Codie Sanchez Reveals 4 Profitable Business Ideas Men Are Sleeping On

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, uh, 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 got millions of followers now. She said she does 100 million impressions a month across all her channels. 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.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road.

Okay. Um, what's up? We got Cody Sanchez in the house. Guest host. Congrats to Sam. He had his baby. He's out on, um, on daddy leave, patty leave, whatever, whatever people call it nowadays. He is, um, 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, um, I decided while Sam's out, I want to 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, a 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, uh, 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?

Do I have to drink hose water? Uh, if I also co-host, is that—

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

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Uh, no, Sam's a dear friend and so is Sarah, and I think they're gonna make hell of parents. So I'm stoked. But yes, those are big, huge, giant. Shoes and he's a giant man to fill. So I'll try to do the best I can.

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

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

So you sent me this Notion doc that can only be described as prolific, epic. It's got like 30 genuinely interesting ideas or opportunities in this. We're not going to get through all of them, but I bucketed some of them into category 1. So opportunity 1, you called, let's get some estrogen in this bitch. Go ahead, take the floor.

I feel like because I am a legitimate fan of the pod, I know, I know my fellow pod listeners. And the idea was that for everybody on Twitter, bro-ing, who typically listens to this podcast, maybe there's this like segment of the market with a little bit more estrogen than you guys have that we could steal our homework. And there are all these businesses that like I would love to see more of. And so since people on 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 basically was joking with your producer and I was like, is this legitimate or is Kody crazy? And she was like, she said explicitly, I feel like you saw into my soul. So it's safe to say women everywhere, I think, will like these ideas. Or you'll tell us if you hate it on the internet.

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

Oh yeah.

I think the best business ideas start with like a, a behavioral observation. So just a behavioral phenomenon. You notice people doing something or you notice the pendulum swinging where 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, of that spectrum. That's usually where there's like a real, real opportunity. So what's, what's the observation here that you have?

Mm-hmm.

Which like used to be the top of the charts and looks like it's come down from top 1 or 2 podcasts to top 20 to 30. On the charts. And so the idea is how can we play to that market?

There's, um, so first of all, do you feel threatened? I feel like you're the girl boss. Like you, you are in the, the top ranking. If somebody said, oh, name like 5 girl boss people, I'd be like, oh, Sophia Amorosa. And then I'd say you, like, I feel like that's kind of you, um, in terms of your public image. Do you look at this like, uh, you know, kryptonite and in some way where you're like, oh shit, uh, they're going the other way now? What do you, what's your reaction to this?

Well, like, Honestly, that whole girl boss, boss babe, babes, bosses, money— like, I want to die. I want to die on the inside anytime I see any of those names. And I remember once I got invited to a speech and they were like, we need a female CEO, uh, to speak here. And I was like, I'm really unclear what my vagina has to do about this. And the guy was like, like, I could just feel him shriveling, you know, on his email. Like, I was like, I don't think it's relevant. Um, so I'm kind of curious. I'm hugely biased, so who knows if I'm right, but I'm happily married. I'm like a very big family gal. Like, I don't talk about sex on the internet. Like, call her daddy. I think you should do whatever you want. Just not my jam. So I'm kind of curious, like, we had these two worlds for so long, right? You were either single, crazy femme, you know, don't need no man, independent, right? Or you were traditional, stay at home, you know, protect the familial unit. And I just think both seem sort of ridiculous. So can't we have people who like, I don't know, both people have some sorts of hobbies and work and that maybe just wishful thinking because the world's too polarized for that.

That's true. Well, even— I mean, you can see it if you look at the Kardashians' body types, for instance. Like, they were like, you know, they were— they had a lot of butt and a lot of up top. They had a lot of curve going on there for a minute. And that became the norm, right? You saw like people getting fillers that were huge. I mean, huge industry. Cosmetology and med spas experienced the biggest growth increase during any historical period in the US, which is wild. We looked at investing in a couple of them and I was like, the margins these places make is incredible. And then what do you see now? The Kardashians, if you're up, up to the know now, Sean, the Kardashians now are like removing their Brazilian butt lifts. They're taking out fillers. There's like that one, Blac Chyna. She like got rid of everything. I guess she had a ton of stuff. And so I think even the really, really big celebrities are starting to realize, ooh, like the trend is changing. And so if you're, you're as, as, as committed to the cause as those ladies are, you change your whole body, which is wild.

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 like a basketball league, like a Brazilian basketball league. And I was like, oh, this could be a great conversation. And 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 the Jenner, Kendall Jenner, whatever, like totally opposite body type as, as Kim Kardashian, right? So it is, uh, I guess like a sign of the times. So what would you do off this? So you notice the tradwife movement, you see the TikTok views going up, you see people more interested in this lifestyle, you start buying white pumpkins and hot gluing Live Laugh Love on 'em. So what, what happens next? What's the opportunity here?

Okay, well, a couple of them that I thought were fascinating. So 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. And basically it's, you know, crafting. But if you think about what the store looks like, it looks like kind of a gnarly CVS, right? Fluorescent lights. Everything's a little dirty, 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? And apparently they do $7 billion a year in sales, which is wild. And then TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, and that whole entity is like $51 billion. 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, we're going to give you the ingredients, you put it 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? Um, and what I thought was funny is I was 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?

Crazy? Yeah, go on.

I do not stand by that wife of Sean, by the way.

She doesn't listen, don't worry. She's never heard one episode.

Um, but women, like, we, 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 like something that we love about a discount on like a HomeGoods item, like a nice little vase, a candle drives men crazy. But I think that there's a play here for HomeGoods or Hobby Lobby 2.0. And all you would have to do is have any sort of retail experience, walk in there, go, oh God, there's nothing nice about this place except that it has what is required and like church it up. So that's one thing, especially because, because retail is so cheap right now. Like we owned a commercial strip mall and couldn't fill the fucking thing. I mean, really having a hard time. And so I like that play.

I like that too. I have a friend that owns almost $1 billion of real estate outright. So not a fund like they own it. It's about 60/40 equity and debt. And they—

I was like, and they do commercial retail. And I remember sitting with them and I was like, do commercial like Isn't that dead? Like, what do you— in my world, it's like everything's going online and retail, brick and mortar, like, this is a graveyard. You're leaning in, you're doubling down. Why do you— don't you need to get rid of this portfolio ASAP? And he was like, yes, in general, but there is a, um, he's like, the segment I went into is like super resilient. Nobody can touch him. He goes, my number one tenant in all of my— he basically goes to these like giant strip mall type places like, or shopping centers that are empty, can't, can't fill a, a lease. And he goes to Hobby Lobby, says, would you like to be here? And Hobby Lobby's like, yes, we're expanding. Because I was like, who's expanding right now? He's like, I'll tell you who's expanding. Hobby Lobby, HomeGoods. And then he explained all these, and he's like, basically anything that's got, um, this kind of DIY craft thing, he's like, it's— you can't touch it. It's like there's so much, uh, demand for it, they just keep expanding. He goes, also The HomeGoods thing, he's like, there's, 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 that if you can find— what did you call it?

A vase?

Is a vase and a vase the same thing?

Same thing. Oh, wow. You nailed it.

And you're just cool if you say one and you're me if you say the other.

All right.

Gotcha. So you go, you find, you find the deal, the sort of needle in a haystack type of thing. And it's kind of thrift shopping, but at a like high-end, you know, in a high-end way. Um, and he's like, yeah, these are super resilient right now. And there was a couple other categories like, you know, car repair, things like that, things that you couldn't take online. Um, but he's basically isolated into these like 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, the Hobby Lobby 1.0, which is like the current Hobby Lobby, is like, you know, half CVS, half Home Depot or something like that. It's not—

yeah, exactly.

It doesn't look like Etsy or Instagram. And I think if somebody just said— which, by the way, you know that, um, that woman, uh, Joanna Gaines, the Chip and Joanna, they have the—

now you're churching up her name. I think it's Joanna, but we could also go with Joanna, either one.

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

Waco?

Yeah.

Yeah, I've been. It's fantastic. I mean, it's Disneyland for like middle-aged white women like me, I think, basically.

Like, damn, you went middle-aged for yourself? Oh wow.

I know. Well, now that I'm late 30s, you know, TikTok tells me that's middle age. But what's fascinating about Joanna Gaines is she, she disrupted like 3 industries that people said they're dead. Magazines. How do you get a magazine that does hundreds of millions of dollars in total revenue from what's built around it? That's wild. And then she did it with, uh, an actual retail space. Um, and then she also did it with, um, well, I guess e-com isn't dying, but she has an incredible e-com business.

So 2 out of 3. Um, so they, would it be just like Magnolia but scaled? Is that like, would that be a winning idea here?

Well, I think we could play some games here. So I had a friend that used to run, um, gosh, what was that store? West Elm. So she used to run something called West Elm Local. And 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. And the cool part about that is HomeGoods rotates its inventory almost entirely. I think it's twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don't know why I know that, but I do. And they— and West Elm Local kind of did the same thing. So they would bring in new clients because you would only be able to get this limited edition pop-up vase or whatever for each period. So I think that'd be cool. You could try it like a 1.0 version would be like, could you do a pop-in at Hobby Lobby? Could you try to talk them into like, for instance, Hobby Lobby is very Christian values, American, like the— they have like Bible quotes up on the— up on their headquarters. They used to sell them investment products back in the day. And so you walk in your headquarters and it's like the Bible on the wall. And so maybe you could talk them into like a local Christian pop-up thing that would go into the store. That could be like an easy little 1.0 way. Maybe not easy 'cause you'd have to get B2B. And then maybe you could do like a pop-up crafting one around a different holiday. And then if you're big time, like your friend with a billion bucks, I would love to go into these where it just was a better shopping experience.

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

The one thing though, I'll say, and I'd be curious, we'll see if Aerie agrees with me and others, but like there's something about you go there and you get the thing. So I don't even think, we're not even that picky.

Oh, we'll give you a box. We'll give you an empty box.

We wanna leave with the candle. We wanna go put the flowers in the vase. Immediately. Um, it's, 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 like, let's go to HomeGoods, honey, and like take her around and get her some candles.

Oh, that's a great idea.

Yeah, we're gonna write that down for later.

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

Um, and it's cheap, so There's that.

You had another one on here that I thought was interesting. You said you tried to buy a Halloween Express.

Oh yeah.

That's fascinating. Tell me, why did you try to buy it? And why is it a try? Sounds like you didn't end up buying it.

Why not? We didn't end up buying it. Somebody else bought it. And basically we tried to buy it because we saw it was $600,000 for a pop-up location. And 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.

And I don't know how to explain. So this is Halloween Express is like Spirit where it pops up for 60 days or something like that before Halloween and it just takes over a vacant space. Is that it?

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 $600K plus the inventory. So you're right, like that's a lot. What would you— what do you— what would one of those locations net, do you think, at the end of that in a Halloween season?

Revenue, though, right?

That's revenue. That's right. Now, the margins on those businesses that they claimed were 30% to 45%. That seems way too high for me. I'm guessing the margins on it are like typical 10% to 20% margin on that kind of business, which 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.

Let's do those numbers. So you said $1 million for one location revenue.

$1 million for this whole business. So that would be 3 locations.

Cool. So $1 million. And then you're saying maybe let's just split the difference there.

20% net.

So $200K. And you're saying that you're buying it for $600K including the inventory. So you're saying couple years and you've broken even on your investment, you've returned your capital. But what you're saying is that these things, 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 million of sales? Maybe $150K or $200K?

Well, so the interesting part to me about Halloween is theoretically a lot of the inventory is the same. So they said that they have about 10 to 15% of the inventory is like the new concepts. So like the, the, the Euphoria outfit, sure, for instance, as opposed to the witches, the lions, the wardrobes, whatever people do each year. And so yeah, if we think that the inventory for that place was probably, you know, $200,000, $250,000 in inventory that they had, you know, Yeah, probably each year you're paying like $50,000 to $100,000 in like the net new inventory. Then you can roll some over. But yeah, I don't— I mean, the problem is I didn't get to actually do it, so I don't know the true numbers. But that seems— that seems reasonable.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Fair enough. Okay. So Halloween store. Interesting. You have a couple 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 you talking about?

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, 3 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, romance, 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 werewolves in them. So I was like, this is weird. Am I weird? Is she weird? Or is this category? And then I went and researched it and I think you guys have covered this before, but there's like $1.3 billion 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 kind of tell because if you look up the best-selling books of all time, Harry Potter, 500 mil, Twilight, 160. Fifty Shades, 150. They're, they're like kind of morphing together. And so I'm curious to see what happens next, but I kind of like this industry. I can't really see you writing a werewolf fantasy novel, Sean, but maybe.

Maybe as a stunt. You know that Sam wrote a romance novel once? You know that story?

Oh, I forgot about that. He did. Or did he write it or did he—

They ghostwrote it. They like ghostwrote it. So basically 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 Amazon bestsellers. Like, what does this word mean actually? Uh, you know, it's like in 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. And so, um, what he found was that to be a bestseller, you basically pick some niche category and then for a day that, you know, you, uh, sell, you know, 1,000 copies or something like that at 99 cents. And you've become a bestseller, you screenshot that, you're, you're a bestseller, you get the flag, some version of that. So it's like, it's a very like gamified thing. There's all these subcategories. So you're, you're trying to just get to the number one inside health, health and wellness inside by a new emerging author or whatever, you know, like there's all these like subcategories. So he found somebody who had done this. So they were, they were making good money, like tens of thousands a month, I think. Selling, um, romance novels on Amazon on just ebooks. And so he commissioned somebody to write one, uh, or he wrote like a couple, and it was like boss and a— it was like a boss and a secretary, and another one was like a werewolf and a something. And, um, 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 can find this if you just—

no, does he still make money on that?

Uh, no, no, not anymore. I think they took it down.

Uh, That's incredible. Well, I mean, honestly, if you go and you—

by the way, the blog post is called Confessions from the Scammy Underground World of Kindle Books. And so, um, his book was called Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin.

Jesus, Sam, so many times.

That guy, that's incredible.

That is incredible. He has way better historical business, uh, shenanigans he's done than me.

Oh wait, wait, no, no, sorry, sorry. I gotta clear the record. That wasn't his, that was the name of somebody else's. His was called Captivating Claire, and the COVID is this really ripped black guy and then this secretary, and it says a first-time billionaire romance. Okay, there we go.

Yeah. Or like ChatGPT. By the way, you know the story of Fifty Shades of Grey? Not like the book story, but the backstory, how it came to be? Uh-uh. Oh, this is crazy. So, uh, I don't know if you've ever seen the, what's it called? The big fan fiction site, Wattpad. Uh, it just sold. It's like a Canadian company. So what happened is, uh, Twilight comes out. It's a vampire story. It's great. Um, and then somebody goes on Wattpad and writes a fan fiction version of Twilight basically. And that was. The early, the V1 of Fifty Shades of Grey. People liked it and it became, and then somebody picked it up and it, they rekindled, branded it as its own thing instead of as a Twilight fan fiction, as its own brand. And it became like, you know, whatever the third or fifth or whatever bestselling book of all time started as a fan fiction blog on a, on Wattpad, I think.

Well, it makes sense actually, because it's all just sort of copywriting in some way. What, you know, Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey, right? And everybody basically used that, uses that from the Bible to Star Wars to, you know, Twilight, et cetera. I mean, the other thing that I remember, so I actually went to a high school that was right next to, and so we were close with the high school of the woman who wrote Twilight, Stephenie. And I remember when it was going wild, that wasn't my category. And so I like reached out to her and was like, hey, like congratulations on your first book. I'm so excited for you. You know, I just wanted to let you know, like I bought a few books for you. To help out. You know, to help out. And then I like looked at her sale, I was like, oh cool, cool, cool. Anyway, I'm gonna go.

Uh, did she reply? Did she ever respond?

Uh, 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.

Yeah, actually not from the beginning though. That's the bad part is it was already successful. Um, that's really good. Okay, so let's, um, let's do one more that's in this, uh, the segment that you called gets estrogen in this bitch. Have we gotten enough estrogen? I don't know. We gotta get one more idea in here. Go pick your favorite.

Okay, let's brainstorm on the fly here. So Uh, first of all, when you started saying there was like this little egg-shaped thing, I thought where you were going was, uh, like you said, like a sort of a smart device. But so you pee on the stick, it tells you kind of where you're at in your cycle. But how cool would that be as a little bedside replacement to your alarm clock? When it glows, hey, it's time. It's time to get busy. Uh, and you, you could see based on the light. So that's a little more tasteful than these apps that are like, You're, you know, your, your ESG levels are spiking right now or whatever. It's like, it's like, uh, let's just, let's just add a little bit of romance to this process that becomes very, very clinical. And so I'm thinking bedside egg, bedside, uh, replacement to the alarm clock. Okay. That's idea number one. Idea number two. Have you ever heard of the Flo app? Yes. It's, I think it's the, it's flo.health. It's the most popular pregnancy period tracking app in the world. Like, Their website gets like 8 million uniques a month or something like that. Crazy. Um, last I had heard they were doing something like 30 million-ish in ARR, which is pretty bonkers for a mobile app and way more than you would think a niche mobile app like this would do. That was like 5 years ago that I heard that number. I would not be surprised if Flow was doing, you know, uh, like 100 million. I'm just gonna search the revenue, see if it, if it's out now.

Yeah. And how much they're worth, because I couldn't also figure out the valuation on these companies. Like, Mira's got to be— because can you imagine you get me at a point where you're going to know the second that a woman is pregnant, which is the highest likelihood of purchasing intent you could have, right? And like, what would that data be worth? And then also you could sell the data to every medical provider imaginable. And have add-ons and affiliate deals for X supplement, X thing you got to drink or whatever.

It's a good point. I mean, it's sort of— I've been messing around lately thinking about levels to the game of business, like how it would be interesting to categorize all businesses as what level on a, let's call it, just a multiple and margin level. If you just say like, what multiple could you get for this business and how high of margins do you get for this business? And maybe like, how reasonable would it be for you to get to, I don't know, $10 million or $100 million, whatever your goalpost would be. And I think like a level 1 business, a lower tier business that would be probably profitable on like day 1 to 30 would be helping just on the consulting aspect of that. Because you're right, I have a friend that paid $25,000 for help navigating the adoption process in Texas. And they— I should figure out what the name of the thing 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 list for adoption in Texas. So if that exists, there's got to be 32 different ways to do consulting for adoption in this space.

That's smart. Well, even we both invested— you invested in Hone Health too, right? Yeah, I invested in them also. And part of the stuff that I think is really smart with what they're doing is just it's such a pain to get access to those type of, you know, TRT and different things that men want and do it in a legal way and really be able to trust what you're getting. And so there's probably a bunch of that inside the women's space too. Hone, I keep telling them they should launch something for women because I think it's a really underserved market. And if you think about it, you know, men sort of dominate most of the dieting trends in general. So you had like Tim Ferriss normalize keto, and so I tried keto for a while. And then I went to— I now have a doctor, Gabrielle Lyon, who's a stud. And she's like, the thing is, that doesn't work as well for women. I'm like, no, no, I read the book. I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan. And it just turns out a lot of that stuff, males— men and women are biologically different. Um, And so, yeah, I think there's lots of cool ways to play in that space. Also, like with stuff like peptides, although those are getting federally banned, so maybe not the best idea right now.

Peptides are getting federally banned?

Yeah, we should check my homework on that, but that's the word from the husband.

Is that like Ozempic, a peptide?

Well, my understanding is most of the reason why peptides are getting banned is because they are hard to patent. And so because of that, there's, you know, conspiracy theorists like Big Pharma doesn't like that. And so they're getting a lot of pushback. But my husband's like number one advocate, thinks everybody should be on peptides, should do research on it.

Yeah. So semaglutide, which is Ozempic or Wegovy, that's the generic name. Semaglutide is a peptide. But yeah, 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 we'll close out this section. You wrote, uh, life/partner hack from woman to a man, from a woman to a man, dot dot dot. What's your, what's your hack?

Yeah, well, this also goes to my husband. Yeah, his, his hack is that, uh, the best money he's ever spent on being in a marriage is a subscription to flowers on a monthly basis for your wife. And 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 like beautifully little burlap tied bow, etc. And, and comes every single month. You don't have to think about it. You get auto gifts for your wife. And I'm pretty sure I'll take any— I'll take almost any guarantee that there will never be a wife that would be mad if they got this on a consistent basis. But husbands are just not going to remember consistently. So like, do yourself a solid and just, you know, buy some flowers on a consistent basis.

Okay, this is interesting to me. So first of all, What's the deal with flowers? Why do girls love flowers so much? Uh, 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. Like a candle, like if I smell a candle, I'm in. Um, you know, if, uh, I don't know, if we buy like a nice, uh, 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 the Is it the flowers or is it this man loves me? Is that what it is? It's just like reassurance.

It's definitely not the love part. It's definitely flowers.

It's actually the flowers.

It's, uh, it 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— if you think about high ROI, low ass pain, number one winner, like number one winner. But I think it's actually just we like plants and flowers. I don't know if that's a pre, you know, genetic disposition or if of, um, you know, society's patriarchy is upon us. But like, women like flowers. And so I don't know what the thing is. But also the fact that, like, I remember when I was younger, Sean, like, I don't— I can't remember if you've ever said one on here, but when I was young and I had no money, there was very low-hanging fruit things for what a rich person would have. And one of them was like, one day I'll have fresh flowers in my house. Every single day, and that'll mean I'm super rich. And okay, so I think there's a part of it that's also just like, this is such a— it's like an I made it 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?

And even if it's on a subscription and, you know, he didn't think— he thought about it once 3 years ago, it doesn't matter.

You just want the flowers.

I love it.

Okay, I just want the flowers.

Okay, I'm gonna report back. I'm gonna try this. Report back.

But don't tell her I don't care. And I just set it up on subscription 3 years ago. No, no qualifiers.

Okay. Well, you know, no guarantees with me. All right. So let's go to the, the small business acquisition stuff. So, yeah, first explain your business model. So you got a media business, which is you create content and your, your output is insane. Like I put you, Pomp, and Sahil, I feel like are so consistent. And so omnipresent everywhere and so consistent with your message. It is unbelievable to me. I can't, 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, uh, you know, who talks to his friend Sam twice a week. So like the way you guys do it is crazy. That's a media business that can be profitable on its own. People maybe advertise, subscribe. I think you have like a paid community or something like that that people pay for. I think that's pretty lucrative, right? Like that's a big moneymaker for you.

Yeah. Well, a couple of different things. One thing that's interesting of those 3 people you picked, what's the common denominator between all 3 of us? We were all in finance, which is categorically a fucking miserable industry to be in for the most part. And we all, I think all of us did private equity or investment banking, which means that we had crazy, crazy hours for a long time. And so anytime like somebody talks to me, like I always kind of giggle when the creators are like, I'm burnt out. I'm like, from filming TikToks, like for a couple hours, I think we're fine.

That tweet fatigued you?

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

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?

Well, I guess we have sort of 3 different businesses now. So one is the content business, which is the one that's Super Public. And we kind of stumbled into that, I think only 2 years ago. So that would be like the latter part of 2020 is when we started creating a business around content. And I was in private equity at the time when I started that. And then that today is comprised of like newsletter, We have a community, we have a bunch of different media channels, and now I guess a couple newsletters. Uh, we have a course on buying businesses, and we do a little bit of ad sponsorship stuff, but I don't, I don't really love that. 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 like how The Daily Wire does it, for instance. Um, and then the second business we have is what was the family office, what's now Main Street Holding Company. And that is like the small businesses that I talk about. So we've owned everything from podcast production businesses to graphic design agencies to laundromats to car washes to each—

your own money. This is— you've raised money.

What happens? My own money.

So it's your own money you're using to buy these. And so that's a portfolio. You said there's 3 businesses. What's the third?

And the third is we have a venture capital fund and then we also have, I guess, you know, alongside that, my own passive angel investments or whatever. And so those would be like Hone Health we did in the venture fund. We invested in Andrew Wilkinson's media companies. That was just a personal investment that I did. It didn't go into the, to the VC company. So that's where like our minority investments go. 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 kind of like, like, okay, the podcast called My First Million. When did you make your first million? Was it in the private equity investment banking world or was it after that when you went on your own?

No, I made my first million when I was working for other people. I'm like the opposite of you. I'm not really as I was. Risk scares me, actually. So like, 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 Hormozy, and then like hope that business turns into $160 million. That like scares me too much. I'm a wuss. And so I worked in corporate for a long, long, long time. I ran a bunch of the businesses. I became a partner in them. And so I made millions before I ever really ran my own thing by myself. And 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.

You say you bought businesses. These are like the— like I bought a car wash, laundromat type of thing, or what type of businesses are you buying?

Yeah, well, I bought some back in the day that I bought, but they didn't make me any money. It was like I bought a website, 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. Like I tried the sexy things websites and I wasn't very good at them. And then it was, oh wait, if I buy a laundromat, I have a hard time fucking this thing up. Like I can make some money on that and I can have somebody else run it. And if I pay that somebody else and then we have 3 or 4 or 5 of them, that's enough money for them to make a good living and me to make a good living. And then maybe we could do that exact same thing in a bunch of different sectors. And I just— back then when I was doing that, that was not cool. Now I feel like it's kind of cool. The holding company thing is cool on Twitter, right? In fact, I didn't tell anybody that I owned laundromats. One, I thought I might get fired because it could be considered conflict of interest. So I was concerned about that. And then secondly, I didn't think it was that cool. You know, at the time I was like running a Latin American investment business. And so we had $1 billion 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 like super proud, but I hated it, was going through divorce and was working like 70 hours a week and on red eyes to Chile basically weekly.. And so I bought the businesses to get the fuck out of corporate. And then when I finally replaced my income is when I thought, oh, well now I'm gonna take a jump and become a partner at a private equity fund. And then finally I got the balls to go do it all by myself. But it took me a long time to get there.

Yeah, that's, everybody's got their, their path. I, 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 till I was 19. You know, you definitely don't need to, you know, you, everybody's got a different starting point. Uh, so that's for sure. So you, um, uh, let's talk about the laundromat thing. I've told this story on the pod before, but I was at a dinner once with this guy who, uh, was a CEO of a public company and he was like, he was like fast. He's like, you know, you know, people are like really busy. They don't use social media. So he's like, um, he's trying to relate to me. So he's like, oh, you do podcast? What's, uh, what's the name? And I mean, I can see he doesn't even know where the podcast app is. Cause he's like, does real work for a living. And so he's like, he's like, I'll definitely subscribe. Can you show me how? How do you subscribe to a podcast? I've always wanted to know. And I'm like, wow, this guy's like, you know, just getting going. And one of the things he said, he's like, he's like, you know, I see these people on Instagram talking about laundromats and he's like, are we all just fucking stupid and we should just be buying laundromats or are they stupid? And they think laundromats are a great business. He's like, it's who's stupid? He's like, I'm worried I'm stupid and that I shouldn't be doing all this like stressful work running this like company with thousands of employees. Do I just need to go buy 4 laundromats and chill? Like, is that actually the answer? And so he was, uh, laughing about it and he's like, 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. Don't intend to own a laundromat in Albuquerque or whatever. Like, that's not my, my jam, but it is for some people. And you obviously are an advocate for it. So this is your opportunity. So, so educate me, drop some knowledge on me. Okay. What is this deal with buying? You can pick either Actually, do laundromat, not car wash, because I actually know the car wash business a little bit. But let's do laundromat.

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 as a job, let's say, and have some ownership in that business. And 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. And, and so when I first started talking about this, I was like, the thing is, I've been in finance. Like, I went through all the levels and 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 the laundromat is like the machine breaks. What do you do? There's a homeless person there. Like, how do you handle that? Somebody breaks into, uh, to your laundromat and breaks the glass door. And like, any human could handle that. And so, um, 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, 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. Um, but this is why I've been obsessing on levels of the game. The problem with laundromats are they're a terrible business if you're really good at business. So like, if you're good at business, the, the laundromat— I invested in one laundromat, it wasn't one that I owned complete, uh, control of, that did $3 million a year. That's the biggest laundromat that I've ever seen individually.

That's revenue? What is that?

That's revenue.

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

Yeah, it's a very big laundromat.

So it's doing like $8,000 a day?

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

Okay, gotcha.

It's location dependent or what's the bottleneck there?

Yeah, location dependent. Also just demographics of, of your, you know, segment. So if you're in a poorer neighborhood, wash and fold might not be as much of a driver for you. If you're in a higher-end neighborhood, it could be competition.

So those are making, you know, between $20,000 and $50,000 a year for the owner.

Yep.

That's right. So you got like, 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 minimum wage employee or something. So, so you want to own multiple. That would be the play here.

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 like, what's the best sector to buy? And I'm like, that's a dumb question. The best sector to buy is like the one that's uniquely aligned to you.

So what was it for you? What was it for you?

The reason I bought the laundromat is because I had an operator that already knew how to run laundromats and had found one that we could buy for very cheap. And I was like, I don't like a lot of risk. I could, I could front $100K. Okay, buy this. And then if we run that and that 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, and then why wouldn't you own a little laundromat? And then I like to compare it versus houses or like short-term rentals. So like the average short-term rentals, we should check my numbers, but does somewhere like $120, $160 in net income a month, and you put up $250,000 on average for one of those homes. So like compare a single-family home for $250K versus a laundromat for $100K, and this one's making you $30,000, $50,000 a year, and I'm sorry, $20,000 to $40,000 a year, and this one's making you a couple thousand dollars a year, that's actually kind of a good, that's a better risk-reward trade-off. And so I think it just depends. And then the other thing I think is you start with one business and not a lot of Americans are probably like your listeners, a lot of Americans like haven't run a big business before, wouldn't know what to do with a tech business. And so them starting with something pretty simple in their local community and then they go, okay, I know how to run this. I made $20K to $50K on it. I didn't risk my house by buying too big of a business or starting too big of a business. Now I go and sell this to somebody else and do a bigger endeavor. At least that's how I think about it.

So your— the first business you bought was a laundromat or was it something else?

My very first business was a website.

Back to that. So you bought the website stuff, then you went brick and mortar after that.

Yeah, brick and mortar. Laundromat was my first brick and mortar business.

What did you do after that?

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

How many laundromats did you buy?

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

Okay.

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

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

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, stolen from. That was a small business that supported other small businesses. From a tax and accounting perspective. So they didn't do the taxes, but they did bookkeeping. And kind of funny that they would be the ones to do the stealing.

But that's the biggest issue in buying small businesses. And I think I lost— I probably lost a couple hundred K on that deal. And the biggest issue with buying small businesses is that you run out of cash 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, you know, that they needed to share this with you or they didn't actually track their finances very well. And so you ended up buying something you didn't want. So that one I got stolen from. But a lot of times the small businesses do not actually have the finances that I, that I think they do.

What about the best deal?

Yeah, the best deal that I've ever did was probably mostly from the land acquisition. So we basically bought a big plot of land that had an RV park on it. Also like a series of vending machines, also like a little area for people to camp and, you know, go into nature, whatever. And that business, the appreciation of the land ended up being what, what paid the most for it. So that business made us a few million bucks, which is kind of cool. And we definitely didn't put that in. Right. And maybe the other business that I think will be my best deal ever is a series of car washes we bought. Because ever since this company called Mr. Car Wash went public to the tune of billions of billions of dollars—

Multiples went up.

Oh, fuck. I mean, we've gotten offers that are just wild on these. So I don't want to— I want to 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. But 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 going to have some crazy exit. Like you're going to cash flow. That's the goal. You cash flow. And if you want to have a crazy multiple exit, buying these tiny businesses, unless you scale them up in a big way, is probably not going to be the way to do it.

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

Yeah, well, one, what do you mean by realized value? You mean you actually want to sell it and then get $100 million from it, or you want a third party to mark it up and say that it is worth $100 million?

The way I thought about it there was 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, not really a liquid— it's not a profitable business. So, you know, you couldn't actually exit for that amount, which is often like the Silicon Valley, how do you get a $100 million valuation but you could never sell that business for $100 million type of thing. So not that, 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.

Yeah, well, for me, I have an issue, which is that I'm pretty ADHD. I like to do a lot of different things. Like if you look at my work history, I think the longest I ever stayed at a job is like 5 and a half years or something like that. And I was moving from different investment firms every 2 years or so. So I kind of like the portfolio approach because it allows me to be ADHD in a bunch of different businesses. And so I get to like pop in and pop out. Theoretically, if I wanted to build a billion-dollar 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 $1 billion. I just haven't had an idea that I was that obsessed with that I thought was fun that I still need to do because I, 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, and I was going to build up this, this thing. And then, you know, I did that for like 15 years working for other people, and then I did it for a couple more years by myself. And I got to this point 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. Nightmare. I refuse to go to Starbucks. We have like a company policy. You're not allowed to buy from big corporate chains. And so I kind of thought, man, if I go and build this thing that I—

What happens if someone does walk in with a Starbucks? What do you do? Just hit it out of their hand? Smack that shit onto the floor?

Actually, Tanner, who's here right now, knows that. He walked into my place in California. We lived there for some of the year with two Starbucks. And I just looked at him and I was like, what are we doing here? And he was like, and then the next week, because I have a good team, I ordered Chipotle on accident. And so then I had to, then I had to pay for my own Chipotle.

Tanner said the F word.

What?

Frappuccino.

It's like, uh, I, um, yeah, I don't know. I think once you start making enough money, like at some point you're like, I want my money to mean something and I want all this work to mean something.. And so I was like, I don't wanna own a billion-dollar portfolio of small businesses and become everything that I talk shit about. That doesn't feel that great. And instead what we'll do is we're starting to buy a lot more businesses in the 3 cities that I'm really involved in, which is San Diego, Austin, and Phoenix. And so I wanna own where I live. That seems to make sense to me and feel good. And then I cash flow off that. And then the second thing I wanna do is I'm gonna go really aggressively all in on. I'll ask you and Sam about it later if you, what you guys think, but we're gonna plow a couple million bucks and we're gonna raise a couple million bucks on one bet, which I've never done before. I've never raised for any of my, 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.

Like to start or to buy?

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

And I'm guessing can't talk about that right now.

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

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. All right, so you, um, so that's the game you're playing. You're— 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 the 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 like—

well, we have a portfolio that you could— I mean, it depends how you value it, but let's say it's, it's worth about about $75 to $100 million in, in, um, a lot of car wash value right now. A lot of car wash.

That's a lot, a lot of soap, baby.

And then, so we have that, and that's cool. Um, really cool. Young Cody would be like, that's fucking wild. Um, the next game we're gonna play is a really big single bet. And so, um, we'll have those two things.

And why, why not just retire and be tradwife and pumpkins and Live, Laugh, Love.

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

And so, um, you're like, I have to buy this pumpkin company for this to have been worth it as a hobby.

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

Yeah, I got hobbies. I, I got hobbies. I love to play basketball, but my hobbies are—

Oh yeah, you do.

They're things that, um, fall into like really specific categories. So not— I don't have niche hobbies like some people are like, oh, I love, you know, studying duck calls and I have all these little duck kazoos or whatever the hell. Mine are not niche like that. They're very common things. I like playing poker. I like basketball. I like working out. I like, you know, like I like shit that everybody likes, right? I'm like the basic bitch of like hobbies. However, I like to do them in a certain way that makes them more fun to me. So for example, I got a lot of joy building a home gym and having a trainer who's like my boy who comes over and we work out here. And then friends who we meet will come drop in for workouts with us. And so I get to like hang out with my friends when I do that. So I try to build a lifestyle around it. Or like basketball, instead of just going play pickup basketball at 24 Hour Fitness, we do this thing called Camp MFN where we rent a house, rent a gym, fly in, you know, a bunch of awesome founders or kind of like celebrity people who love to play basketball and an NBA trainer. And we spend the weekend pretending we're NBA players, right? Like we cosplay. And so I will try to take the hobbies, basic hobbies, but do them— common hobbies in an uncommon way is what's done it for me as far as being, being a fun thing to invest in.

I like that. Well, yeah, I need to— I need hobbies, basically. I have none. I like to work out. I like to hang out with, like, friends that, like, 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, you know, former Navy SEAL, so he's amazing at shooting. Him and Sam are always hobbing, and I'm not.

I'm surprised Sam hangs out with him because Sam, uh, wants to always be able to eat and kill everybody in the room or whatever he always says. And, uh, 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.

Sam does try to fight him a lot, which is like a very Samism, you know, like a son to his dad.

Oh, Let's fight. And then the dad's like, okay, sure, let's play wrestle. So yeah, I'm gonna tell you one tip for hobbies.

Yeah, tell me.

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

You're like, did you see my Twitter ad for my newsletter though?

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I got the CPC down and they're like, wow. Like I remember used to care about those things. Um, so, so that's one way to do it. And the other is to go to a place where, um, like hang out with like, like artists or Hollywood people. Cause we hang out with like actual artists. For whom the art is the goal and not the recognition from the art. All they want to do, like 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. And they're like, so why are you doing it? And you're like, because it leads to outcomes. And then they're like, oh, you know, like you're like a, it's like you value things so differently than an actual artist. So two ways, if you want to like, round yourself out is, uh, immerse yourself though, and then the embarrassment will fuel you to find something that is, uh, non, um, it's not about the—

a non-work hobby. Yeah, the thing that I have found about that is, uh, I don't actually care that much what people think, and 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 we're compensating for it with lots of free sex. I think you should go wild. But, uh, I don't think it's that fucking cool, actually. So maybe I do maybe have one hobby, which is that I, um, I really find, uh, like, the political movements in the country interesting. Not like Republican versus Democrat, but maybe that's my— that's my toxic trait hobby.

That's your Roman Empire.

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

None of the words you just said the last minute even mean anything to me. You said political movements that are not Democrat, Republican. I'm like, what the hell is she talking about? Then the second thing you said is I'm part of a think tank. I'm like, what, 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 can you go in reverse order? What are political parties not the Democrats and Republicans?

So American Enterprise Institute has this one idea, which is that all ideas should be in a 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, what are our regulations. And so they're bipartisan, there's Democrats and Republicans in it. And, um, and I'm part of a group that donates every year, and we go to a couple events for them. And so that might be a hobby of mine, I suppose.

Something like UBI or something, is that what you mean? Like, is that the idea?

Like, like, they'll have Dick Cheney and, um, Michelle Obama on a stage together, and they'll be like, ready, go, you know, and they'll kind of compete their ideas. And, and it's closed doors, and you can't video it, um, and you can't talk about the specific things that were talked about inside of there. So it allows these politicians to be perhaps more realistic than they would be on the news sites. So I find that to be really interesting.

It's kind of cool.

Yeah, I think you guys would like it. And then this guy, Arthur Brooks, who would be incredible, he used to run AEI and was fascinated because he actually was like good friends with the Dalai Lama, which that's, that's impressive. But then simultaneously was able to pull together more funding. Like, 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. And he is— if you can imagine what this is like, like you go to this event, all the— most of the leaders of the free world are there. You fly in. To a private airport and in Sea Island, and you go to this private hotel, there's all these securities. It's like a little mini UN. And the guy who runs the think tank is talking to a lot of— since it's free markets and competition of ideas, there's a lot of conservatives there. And, and 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, which for conservatives is like not normalized at all, that nobody wants to talk about that. They want to talk about how all the Democrats are crazy. And so, um, I really have a lot of respect for him. He has like a bestselling book with Oprah now and, uh, and a documentary out about capitalism.

And so, wow, this guy, uh, yeah, I see him posing with Oprah. Uh, okay, this is interesting. And so you go to these like private, um, private events. How much, what's the, what's the absolute minimum one has to donate in order to be invited to the private thingy?

I think it's $25K or $50K. Okay. Um, all right, go through a screening process.

Uh, they're gonna realize I don't, I don't know anything and don't give a shit about anything.

Oh, they did. I remember the first time I went, they're like, you do what? Where? Like, they thought this whole internet— because I've only been doing it for like probably 3 years. Uh, and so I told them that I, I did little— I wrote little blogs on the internet. And they were like, well, that's, huh, cool.

It used to be my secret that I like don't care, don't vote, don't watch the news, uh, ever. Like not as like a general thing. Like I just don't. And, um, and I used to just not say it because when I did, people would look at me like, oh, so you're just like, it's some combination of you're dumb or selfish. And they're like, you're some combination of dumb and selfish. I don't really understand. And I never really knew how to put it into words. Um, cause I was like, I don't know. I've just focused. Yeah. I'm on a focus 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.. And then somebody said this to me, they go, they go, yeah, yo, 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 go, you know, I think actually the world would be a better place instead of worrying about the government, learning how to govern yourself. And I really took that, that like resonated with me because I was like, Oh, that's exactly it. Uh, I realize I can't even fully govern myself, whether it's, uh, you know, I shouldn't eat that and I go eat that, or I should wake up early and I sleep in, or, um, 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. You, what am I worried 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. And so That was the first time I heard something that made me feel good about that, where I previously just felt a little embarrassed, but not to the point 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.

Well, I always liked that. I think it was Jordan Peterson that said, before you clean up the world, clean up your room. And so I think there is actually a true component to, man, if we actually all just took care of our own things and our own things could be our family, our friends, our community. Life would probably be a little bit better. So, um, I support you in your purple, non-blue, non-red nature, Sean.

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

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Well, also, I mean, why you got to tell other people how to live? That's my biggest complaint. I'm like, you do you and I'll do me. And 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.

Okay. I want to ask you about content. So you have built a big content brand across newsletters, social media, TikTok, YouTube. You're everywhere. Give me the kind of— can you do a rant on like, what is your approach? Like, you were Cody Sanchez, but at some point you created Cody Sanchez the brand. And can you explain to me what went into that, um, because I think most people don't know what goes into that. I think a lot of people try to take an aw shucks mentality and say, I didn't really—

I hate—

I didn't think too much.

I just—

it just all sort of happened organically. And anybody out there who would like to do the same is like, great, so I guess I'll just hope it all just happens. Um, whereas I, 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 were doing and it paid off. I'd love to hear your version of that.

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

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 gonna sell me their business. And then once they sell me their business, I'm going to build that business through my audience. So I'm gonna funnel more of the audience into said business. And then finally, when I go to exit the business, I'm gonna have a community of buyers that wanna buy this business. And then I'm gonna do it again and again and again. And it sort of ended up working out like that. I would say most often now it's that I get referrals to businesses that I wanna buy. It's not so much cold outreach, So maybe it was slightly off from what I thought the thesis was going to be.

Right, right. And 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— so bad criticism is this person's full of shit. Good criticism is, it's, it's not all perfect, right? It's like that's like a good version of criticism, meaning you're in a good position if somebody says that. So for example, I want to give you a chance to to answer this in two ways. The first is every criticism I believe has a kernel of truth. When I go read the YouTube comments and somebody says blah blah blah about me, it might be mean, it might have been rude, might have been uncalled for, but it's usually not completely baseless. There's some kernel of truth in it. And the same thing on the good side. Somebody compliments me, it's usually not as good as they say, but there's a kernel of truth and that's what led to that sentiment. So here's some of the things that people would say about you. Cody Sanchez, her real business is in creating content, getting you to pay her to teach you how to buy a business, not in the businesses she's bought herself. In what way would that be true and in what way would that be false?

Yeah, I think one— I think you're right. One of our mottos is question everything. So I don't think there's anything wrong with 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 the fact. Now, would I be upset if all of a sudden we're doing $25, $50, $100 million in a community? And this— my idea of an M&A for MBA, like an MBA M&A, if I could actually create that and I could supplant what we're getting in institutions and education systems, I'd be fucking thrilled. So the second that I make way more money with communities and courses, I will be shouting it at her. Yes. Like, we built the best fucking thing ever. We're doing tens and tens of millions of dollars and you're welcome. Like, happy. The second, like, what would be true about that is, yeah, we're really good at this. Like, it is a big business. It does millions of dollars a year. Uh, I think we have really quickly supplanted anybody in the industry. Like, we are the name if you want to go learn how to buy a business. Soon we will be the name if you want to learn how to sell a business. And my goal is we will also be the name if you want to learn how to build a business. So we will own the entire ecosystem. I'm in talks right now with University of Texas and University of Austin, which is Joe Lonsdale's, uh, 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. Right. 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. And 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 fuck up. Like one time we did this tweet thread, huh, and it was a 7 instead of a 2 for the number of years that I was at Goldman, which is like, you can see it on my, uh, Form U4 and my, uh, LinkedIn. You can see how long I was at Goldman. And I had all these people be like, I knew you were just a fucking secretary and you were only there for, you know, 2 years, not 7. And that one actually bothered me a little bit because I was like, we were wrong. And so Fuck, that's, that's not right.

Yeah, well, it's a typo, who cares? Um, you know, like, you're wrong, but like, don't beat yourself up over that, right? Like, that's nothing. Yeah.

Um, it was true.

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

Yeah. One, 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 going to 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 want to do a math model on this. So much of what we are told in today's society, in my opinion, is the opposite. It's like it's clown world. 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 want to lose money." Because this is like, a very small— it's a $10 million 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 billion-dollar 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 want to 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 remedied it. Now, I hate comparisons to Grant Cardone or Tai Lopez because I'm not talking about those two 'cause 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 point in which it's comfortable. Um, 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, because there's always going to be— you know, if you think about it also, Sean, like, so if we have 100 million views a month or 5 million followers, like, 1% is going to be fucking nuts for sure, just like categorically. And 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 was a typo. That's our bad.

Right. Well, I'm hoping that people who listen to this, 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, which is why I asked some of these questions to you because 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. So as far as, as far as I've seen. So I hope that people, you know, come to whatever opinions they want on that stuff. That's, that's on them at that point. 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, You know, like, what's wrong with the chip in my brain that wants to buy exciting businesses? Like, I only want to buy exciting businesses. And I think that is probably harder, higher degree of difficulty. Yeah, but, you know, you, you choose, you get to choose the game you play. That's, that's the game I want to play.

Or you just invest in, you invest in Xavier's thing, which we both did too, you know. Yeah. Which is like small businesses that way. I mean, and the only other thing I want to say is like, 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 industry hate, which is you're taking complex ideas and you're skinning them down so a lot of people can execute on them. And like, they're not— a lot of people 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, which is here's what works for me, here's some relatively complex stuff, here's how I think we could really simplify it. And 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.

My, uh, I invest in the same company you did, ShopGenie, which is like the perfect example of a boring business that can be pretty big. And so these guys make like, if you go to an auto repair shop, uh, if I, if you need to go get your car repaired today, you basically have to drive. It's only like walk-in essentially. You drive in or you call and nobody picks up the phone. You drive up and then they're like, ah, it's gonna be a couple hours. You could just like leave it here and like go home on foot. And you're like, ah, shit. Like, damn, I wish this was like, I wish this worked like everything else in the world worked. Meaning I wish I could just go online and book an appointment and show up and drop off my car and be done and pay you online. Not like, you know, not like, you know, in cash here or whatever. And so they made this like 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.

Yeah, well, and 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, like we did a little tweet for them and a little announcement of investing in them and they got like 30 franchise users who have multiple franchises underneath them. Right. And so the ability to help somebody scale with a podcast like yours is really cool, which makes sense because you did support Shepherd. And I think that's like a similar, similar model.

Yeah, we should own more of those, huh? I mean, 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 like CringeCon. And 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 like the keynote from, you know, because one of our friends owns a small self-storage company that we're going to invest in. And 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 wanna see this. So there's so many ways to do it.

There's a giant compilation of every like niche conference would be hilarious. Oh my God.

Well, yeah, I know I'm going to speak at Balaji's conference next week about like, they use all these words, Shaan, that you probably know 'cause you're smarter than me. Like ACC/EE in parentheses on your Twitter bio.

Dude, I don't know what the hell that is. I've seen that everywhere.

Yeah, that's what I told them. I'm like, I need a dictionary to speak here. And, and what I thought was fascinating is I'm like, you have this whole world that nobody else knows about. And, you know, you guys have all made billions or hundreds of millions off of it. So, so many ways to make money. And that to me would actually be boring. Like, I don't, you know, acronyms, I don't need all of those.

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

Dude, that's going to be me next week. I already told Balaji, I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to 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, 5-minute little speeches. And I'm like, one, that's hard, but okay, we can do that. And he's like, so I want to do a bunch of them. And 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 and then we'll walk up on the stage and we could press play.

I was like, like a DJ.

I was like, Balaji, you are the smartest man I've ever met.

And also, no, he's like, and then instead of coming to the conference, everyone just stays home and actually they just listen to it on their own in the podcast app. It's a podcast actually.

This is, yeah. I mean, thank God humans think differently, but I'm, 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.

And they're like, we don't.

We don't.

And that's that. Next. All right, uh, Cody, this has been great. Sorry I took you so far over time, but.

Not at all. This was a blast.

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

Cody Sanchez on all the socials. Uh, pretty straightforward.

All right, that's it.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.