofia Barossa," and then I'd say you. I feel like that's kind of you in terms of your public image. Do you look at this like, you know, kryptonite in some way? Where you're like, "Oh shit, they're going the other way now." What’s your reaction to this?

Codie Sanchez

Well, like honestly, that whole "girl boss," "boss babe," "babe's boss's money" thing... I wanna die. I wanna die on the inside anytime I see any of those names. I remember once I got invited to a speech, and they were like, "We need a female CEO to speak here." I was like, "I'm really unclear what my vagina has to do with this." The guy was like... I could just feel him shriveling, you know, on his email. I was like, "I don't think it's relevant." So, I'm kinda curious. I'm hugely biased, so who knows if I'm right? But I'm happily married, and I'm a very big family gal. I don't talk about sex on the internet. Like, "Call Her Daddy," I think you should do whatever you want; it's just not my jam. So, I'm kinda curious. We had these two worlds for so long, right? You were either single, crazy femme, you know, "don't need no man," independent, or you were traditional, stay-at-home, you know, protecting the familial unit. I just think both seem sort of ridiculous. So, can't we have people who, like, I don't know, have some sorts of hobbies?

Shaan Puri

of course

Codie Sanchez

work and that maybe just wishful thinking because the world's too polarized for that

Shaan Puri

well I think I totally agree with you and I think that obviously we in a way we simplify ourselves to make ourselves a great brand like the simpler the logo the simpler the slogan the simpler the the the less three-dimensional you are the easier it is as a brand initially and then of course you're like no no no but I'm I have all these layers you know I I do have the soft side I do have the right like I do this every anybody who's built a brand on the internet does this you first simplify and then you try to add depth and so the downside of the simple the upside of the simplify is you get a whole bunch of followers a bunch of people know you for boring businesses and kicking ass in the in the business world people know sweaty startup for the sweaty startup thing they don't wanna hear his stock picks they don't wanna hear his other stuff because it's not on brand for him and of course people do wanna shift over time what I find interesting in this like this observation of I actually think there's 3 so I think there's the caller daddy which I'll I'll put in there which is like the sex positive sort of like girls can be players too it's more of a relationship empowerment thing but not so much career then you have the career work empowerment which is like you know like you said what does my vagina have anything to do with this and then you have the sort of traditional values and of course people float between all 3 depending on the day the situation the phase of life that they're in etcetera I've definitely noticed this movement coming because my wife is exactly like this she's like she's like yeah it's I can't say this like out in the world but I kinda like gender roles like I just want you to take out the trash and I'm down to do this stuff with the kids and then I I just want you to always drive and like she's like why I don't wanna fight all this and she's also like she's she worked really hard she had a better career than me when we met and stuff like that like she was totally good at that but she also was like yeah I really wanna be stay at home wife like that's my next phase you know I I want that I just wanna do house stuff and like that's where her mindset was at at the time and so it is very and but I but I noticed that she couldn't really come out and say that and anytime there's like a there's a belief or behavior that can't be said there's an opportunity this is what trump capitalized on when he became president was there was a bunch of thoughts in people's heads that he was the only guy willing to say out loud and and there's a whole bunch of examples of this in business where there are like grindr is a good example of this there was a behavior that was happening that was not compatible with traditional dating and grindr came in and enabled that spoke to that and was able to do it even though it's somewhat taboo and they're and they're not always in these like sketchy areas another example of that would be snapchat so when everything became public and permanent because facebook was the big social network and then instagram was the big social network and it was like perfectly filtered photos publicly on display not even for your friends and family for all your followers and it goes on your feed and then you had snapchat come out which was like make a silly face is gonna disappear in 5 seconds and so it's like yeah the the bigger one thing gets the craving grows for the opposite for the other for the anti whatever the current thing is

Codie Sanchez

That's true. Well, even, I mean, you can see it if you look at the Kardashians' body types, for instance. They had a lot of curves going on. For a minute, that became the trend. You saw people getting fillers; it was a huge industry. Cosmetology and men's spas experienced the biggest growth increase in any historical period in the U.S., which is wild. We looked at investing in a couple of them, and I was like, the margins these places make are incredible. And then what do you see now? The Kardashians, if you're up to date, are now removing their Brazilian butt lifts. They're taking out fillers. There's that one, Blac Chyna; she got rid of everything. I guess she had a ton of stuff.

Shaan Puri

right

Codie Sanchez

And so, I think even the really, really big celebrities are starting to realize, "Oh, the trend is changing." If you're as committed to the cause as those ladies are, you change your whole body, which is wild.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's one way to look at it for sure. I remember the first time I heard "BBL," I thought somebody was talking about a basketball league, like a Brazilian basketball league. I was like, "Oh, this could be a great conversation." Then quickly, I realized I was completely out of my depth. I had no idea what anyone was talking about. But it's true, right? Like, Kendall Jenner has a totally opposite body type compared to Kim Kardashian. So, I guess it is a sign of the times. So, what would you do with this? You notice the "trad wife" movement, you see the TikTok views going up, and you see people more interested in this lifestyle. You start buying white pumpkins and hot gluing "Live Laugh Love" on them. So, CapEx, what happens next? What's the opportunity here?

Codie Sanchez

Okay, well, a couple of them that I thought were fascinating. One is, I'm sure you don't spend your time on the weekend here, but a bunch of chicks and people do in general. It's called Hobby Lobby. Basically, it's crafting, but if you think about what the store looks like, it resembles a kind of gnarly CVS. You have fluorescent lights, everything's a little dirty, and there's too much stuff crammed in there. Why does anybody need 472 toothpaste SKUs? Like, nobody knows. And it's always packed, which astounds me. Then I was like, how big is this company? Apparently, they do **$7,000,000,000** a year in sales, which is wild. Then there's TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, and that whole entity, which is like **$51,000,000,000**. I don't know how big HomeGoods is as a portion of it, but HomeGoods would be like Hobby Lobby, but it's done for you. So Hobby Lobby is like, "Here's a bunch of... here's a recipe."

Shaan Puri

right the ingredients

Codie Sanchez

You put the ingredients together, and then HomeGoods is like, "Cody doesn't have to paint the pumpkin; it's already there." She gets to buy it—"Live, Laugh, Love" included, right? What I thought was funny is I was chatting beforehand with Ari about this, and I was like, "There's some crazy thing about women and candles." Is your wife like this, Sean? Does she love a good candle?

Shaan Puri

crazy yeah go on

Codie Sanchez

I do not stand by that wife lashawn by the way

Shaan Puri

she doesn't listen don't worry she's never heard one episode

Codie Sanchez

But women, like, as a gross generality—I'm sure a bunch of people are going to hate this on the internet afterwards—but as a gross generality, there's something that we love about a discount on a home goods item. Like a nice little vase or a candle drives men crazy. But I think there's a play here for HomeGoods or Hobby Lobby 2.0. All you would have to do is have any sort of retail experience, walk in there, and go, "Oh God, there's nothing nice about this place except that it has what is required." So, like, church it up. That's one thing, especially because retail's so cheap right now. We owned a commercial strip mall and couldn't fill the thing. I mean, we were really having a hard time. So I like that play.

Shaan Puri

I like that too. I have a friend who owns almost $1,000,000,000 of real estate outright. It's not a fund; they own it. It's about 60/40 equity in debt, and they do commercial retail. I remember sitting with them and saying, "Dude, commercial? Isn't that dead? In my world, everything's going online, and retail brick-and-mortar is like a graveyard. You're leaning in, you're doubling down. Why don't you need to get rid of this portfolio ASAP?" He was like, "Yes, in general, but there's a segment I went into that's super resilient. Nobody can touch it." He goes, "My number one tenant in all of my properties is Hobby Lobby." He basically goes to these giant strip mall-type places, like over shopping centers that are empty and can't fill a lease. He asks Hobby Lobby, "Would you like to be here?" and Hobby Lobby is like, "Yes, we're expanding." I was like, "Who's expanding right now?" He said, "I'll tell you who's expanding: Hobby Lobby and HomeGoods." Then he explained all these things. He said, "Basically, anything that's got this kind of DIY craft thing, you can't touch it. There's so much demand for it; they just keep expanding." He also mentioned the HomeGoods thing, saying, "There's like a treasure hunt dynamic to it," which is exactly what you just said. He goes, "Women want to physically go to the store because it's a deal-hunting experience. If you can find... what did you call it? A vase? Is a vase the same thing?"

Codie Sanchez

same thing

Shaan Puri

yeah wow

Codie Sanchez

you nailed it

Shaan Puri

And you're just cool if you say one, and you're me if you say the other. Alright, gotcha. So you go, you find the deal, the sort of "needle in a haystack" type of thing. It's kind of thrift shopping, but in a high-end way. And he's like, "Yeah, these are super resilient right now." There were a couple of other categories, like call repair and things like that—things that you couldn't take online. But he's basically isolated it into these super resilient ones that now are like, "Oh, we can go pick up prime real estate everywhere because of this." And I'm with you on the Hobby Lobby one, which is like the current Hobby Lobby. It's like half CVS, half Home Depot or something like that. It's not... yeah.

Codie Sanchez

exactly

Shaan Puri

It doesn't look like Etsy or Instagram. I think if somebody just said, "Which, by the way, you know that woman Joanna Gaines, the Chip and Joanna?" They have the now.

Codie Sanchez

you're churchin' up her name I think it's joanna but we could also go with joanna either or

Shaan Puri

It's a vase sort of situation. So, she's got Magnolia, the store, in Texas somewhere. Have you been?

Codie Sanchez

Waco? Yeah, yeah, I've been. It's a fan... I mean, it's Disneyland for like middle-aged white women like me, I think. Basically, like, it's... damn.

Shaan Puri

you went middle age for yourself oh wow

Codie Sanchez

I know, well, now that I'm in my late thirties... you know, TikTok tells me that's middle age. But what's fascinating about Joanna Gaines is she disrupted like three industries that people said were dead: 1. Magazines: How do you get a magazine that does $100 million in total revenue from what's built around it? That's wild. 2. Actual retail space 3. E-commerce (though I guess e-com isn't dying) She has an incredible e-commerce business. So, 2 out of 3 [industries she disrupted were considered "dead"].

Shaan Puri

To be... so they, yeah. Would it be just like *Magnolia* but scaled? Is that like, would that be a winning idea here?

Codie Sanchez

Well, I think we could play some games here. I had a friend that used to run, gosh, what was that store? West Elm. She used to run something called West Elm Local. It was basically like, "Here's West Elm, but in your local area." You have cool little, kind of like you said, pop-up Etsy shops that are inside of West Elm, and they're from local providers. The cool part about that is HomeGoods rotates its inventory almost entirely. I think it's twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don't know why I know that, but I do. West Elm Local kind of did the same thing. They would bring in new clients because you would only be able to get this limited edition pop-up vase or whatever for each. So, I think that'd be cool. You could try it like a 1.0 version. It'd be like, could you do a pop-in at Hobby Lobby? Could you try to talk them into, for instance, Hobby Lobby is very Christian values-oriented. They have Bible quotes up on their headquarters. They used to sell investment products back in the day. So, you walk into their headquarters, and it's like the Bible on the wall. Maybe you could talk them into a local Christian pop-up thing that would go into the store. That could be like an easy little one.

Codie Sanchez

O way, maybe not easy because you'd have to get B to B. Then maybe you could do like a pop-up crafting one around a different holiday. If you're big time, like your friend who was a billionaire, I would love to go into these where it just was a better shopping experience.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I feel like somebody should just take a house and turn it into a shopping experience. Basically, stage the house, and then you come in and you could just push a button to get any of these things delivered to your home from there. You could even kind of franchise that concept out and let people curate their own.

Codie Sanchez

The one thing, though, I'll say—and I'd be curious to see if Arie agrees with me and others—but like, there's something about going there and getting the thing. So, I don't even think we're that bad.

Shaan Puri

give you a box we'll give you an empty box

Codie Sanchez

We want to leave with the candle. We want to go put the flowers in the vase immediately. It's literally... if you go to TikTok and scroll around for some fun times, there's all this stuff about if your wife's upset, you just tell her, "Let's go to HomeGoods, honey," and like, take her around and get her some candles.

Shaan Puri

oh that's a great idea

Codie Sanchez

yeah we're gonna write that down for later

Shaan Puri

Yeah, no, I don't even need to write that down. That went straight to my core memory as like, you know, just default. Actually, I'm going to do it preventatively every Friday, just in case.

Codie Sanchez

and it's cheap so there's that

Shaan Puri

you had another one on here that I thought was interesting you said you tried to buy a halloween express

Codie Sanchez

oh yeah

Shaan Puri

That's fascinating! Tell me, why did you try to buy it? And why does it sound like you didn't end up buying it? Why not?

Codie Sanchez

We didn't end up buying it; somebody else bought it. Basically, we tried to buy it because we saw it was **$600,000** for a pop-up location. I should make sure I get this right, but it was like **3 or 4 retail locations** plus whatever last year's inventory was. So, there was like a lot of *there* there. They already had the leases, they already had the locations, and it was right before Halloween. So, I don't really...

Shaan Puri

So, this is Halloween. Express is like Spirit, where it pops up for 60 days or something like that before Halloween. It just takes over a vacant space, is that it?

Codie Sanchez

Well, yes, they could take over a vacant space. A lot of times, they pre-negotiate the contracts. But basically, you know, retail has so much data behind it. Usually, they know like, "Oh, X percentage of these commercial strip malls will be open at any time." So if we do a contract with Halloween Express this year, there's likely going to be one location that's open. Then the wild part about Spirit and Halloween Express—I always get the two confused—but they have the same model, which is like every store is 10,000 square feet. So they'll have a target, which is, I don't know, 60,000 or 100,000 square feet, but they only take up 10,000 square feet inside of the store. If you've ever been in one, they kind of throw up these real... it's like drapes basically and, you know, racks for clothing that you could buy online.

Shaan Puri

because they're just trying to standardize the the the rollout of the store quickly and cheaply

Codie Sanchez

Exactly, exactly. It's like the IKEA furniture of stores, you know? Every single time we put it in the box, you have the list of things that you need. We talked to a contractor who could do the build-out for us, and he said that those things go up in a matter of sometimes days. He said that would be aggressive, but like in 2 weeks, you can have an entire Halloween Express up, which is wild because a normal store takes months, if not a year, to set up. So anyway, we tried to buy this one kind of for shits and giggles because I thought we could make cool content around it, and then maybe we could try to sell it. I wanted to understand the business model, and then somebody else bought it out from under us, basically. But that's when I went down this deep rabbit hole of, "Oh my God, the average commercial, let's call it retail store, costs $1,000,000 to set up and takes months." In contrast, Spirit or Halloween Express costs maybe $10,000 to $50,000 to set up and is up in days or weeks. So just like speed to execution has to make this a much more interesting business model.

Shaan Puri

So, how much would a business like that make? Let's say you buy one of these businesses, and this was, you said, 3 locations for $600,000 plus the inventory. You're right, like that's a lot. What would you think one of those locations would net at the end of that season?

Codie Sanchez

Season... well, yeah, I think they said that it was somewhere around **$1,000,000**. So, three locations, open for two months a year, would bring in **$1,000,000**. I think it was like **$9.50** or something like that.

Shaan Puri

that's revenue though

Codie Sanchez

Right, that's revenue. That's right. Now, the margins on those businesses that they claimed were 30 to 45% seem way too high for me. I'm guessing the margins on it are more like a typical 10 to 20% margin for that kind of business. This means if I bought it, I guess it depends on how much inventory was in there. We never got to go deep on the due diligence side, but depending on how much inventory is in there, if we did this type of business, you could basically be in the clear inside of 2 or 3 years. You could be in the black, and so that's kind of interesting.

Shaan Puri

let's do those numbers so you said $1,000,000 for one location revenue

Codie Sanchez

a $1,000,000 for this whole business so that would be 3 locations mhmm

Shaan Puri

Cool, so $1,000,000. And then you're saying maybe let's just split the difference there: 20%.

Codie Sanchez

20%

Shaan Puri

Net... mhmm. So, $200,000, and you're saying that you're buying it for $600,000, including the inventory. So, you're saying a couple of years and you've broken even on your investment. You've returned your capital. But what you're saying is that these things, like... to just run these things, you have to buy new inventory every year. So, you'd have to inject how much working capital do you think to do $1,000,000 in sales? Maybe like $150,000 or $200,000?

Codie Sanchez

Well, the interesting part to me about Halloween is that theoretically, a lot of the inventory is the same. They said that they have about 10 to 15% of the inventory that consists of new concepts. For instance, the **Euphoria** outfit, as opposed to the witches, lions, and wardrobes that people use each year. So, if we think that the inventory for that place was probably around $200,000 to $250,000, then each year you're paying like $50,000 to $100,000 for the net new inventory. You can roll some over, but the problem is I didn't get to actually do it, so I don't know the true numbers. But that seems reasonable.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, okay, alright, fair enough. Okay, so Halloween store... interesting. You have a couple of other ones on here that I just don't know anything about, but I want to hear what you have to say. You wrote the words "fantasy werewolf romance novel." What are you talking about?

Codie Sanchez

yeah so we have a we have a group where we all buy businesses together and this one lady comes on and she's like I bought a romance novel book company so they write them they distribute them and they market them sort of 3 three levels to the business I was like that's fascinating and she started explaining some of the titles and then she's kind of a funny character and so she was like the thing is romant romance werewolves huge category like biggest growing category and I was like okay talk to me about that and she basically said of all the titles that she has I can't remember how many she had but let's say like 25 30 titles that she bought the outselling ones the 80 20 rule for her 25 to 30 book business were this fantasy romance category and then because I'm a woman and I also read books I was like let's look at my thing like do I ever read this category and it turns out I'm a fantasy reader and some of them have wearables in them so I was like this is weird am I weird is she weird or is this category and then I went and and researched it and I think you guys have covered this before but there's like $1,300,000,000 are sold of romance books a year and and it's huge it's like almost in some cases you know a quarter to half of the entire industry but the part that that got me the most was realizing romance is growing hugely but it's with like we're the target audience my age so like somewhere in the realm of 18 to let's call it 45 which used to be like the long haired fabio romance novels that used to be the deal and I guess now this fantasy level is taking over and what's interesting is you can kinda tell because if you look up the best selling books of all time harry potter 500 mil twilight 160 50 shades 150 there there's like kind of morphing together and so I'm curious to see what happens next but I kinda like this industry I can't really see you writing a werewolf fantasy novel tom but maybe

Shaan Puri

maybe it's a stunt you know that sam wrote a romance novel once you you know that story

Codie Sanchez

oh I forgot about that he or did he write it or did he

Shaan Puri

They ghostwrote it. They like ghostwrote it. So basically, the same sort of observation: he's like, you know when people are like, "Oh, Amazon bestseller," and then it's like everybody and their mom is an Amazon bestseller? It's like, what does this word actually mean? You know, it's like at the bottom of the power rankings of meaningful titles. It's like Forbes 30 Under 30, and even below that is Amazon bestseller because it means nothing. So what we found was that to be a bestseller, you basically pick some niche category and then for a day, you know, you sell, you know, 1,000 copies or something like that at 99 cents, and you've become a bestseller. You screenshot that you're a bestseller, you get the flag, some version of that. So it's like a very gamified thing. There are all these subcategories, so you're trying to just get to number one inside health and wellness, inside "by a new emerging author," or whatever. You know, like there are all these subcategories. So he found somebody who had done this. They were making good money, like tens of thousands a month, I think, selling romance novels on Amazon, just eBooks. He commissioned somebody to write one, or he wrote like a couple. It was like a boss and a secretary, and another one was like a werewolf and something. He commissioned somebody to write it, and then they wrote it, and they did it. They hit the Amazon bestseller. It's out there somewhere; you could find the Swedish.

Codie Sanchez

people does he still make money on that

Shaan Puri

no no no not anymore I think they took it down

Codie Sanchez

that's incredible well I mean honestly if you go and you by

Shaan Puri

The way the blog post is called "Confessions from the Scammy Underground World of Kindle Books." His book was called "Untamed Billionaire Undressed Virgin."

Codie Sanchez

jesus yeah sometimes that guy

Shaan Puri

that's incredible

Codie Sanchez

That is incredible! He has way better historical business shenanigans he's done than I do.

Shaan Puri

Oh, wait! No, no, sorry. I've got to clear the record. That wasn't his. That was the name of somebody else's. His was called "Captivating Claire," and the cover is this really ripped black guy and then this secretary. It says "A First Time Billionaire Romance." Okay, there we go.

Codie Sanchez

That's captive in theory, but I like the other story better. I think we should cut this part and just tell everybody the other one. What's his name? I think that's the move. But you know what's fascinating? When you go to your bookstore and you look up the top charts for free, I mean, this category is everywhere. The thing that I thought was interesting is the Amazon bestseller thing. That's why they put it up for $0.99. The reason, as this lady was telling me, is you put one up for $0.99 or for free, and you get it on the top free list. Then you hammer these things out. So you have 472 versions of "Fabio the Fantastic Werewolf," and the likelihood that people are going to buy all of those in the series is apparently incredibly high. I thought that was fascinating. A lot of these authors, if you look at them, they have 50 books out, which must mean somebody's ghostwriting for them. I don't think you could do it any other way.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, or like ChatGPT. By the way, do you know the story of *Fifty Shades of Grey*? Not like the story itself, but the backstory of how it came to be? Uh-uh. Oh, this is crazy! I don't know if you've ever seen the big fan fiction site Wattpad. It just sold; it's like a Canadian company. So what happened is *Twilight* comes out. It's a vampire story; it's great. Then somebody goes on Wattpad and writes a fan fiction version of *Twilight*, basically. That was the early version of *Fifty Shades of Grey*. People liked it, and then somebody picked it up and they kind of rebranded it as its own thing instead of as a *Twilight* fan fiction. It became, you know, whatever the third or fifth or whatever best-selling book of all time. It started as a fan fiction blog on Wattpad, I think.

Codie Sanchez

Well, it makes sense actually because it's all just sort of copywriting in some way. You know, Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey, right? Everybody basically uses that, from the Bible to Star Wars to, you know, Twilight, etc. I mean, the other thing that I remember is that I actually went to a high school that was right next to, and we were close with the high school of the woman who wrote Twilight, Stephanie. I remember when it was going wild. That wasn't my category, so I reached out to her and was like, "Hey, congratulations on your first book! I'm so excited for you." You know, I just wanted to let you know that I bought a few books for you to help out. In retrospect, I looked at her sales and was like, "Oh, cool, cool, cool." Anyway, I'm gonna go.

Shaan Puri

because you were blind cool respond

Codie Sanchez

no I don't know I don't think she did but you know what stephanie I was I was here for you from the beginning

Shaan Puri

Yeah, actually, not from the beginning though. That's the bad part. It's already successful. That's really good. Okay, so let's do one more. That's in this segment that you called "Get some estrogen in this bitch." Have we gotten enough extras? I don't know. We gotta get one more idea in here. Go pick it up for...

Codie Sanchez

One that I think could be a **$1,000,000,000** business, but I don't have the "how." The MFM listeners are super smart; maybe you guys can figure out the "how." You know, lots of our friends—and I don't know if you experience any of this, Sean—but getting pregnant these days is hard. When we were young, I remember it was like, "Yeah, if you look at that guy sideways, you're pregnant." You know, shake hands, pregnant; everybody's pregnant, right? Then, as you get older, apparently it's like now impossible. I've experienced this firsthand. It's expensive. You go to the doctors, and then you have these different apps, and you're tracking for 72 different things. The whole experience is awful and expensive. So, I think there's a huge opportunity to do something in this area. Because once that little box gets checked, like a woman is ready to have a baby or whatever, we turn into crazy people. We'll do whatever it takes. You guys have... Sam was telling me some crazy stuff he was telling Sarah. I'm like, "I don't think that's true about how to get pregnant." For instance, there's this company called **Mira**. It has this little egg-shaped tester. This is a little TMI, but you pee on a stick, and it tells you how fertile you are. I kid you not, when I opened the app—I'm not a total idiot; I can't tell what I'm tracking, and I can't tell what's happening in here—there are no notifications, there are no gamifications in it, and they charge you. It's like **$50** for the sticks that they send you, and then it's like... somebody should check my math on this; I'm definitely wrong on the number, but it's like **$150 to $200** for this tiny little plastic egg that has to be created in China. And that's it! I never saw an ad for this; it's all like word-of-mouth referral. So, I don't know what crazy ideas you have, but I feel like the people from MFM should solve this.

Shaan Puri

Let's brainstorm on the fly here. First of all, when you started saying there was like this little egg-shaped thing, I thought where you were going was like you said, a sort of smart device. So, you pee on the stick, and it tells you kind of where you're at in your cycle. But how cool would that be as a little bedside replacement for your alarm clock? When it glows, it could say, "Hey, it's time to get busy," and you could see based on the light. That's a little more tasteful than these apps that are like, "Your ESG levels are spiking right now," or whatever. It's like, let's just add a little bit of romance to this process that becomes very, very clinical. So, I'm thinking bedside egg, bedside replacement for the alarm clock. Okay, that's idea number one. Idea number two: Have you ever heard of the Flow app?

Codie Sanchez

yes

Shaan Puri

It's, I think it's the **Flow** app. It's the most popular pregnancy tracking app in the world. Their website gets like 8,000,000 unique visitors a month or something like that. Crazy! Last I had heard, they were doing something like $30,000,000 in ARR, which is pretty bonkers for a mobile app. It's way more than you would think a niche mobile app like this would do. That was like 5 years ago when I heard that number. I would not be surprised if **Flow** was doing, you know, like $100,000,000. I'm just going to search the revenue to see if it's out now.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, and how much they're worth. Because I couldn't also figure out the valuation on these companies. Like, Mara's gotta be... can you imagine? You get me at a point where you're gonna know the second that a woman is pregnant, which is the highest likelihood of purchasing intent you could have.

Shaan Puri

right

Codie Sanchez

And like, what would that data be worth? You could also sell the data to every medical provider imaginable and have add-ons and affiliate deals for [insert specific supplement].

Shaan Puri

right

Codie Sanchez

thing you gotta drink or whatever

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I agree with you. It's an extremely valuable sort of stage. That's a time-bound stage where you become pretty price insensitive, as you've noticed. So, **Flow**—over 3.3 billion people have downloaded the app, and revenues are over $100 million for this app. It's a $1 billion app that started off as a tracking app. It began as such a simple little mobile app at the time. So, you know, props to these guys. I think they're in Europe that built this thing. I think the mobile app space is... it was obviously, you know, kind of like one winner in this. There are other ideas that I think are interesting. Somebody said this to me the other day, and I know nothing about this. I had put it on my list to research, but I haven't gotten around to it. So I'll just share the 1% of the idea that I have ready. She goes, "Do you know how hard it is for a gay couple to adopt a baby?" I said, "Sure, I don't. I have no idea how hard it is. Is it very hard?" She said, "Nearly impossible." She goes, "If anybody created a company that just helped gay male couples adopt babies... you know, because they're usually a very rich segment, like one of the highest average household incomes. Obviously, there's a super high need or like no price sensitivity when it comes to the convoluted, low NPS process." So, I think if somebody just went and interviewed like 100 couples that are trying to adopt right now, I bet you could find a $500 million to $1 billion business out of those 100 interviews. I don't know what that idea is yet, but that's enough of a map for somebody to go, you know, find their own immunity idol, to use my Survivor references.

Codie Sanchez

It's good. I mean, I've been messing around lately thinking about levels to the game of business. It would be interesting to categorize all businesses based on their level, let's call it a multiple and margin level. If you just say, "What multiple could you get for this business?" and "How high of margins do you get for this business?" Maybe also consider how reasonable it would be to reach, I don't know, $10 million or $100 million, whatever your goalpost would be. I think a level one business, a lower-tier business, would probably be profitable from day one to thirty. This could be in the consulting aspect. You're right; I have a friend who paid $25,000 for help navigating the adoption process in Texas. I should figure out what the name of the service is that they asked for, but they paid a huge chunk of money just to help them figure out how to get higher on the lists for adoption in Texas. So if that exists, there have to be 32 different ways to do consulting for adoption in this space.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, basically, anybody who's clear, like in the airports, but for all life processes—not just lines at the airport. So, it's like somebody is doing this right now. I saw for H-1B visas, they're like, again, if you're an immigrant in the United States applying for a visa, it is literally one of the two things that keeps you up at night. There are people that are like, "We're just H-1B concierges. We know this process inside out." You don't; you're just sitting here Googling and reading forums. We know how to expedite some timelines. We know where you should pay money and where you shouldn't worry because this is just normal. This is part of the standard delay. We know when you put together your application how to order the documents, like which order to staple it together so that you have the best chance of success. I find that for these really complex workflows that are high ticket and high desire—like adopting a child or getting your visa—people are willing to pay, you know, whatever, $10,000 to $20,000 in order to do it. Obviously, it's the richer segment there, but that's the case. You could go buy the lead for this; you could advertise and get the lead for this, you know, through Google for maybe $2,000 a lead, but you're making $20,000 per person that comes out of that funnel.

Codie Sanchez

That's smart. Well, even we both invested. You invested in Hone Health too, right? Yeah, I invested in them also. Part of the stuff that I think is really smart with what they're doing is that it's such a pain to get access to those types of treatments, like TRT (testosterone replacement therapy) and different things that men want, and to do it in a legal way. You really need to be able to trust what you're getting. There's probably a bunch of that inside the women's space too. At home, I keep telling them they should launch something for women because I think it's a really underserved market. If you think about it, men sort of dominate most of the dieting trends in general. You had like Tim Ferriss who normalized keto. I tried keto for a while, and then I went to Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who's a stud. She's like, "The thing is, that doesn't work as well for women." I was like, "No, I read the book! I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan." It just turns out a lot of that stuff is based on the fact that men and women are biologically different. So, yeah, I think there are lots of cool ways to play in that space. Also, with stuff like peptides, although those are getting federally banned, so maybe not the best idea right now.

Shaan Puri

peptides getting federally banned

Codie Sanchez

yeah we should check my homework on that but that's the word from the husband is that

Shaan Puri

like ozempic a peptide

Codie Sanchez

Well, my understanding is that most of the reason why peptides are getting banned is because they are hard to patent. Because of that, there are conspiracy theorists who believe that big pharma doesn't like that, and so they're getting a lot of pushback. But my husband is the number one advocate. Thanks, everybody.

Shaan Puri

should be on peptide

Codie Sanchez

to do research on it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, semaglutide, which is Ozempic or Wegovy (that's the generic name), is a peptide. Oh yeah, but I don't think that can get banned. I think people will riot in the streets right now if Ozempic got banned. You also... just to close out this section, you wrote "life/partner hack from a woman to a man." What's your hack?

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, well, this also comes from my husband. His hack is that the best money he's ever spent on being in a marriage is a subscription to flowers on a monthly basis for your wife. I totally stand by this because it's cheap. There's this one I would use called Farm Girl Flowers. I don't have any affiliation; I'm not an investor, but it's beautifully wrapped in little burlap tied with a bow, etc. It comes every single month. You don't have to think about it; you get auto gifts for your wife. I'm pretty sure I'll take almost any guarantee that there will never be a wife that would be mad if they received this on a consistent basis. But husbands are just not going to remember consistently. So, do yourself a solid and just buy some flowers on a consistent basis.

Shaan Puri

Okay, this is interesting to me. So first of all, what's the deal with flowers? Why do girls love flowers so much? Is there... does it do something for you? Is it just like a mood brightener when you see it in the room? What is the actual appeal here? Because if I see flowers, nothing... needle doesn't move, doesn't do [anything for me].

Codie Sanchez

anything for me

Shaan Puri

Like a candle... if I smell a candle, I'm in, you know? If we buy like a nice little piece of art, I like it. I see it, it does something for me. Flowers, I just don't get it. What is the... why? What is it? Is it the flowers, or is it "this man loves me"? Is that what it is? It's just like reassurance?

Codie Sanchez

it's definitely not the love part

Shaan Puri

it's definitely flowers actually the flowers

Codie Sanchez

It's that could be both. No, I think when you're in a relationship, yeah, it's lovely. You're just like, "Oh, you know, it's such a low-risk, high-reward situation." Number one winner! But I think it's actually just that we like plants and flowers. I don't know if that's a pre-existing genetic disposition or if society's patriarchy is upon us, but like, women like flowers. So, I don't know what the thing is, but also the fact that, like, I remember when I was younger, Sean. I don't know if you've ever said this on here, but when I was young and I had no money, there were very low-hanging fruit things that a rich person would have. One of them was, "One day I'll have fresh flowers in my house every single day, and that'll mean I'm super rich."

Shaan Puri

okay

Codie Sanchez

So, I think there's a part of it that's also just like, this is such a long experience moment, right? And this is just for me; I can't speak to anybody else. But now, when I see them, I'm like, "Oh, it means we're doing okay," you know?

Shaan Puri

And even if it's on a subscription, and you know, he didn't think about it—he thought about it once three years ago—it doesn't matter. You just want the flowers.

Codie Sanchez

love it

Shaan Puri

okay good you just want

Codie Sanchez

the flowers

Shaan Puri

okay I'm gonna report back I'm gonna try this report back report back

Codie Sanchez

But don't tell her. I don't care. I just set it up on subscription three years ago. No qualifiers, okay?

Shaan Puri

Well, yeah, no guarantees with me. Alright, so let's go to the small business acquisition stuff. First, explain your business model. So, you have a media business, which is you create content, and your output is insane. I feel like you, Pump, and Sahil are so consistent and so omnipresent everywhere. You're consistent with your message; it is unbelievable to me. I can't imagine myself even doing that. Even though I call myself a content creator, in comparison to you guys, I'm nothing. I'm just a guy, you know, who talks to his friend Sam twice a week. So, the way you guys do it is crazy. That's a media business that can be profitable on its own. People maybe advertise or subscribe. I think you have like a paid community or something like that that people pay for, right? Yep, I think that's pretty lucrative. That's a big moneymaker for you.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, well, a couple of different things. One thing that's interesting are those three people you picked. What's the common denominator between all three of us? We were all in finance, which is categorically a **miserable** industry, end to end, for the most part. I think all of us did private equity or investment banking, which means that we had crazy, crazy hours for a long time. So anytime somebody talks to me, I always kind of giggle when the creators are like, "I'm burnt out." I'm like, from filming TikToks for a couple of hours? I think we're fine.

Shaan Puri

that tweet fatigued you

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, it's totally... we're gonna be okay. I think probably we're good at output because anything that can be mechanized, systematized, and replicated consistently, finance people are usually pretty good at.

Shaan Puri

So you have the content business and then you have your buying businesses stuff. Is there a third part of what you do? Like just passive investing or anything like that? Or are those the two things that you do?

Codie Sanchez

Well, I guess we have sort of **three different businesses** now. One is the **content business**, which is the one that's super public, and we kind of stumbled into that, I think, only two years ago. So that would be like the latter part of **2020** when we started creating a business around content. I was in private equity at the time when I started that. Today, that business is comprised of a newsletter, a community, and a bunch of different media channels. Now, I guess we have a couple of newsletters, a course on buying businesses, and we do a little bit of ad sponsorship stuff. I don't really love that, and I think we're going to change the model to only talk about the products of the businesses we own and our own products. So I'm kind of messing around with that, looking at how **The Daily Wire** does it, for instance. The second business we have was the family office, which is now the **Main Street Holding Company**. That is like the small businesses that I talk about. We've owned everything from podcast production businesses to graphic design agencies, laundromats, car washes, and beach fare.

Shaan Puri

own money this is you raised money what happens

Codie Sanchez

my own money

Shaan Puri

So, it's your own money you're using to buy these. And so, that's the portfolio. You said there are three businesses. What's the third?

Codie Sanchez

And the third is we have a venture capital fund. Alongside that, I also have my own passive angel investments. For example, we invested in Hone Health through the venture fund. Additionally, I made a personal investment in Andrew Wilkinson's media companies, which did not go into the VC company. So, that's where our minority investments go.

Shaan Puri

Okay, and when did you get rich? Was it after all this? Were you rich before you started all this? What was the... like, where was your kinda like... Okay, the podcast called "My First Million" - when did you make your first million?

Codie Sanchez

was it

Shaan Puri

in the private equity investment banking world or was it after that when you went on your own

Codie Sanchez

No, I made my first million when I was working for other people. I'm like the opposite of you. I'm not really... I was risk-averse; it actually scares me. So, I could have never gone and done what like Sean and Sam did, which is start a business. Like Sam did, have no money, sleep on a couch like Hormozi, and then hope that business turns into $160,000,000. That scares me too much. I'm a wuss. I worked in corporate for a long, long time. I ran a bunch of the businesses and became a partner in them. So, I made $1,000,000 before I ever really ran my own thing by myself. I was actually so scared to leave the big corporate... I don't know, canopy, that I bought businesses while I was still working for somebody else.

Shaan Puri

You say you bought businesses. Are these like a car wash or laundromat type of thing? What type of businesses are you buying?

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, well, I bought some back in the day, but they didn't make me any money. I bought a website; I bought a site. I bought a fashion styling marketplace. Those threads were fine back in the day. I bought another one called Selling South, but the ones that started making me real money were the boring ones. I tried the sexy things—websites—and I wasn't very good at them. Then it was, "Oh wait, if I buy a laundromat, I have a hard time messing this thing up. I can make some money on that, and I can have somebody else run it." If I pay that somebody else, and then we have three, four, or five of them, that's enough money for them to make a good living and for me to make a good living. Maybe we could do that exact same thing in a bunch of different sectors. Back then, when I was doing that, it was not cool. Now, I feel like it's kind of cool—the holding company thing is cool on Twitter. In fact, I didn't tell anybody that I owned laundromats. One, I thought I might get fired because it could be considered a conflict of interest, so I was concerned about that. Secondly, I didn't think it was that cool. You know, at the time, I was running the Latin American investment business, and we had $1,000,000,000 in assets under management. I built the thing from zero for this company called First Trust, and everybody thought that job was really cool, including my parents. They were super proud, but I hated it. I was going through a divorce and was working like 70 hours a week, on red-eyes to Chile basically weekly. So, I bought the businesses to get out of corporate. When I finally replaced my income, I thought, "Oh, well, now I'm going to take a jump and become a partner at a private equity fund." Then finally, I got the courage to go do it all by myself, but it took me a long time to get there.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's... everyone's got their path. I always joke, like, you hear these stories, like, "Oh, Mark Cuban, when he was 6 years old, started a newspaper route, then a lemonade stand, and then hired his friends." I'm like, dude, I didn't even know the word "business" until I was 19. You know, you definitely don't need to... everybody's got a different starting point, that's for sure. So, let's talk about the laundromat thing. I've told the story on the pod before, but I was at a dinner once with this guy who was the CEO of a public company. He was like... he was fast. He said, "You know, people are really busy; they don't use social media." So, he's trying to relate to me. He's like, "Oh, you do a podcast? What's the name?" I mean, I could see he doesn't even know where the podcast app is because he does real work for a living. So, he's like, "I'll definitely... can you show me how to subscribe to a podcast? I've always wanted to know." And I'm like, wow, this guy's just getting going. One of the things he said was, "I see these people on Instagram talking about laundromats. Are we all just... fucking stupid? Should we just be buying laundromats? Or are they stupid and they think laundromats are a great business?" He's like, "Who's stupid? I'm worried I'm stupid and that I shouldn't be doing all this stressful work running this company with thousands of employees. Do I just need to go buy four laundromats and chill? Is that actually the answer?" He was laughing about it, saying, "It can't be that good." And I was like, dude, I honestly don't know what to say. I've never bought one of these boring businesses and don't intend to own a laundromat in Albuquerque or whatever. That's not my jam, but it is for some people, and you obviously are an advocate for it. So, this is your opportunity. Educate me. Drop some knowledge on me. Okay, what is this deal with buying... you can pick either, actually, just do laundromat, not car wash, because I actually know the car wash business a little bit. But let's do laundromat.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, I call these **gateway drug businesses**. So basically, no, if you're a billionaire, you shouldn't go buy a laundromat. This is a terrible idea. The reason I talk about it is because I have a belief that I think a lot of people don't have: that almost anybody could have a business that they currently work at as a job and have some ownership in that business. In fact, the world would be a lot better off if we all had a little bit of skin in the game. That's like my little hill that I want to die on. When I first started talking about this, I was like, "The thing is, I've been in finance. I went through all the levels." We want everybody else to think that we're smarter than them when we're in finance, and we're actually not. Because the worst part about running a laundromat is not reading the P&L. The worst part about running a laundromat is when the machine breaks. What do you do? There's a homeless person there; how do you handle that? Somebody breaks into your laundromat and breaks the glass door. Any normal human could handle that. So I talk about laundromats, one, because that is one of the first businesses I bought, so it just was, you know, recency bias. And then, two, because I think if you can't understand taking a coin, putting it in a machine, and getting out clean clothes or dry clothes from it, and running that business model, you probably shouldn't run a business. That's like a very simplistic business model. But this is why I've been obsessing on levels to the game. The problem with laundromats is they're a terrible business if you're really good at business. So like, if you're good at business, the laundromat I invested in—one laundromat—it wasn't one that I owned complete control of, and it did $3,000,000 a year. That's the biggest laundromat that I've ever seen individually.

Shaan Puri

that's revenue what is that

Codie Sanchez

that's revenue

Shaan Puri

So $3,000,000 a year? Okay, let's get out my calculator. Is it like one of these jumbo... I have seen some of these laundromats that look like full-on shops or something like that. They're like huge!

Codie Sanchez

yeah it's a very big laundromat

Shaan Puri

so it's doing like $8 a day

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, they do 15% margins. The way they achieve this is actually through the wash and fold business, not the walk-in laundry business.

Shaan Puri

okay gotcha

Codie Sanchez

And so, the real business where the higher-level customers are, and where you make more money, is when a single mom wants to put her bag of clothes outside of her door. You pick it up, you wash it, and you drop it back off. It requires cars, logistics, and some oversight. It's more complex. The average laundromat makes somewhere around $100,000 to $500,000 a year. That's what a laundromat makes at 10% to 15% margins. There's not that much you can do once you have a laundromat. To get a laundromat that's doing $100,000 to $500,000, it's really hard.

Shaan Puri

it's location dependent or what what's the bottleneck there

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, location is dependent, as well as the demographics of your segment. So, if you're in a poor neighborhood, wash and fold might not be as much of a driver, right?

Shaan Puri

for

Codie Sanchez

you if you're in a higher end neighborhood it could be competition

Shaan Puri

So those are making, you know, between $250,000 a year for the owner.

Codie Sanchez

yep that's right

Shaan Puri

So you've got to... you know, you have to do multiple of these. Otherwise, if you own one, you're working the job of an owner but making the wage of a, you know, minimum wage employee or something. So you want to own multiple. That would be the play here.

Codie Sanchez

Well, I think it depends. This is where I think business acquisition gets interesting. It's like, who are you and what do you want? Everybody always asks me, "What's the best sector to buy?" and I'm like, "That's a dumb question." The best sector to buy is the one that's uniquely aligned to you.

Shaan Puri

so what what was it for you what was it for you

Codie Sanchez

The reason I bought the laundromat is because I had an operator who already knew how to run laundromats. They found one that we could buy for very cheap. I thought, "I don't like a lot of risk. I could front $100,000 to buy this, and then if we run that and it works, let's get 3 to 5 of them and get rolling." But like a lot of people that I talk to, you know, maybe you're a teacher and you have 6 months off during the year. Why wouldn't you own a little laundromat? I like to compare it to houses or short-term rentals. So, the average short-term rental, we should check my numbers, but it does somewhere around $120 to $160 in net income a month. You put up $250,000 on average for one of those homes. So, compare a single-family home for $250,000 versus a laundromat for $100,000. This one's making you $20,000 to $40,000 a year, and the other one's making you a couple thousand dollars a year. That's actually kind of a good risk-reward trade-off. I think it just depends. The other thing is, you start with one business. Not a lot of Americans, probably like your listeners, have run a big business before or would know what to do with a tech business. So, starting with something pretty simple in their local community makes sense. Then they can say, "Okay, I know how to run this. I made $20,000 to $50,000 on it. I didn't risk my house by buying too big of a business or starting too big of a business." Now, I can go and sell this to somebody else and do a bigger endeavor. At least, that's how I think about it.

Shaan Puri

so your the first business you bought were was a laundromat or was it something else

Codie Sanchez

my very first business was a website back then

Shaan Puri

so you bought the website stuff then you went brick and mortar after that

Codie Sanchez

yeah brick and mortar laundromat was my first brick and mortar business

Shaan Puri

what'd you do after that

Codie Sanchez

After that, we bought a couple of them. Okay, so we bought multiple laundromats, and then we kept buying laundromats.

Shaan Puri

how many laundromats did you buy

Codie Sanchez

In total, I probably owned like 25 or 30 laundromats over my career of laundromatting. But that first little portfolio was probably 7 or 8.

Shaan Puri

okay

Codie Sanchez

And I was working full-time at the time. I was at a company called First Trust, mostly in Latin America, so I couldn't do too much with it back then.

Shaan Puri

and give me the best deal you ever did and the worst deal you ever did

Codie Sanchez

The best... let's see, the worst deal I did. We had one business entirely go under. So, we invested in a business where we got lied to and stolen from. That was a small business that supported other small businesses from a tax and accounting perspective. They didn't do the taxes, but they did bookkeeping. It's kind of funny that they would be the ones to do the stealing.

Shaan Puri

right

Codie Sanchez

But that's the biggest issue in buying small businesses. I think I lost probably a couple of hundred thousand dollars on that deal. The biggest issue with buying small businesses is that you run out of cash. This can happen because they either lied to you about the business that you bought and how much money it has in it, or they lied by omission. They didn't quite realize that they needed to share this information with you, or they didn't actually track their finances very well. As a result, you end up buying something you didn't want. In that case, I felt like I got stolen from. A lot of times, small businesses do not actually have the finances that I think they do.

Shaan Puri

what about the best deal

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, the best deal that I've ever done was probably mostly from the land acquisition. We basically bought a big plot of land that had an RV park on it, a series of vending machines, and a little area for people to camp and enjoy nature or whatever. The appreciation of the land ended up being what paid the most for it. That business made us a few million dollars, which is kind of cool. We definitely didn't put that in right. Maybe the other business that I think will be my best deal ever is a series of car washes we bought. Ever since this company called Mr. Car Wash went public to the tune of $1,000,000,000, it has been significant.

Shaan Puri

multiples went up

Codie Sanchez

Oh, fuck. I mean, we've got offers that are just wild on these. So, I don't wanna... I wanna knock on wood that that one actually goes through. But we sold out of a bunch of our laundromats at great multiples, and I think we'll sell out of our car washes at really, really good multiples. However, I don't always talk about my best deals because it's like, I don't think you should get into these with an idea that you're gonna have some crazy exit. Like, you're gonna cash flow—that's the goal. You cash flow. And if you wanna have a crazy multiple exit, buying these tiny businesses, unless you scale them up in a big way, is probably not gonna be the way to do it.

Shaan Puri

And Ben and I were debating this the other day. We were talking about, on the finance side, what's a good north star goal. We threw out a bunch of ideas. Two of the ideas were: should we build up $10,000,000 a year of annual cash flow as the goal out of this holding company, or should we just try to build a $100,000,000 portfolio value? That's realized portfolio value in roughly the same amount of time. Of course, if you have $10,000,000 of cash flow, you could probably sell it for $100,000,000. So it's not like these were totally different, but you would maybe buy different things. If you're just trying to get to $100,000,000, you might not buy things that cash flow. You could just start a business if it doesn't cash flow. But if you need cash flow, you should have to go a certain route. I'm curious about two things: a) what would be your opinion on that? And b) what's the goal for you? What do you set as your kind of north star or your summit that you're trying to climb up to?

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, well, what do you mean by "realized value"? Do you mean you actually want to sell it and then get $100,000,000 from it? Or do you want a third party to mark it up and say that it is worth $100,000,000?

Shaan Puri

The way I thought about it is that it's sold or sellable in a kind of more bulletproof way. Versus like one business that, on paper, got marked up by one investor, but you know, it's not really liquid. It's not a profitable business, so you couldn't actually exit for that amount. This is often the case in Silicon Valley. You get a $100,000,000 valuation, but you could never sell that business for $100,000,000. So, not the paper valuation, but either it's exited or, you know, if you ran a process for 60 to 90 days, with 80% certainty, you could get that value.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, well for me, I have an issue which is that I'm pretty ADHD. I like to do a lot of different things. If you look at my work history, I think the longest I ever stayed at a job was like five and a half years or something like that. I was moving from different investment firms every two years or so. So, I kind of like the portfolio approach because it allows me to be ADHD in a bunch of different businesses. I get to pop in and pop out. Theoretically, if I wanted to build a $1,000,000,000 business, you could argue that if I have a great idea that I really, really love, that would be a better way to get to a $1,000,000,000. I just haven't had an idea that I was that obsessed with, that I thought was fun, and that I still need to do. Because, you know, I'm pretty comfortable. I have enough cash to do sort of what I want now. So, I think our goal has always been... I kind of buy my own bullshit, which is for a long time I thought I was going to just build a bunch of boring businesses into my little tiny version of KKR or Berkshire Hathaway. I was going to build up this thing, and then, you know, I did that for like 15 years working for other people. Then I did it for a couple more years by myself, and I got to this point.

Codie Sanchez

Where I was like, I actually do not think it is good for the really, really few people to own everything. I think it is much better, experientially and just for society, when you go to a local coffee shop than when you go to Starbucks. It's a nightmare! I refuse to go to Starbucks. We have a company policy: you're not allowed to buy from big corporate chains. So, I kind of thought, man, if I go and build this thing that I...

Shaan Puri

what happens if someone does walk into the starbucks what do you do just hit it out of their hands smack that shit onto the floor

Codie Sanchez

Actually, Tanner is here right now. He walked into my place in California. We lived there for some of the year with two Starbucks nearby. I just looked at him and I was like, "What are we doing here?" Then the next week, because I have a good team, I ordered Chipotle by accident. So then I had to pay for my own Chipotle.

Shaan Puri

so the f word what frappuccino it's like

Codie Sanchez

I... yeah, I don't know. I think once you start making money, at some point you're like, "I want my money to mean something," and "I want all this work to mean something." So I was like, "I don't want to own a $1,000,000,000 portfolio of small businesses and become everything that I talk shit about." That doesn't feel great. Instead, what we'll do is start buying a lot more businesses in the three cities that I'm really involved in, which are **San Diego**, **Austin**, and **Phoenix**. I want to own where I live; that seems to make sense to me and feels good. Then I can cash flow off that. The second thing I want to do is go really aggressively all in on... I'll ask you and Sam about it later if you guys think this is a good idea, but we're going to plow a couple million dollars into one bet. I've never done that before. I've raised for some of my funds, obviously, but never for a single company. So I'm sort of nervous, but I think we have an opportunity.

Shaan Puri

like to start or to buy

Codie Sanchez

I bought the company already as an MVP, and then I'm going to build something on top of it. I'm going to put in a new CEO, and I'm currently working on recruiting that CEO for this business.

Shaan Puri

and I'm guessing can't talk about that right now

Codie Sanchez

Not yet. I mean, not that anybody really cares on the internet, but you guys, you guys MFMers are doers. So I feel like if I do, there'll be 37 copycats by Monday.

Shaan Puri

Hell yeah, there will be! That's what we do. We destroy all the margins for all of us collectively. We destroy alpha left and right. Alright, so that's the game you're playing. Wait, so sorry, you told me the game you're not playing. You're not playing the private equity, build the next KKR game. You're building your own businesses where I live. I got that part of it, but that doesn't seem like the complete picture. What's the rest of the game and how does it work?

Codie Sanchez

Well, we have a portfolio that you could... I mean, it depends on how you value it. But let's say it's worth about $75 to $100 million.

Shaan Puri

a lot of car washes

Codie Sanchez

value right now a lot of car washes

Shaan Puri

that's a lot lot of soap baby

Codie Sanchez

And then, so we have that, and that's cool. Really cool. Young Cody would be like, "That's fucking wild!" The next game we're going to play is a really big single bet, and so we'll have those two things.

Shaan Puri

and why why not just retire and be trad wife and pumpkins and live laugh love

Codie Sanchez

Dude, honestly, I bought those pumpkins and I was painting them. It brought me no joy whatsoever. It brought me zero joy. I remember I called my husband afterwards and I was like, "I feel nothing and I must be dead inside." So, you're...

Shaan Puri

like I have to buy this pumpkin company for this to have been worth it as a hobby

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, exactly. It's like something's wrong with me. Oh, I also think... do you have hobbies, Sean?

Shaan Puri

yeah I got hobbies I I I got hobbies I love to play basketball but my hobbies are

Codie Sanchez

oh yeah you do

Shaan Puri

They're things that fall into really specific categories. I don't have niche hobbies. Some people are like, "Oh, I love studying duck calls," and they have all these little duck kazoos or whatever. Mine are not niche like that; they're very common things. I like playing poker, I like basketball, I like working out... I like things that everybody likes, right? I'm like the basic person when it comes to hobbies. However, I like to do them in a certain way that makes them more fun for me. For example, I get a lot of joy from building a home gym and having a trainer who's like my buddy. He comes over, and we work out here. Then friends who we meet will drop in for workouts with us, so I get to hang out with my friends while doing that. Or, with basketball, instead of just playing pick-up games at 24 Hour Fitness, we do this thing called Camp MFN. We rent a house, rent a gym, and fly in a bunch of awesome founders or celebrity people who love to play basketball, along with an NBA trainer. We spend the weekend pretending we're NBA players, right? We cosplay. So, I try to take these basic hobbies and do them in an uncommon way. That's what has made them fun for me to invest in.

Codie Sanchez

I like that. Well, yeah, I need to... I need hobbies, basically. I have none. I like to work out, and I like to hang out with friends that literally have the most boring hobbies imaginable. I really actually like working a lot, which is probably pretty sick. But my husband is like Captain Hobby. He's so good! He's like a fucking black belt in jiu-jitsu or a purple belt or something. And he's a former Navy SEAL, so he's amazing at shooting. He and Sam are always hopping, and I'm not.

Shaan Puri

I'm surprised Sam hangs out with him because Sam wants to always be able to eat and kill everybody in the room, or whatever he always says. And your husband would eat him as an appetizer. He's... Sam is tapas for him. Like, this is nothing. So I'm surprised that Sam allows himself to be in the same room.

Codie Sanchez

Sam does try to fight him a lot, which is like a very "Sam-ism," you know? Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Like a son to his dad, "Oh, let's fight!" And then the dad's like, "Okay, sure, let's play wrestle." So, yeah.

Codie Sanchez

I'm a

Shaan Puri

tell you one tip for hobbies

Codie Sanchez

yeah tell me

Shaan Puri

You want to get hobbies? There are two things that will force any person like us to get hobbies. The first is to hang out with people who are completely post-economic. These are individuals who are literally wealthier than wealthy. When you go to dinner with them, they don't want to talk about business deals. They're completely over that. They're still in the game of business, but it's just not interesting to them anymore. It's not what makes for a new conversation, and it's no longer part of the status game. They are also only with other people who are very successful. So the status game then becomes, "Oh, my Burning Man camp was like this," or "Oh, my new hobby is to do this," or "Oh, I'm doing this crazy health kick where I'm taking blood from my feet and putting it into my arms." It's crazy! You have to do the crazy thing outside of business because you've already hit the ceiling on business craziness. The only one they want to talk to about business craziness is, "What is Elon doing?" That genuinely gets the pulse going for them on the business side, whereas most things don't. I remember sitting at many dinners and feeling completely generic. The things I'm interested in, the things that my brain has been working on, to them are like, "Yeah, we know. We've been doing that for 20 years now. That's not something to talk about."

Codie Sanchez

the weather my twitter ad for my newsletter there

Shaan Puri

Exactly! I'm like, I got the CPC down, and they're like, "Wow! I remember you used to care about those things." So, that's one way to do it. The other is to go to a place where you can hang out with artists or Hollywood people. They're hanging out with actual artists for whom the art is the goal, not the recognition from the art. All they want to do is, you tell them what you're making, and they're like, "Oh, that's cool! Do you think that's cool?" And you're like, "No, this is fucking cringe." Then they're like, "So why are you doing it?" And you're like, "Because it leads to outcomes." Then they're like, "Oh." You know, it's like you value things so differently than an actual artist. So, two ways if you want to round yourself out: immerse yourself in that environment, and then the embarrassment will fuel you to find something that is not about the economic environment.

Codie Sanchez

non work hobby

Shaan Puri

yeah

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, the thing that I have found about that is I don't actually care that much what people think. I find that hanging out with a lot of really, really rich people—like you and I both have, I think, a bunch of mutual friends that are super rich—I’m like, I don't care about your polyamory orgy at Burning Man. Like, good for you, dude! I'm so excited that you were such a nerd in high school that now you're compensating for it with lots of free sex. I think you should go wild, but I don't think it's that cool, actually. So maybe I do have one hobby, which is that I really find the political movements in the country interesting. Not like Republican versus Democrat, but maybe that's my toxic trait hobby.

Shaan Puri

that's your roman empire

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, yeah. I think we're part of this think tank called AEI, and those people fascinate me. Have you ever been around big thinkers? Like, you know, Arthur Brooks? Do you know who that is? You guys should get him on here. I wonder.

Shaan Puri

if you'd

Codie Sanchez

like him

Shaan Puri

I'm sorry, none of the words you just said in the last minute even mean anything to me. You said "political movements that are not Democrat or Republican," and I'm like, "What the hell is she talking about?" Then the second thing you said is "I'm part of a think tank." A *what* tank? And then you said "AEI." I'm like, that's a wrestling league, I think. And then you just mentioned Arthur Brooks, who I think might own the Atlanta Falcons, but I'm pretty sure that's not him. So, could you go in reverse order? What are political parties not the Democrats or Republicans?

Codie Sanchez

So, the American Enterprise Institute has this one idea: all ideas should be in competition. There should be a competition for the best ideas, and the best ideas should win in order to determine how we rule our lives and what our regulations are. They're bipartisan; there are Democrats and Republicans involved. I'm part of a group that donates every year, and we go to a couple of events for them. So, that might be a hobby of mine, I suppose.

Shaan Puri

something like ubi or something is that what you mean like is that the idea like yeah

Codie Sanchez

Like, they'll have Dick Cheney and Michelle Obama on a stage together, and they'll be like, "Ready, go!" You know? And they'll kind of compete their ideas. It's closed doors, and you can't video it, and you can't talk about the specific things that were discussed inside of there. So it allows these politicians to be perhaps more realistic than they would be on the news sites. I find that to be really interesting. It's kind of cool. Yeah, I think you guys would like it. Then there's this guy, Arthur Brooks, who would be incredible. He used to run the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and was fascinated because he was actually good friends with the Dalai Lama, which is impressive. But then, simultaneously, he was able to pull together more funding. I think he raised tens and tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars for AEI and really changed regulation on both the Democrat and Republican sides. If you can imagine what this is like: you go to this event, and most of the leaders of the free world are there. You fly into a private airport in Sea Island, and you go to this private hotel. There are all these securities; it's like a little mini United Nations. The guy who runs the think tank is talking to a lot of people. Since it's about free markets and competition of ideas, there are a lot of conservatives there. He gets in front of the biggest conservative donors in the world and starts to talk to them about love and why love is the most important thing in the world. For conservatives, that's not normalized at all. Nobody wants to talk about that; they want to talk about how all the Democrats are crazy. So, I really have a lot of respect for him. He has a bestselling book with Oprah and a documentary out about capitalism.

Shaan Puri

Wow, this guy... Yeah, I see him posing with Oprah. Okay, this is interesting. So you go to these like private events? How much... What's the absolute minimum one has to donate in order to be invited to the private thingy?

Codie Sanchez

I think it's 25 or 50 k

Shaan Puri

okay alright

Codie Sanchez

go through a screening process to to come in realize I

Shaan Puri

don't I don't know anything and don't give a shit about anything no

Codie Sanchez

They probably liked that. I remember the first time I went, they were like, "You do what? Where?" They thought this whole internet thing was strange because I've only been doing it for about three years. So, I told them that I wrote little blogs on the internet, and they were like, "Well, that's cool."

Shaan Puri

It used to be my secret that I like... I don't care, don't vote, and don't watch the news ever. Not as a general thing; I just don't. And yep, I used to not say it because when I did, people would look at me like, "Oh, so you're just..." It's some combination of being dumb or selfish. I don't really understand it, and I never knew how to put it into words. I was like, "I don't know, I've just focused... yeah, I'm on... I focused on myself." But not in a way that's selfish. I'm not trying to take anything from anyone; I just put my attention on the things in my life. Then somebody said this to me: "Yeah, you're an extreme in any one position. You know, just being all-consuming, watching the news 24/7, or never ever caring or paying attention to the news. Neither one of them is probably very good." But towards your end of the spectrum, they said, "You know, I think actually the world would be a better place if instead of worrying about the government, you learned how to govern yourself." And yes, that really resonated with me because I was like, "Oh, that's exactly it!" I realized I can't even fully govern myself. Whether it's, you know, "I shouldn't eat that," and I go eat that, or "I should wake up early," and I sleep in. Or, you know, I want to text my friends and stay in touch, but I forget about them and become consumed with what's going on in my life. I've yet to even govern myself! Who am I to worry about what's going on 3,000 miles away with other people I can't control at all, let alone myself, who I can't? So that was the first time I heard something that made me feel good about that. I previously just felt a little embarrassed, but not to the...

Shaan Puri

Where I was going to change my behavior because I was like, "I know intuitively this is right." I just have no words to justify it.

Codie Sanchez

It well, I always liked that. I think it was Jordan Peterson who said, "Before you clean up the world, clean up your room." I think there is actually a true component to that. If we all just took care of our own things—our family, our friends, our community—life would probably be a little bit better.

Shaan Puri

I

Codie Sanchez

support you in your purple non blue non red nature sean

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody also said this about relationships: the wrong way to think about them is, "I'll take care of you and you take care of me." This leads to constantly feeling like you've lacked some care from the other side. Instead, it should be, "I'll take care of me for you, and you take care of you for me." I think that's just a much better mental model for how to be in a relationship. I will become the best person I can be for you, and if you do the same, then we're both going to end up in great shape. We're both focusing on the only thing we can control, which is ourselves.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, I love that. Well, also, I mean, why do you have to tell other people how to live? That's my biggest complaint. I'm like, "You do you, and I'll do me." Even if you don't like it, I'm still going to do that anyway. So, you know, thank God for freedom in that way.

Shaan Puri

Okay, I want to ask you about content. You have built a big content brand across newsletters, social media, TikTok, and YouTube. You're everywhere! Can you give me a rant on your approach? You were Cody Sanchez, but at some point, you created Cody Sanchez the brand. Can you explain to me what went into that? I think most people don't know what goes into that. A lot of people try to take an "aw shucks" mentality and say, "I didn't really..."

Codie Sanchez

I hate that

Shaan Puri

I didn't think too much; it just all sort of happened organically. For anybody out there who would like to do the same, that's great. I guess I'll just hope it all happens. Whereas I think that most people do have some thought that they put into things and a strategy, maybe, that they put into things or took a different approach than what they saw others doing, and it paid off. I'd love to hear your version of that.

Codie Sanchez

Totally! One, I hate when people do that. I have never met somebody that, after you dig in a little bit, didn't systematically try for the thing that they have created in any aspect of life. Like, that'll fucking buy it. So, that's one of my big pet peeves. For me, basically what happened is I think I'm the opposite of a lot of people that are public now. I raised a bunch of money before for my funds and built these big fund families, right? We invested a lot—$100 million raised, $1 billion of dollars over my career—not just for me, but when I was with other companies. What I kind of realized is that's a little bit like giving a man a fish as opposed to teaching a man to fish. I was with a CEO of a company that I worked for back in the day, and I was starting to do a little stuff online. This was like six or seven years ago. I remember he took me on a walk on the beach at the Monarch in California, and he was like, "The thing is, Cody, we get rich quietly here. We don't build the 'I,' we build the 'me.'" At the time, I didn't really like that answer. In my self-righteousness, I was like, "Well, he doesn't get it, and the internet's gonna be so powerful." And steak dinners and strippers—which is how a lot of people in finance raise money—doesn't work and isn't gonna work in the future. So, we should actually build a media presence. But I realized quickly that he had built a multibillion-dollar business. It was his. I was playing with his chips, so he had every right to say, "Hey, no, I'm not done."

Codie Sanchez

I kinda realized that I think what I actually like doing is I like watching other people grow and build based on the ideas I share with them like my little ego likes when somebody tells me that one of the things that I did works for them and I feel like that's like kind of a cool legacy makes me happier and so I started realizing that originally just by speaking with some nonprofits we worked with I would go and speak and I was like oh I kinda feel good I feel better doing that than when I close a big transaction actually and so I started doing that more and more and then I was like I think we should scale this because I just think I have that sickness in my brain that anything I do a little bit I wanna do giant probably not that dissimilar with you in basketball you're like I could go play a pickup game or I could invite mister beast and also lebron you're like well let's do option 2 and so so I was like I just started writing a newsletter for a while and didn't realize it was a business and then the first thing I did that I would tell anybody to do if you wanna go and build a content machine is you should steal people who've already built the thing it seems so obvious but nobody does it everybody tries to do things by themselves and because I had built a lot of businesses by now I was like oh this is just a normal business we need a head of ops we need a head of I would have called it marketing back in the day but now we call it a head of content you know we need a head of finance to figure out how much we should budget and how much we should put into all of this stuff and then we also probably need a bunch of chiefs or a bunch of indians underneath the chiefs and so I basically hired those first three things I always hire first at the top and then I do a sliding scale down and after I had hired those three people because I was funding it all myself from what I had built before then I started to go sectors or niche specific so like hire 1 person for tiktok hire 1 person for twitter hire 1 person for instagram and it doesn't mean that they would write it all in their ghost writing I would just say I'm stressed about these 3 platforms I'm gonna remove my stress from me into you and so you shall now stress all day about tiktok and twitter and instagram and a newsletter and I will not I'm gonna stress on this portfolio of businesses which nobody else can run and so that's how I started

Shaan Puri

And do you do one for the other? Do they feed each other? Or what's the plan with the content? Like, how does the content fit with the portfolio of businesses? What's the... why do you do both? Why not just do one?

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, no, it's the best. I mean, I think maybe you've talked about this, but the flywheel of content is the most powerful thing I've ever seen. I mean, Naval talked about it with his... I think he talked about three levels of leverage, which were, you know, capital, or I'm sorry, people, capital, and then code. Then I think the current one is audience. Audience is the only permissionless version. All those other ones, you have to have banks, you had to have employees say yes, you had to actually understand code. But audience is... is your favorite word: democratize. Anyone can...

Shaan Puri

yeah anybody can swear jar before you leave

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, exactly. Anybody can do it. I was like, "Well, this is fascinating." For instance, yesterday in one of our YouTube videos, we put a lead magnet to the newsletter and we got like 2,500 newsletter sign-ups. Let's say the newsletter sign-up on average costs us $1 to $2. Well, that was, you know, $5,000 I could have done through PPC or through organic. I could just get it from the audience.

Shaan Puri

content yeah

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, and so they all influence one another. But how I originally thought about it is, I'm going to talk about content related to buying businesses. Because I talk about buying businesses, what's going to happen? A bunch of people are going to want to sell me their business. So now, I'm going to buy more businesses that they want to sell, and I'm going to buy them at better prices and faster than anybody else because they feel like they already know me and they trust me.

Shaan Puri

right

Codie Sanchez

And so, I'm almost indexing on trust. I'm going to tell them exactly how I value it. I'm going to tell them exactly how I buy, and then they're going to sell me their business. Once they sell me their business, I'm going to build that business through my audience. I'm going to funnel more of the audience into said business. Finally, when I go to exit the business, I'm going to have a community of buyers that want to buy this business. Then I'm going to do it again and again and again. It sort of ended up working out like that. I would say most often now, I get referrals to businesses that I want to buy. It's not so much cold outreach, so maybe it was slightly off from what I thought the thesis was going to be.

Shaan Puri

Right, right. Okay, so I want to give you a chance to address what I view as good criticism. So, what's good criticism? Good criticism is different from bad criticism. Bad criticism is when someone says, "This person's full of shit." Good criticism acknowledges that it's not all perfect. That's like a good version of criticism, meaning you're in a good position if somebody says that. For example, I want to give you a chance to answer this in two ways. First, I believe that every criticism has a kernel of truth. When I read the YouTube comments and someone says something negative about me, it might be mean, rude, or uncalled for, but it's usually not completely baseless. There's some kernel of truth in it. On the good side, when someone compliments me, it's usually not as good as they say, but there's still a kernel of truth that led to that sentiment. So, here are some of the things that people would say about you: "Cody Sanchez's real business is in creating content, getting you to pay her to teach you how to buy a business, not in the businesses that she's bought herself." In what way would that be true, and in what way would that be false?

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, I think you're right. One of our mottos is "question everything," so I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning any of that. We make more money categorically from the businesses we own than from the community that we own, for instance. So, like, numerically, categorically, that's just a fact. Now, would I be upset if all of a sudden we're doing $25 million, $50 million, or $100 million in a community? This is my idea of an M&A for an MBA. If I could actually create that and supplant what we're getting in institutions and education systems, I'd be thrilled. The second that I make way more money with communities and courses, I will be shouting it out. "Yes! We built the best thing ever! We're doing tens and tens of millions of dollars, and you're welcome!" What would be true about that is, yeah, we're really good at this. It is a big business; it does millions of dollars a year. I think we have really quickly supplanted anybody in the industry. We are the name if you want to learn how to buy a business. Soon, we will be the name if you want to learn how to sell a business. My goal is that we will also be the name if you want to learn how to build a business. We will own the entire ecosystem. I'm in talks right now with the University of Texas and the University of Austin, which is Jill Lonsdale's company, to do a program with them where we can push back on what I think is awful education that's taught at most institutions.

Shaan Puri

right

Codie Sanchez

And instead of telling you what to think and a bunch of political nonsense, we're just going to teach you really smart financial tactics that you can apply whichever way you want. So, it does... like I'm sure it's the same with you. What bothers me when people talk about me online is if I feel like there is a kernel of truth or we mess up. Like one time we did this tweet thread and it was a 7 instead of a 2 for the number of years that I was at Goldman. You can see it on my Form U4 and my LinkedIn; you can see how long I was at Goldman. I had all these people say, "I knew you were just a fucking secretary and you were only there for, you know, 2 years at 7." That one actually bothered me a little bit because I was like, "We were wrong." And so, fuck, that's...

Shaan Puri

the only way a typo who cares

Codie Sanchez

yeah they're

Shaan Puri

like yeah you're wrong but like don't beat yourself up over that right like that's nothing

Codie Sanchez

yeah it was true

Shaan Puri

Another way to think about it, or another thing to react to, is why we get less criticism. I was wondering, "Why do we get less criticism?" I was worried, thinking, "Are we just less popular or less good than these other people?" What I realized is actually, no, there's one difference. When you do a podcast, because they're long-form, it naturally filters a bunch of people out. Second, it gives you a chance to breathe and be yourself. People tend to, once they get to know you and understand you, not feel the same way about you. They don't have that sort of reactionary takeaway against you. The third point is that you're just not everywhere. The vibe is, "I'm talking to my buddy Sam," and you're here listening as a fly on the wall. In contrast, when you go on Instagram or TikTok, you're staring down the barrel, looking at the camera, saying, "You should do this." All of a sudden, you're a business guru. You're telling me what to do, and all of a sudden, the guard walls go up. Literally, just because of the way we're pointing, when it's me talking to my co-host, it's very different than someone who picks up their phone and says, "You know, I'm so great, and here's what I do, and you should do the same." That's when I realized the way that the reaction gets really big. Now, I wonder how you think about distancing yourself. Do you just not care about the whole business guru kind of thing, like Grant Cardone or Tai Lopez? There's this whole thing that I personally don't want to necessarily be associated with. I don't think they're bad in any way; I just don't want to be bucketed in with that group. I can see how there's a tension: the more you come out and talk about business and how to make it, the more you can be bucketed as a business guru. How do you think about that? Do you think you fall into that trap, or how do you avoid that?

Codie Sanchez

yeah 1 I think as I think I'm a big ethical and moral compass type person so like if I feel like I'm doing something wrong that's gonna bother me a lot more than what other people think about me and so that that doesn't bother me too much I also think and I would be curious your take like I wanna do a math model on this I so much of what we are told in today's society in my opinion is the opposite it's like it's clown world it's we're told this one thing and it actually makes no sense for instance if I went out right now I've never ever raised money for any of the businesses that I invest in from my audience ever not once not once have I asked for a dollar for that now we have a venture fund that's tiny that I say do not invest in if you don't wanna lose money because this is like a very small to $10,000,000 fund and it's like who knows who knows if venture works and I think that there's a legitimacy that comes with asking people for money to invest in your funds as opposed to teaching them how to do the thing which in my mind actually makes no sense because if I went and raised another $1,000,000,000 fund family like I did I'm going to make so much more money than I ever will teaching people how to do things online so much more money but then they don't actually learn so I think I have like a I have like a chip on my shoulder about it that I wanna push back on it and I also think man young cody would have really liked to learn this earlier and wouldn't it be nice if somebody would have actually showed me their homework back in the day like I would have liked that actually so I think I think that's how I I remedied it now I hate comparisons to grant cardone or tai lopez because I'm not talking about those 2 because I don't know them individually but you know I looked at some of the fundraising docs on grant cardone stuff and I don't think it's that great for retail investors I think it's pretty one-sided and I think tai lopez is very like ferraris women you know get rich quick stuff and ours is sort of the opposite it's like this is gonna be hard it'll take longer than you think it'll be harder than you think and maybe it'll be worth it if you actually keep going past the.

Codie Sanchez

In which it's comfortable, but yeah, I think at some point, you just have to give up what people think about you on the internet, one way or the other. There's always going to be... you know, if you think about it also, Sean, like if we have 100 million views a month or 5 million followers, like 1% is going to be *fucking nuts* for sure, just categorically. So anytime something happens, I go, "Well, that's the 1%." Unless we're doing something wrong, and then I go, "Well, we did that. That was a typo; that's our bad."

Shaan Puri

Right, well, I'm hoping that people who listen to this... You know, I guess I believe that, like you just said, the most important opinion is the one you have of yourself. The reputation with yourself is the one that matters. I also believe that people should come to their own opinions once they have the opportunity to hear you speak. So, I asked some of these questions to you because I wanted to know... I wanted to hear how you would answer them myself. But I also know that for most people, they're not really going to get to hear you talk on this really anywhere, as far as I've seen. So, I hope that people come to whatever opinions they want on that stuff. That's on them at that. I think that the ideas you shared at the beginning and the model that you've created here around buying boring businesses is fascinating to me. I am almost jealous that I don't want to buy a boring business. I'm like, "Oh, well, what's wrong with the chip in my brain that wants to buy exciting businesses?" I only want to buy exciting businesses, and I think that is probably a higher degree of difficulty. But, you know, you choose... You get to choose the game you play. That's the game I want to play.

Codie Sanchez

Or you just invest in Xavier's thing, which we both did too. You know, yeah, which is important for small businesses that way. I mean, the only other thing I want to say is, I think it's really cool what you guys are doing here. Because although you might not call your businesses boring, you are actually doing the thing that most people in the industry hate, which is taking complex ideas and breaking them down so a lot of people can execute on them. There are not a lot of people who want to share their homework like that. So while mine might be boring and yours might be more sexy, I think we're both doing something really similar. Here's what works for me, here's some relatively complex stuff, and here's how I think we could really simplify it. Then, like, you go do you and go build something. Because I think that's the only thing that makes the world a little bit better: are the builders.

Shaan Puri

I invested in the same company you did, Shop Genie, which is like the perfect example of a boring business that can be pretty big. So, these guys make it easier for auto repair shops. If you need to get your car repaired today, you basically have to drive it in. It's only like walk-in service. You drive in or you call, but nobody picks up the phone. You drive up, and then they're like, "Yeah, it's going to be a couple of hours. You can just leave it here and go home on foot." And you're like, "Ah, shit! I wish this worked like everything else in the world." Meaning, I want to go online, book an appointment, show up, drop off my car, and be done. I want to pay you online, not in cash or whatever. So, they made this basically like a booking software for auto repair shops. Is that a good way to explain it? That's how I think about it, at least.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, well, now that you're talking about it, I'm sure this will happen for them again. But what's cool about when we get to invest in these types of businesses is that we did a little tweet for them and a little announcement of investing in them. They got like 30 franchise users who have multiple franchises underneath them.

Shaan Puri

right

Codie Sanchez

The ability to help somebody scale with a podcast like yours is really cool. This makes sense because you did support Shepherd, and I think that's a similar model.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and so Kieran, the founder of it, he told me about this business. I was like, "That's a great idea." I would like... I don't wanna do that, that sounds boring to me, but it's not boring to you and that's all that matters. Investing is the easiest way for me to like ride along that ride. And the funny thing is, he told me... like, back to the content idea, he's like, "Oh, we had this guy..." I had never heard of this guy Aaron Stokes. Do you know who this is?

Codie Sanchez

yeah

Shaan Puri

He's like, you know, the Gary V of the auto repair world. This one guy, I'm pretty sure, is making like $30,000,000 a year just creating content for people that own auto repair businesses. He has conquered this niche. He's doing the content marketing stuff, but only for a really, really narrow focus. For them, he's probably the only talented content person creating anything for them. So when he hosts the event or has the paid group or whatever, I don't even know this guy's full business model, but I know that his revenue is up there, sort of like $20,000,000+. He can get 1,000 auto repair shop owners to show up to any event, you know, a conference that he throws. I was like, wow, this content game can be niched down into even the boring verticals in a very interesting way.

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, we should own more of those. I mean, like, I think a fun game, like a great content channel that I was talking to Chris, my husband, about was, like, oh, what did he call it? He called it "Cringe Con." It would just be like you going to different niche industry conferences and watching their keynotes. Like, the keynote from the self-storage industry conference and, you know, because one of our friends owns a small self-storage company that we're going to invest in. He was like, "Yeah, I went to a self-storage conference and the keynote speaker was like, 'They use words like hoarders; we use words like customers.'" You know, and you're like, "I just want to see this." So, there are so many ways...

Shaan Puri

to giant compilation of of every like niche conference would be

Codie Sanchez

Hilarious! Yeah, I know I'm going to speak at Balaji's conference next week about... like, they use all these words, Sean, that you probably know because you're smarter than me. Like "ACC/EE" in parentheses on your Twitter bio.

Shaan Puri

dude I don't know what the hell that is I've seen that everywhere

Codie Sanchez

Yeah, that's what I told him. I'm like, "I need a dictionary to speak here." What I thought was fascinating is that you have this whole world that nobody else knows about. You know, you guys have all made $1,000,000,000 or $100 of $1,000,000 off of it. There are so many ways to make money, and that to me would actually be boring. I don't need all of those acronyms.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I've told this story before, but we got the idea for Milk Road—or not the idea, but the trigger to launch Milk Road—at FarmCon. We went to a farming conference in Kansas City, and like the same thing, you know, we go in and the panel is talking about, you know, corn and wheat futures. I was stunned. I was like, "These guys know what futures are?" Secondly, we're talking about corn futures, and then one guy was like, "I'm all in on beans." I was like, "Hey man, brother, I'm all in on beans too, but I think for different reasons." So, like, it was such a wild experience that I just really had no... like it was a totally different world. You know, literally like 2,000 farmers in a room just talking farming. I think it's really good to get outside your bubble and kind of, you know, for a guy who lives in San Francisco and talks to tech dorks all day, that was a totally different experience. I should do more of that, but like that was my one trip last year. It's like I don't go to Burning Man; I went to FarmCon, which I think is actually a more extreme experience, all things considered.

Codie Sanchez

Dude, that's gonna be me next week. I already told Balaji, "I'm pretty sure I'm gonna understand half of this." He had this idea too that I was like, "I think actually this is a terrible idea, categorically." He wanted to do 5-minute speeches, like 5-minute little speeches. I'm like, "One, that's hard." You know, okay, we can do that. And he's like, "So I wanna do a bunch of them." I was thinking, in order for some of them to be really fast, what we'll do is we can prerecord some of it so it's really good. Then we'll walk up on the stage and we could press play. And I was like...

Shaan Puri

like a dj

Codie Sanchez

I was like balaji you are the smartest man I've ever met and also know

Shaan Puri

He's like, "And then instead of coming to the conference, everyone just stays home and actually listens to it on their own in the podcast app." It's a podcast, actually.

Codie Sanchez

This is, yeah, I mean, thank God humans think differently. But I'm really curious to imagine if I could carry a conversation well with a lot of people here. I'm just going to tell them, "The thing is, if you want to know about laundromats, I'm your girl." That's about it.

Shaan Puri

and they're like we don't

Codie Sanchez

we don't

Shaan Puri

That's that. Next, alright Cody, this has been great. Sorry I took you so far over time, but...

Codie Sanchez

not at all this is a blast

Shaan Puri

Thank you for guest hosting while Sam is out. And that's the pod! Where should people follow you? Where do you want to send them?

Codie Sanchez

cody sanchez on all the socials pretty straightforward

Shaan Puri

alright that's it