Codie Sanchez: The Business Model Quietly Creating Millionaires | Entrepreneurship | YAPClassic

But if I become a marketer or a graphic designer, that's cool. Here's the problem. Rufur's make way more fucking money. Ownership actually is a sin and I'm the for freedom. So the more that you own things, the less other people can tell you what to do. How do you see mom and pop boring businesses really evolving in the next 5-10 years because of AI?

The first jobs that AI took were artists, copyrighters, because AI lives online. You know where AI is going to take longer, painting companies, roofing companies, plumbing companies, the best ways to make money are super simple.

“If you want to make more money, you should look at it.”

And you will have a hard time being poor. What's up, Yap Gang? Well, everybody is chasing the next big idea. Some entrepreneurs are quietly building wealth with businesses that most people overlook.

On our Monday episode this week, David Royce shared how he built and sold a $500 million

past control company. Not glamorous at all, but wildly profitable. And today's Yap Classic guest Cody Sanchez has built her whole investing strategy around what she calls boring businesses. Turns out that some of the richest people out there are making serious money for roofing, plumbing, laundromats, landscaping, like some of the most unsexy businesses you can think of.

And this episode, Cody walks us through how everyday people can start acquiring these businesses, and why they might be the ultimate past to making extraordinary wealth. After this episode, I bet you're going to start seeing opportunities and places that you least expected. Let's dive in. Welcome to the show, Cody Sanchez.

I'm thrilled to be here. Me too. So last time you came on the show, we talked about your background. We talked about your contrarian investment views and we talked about buying boring businesses, which I absolutely love.

And now you have a new book out. It's called Main Street Millionaire. So I can't wait to find out how we can all become Main Street Millionaires.

So my first question to you is trying to really understand some misconceptions that we have about rich people.

“When I think about rich people, I think about billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Basos and”

tech entrepreneurs or celebrities like Oprah and Kim Kardashian. But tell me why you are challenging this idea. What stats and facts do you have about rich people? Let's start with the fun one. I want to know who the richest woman in the world is.

This is as of the end of last year when the Forbes report came out. If you saw it, maybe it's T Swift. And she had a big tour. Wrong. She's like 34th on the list.

If you thought it was Kim Kay, you'd also be wrong. She was like 21st on Amazon. If you thought that it was somebody like Oprah, also wrong, she doesn't even crack the top 10. Who is it actually?

It is a woman who grew a roofing company to more than $15 billion in net worth.

“And so my point here is I think one of the biggest misconceptions with the really, really rich is that they do things that are really, really sexy.”

And fact, most of the richest people on the Forbes 100 list. If they didn't inherit it from a boring business, they started a boring business or they bought businesses. Okay, fine. So I think there's a matrix kind of like this.

So, you know, on the vertical side of the matrix, you basically have the sexiness of a business, you know, from artists to musicians to actors. And on the right side, you have the income or how much money you can make. And what it turns out is if you correlate the two,

the sexier the industry, the fewer the people make an obscene amount of money in it. The more boring the industry, the more people make consistent high dollars in it. And so there seems to be a correlation between boring traditional everyday businesses that we need nonstop and more of us making money, which I thought was interesting. That's so interesting.

And we're going to find out later why these boring businesses are so overlooked. But before we do that, you open up your book basically saying that we are programmed to be poor. Tell us why America basically teaches us to be poor our whole lives. I heard a quote once that just seared its way into my soul, which was that you are as rich as you programmed yourself to be.

And if you think about it that way, there's a good and a bad side to it. The good side is, well, you can reprogram yourself. Just like a computer, you can scrap the software, keep it the hardware, and realign what is inside of you. The bad part is that the foundation on which you and I have learned money is actually a one that incentivizes us to stay just sort of tracking to our spend for our entire life,

which is why most people will die alone and without much in the way of resources, which is really, really sad. And so when I started thinking about writing this book, I was like, we listen.

We can't make ourselves have more money than other people do up front.

So what would be a way to level the plane field? And because I was in finance for 12 years, I watched with the really, really rich did. And they did something completely differently, which is they didn't innovate as often as Silicon Valley did. You know, they didn't come up with some crazy start-up and sleep on couches. In fact, they worked Gucci loafers all the way to the private plane they eventually bought.

And how did they do this? Because they bought other people's hard work, other people's years of hard work. And then they did a little bit of what's called financial arbitrage.

But basically, you know, make expenses a little bit lower, increased profits here,

and apply the Wall Street mechanism for growth to most businesses.

“And I was like, why does Wall Street only do this? Why can't we?”

And so I think that we can reprogram ourselves to be rich by realizing that we just have to copy other people's homework from those who have already achieved the thing we want in life. And that's kind of what I strive to do. Yeah. So I'd love to understand the difference between living a life where you have non-ownership, right? Versus living a life where you actually have ownership and something. Can you like comparing contrast that for us?

Yeah. So I think ownership actually is a synonym for freedom. So the more that you own things, the less other people can tell you what to do. And if your listeners are like you and I, you and I, we're probably pretty unemployable, right? Or like, we're a pain in the ass, which is why we became entrepreneurs, you know?

“We are just on the other side of Diva, which is like, you know, I think we should do it this way.”

How come we can't do this? Let's go faster. What do you mean I can't make more? That's what a good entrepreneur is. And so I think if you are also like that, you are set up to succeed in some ways, which is that you will fail at being an employee for a long time. And the best entrepreneurs are failed employees. And so you will eventually get to a path where you realize that you can own the equity and the business that you have distributions in the business over a long term.

And it can be on legally binding contracts. You can take it with you as opposed to your W2. And the only little caveat there I like to put out their hollows is like, I, I loved being an employee actually. Like the tail end of my career where I was a partner at a few private equity companies. I really liked what I did. I could have done that forever at one company in particular. I just wanted to do it my way. And so I was annoyed at their speed.

And because of that, I ended up going and doing my own thing. But what I wish I could realize at the time is that I could have had even my own business on the side. And I could have negotiated for more equity and distributions in a business so that you could stay an employee too if you want an owner business. And so I think there's lots of ways to get to the end of the game of ownership. Yeah, I love that you make that point. I also love the fact that you actually had a corporate job where you were helping people buy businesses.

And I mean, I think it's pretty safe to say you probably learned so much, which is why you could then become an entrepreneur who's, you know, as a holding company that buys businesses. So you also learn the ropes on somebody else is done. 100%. There's so many people in the internet now and you're not one of them because you've done this game too, but there's so many people on the internet who want to tell you like go beer on boss being entrepreneur. And that's fine. I do think that that's great for many people. However, there's risk associated with pure ownership where you own the entirety of the business.

“And so one don't assume that in order to buy a business, you have to buy the whole thing.”

You can actually just don't part of it and you can use other things besides your money to buy it. That's really cool. We talked about that in the book. But number two is there is no better way to learn the game of business than by getting a salary, learning under somebody else's tutelage. And eventually, if you're a great employee, getting a percentage of their company or getting them to invest in your business.

And this is actually fascinating because people on the internet don't always love to hear this, but you know, in finance, most of the companies that we start.

So if I left to finance firm, like when I left Goldman, I was too young, they wouldn't have given it to me, but when I left my last firm, which was EEC, they asked if they could invest in whatever my next venture was. They wanted to give me my first checks. And I think more often than not, if we kill it as an employee, we can actually push that into capital in our next venture. Yeah, it's so true. I have somebody named Kate on my team who started as an intern four years ago. And now she's a partner who's investing to get 10% of my business and helps me manage, you know, the whole social side of our team.

So it just goes to show that like you really can get equity in a company. And she's not really an inventor, right? I'm always inventing things, creating things like that's my skill set and she's really good at managing.

Oh, yeah, I love that. I mean, I think you're really smart because a lot of young entrepreneurs don't understand a few words that will change your life when it comes to making money and ownership. Which is, investing equity, okay, you can give somebody a percentage of your company, but they don't take it right away.

They get it over years of work a little bit at a time each year, which is called a cliff. So nothing earned in the first year until they make it to the end of the first year.

And if they're successful, then they earn a portion. Same thing with your two, your three. We talk about lots of the lingo in the book.

“Another thing that you mentioned that I think is really important is she was a high performer. She kept growing.”

And so you were rewarding what you had already seen as positive behavior, not trying to incentivize future better behavior. So I think a lot of times what people don't realize is they give a carrot to somebody who is underperforming or sort of flat.

And they say, you could earn equity in my business if you do X and Y and Z, but you really should do instead of say, wow, you're the fastest gray background on the track.

You're crushing it right now for me. I want to reward you for what you're already doing now over a multi year period. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So your high performers are more likely to continue performing than you changing the mindset of a poor performer. So true. So entrepreneurship is like thrown around all the time. Everybody thinks they're an entrepreneur. Can you talk to us about freelancers, gig workers, solopreneurs? Do you feel that that's the same thing as owning a business, why or why not?

I think we were sold a great lie and the great lie was essentially this. First, we own our businesses back in the day when we first started in this country, we didn't pay a ton in taxes and we owned our own businesses. And then we apprenticed to eventually take over those businesses. Then one day big corporations came around and they said instead of you owning these little things, come work for us. We have this big huge opportunity. You can come work inside of our sphere. Then we worked in corporations and realize the only place that padded walls should be is insane asylum.

“And I don't want to work in the cubicles anymore under the fluorescent lights. So we said wait a second, startups. That's what it is. It's Silicon Valley backed venture rocket ships will go to do those.”

So then we didn't did that as a society and that's what we glamorized. The problem there is nobody told us nine out of ten of those startups would fail miserably. And they would leave a bunch of us with a mess on our hands with companies that were failing with heartache, right? And the people who would win would be venture capitalists who got to sprinkle tons of dollars across many companies. And also fueled a ton of innovation. But it's not for everybody. It's a very hard path. And then finally we were like no more venture. I don't want to do that. So we were like yellow into freelance and I own my own company or what all cost.

And we were like solo-preneurship is the way. Well, you've done this before too. I think the road to hell is paved with individual zoom meetings back and forth between yourself and no help. And so we didn't realize that all we did actually was now go work at the behest of an Uber or at the behest of a sub-stack where they still own us. Silicon Valley still owns us. We just make a smaller percentage of our total profits as a solo-preneur. And now we're like, man, we're not even making enough money in solo-preneurship anymore.

“And we don't really like this. And so I think the solo-preneur movement is actually not as glamorous as we thought it was. And so my hope is the next movement is this mainstream movement.”

Can we go back to the thing we were originally talked out of, which is let's own a portion of small businesses all around this country that are already profitable, that have existed for a long time, that don't have crazy volatility of online businesses, and that are simple. And that you're going to pay even if it's a no recession, because you want your plumbing to work even if it's a downturn. And that's my belief.

I love that. And you have this quote in your book. And you say, your salary will never set you free.

Your financial freedom can only come through ownership, specifically through equity done the right way. So my question is, what do you mean by equity done the right way? Such a good question. Everybody wants equity, right? That sounds good. But the problem with equity is you can't eat it. Meaning, like, what are you going to do? I can't take my equity and go pay for something or put it down payment on that house. It's sort of like, up in this ether, this thing that I can't touch. And if you went and looked at a bunch of Silicon Valley startup employees, you'd see, oh man,

most of them thought they were being compensated like this, very high, because they had a lot of equity, and realized, wow, my equity wasn't worth anything like that. So I think there's a better way, which is equity plus distributions. So that means, hey, I get a percentage of a company, and that you can't really take that away from me unless I do something fraudulent or crazy.

And so if you take, if the owner takes $100,000 out of the business, and then that means that I get what's called my pro rata, so my percentage that I own of the business, I get distributed too.

So let's say the owner is going to take $100,000, I might get 5% if I own $5,000, if I own 5% of the business. And that way we can eat as we move along and get equity. That is equity done right. Distributions today, future profits tomorrow. Hey, y'all, I'm not afraid to say producing this podcast for quieter skills. I do not naturally have from audio engineering to video editing. I have to hire experts who are way better than me in those areas.

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“So you have this new book that's out right now. It's called Main Street Millionaire. Can you talk to us about what a Main Street business is?”

Yeah. So Main Street Business is the business that you pay right now every single month, but you kind of ignore it. It's your landscaping business. It's your house cleaners. It's your roofing companies.

And so when I think about Main Street businesses, I look all around our small community and I realize, man, it's not just the local coffee shop that's interesting.

It's also the street sweeping business that cleans up the streets. It's the person who does line painting in the middle of the streets to make sure that there are parking spaces. All of those services are businesses. But we were taught as a generation. You're in my generation that, you know, if I own a handyman business and I'm a handyman, that's bad. You know, if I go to college and I become a roofer, that's not very cool. But if I become a marketer or a graphic designer, that's cool. Here's the problem.

“Roofers make way more fucking money. So I think we were sold a little bit of a bag of goods.”

Maybe you don't want to stay a roofer forever because it could be hard on your body. But you learn the trade, then you learn the business, then you own part of the business, then you own the whole business, then you sell it.

And that is how you're able to pass off your work over time.

Talk to us about how these businesses are overlooked and why they're such steady, reliable businesses. Yeah, I think a lot of reasons why these businesses are overlooked is really three things. Main street businesses have a societal belief. They are less than we call the blue color, not white color, right? They're not shiny. They are something that is done by people who don't have university degrees and somehow that's a bad thing. So we have a societal sheen on them.

The second reason people don't love these businesses is because we've been told, well, these people don't make very much money, and these businesses don't make very much money.

If I'm going to be a banker or an accountant or an attorney, I'm going to make more. Well, that turns out not to be true over time. And then the third reason is because these businesses don't have what's called a vote. So there's probably, I don't know, a couple thousand handyman companies, maybe 10,000 handyman companies in Texas. There's like one Facebook, right? So we thought you had to have this new sexy innovative business in order to make money. You don't. In fact, it'd be much easier to compete with your local handyman company than Mark Zuckerberg, who's an animal. And so those three reasons kept us away from main three businesses.

The other thing that's interesting about main three businesses is most of them are recession resistant. So you're going to use a landscaping company if you need to have your driveway shoveled during the winter, no matter what. Most of these small businesses have some version of subscription revenue, the thing that SaaS companies tech companies love, and most of these businesses are pretty simple to understand. Now, I don't want to idealize this. I'm not saying this is like a fast, easy 30 day million type thing, but these businesses have been overlooked in any time that happens, there's money to be made.

Any talk to us about the Lindy effect and why it matters. I love it. You have read the book. You're going to be, you're going to own a bunch of these things.

“Well, Lindy effect is really important. So it's very simple. And I think the best ways to make money are super simple. If you want to make more money, you should look at how long a business has existed.”

The Lindy effect says the longer a business has been in existence, the higher likelihood it will have to continue to be in business. So essentially the opposite of what I thought was true. It was like this thing's been around for 30 years. It must be old, outdated, not work, but in fact, it has a higher likelihood of continuing to succeed as opposed to a brand new startup, much riskier, much higher likelihood to fail. And so if you look at businesses that have survived for over five to seven years, you have taken away anywhere from 50 to 60% failure rate.

That means you're left with only 44%. What if I could tell you today you could start a startup and I could decrease your risk of failure by 50%.

“You'd be like, that's cool. Yeah, let's do that. Well, that's what you can do with these boring businesses that have existed for a long time.”

Is there a certain like personality type or level in which we should be before we should actually go and try to seek out a boring business? That's a great question. So the question usually comes to me like, when am I ready to buy a business? How would I know? And my question back to you would be one, one skill set that I have never regretted that I wish I had learned earlier was deal making, because it will forever change how you make money. Even if you never buy a business outright, if you understand terms, structuring, deal making, and how the world of money works, you will have a hard time being poor.

And so because of that, I like to teach people business buying before they even think they're ready for it. So for instance, I gave my cousin this book, who's 16 and he's reading through it and he's figuring out ways to do deals right now.

If you are in business right now, it is no brainer. If you look at the biggest companies in the world, they grow through acquisitions, Amazon, Facebook, they've done both of them have done over 200 transactions. They grow faster through acquisitions than they do organically customer by customer.

“So if you own a business today, you need to understand how to do deal making, it's how you will be harder to compete with. You can acquire 100 customers at a time, while most people are acquiring one at a time, total game changer.”

If you don't have a business yet, what I'd like to do is turn on what I call your particular activating system of business buying.

So your particular activating system is what gets turned on when your brain tells you that something is important. And so when you go on buy a car, for instance, like a Porsche, let's say you go on buy a Porsche. And before you bought the Porsche, you're like, I don't see any of these things anywhere. After what you buy the Porsche, like, everybody has a Porsche and Austin texted what happened. Nothing happened. Your brain just started getting a signal to it saying that this is important and so you started noticing it.

Right now, we're walking around sort of in the matrix, not realizing that all around us are deals, potential deals. And what I want to do is turn on your brain so you start seeing them. And what this might mean is, if you work for a small business, you might not even realize that the owner is ready to retire and if you position yourself correctly, you could take over that business using seller financing. If you're a solo content creator online, you might not realize that the thousand dollars they want to pay you to promote XYZ product, you should actually negotiate a deal instead to get future distributions and a percentage of the company deals are all around you.

It just wants you to turn it on. I love that. So I know that it's a lot of hard work to have a boring business, but I think people have the misconception that it's like passive income like, oh, I'm going to buy a bunch of vending machines, plop them in stores and passive income. Why is that not really the case?

Yeah, I, you know, I was joking with one of my favorite CEOs that I used to work for back in the day. He runs a company that does not enough $300 billion in annual sales. It's a huge company.

And when I was talking to him, he was pretty funny. I was like, Jim, I'm curious. He's older. So he's probably in his little mid 70s. And I was like, you've been around for a long time. You've been a investor all your life. You own all these companies. You ever met any passive income and he was like, sure, haven't, but I'm open to it. But I mean, the way you get passive income is years of active work. And I think we need to be honest about that with each other. Now that said, there's a lot of people that want to tell you two things. Either one, you can't.

But it's not possible for you. Stay in your lane. It's much easier to be a hater than a hope giver. And then the second group wants to tell you, hey, it's super easy. Anybody can do it. Look at my Lambo. Look at my private plane. Look at my Gucci. And because of that, you know, I'm really successful. You can be too. And they want to sell you something. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

“And in fact, with small businesses, I think you should expect for the first year, you got a lot to learn. Man, it's a hard. It is not complicated.”

But it is hard. It's not easy, but it is simple. And I think when you realize, oh, running a laundromat is not complicated, but it's hard work. If you have any machine business, it's actually harder than a laundromat business because you have these tiny little stores, right, machines that have very limited cap on how much they could make per month. Let's call it max.

I mean, if you had a $5,000 month producing that machine that'd be incredible. So you have max this little $5,000 machine.

And then you got to figure out the logistics to go back and forth to all of them to accumulate eventually to a business that does, let's say, a million dollars a year. It's actually pretty, it's a lot of work. And so I don't like to talk about passive income. I like to talk about horizontal income, which basically means, where can you layer your income, like a cake. So that in any given time, your day is split between a few activities, mostly oversight as opposed to execution. So in my businesses, I run a big portfolio at Main Street holding company. You can see a bunch of the businesses we own there. And part of my day is spent with, like, this company up here, which is pinks.

“So, you know, I'm talking to the CEOs, Stephen, and I'm saying, hey, you know, how is the cash flow looking? What's going on?”

I'm actually doing nothing in the business, but I'm at least thinking about it. So I like to be honest about that. It's not going to be easy, guys, but it could be very lucrative. Okay. So let's talk about prep before we buy these businesses. We talked about what do we need to get started in your book. You have four levels.

And then you tell us like, what is this level about who's it for? What are some examples of the businesses that we should be looking for? What should we expect at this level? And this is an entrepreneurship show. So we really have people who want to be entrepreneurs. We've got people who have 50 million dollar businesses listening in. So we've got lots of different people on the show. So I thought this would be fun. Level one solo venture. So a good level one business might be something like a Venom machine. These are what I call people light businesses. So it might be something where you could be the owner operator of the business.

The business is probably not making eight figures. You're talking about businesses that are, you know, one or three million or less. These businesses on average are what I call gateway drug style businesses.

So like you can dip your toes into your first small car wash deal, your first small laundromat, your first Venom machine, your first podcast production company.

But you're probably not going to get independently wealthy working on these businesses. You're in it. It will require some work, but it doesn't require as much cash. Well, is your first level one business? Well, my very first one was a website called selling south back in the day.

“And I tried a game that I was really bad at, which is, I think we made money on ads in affiliates back then. It was really hard.”

It should make very much money at all, but it was a good entry drug business. And then I had a Venom machine, I'm sorry, a laundromat business, which I would put in this category two in the beginning. And then I also had a consulting business, which was right on the edge of a level one level two. Okay, moving on to level two hands on CEO. So this business is one where you're going to potentially have an operator right along with you. You might have somebody who's actually in the business. My first business, I had a GM in the laundromat. So he's the one actually running some of the laundromat specifics.

I am best in it. I track things overall. I'm still involved in the business, but I have a little help. These businesses are slightly bigger and size. There's also a slight bigger complexity here. This could be things like multiple laundromats. Let's say, for instance, this could be things like having a media company.

What we have now is they most media companies fall into this category. They never get to like a huge daily wire allowance.

“These businesses also on average still have most of your time dedicated to this business and are going to have some employees but not upon.”

Okay, level three, and this is like it gets harder and harder, right, or like less likely that you fit in the level as we go along. So level three is on deck operator. So this means you got an operator that's rocking a roll in this business. You are an oversight mode. You basically get to do what I do, which is financial Fridays, reviewing what's going on. You have an operator who probably knows more than you do about the business. You've got employees underneath that operator. This business is doing millions of dollars in revenue.

And that means alternatively you could be doing a million plus and profit. And this is a business where you could have almost any type of business, imaginal could be in this amount. So you could have a small furniture store. You could also have a roofing or an HFAC company in this amount. These start to get to the level where you're starting to do roll-ups in your business. And so the idea is that you're actually not the operator of this business. You've just invested in this business. That's right.

“Okay. And the way that we think about these levels is mainly does the revenue support that employees and infrastructure that allow you to work on the business as opposed to in the business.”

So the first two, not as much. The third one, you start to get into it.

And we're going to, I'm going to dig deeper on that in a second level for market leader. So this means we're a big business now. Not only do you have a CEO, but you probably have a C-suite staff. You've probably got a few other real pros in there running the business. Now we're talking about tens of employees plus. We're making real revenue and real profit in this business. And you're in a stage where you're either already at or getting to a spot where private equity might buy you might compete with you.

And these all are still in what I consider small and medium business. So this is still sort of micro PE below the level at which you're going to compete with what's called middle market and private equity. So you have this framework. Like now we know the levels. We know where we got to start. We're about to go look for our boring business. We need to have some sort of criteria to pick a smart move right. We can't just like go after any business that we find you've got this acronym S-O-W-S. So is that, is that how you say it sounds?

Okay. I'd say it sounds. Yep, sounds. So still old, weak, simple. Can you explain and break that down?

But if I was to give you a framework, it would be sounds, which is when I look for businesses, I look for a business that is stale. That means that it's been around for a long time. That means that the business probably hasn't done much in the way of innovation. Might have something called the fax machine tests, which is they have a fax machine still. That's crazy. Do they actually use that thing?

They might take invoices on a piece of paper as opposed to putting it into quick books. Then we get to the, oh, which is old, has the business been around at least five to seven years. Is it a lindi effect in effect? Can this business be one that we think has a lower risk?

“Because the likelihood of future success is probably based on historical success.”

Then we have weak. This one I really like if there are competitors that are weak in the space. And also the business itself might be some I weak. So can I compete with a bunch of handyman and Austin Texas? Maybe because I don't know the name of any of them.

Can I compete with a Dell computer's hard, right? Like that is an entrenched business overall. I want to see sort of weak competition and weak execution by the company.

And finally, I want a business that is simple.

So I want a business overall that is not difficult to understand that is straightforward. So easier grandma could do it. So this is so counterintuitive. You wouldn't think like, oh, I want a weak, stale business. I wanted to be so simple. The same so counterintuitive.

So is the idea that you could come in and make small improvements and then make more money. Like what why do you want those things? Yeah, the fastest way to lose money in buying a business is to think that you know more than the owner of the business and to take on more complexity than you actually should. So I think about buying a business.

Kind of like I think about maybe buying your first house to fix up and flip. Like you don't really want to buy complete disaster on a street.

Why? Well, you've never done a construction project before.

And so I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a construction project that comes in under budget and faster than you think. And so what I really want for your first acquisition is the first acquisition to go so well. That you go, oh, God, that business was like a little too small, a little too easy. We're going to build it up. Then we're going to sell it.

Then we're going to do our next one because your first deal turned out so well.

“And so that's why I like really simple businesses for the first one.”

Business is complex enough and we can layer on top of it, create marketing. We can layer great advertising. We can layer a great team and culture. But we want to make sure we don't buy it off more than we can chew with our first acquisition. Unless you're a pro in which case we teach some different things.

Yeah, I love that you made this analogy to buying a house. But actually buying a business can be a little bit cheaper up front than buying a house because you don't have to lay out all this cash necessarily. You talk a lot about creative financing. Can you tell us more about some of the creative ways that we can actually buy a business? Yes, so one of the most beautiful parts about buying a business as opposed to buying a house is when you go buy a house.

They want to know how much money you make. And they want to know how much money you make so that they can determine how big of a house you can buy. When you go to buy a business, they meeting the lenders or the bank. They want to know how much money the business makes. And if the business makes enough for you to be able to use the revenue and profits of the business to pay the loan back.

Now, there's going to be some degree of them vetting you and making sure that you seem trustworthy. And you've got to put together a little pitch to show that you are capable of buying a business and getting alone. But the fascinating part is it's not on your salary. It's on the businesses income. And because of that, we have a unique opportunity to out kick our coverage by buying a business that would be more than we could actually afford

if we were only to look at the amount of money we have or our salary. So that's one huge differential. The other is that we teach 21 ways in the book in order for you to buy a business using creative financing. But one of my favorites is seller financing. So you mentioned that 60% of all businesses bought are bought with some aspect of seller financing.

And if you understand seller financing, I don't think you'll ever buy anything the same way again. Because what it basically teaches you is that you want to invest in businesses and buy them using some portion of the future revenue and earnings of a business.

Now, this isn't to say you can run around saying I'd like to buy your $5 million business owner for $0 down.

How does that sound? You have to just like anything in life.

“You have to treat a business transaction kind of like treating a dating transaction with a woman.”

You got to get her to trust you. You got to get her to believe that she's going to be better in your hands than anybody else. You got to get her to see that you actually care about this business and you are going to make sure it succeeds. And if you do that, then you can get really creative unfair deals that somebody running around throwing out offers left and right isn't going to get.

They might be working in their old age. Why is it in there incentive to maybe take a seller financing opportunity? Yes, so we have this whole section where we show three different graphs on seller financing. And once I understood how to pitch seller financing properly so that it was a win-win, our ratio of people taking seller financing went up about 100%. And here's how I think about it. I'm going to do a small business owner. Here's the conversation that I would say. I would say, all right, small business owner.

This is after you've gotten to know them after they like you. After you really understand the business, you've done all of the, you know, the early stage of dating. You're not asking to take the girl home on like your first coffee date. So after you do that, you're going to have a conversation that sounds like this.

“Okay, Mr. Owner, you want $2 million for your business. You think that's what it's valued at, right?”

Okay, let me show you. When I took your business to the bank, based on what you showed me, the bank said they would give you about a mill, whatever the dollar amount is. Usually businesses are not worth with the owner thinks it is. So you want to introduce the third party saying, sorry, we're not going to pay you for that.

So we say, okay, the bank says that it's worth a million instead of two.

Well, that means that I could give you a million dollars plus I got to pay like 8% to the bank because there's an interest rate associated with it. Plus I probably got to wait like 120 days for the loan to fully go through maybe 90 at best. Plus you're going to have a higher tax burden because they're going to lump some pay you out right now. As opposed to over time, we can't get very creative with your taxes. You're going to pay more in taxes. Also because we're going to go with this loan over time, I can't pay you any of the interest, I have to pay the interest to the bank.

Now that means that I can give you a million dollars plus these other negatives or there's another way that we could do this through seller financing.

“Would you want to talk about how we could structure it that way?”

And they'll probably go, okay, yeah, what do you mean? And you say, okay, other option, I pay you 1.5 instead of 1. So you get another $500,000 plus I will pay you the interest on the loan instead of the bank. Except I'll pay you 4% instead of 8% which increases the likelihood the business succeed because it's not as high. Plus you make another 4% every single month or a year depending on how you structure the deal. Plus we could get this done deal done in probably 30 days because we don't have to go through a traditional bank process instead of 120 days.

And we will structure the payouts over time which means you pay less because you're getting long term capital gains and distributions as opposed to short term capital gains and distributions. So you're getting 500k more plus you're getting 4% a year plus you're getting better tax savings. Would you be interested in at least us discussing what that would look like? I would point the owner is going to say probably yes. And so that's how you nail seller financing.

I got that was like a master class right there anybody wanting to buy boring business you could literally just transcribe that script and get your deal. Hey y'all fam if something unexpected happened to you tomorrow with the people who depend on you be financially okay.

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“But in your state department of financial services so is it realistic to think that there's actually a lot of opportunity out there for these boring businesses like when I think about this.”

I don't know like I just feel like how many people are really willing and ready to sell their business.

Yes, let me tell you some data so how many people actually will sell you a business today and use some version of seller finance in well, one I bought a boring business that was a business marketplace called biz scout and then plowed a couple million dollars into it. Biscount is now a marketplace where people buy and sell businesses when we first launched which was maybe four weeks ago six weeks ago we had 30,000 listings on the platform today we have 45,000 listings on the platform at biscount there 45,000 people publicly listed that want to sell their business.

Plus, the other interesting part about biscount is we have this back end scraper where we scrape old small businesses so you could say I want to buy a I don't know sales company in Atlanta, Georgia I want to buy a car wash in peedmont north Dakota and you could go and let's see all of the listings of those there and reach out to the owners individually so that would mean millions of millions of businesses.

“So I know firsthand there are tens of thousands of businesses ready to sell right now today the numbers growing every single day and then there are millions where the owners don't even realize they could sell so this is happening all over the place.”

Now here's what you're going to hear from people that is great for you and me and I love every moment of it.

You're going to hear people go there's no businesses for sale it's all trash on those sites nobody good would sell a business like that and I go perfect just stay in your lane. This is always finance pros to do this by the way and there'll be like no way would this business sell for that and then I just go scoreboard like bought and sold this newsletter business bought and sold pigs bought and sold that one painter bought and sold garage up bought and sold a brand new roofing company we're going to launch you know there are businesses all around we're doing it every single day and our community called contrarian community.

People have done 260 million dollars of deals that we've tracked hundreds of small businesses transacted so while other people always tell you no.

You can be the person that makes the money while they sit on the sidelines. It always harder than it looks and is going to take work these businesses are all around you guys and anybody that's telling you they aren't either wants to buy them for themselves or wants to sounds sophisticated because the sophisticated sounds the negative sounds smart and the positive make all the money. So when people are to you about boring businesses you've been talking about boring businesses for a few years now I feel like it sort of synonymous with vending machines and laundry mats.

But you actually say some of your favorite boring businesses are digital businesses and professional services so talk to us about some of the little known boring businesses out there and why they're so.

But really what we teach is what's called deal clarity so how do you figure out the right business for you specifically what's the right business for you or your audience.

And so those might be things like for instance I bought a podcast production company back that I bought like 49% of one called strike fire productions that was a great business I think I bought 49% for 10k and you know we profited five or eight or 10k a month off of it for about a year before I sold it back to the owner of the business because it wasn't a big enough business for us anymore.

“So podcast production I've bought a video production before production company before that's called viral cuts that's another online business.”

We've invested in a tax and LLC business so it's kind of cool they take like accounting old school accounting practices kind of sex them up make it really easy for people to access them that's called dola. We invested in a company that's called sense so it's software for the London industry so you know everywhere you have a boring business you have digital businesses that support them you have advertising businesses marketing vendors software providers sales systems and those are businesses you can buy just as simply as you can buy a brick and mortar mainstream business.

So should we diversify our businesses for example like I own several businesses now I have my podcast itself which is a business I have my social media agency number one linked in marketing agency and I have the number one business self improvement podcast network so I've three businesses.

Should I like stain my lane and go buy podcasts and social media businesses or is it better to actually diversify and think about other lanes.

I think about acquisition strategic acquisitions or diversified acquisitions so strategic acquisitions I think are the easiest for business owners to buy that would be like can you buy another agency that has talent that you're having a hard time hiring and can you insert that talent inside of your agency so you can increase your capacity. And so you can sell more Amazon is notorious for this and I would say the great thing about strategic acquisitions is you understand the business better you're going to know if this is a shitty agency or not because you already run it you probably already know them and have target acquisitions because you know your competitors you also have a much higher ability to increase the revenue of that company because you're already doing the thing and so I think strategic acquisitions are the best for current business owners to think about.

“If you want to create a portfolio and a holding company like I have because my skill set.”

His finance right like I knew how to create a portfolio and holding company because I ran a private equity firm but if I was a great business operator. I would do more strategic acquisitions than I would diversify acquisitions and the reason is because you're going to have such a higher likelihood of success and you're going to be able to increase the value of those businesses so materially. So if I was you I'd be saying right now and you probably have someone your head even as we're talking about it you're like oh these competitors oh I hear she's kind of unhappy.

I think they might shut down their business they're growing really fast. But man they don't have X that we have and those your target acquisitions where you can even overpay a little bit or use potential future revenue that you drive them to pay for those companies. And close a deal faster than you ever could do diligence in a laundry.

Yeah you've really opened my eyes like I never really had thought so much about acquiring companies but now I'm like thinking I'm like oh like we could acquire you know this.

X team so that makes sense it's kind of what I did actually with my business partner Jason he had a production company originally. And then I actually brought him on his business partner and kind of absorbed him so I guess I did do that in a roundabout way. It's called an aqua hire.

“Yeah and the poor it is if you start using the terminology that's why I like people who learn to make it.”

I can't even know that. Yeah you can sweeten the deal so let's say you know in this case you might have been saying God I need better production and I want somebody who really cares about it. So I want a partner I want them to be invested in it I want them to be a pro I don't want to have to pay pro salary right now because maybe my biggest my business isn't big. I want them to share my vision long term so they take some risk with me.

So you're like huh I'm going to buy I'm going to buy aqua hire Jason's company and I'm really just going to use Jason salary which I pay over the course of the year just like anybody else's salary to acquire his company.

Jason congratulations you got an exit from your business.

I am going to acquire and integrate you you also get to say I've already done one acquisition because we did it this way. You did an asset sale potentially if you bought any of his assets and you did an aqua hire because you bought him. And so a lot of the people in Silicon Valley use this term all the time they'll be like I sold my sword up to so and so they got aqua hired. And we like normal people don't use that same terminology and so we don't sound as sophisticated but we're doing the exact same thing.

“So I would keep your eyes open I think you know one of the things I've been obsessing on lately is that rich people do not think the same as poor people when they think about problem solving.”

Poor people when they have a problem they say how do I fix this problem how how how how.

Relatively wealthy people think I have a problem who could fix this problem for me. Not how rich people think I have a problem how could I buy an almost guaranteed solution to this problem buy who. How and you can start when you have a problem in your business going all right pause don't go to how pause don't go to who. Pause how could I buy the solution I need more revenue in my business I need to come up with a brand new product that I could sell do you or is there's something else out there in the market that you know your audience would love.

“And you could acquire part of that company do no fulfillment not guess what a great product is but no because people are already buying it and you are to use it and just integrate that into your revenue line.”

And the truth of the matter is I forget my own homework all the time I report back to the how constantly and I should obsess on the buy more often too. Oh my gosh that is so smart I love that it by so much okay so buying a business we're of course going to be looking at the financials to some degree right so what are you looking at personally when you are trying to buy a business. And then also if we need to hire people hiring operator what do we need to consider in terms of the financials. Yeah a couple things we have a framework that we look at for every time you buy a business what does it need to have.

I think about it as towards an income stream your buying a business because you want to make money not because you're doing charity. And so when it comes to an income stream it income stream has to cover a few things it has to cover the interest expense on your loan so whatever that costs for how you bought the business it has to cover your income so how much money you want to make from the business. It also has to cover some version of an operator salary so you don't go crazy you have a manager you don't buy a job you buy a business and then it has to cover working capital.

And that means a little bit extra money in case anything goes sideways or to grow the business.

“That is, those four things if you remember that will help you buy a profitable business and we have a structure that breaks that down a little bit more in the book but at a high level that's it.”

The second thing that I really want you to think about if you're thinking about buying a business overall is very very high level.

You don't want to make acquisitions to complex you want to see what are the financials tell you is the business profitable or not we don't buy unprofitable businesses to start that is asking for pay. You want a profitable business according to its financials that means it's panels we want the financials and piano to somehow match the tax return or decrease the price so that the tax return is your de-risked price. And then we also want a breakdown of our due diligence file kind of looking at where's the risk in the business how many employees are there what kind of assets do we have.

So we have a full due diligence list that we use for this which is important but you want to start high level with the financials and the tax return. It's really about like tweaks to grow the business like what do you usually see of like the small tweaks that you can do to like really just grow the business when you're looking at these boring businesses. Yeah, we got to come back on a different time and talk to you about the next book I'm writing which we're creating some portions of it it's about an operating system how do good companies scale from six to seven to eight to nine figures.

Yeah, and I came up with something with one of my friends whose name is aim and called nine steps to nine figures and don't take the nine figures literally you don't have to create a nine figure business but the idea is a business so big that it it makes profitable money for you. It is fun to run and is trusted and that it will continue to make more money so trust fund profitable and there's really a few steps first if you want to have a profitable fund around business you got to know who you're selling to this is what we call persona so you need to be able to name and label your target market.

Then you got to obsess on product so what product are you selling this person in order to fix their pain that this person in particular really really really wants.

“I like to talk about performance so where in your business are you tracking if you are winning or losing and what does winning look like then you want to have a scoreboard or operational system.”

How can I consistently run a business without a bunch of question marks and games because I have an operating system I run on and then we want to have people. Finally and maybe most importantly in many ways who are the people inside the business that I am hiring firing and what is our culture look like we have nine steps but those are like the first seven that are so important because. If you have the persona the problem the product if you have the performance the operating system and the people. Then you can run a sustainable business over time and sometimes you don't even have to have the people if you have a solo business as well so those things are necessary for scaling is sustainable business.

So let's say we've got our boring business in place things are rocking we're making a profit. Is there any point where we should think about exiting this business like what are their criteria to like think about exiting a business.

So the end of the book starts talking about the exit and the reason why is because the first business that you buy probably isn't going to be the business that you have forever.

“You should do your first deal just kind of thinking like you did your first job you know you didn't plan on staying your first job forever.”

You're like I want to be here for two to five years something like that I want it to make me money I want to learn from it and I either want to scale up where I want to scale out right I want to move up to the sea sweet position or I want to go on to my next job. And it's the same with the business so the first deal that you do should not be your last deal in my opinion it wasn't for me. So since we know that we want to start planning for the exit and the ability for us to eventually sell our business to make more money.

The cool part is most of the money in buying businesses and building businesses is made on the sale.

So you know if you have a business that does a hundred thousand dollars in profit in small business land you can sell that business for three to five acts on average of the profit. So a hundred thousand dollars business sells for three hundred to five hundred thousand dollars to overly simplify.

“That means that if I buy a business for three hundred thousand dollars.”

That makes a hundred thousand dollars in profit but I am able to increase the profit to two hundred thousand dollars. Well now I'm selling this business for somewhere between six hundred thousand dollars and maybe eight hundred thousand dollars. So I have taken multiple years of potential future revenue and fast track them and I moved them up. And so when it comes to thinking about exiting your business there are really only three levelers that matter and the three levers are can I increase the profits.

Can I increase the revenue of the business can I decrease the risk in the business and can I increase the systems processes and people in the business. And if you can do those four things then your business can be worth more when you sell it than when you bought it. So you know as a founder I feel like very emotionally attached to yet media right like I really couldn't imagine selling at least for a really long time right I really couldn't. But with these boring businesses I feel I could like buy one fix it up and then have no emotional attachment to just sell it.

So do you feel like there's something there like it's just like easier to kind of just buy and sell these boring businesses because there's less emotional attachment. For sure I mean you're yeah for you in any content creators listening that's your distribution mechanism. You know gap is your ability for the rest of your life to sell varying things to your audience without using a ton of capital. So you might want to keep you app forever and layer on top of it different products to sell layer on top of it different services to sell layer on top of it owning part of another content creator who.

Maybe you help distribute but you take a percentage of future revenue from that content creator. So this is how we build big conglomerates right you could do what most media companies did which is they acquire assets back in the day Ted Turner was famous at Turner News Network for acquiring assets and he did it the old fashioned way which is acquire radio stations here acquire television rights here acquire distribution rights here. And he used to be talent and he worked his way all the way up to complete ownership and chairman.

And so the way to do that in the 21st century version is what like Alex Cooper's doing right now with call her daddy in unwell. She acquired part of Alex.

I have no idea. I don't want it. It's I only fainted into the business self-improvement world. I'm so like call her daddy you. I know.

I mean not not typically what I talk about. I don't think but brilliant business mind she looked at she looked at Dave Courtney bought bar still sports and said why doesn't this exist exist for women.

I'm going to build it Dave sold his company for what 600 million or something like that.

She's like yeah I'm going to do the same thing and so she started acquiring up other talent. She also acquired and built part of a pop up and a tour company. You see her doing tours right now all over the place you see Alex Alex Earl that's the other one's name. Doing the same thing those are smart business women like don't let the sex talk fool you. They are sharks and I'm here for it.

And that could be the way that you do it.

And then at some point you might do what what bar stool does or some of these big media companies do which is you might say alright talent you want to buy back your rights.

No problem you buy back your rights.

“It doesn't mean you sell yeah but you sold one of your assets and that's how you kind of deal link your personal brand to your business.”

I love that advice. Okay so people are afraid of failing right a lot of people don't actually take the leap into entrepreneurship because they're afraid of failing. I'm sure I have plenty of listeners right now who want to be entrepreneurs who listen to an entrepreneurship podcast who haven't become an entrepreneur because they're scared of failing. They've got golden handcuffs. They probably work a nice corporate job. I've got smart listeners. How can mainstream millionaire help them overcome their fears into becoming an entrepreneur?

Well first of all, mainstream millionaire is peppered with stories of people just like me and just like you who worked in corporate for a long time and leveraged the best form of money there is which is a salary somebody else pays into the future ownership of your business. So one you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

If you're already making revenue by a salary that's incredible you can use that to acquire your company.

In our community and in mainstream millionaire I would say 40% of the people in our community where we teach business buying are W2 employees well paid W2 employees that are buying their first or their second business.

“What mainstream millionaire will teach you how to do is two things that I think are invaluable.”

One, negotiate with the company that you work for or with vendors that you work for for part of businesses you already fully understand partial equity. That should could be your first tip toe into ownership. Number two, it will teach you how do you layer on acquisitions using operators family for instance like my husband runs one of our companies my mom ran another one of my or companies my brother and I co-owned another one of our companies. So how can you use the people around you who maybe don't have your same salary for ownership I think it's beautiful to do for husbands and wives.

The last thing that a book like mainstream millionaire will teach you is when it comes to seeing a deal in front of you that feels so unfair it is an absolute fuck yes you will be able to jump on it. You know Baron Ross Childs said buy when there's blood in the streets especially and even when the blood is your own he was one of the titans of American history one of the richest man ever to live. And what's interesting I think is if you at all are scared about the economy the recession your job your future.

There is nothing better than a little shake up in the market to get better deals. And so what I want you guys to be prepared for is that when that comes you will already know and have turned on your particular activating system in order to see these businesses all around you and do a smart deal. So my last question to you before it closed up the show is really about like future predictions I just interviewed the CEO of Microsoft AI most of us only man he was the founder of Deep Mind and he told me something like mind blowing he's like listen like AI everyone's going to have their own personal AI people are going to be going to job interviews with their AI and having to develop their AI people are going to co-found businesses with their AI and that's just like sort of blew my mind.

And so I'm curious to understand like how do you see like these mom and pop boring businesses really evolving in the next 5 10 years because of AI.

“Such a good question. Let me tell you what I think about AI and mainstream businesses which is.”

The first jobs that AI took were graphic designers artists copy writers maybe even singers in some way they were online jobs why because AI lives online because it's very easy for quote unquote online digital robots to take over jobs that are mainly online. So if right now you have a job that you can do completely from zoom that has a lot of automated processes in it where sometimes you feel like you do a lot of automated tasks be wary of AI because that will come for you first as it already has for many people in the digital world you know where AI is going to take longer.

Where can I have a note built around me where it is not as easy for a digital component to take over and and that's what I think about it and the only thing I'll say there is I'm a techno optimist.

“I think by and large our world is better mathematically because we have more technology today not with.”

Technology hurting us it is helped increase longevity it is help decrease poverty levels and I think you can make a very hard argument except perhaps in the US with anxiety and depression rates that technology is largely good. So I think AI will continue to be really useful for us and with the businesses out there man think about how much we're going to be able to increase our profit margin by using AI right alongside us. Yeah, totally and I'm a stuff I actually told me something about that loneliness factor a lot of the AI that's being developed is actually developing as emotional support and so this AI will help you do your work but also like be your therapist.

And something that I said was like really interesting I just thought you might think it's interesting is that he felt like it's going to really help under privileged kids because he said that it's almost like every under privileged kid would have like a mother or a father who is guiding them.

“So I just think it's going to be really powerful interesting.”

That's horrifying to me.

It's also like who knows hopefully we can steer it in the right direction.

Yeah, hopefully we don't have ads just straight mainlining into everything. Most likely that will have it. Okay, so I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests you can ignore everything that we just talked about just answer it from the heart wherever it comes from. I don't have to worry about the topic that we just spoke about so what is one actionable thing are young and profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow. One of my favorite mentors Bill Perkins told me why he thought he was so successful where did his billions come from and he said that he does one thing differently than everybody else he moves fast by the time that other people have thought about an idea brought it up to their friends consider it.

He's already taken action made three mistakes and found a better way. I think the faster you move the more money that you make the faster you move the larger your bank account. So whatever you're going to do take action more often than you think and quicker than you think. Very good.

“And what is your secret to profiting in life and this can go beyond business and money?”

The best deal I've ever done was the one I do with my husband. It sounds cheesy, accepted, it's true and so I think you know you are going to spend the rest of your life with one human and I wish I would have known earlier how important it is to choose somebody who had a growth mindset wanted to continue to progress and that profits come from profitable relationships done well.

And so especially if you have young women listeners I think you know obsess about becoming a better human so you attract better humans and two people is so much more powerful than one.

Cody this is such a great interview. I love learning from you working everybody learn more about you and everything that you do. I think most important is mainstream millionaire that's the name of the book you can find it at msmbook.com. The ideas we're going to put tons of resources and tools for anybody who picks up the book so that we can all become a little bit more unemployable and have control of our life. That's the idea anyway. I love it guys. I read the book. I got an advanced copy. I absolutely devoured it so I highly recommend it. We'll stick the links in the show notes. Cody, thank you so much.

Thank you! You'll have to tell me if you buy a business. I'll help you anyway you need. Thank you.