Unlock Financial Freedom: Secrets From A $50 Million Portfolio - Codie Sanchez

if you want to know what the key to happiness is it's struggle this is the thing that I'm not sure about hey friends and welcome back to Deep dive the weekly podcast where it's my immense pleasure to sit down with authors entrepreneurs creators academics and other inspiring people and we find out how they got to where they are and what strategies and tools we can learn from them to help build a life that we love what you're about to hear is an interview between me and the wonderful Cody Sanchez now Cody has an incredibly inspiring story she started her career as a journalist covering human trafficking and she was confronted with extreme violence and the worst of Humanity on a daily basis and then after a few years of that she made a hot pivot into the world of Finance I saw things that that I don't think most people in the UK or the the us see I wanted to understand money I didn't come from it but I thought maybe if I understand money then I could understand this thing called power and I could help more people have it but I could also protect myself too and since entering the world of Finance she's become a partner at a private Equity Firm and she's the founder of contrarian thinking and unconventional Acquisitions I buy bar in businesses and what I mean by that is that I buy mom and pop businesses all around the US and then I talk about it on the internet in the conversation we talk about how most of us including Cody don't really have linear career paths and actually trying different things early on and skill stacking will get you into the best position to be successful however you define that further on in life we talk a lot about hustle culture and this idea between sort of working hard and working smart and Cody shares her advice for women in the workplace as well I've found it to be a huge benefit that I'm a woman in the workplace one of my mentors told me something that I thought was kind of true he's like the men that work with you typically either want to bother you friend you or they want to [ __ ] you Cody welcome to the show thank you how would you describe what you do to people who might not know you I buy boring businesses is usually what I say unless I'm sitting next to somebody on an airplane then I just tell them I'm like a salesperson so that they you know nobody wants to talk on airplanes right yeah so so that's that would be my go-to there but otherwise I say I buy bar in businesses and um and what I mean by that is that I buy mom and pop businesses all around the US and then I talk about it on the internet and apparently people find that interesting these days it's nice yeah how how did you how did you get here how did how did you end up winding from starting out as a journalist it's my understanding to ending up buying boring businesses I don't believe that humans have linear paths ever anyone who has had an interesting career in my opinion has had a complete Divergent set of experiences like I was sitting next to yesterday so recency biased this guy Jeffrey Kent who started Abercrombie in Kent and he was telling me about you know his first business he ran a safari and then he sold shoes and he did all of these unique things that end up skill stacking you to some position where nobody else can be better at it than you and so thankfully that was mine I started off as a journalist human trafficking coverage along the U.S Mexico border so the cool part about that is it really teaches you context you know I saw things that that I don't think most people in the UK or the the us see right like real death and despair and horror and struggle and I did that for a year when I was still in college and and that taught me one that I didn't want to live in that world that I have a lot of empathy for journalists now because when you are confronted with extreme violence and the worst of humanity what do you end up doing often believe that humans can do the worst and so I wanted a little bit more of a light instead of to live in the darkness and um and so I moved as one naturally went to finance but really that came because I was going to go into law and politics similar to you you were going to do the doctor thing immigrant of course my family is immigrants as well so a lawyer could be reputable but I realized very quickly that I didn't want to fight for a living either and so I was starting to think what are the second and third order effects of choosing a job and I had an incredible Professor International torts and we sat down one night and he said you know why do you think that these people you're covering along the U.S border live such a different life than you and the immediate reaction is well I'm American and they're Mexican he's like well let's stress test that he's like do you know Mexicans who live incredible and better lives than you of course yeah sure I do so what's the difference your last name is Sanchez their last name is Sanchez you have brown hair they do too and what we came to is that the difference between humans who have a lot of power and have incredible lives and those who don't is really one thing it's green and it's money and so I wanted to understand money I didn't come from it I didn't have a lot of it I didn't know anything about it but I thought maybe if I understand money then I could understand this thing called power and I could help more people have it but I could also protect myself too so that's when I started climbing up the rings of Finance but I think without journalism to ask a lot of questions without the difficulty of seeing real struggle I wouldn't have wanted to work you know 70 hour weeks at Goldman and so without all of those things I couldn't have gotten here was there one specific moment that made you realize that the journalism thing wasn't for you yeah um there's this woman uh her name was Carmelita she since passed but um I covered her in a project called um Los abandonados the abandoned and um she was elderly and was left behind on the border which is a very normal happening in the U.S because they cross his families they get separated the coyotes separate them and so she had been by herself for like 10 years and Ali if you could imagine like the most derelict you know multi-story flat in London just awful location um old neglected sort of like frumpy beds that she was laying in bed sores and it's full with like hundreds of these elderly people and so I wrote the story on Carmelita and she was so cute she had like three teeth she always wore this little pink beanie she had a bear I can't remember what the bear's name was now a little teddy bear that she kept with her that was from her grandson and um we covered her story and she got all this press we won the Howard F Buffett award for print journalism I got a bunch of job offers and I went back to go give her we won some prize money so I gave the prize money to the clinic she wasn't really in her right mind enough to take the money direct and uh and I showed her the prizes and she was like Carino which means like deer like now that America knows this is amazing like you're going to connect us with our families you're going to fix it and I was like oh [ __ ] no like America doesn't care you know like Kim Kardashian did something Britney Spears shaved her head and you're forgotten and so that's when I realized oh man I don't want to just tell people stories uh I want to try to help people write different ones and I don't think journalism is always the best way to do that so then the switch to finance how did that how did that go well that really came from a late night conversation with my professor where you know I realized that I wanted to have some impact it was like my little quarter life crisis you know at 21 and feeling high and mighty like one person could change the world and uh and I'm sitting down to speak with him uh after we had taken one of our tests and he was one of those rare teachers you know that actually sit down with their students really want to know you I went to Arizona State University huge school you know my classes were 300 500 people but this one was small it was in the Honors College and um and I told him well I think I should go into politics because politics will change things and he was like who do you think uh pays the politicians you know who do you think if you can go down to the basis level who is the string puller and and his belief and I think mine was too over you know many of these conversations is that the people with money rule the world and you can see it I mean even if you want to get crazy conspiracy theorists on either side of the the aisle you can see that the big backers are the ones that put candidates in office and so I thought maybe we just need to get as much money as possible and help other people get money as possible because then if you have money you're a lot harder to kill you're a lot harder to do things too you're a lot harder to push around because you have options uh and so that's what brought me to finance and I thought well first I just have to go understand it hmm so what was the finance journey and how did that culminate in I guess leaving Finance to be a entrepreneur slash investor yeah well I knew nothing about Finance so getting into Finance was kind of hard um but I have a theory called get in the game and basically I think if you want to go play a game you need to to go where it's played like it's not that confusing or difficult most people say they want to make a career change and then they send out their resume to a bunch of different sites and they hope that they get a job and the best way to do it in my opinion is go where people who are experts in the field are playing so uh what I did is I ended up going to a bunch of events and conferences I went to every finance and money and wealth and investing conference and event I could find and as a student there are a bunch that are free right so I don't know I must have gone to 30 of them 40 of them and most of them nothing really happened but I learned a few things I got the right words right because every industry has the vernacular you know that medicine and um and then one day I went to an event that I really didn't want to go to it was like I had a long day of classes and I was late and then I I ended up going no matter what um my mom has a saying which is always show up and then look for the exit so you can go note the exit at any time you can leave but just step your foot in the door because that's when magic happens kind of like that line in Tolkien right you know it's a it's an amazing thing what happens or it's a dangerous thing what happens when you step one foot outside your door that was from The Hobbit for you nerds like me who like that Ollie and I were talking Harry Potter so I was gonna see if I could be cool like him um so so I went and I listened to this event and I didn't know anything about anything but I was curious as a journalist so I asked a lot of questions and the woman who sat next to me ended up being a recruiter for a company called Vanguard which is one of the largest investors investment firms in the world and so she because of all my pestering her I guess thought that was unique everybody loves to hear their own voice and and so asked me to interview for their rotational development program and if you're young these days everybody tells you to go be an entrepreneur I actually think you should do the opposite I think you should go learn on somebody else's dime because Vanguard puts in it on average a hundred thousand dollars worth of training into every renew hire I would never stay at Vanguard I didn't like the place but I loved starting there because they train you I got licensed and I got to learn on somebody else's dime when you come out of college typically and especially if you don't go to college I feel like you have a lot of rough edges you know you make faux pas constantly in business you don't know the language or the context and going to a corporation I think actually teaches you a ton so I'm a big advocate for starting and then go do your own thing but these days I feel like everybody wants to be a YouTube Star right away and you've met a lot of Young YouTube Stars too half the time I'm like you guys couldn't [ __ ] exist out in the real world for four seconds because um you don't have a lot of contacts for for what else Works in this world of ours on that note so the whole um what to do with your career when you're when you're young um one view is if you want to be an entrepreneur just go straight into it yeah well another viewers if you want to be an entrepreneur you can learn on someone else's time um I was interviewing someone else on the Pod Dan Priestley and his view was if you want to be an entrepreneur uh learn on someone else's dime but try and get a job when a company that has fewer than 10 people because if you work for a big corporate the uh you just learn a lot less about the whole business than you would if you're working in like a eight-man whatever team where you actually have visibility over revenues profits all that kind of stuff what's your what's your take on that I I think I'm of two minds one I don't think there's only one right path do either I think the smart thing though is if you can learn on other people's time that's really helpful because you'll never bankrupt yourself while working a salary right and so um that is a really big Safeguard because what I like to to make sure people don't do is there's a lot of like um hustle porn out there right like sleep on your couch for 47 years and you know only eat ramen noodles and that's okay but I'm not sure it's necessary and I also think it's a dangerous road to think that way because you know in America for instance people on average have less than two weeks of cash on hand so if we're out there telling people all the time to go risk it all not everybody makes it so let's give them like a little buffer you know and it's okay to have a little buffer don't let anybody tell you that you have to hustle and focus on the one thing and Gary your V garyvee your way to success I don't think you have to even though I like the guy um um so I think you can do either the one thing I liked about the corporate structure is they they spend they have so much extra Capital that they can spend a lot on you you know and startups me too I have like three dimes to rub together you know like I don't training or like when somebody asks me do I get training if I come on board I'm like next company there's no training here um we're too young we're too small we don't have time it's like get in do whatever you can do the other thing about startups that's dangerous is they grow so fast if you're at a good one that if you are not a self-grower you will be quickly outgrown in a startup and so I'm sure you've experienced it too in most of my startups we've you know 3xed every year and so if somebody cannot 3x themselves in a year they can't stay in the startup because we're moving too fast and so you have to be careful I think if you go to a startup and you think I'm just going to like learn a little bit as I go uh-uh this is like death by firehouse and so yes you can do the eight to ten company but if you're the type of person where you need a little bit more time and you want to want to give yourself a bigger barrier between um you know your ability to have to level up immediately in a startup then I like the corporate route and I'm not saying it's fun it's awful I hated working in corporations it's not fun but just because it's not fun doesn't mean it's not good what were some of the lessons that you took away from those early days at Vanguard well Vanguard I hope I mean here goes any chance they ever sponsor us to say anything but Vanguard was the worst I hated that place but the reason why is it just wasn't a good culture fit for me um I like meritocracies I want to be somewhere aware um the cream Rises to the Top If I am working harder than everybody I can make more money I can progress and vanguard's a little bit like the military it's like every three years you can move you can be an individual contributor or you can be a leader there's not a lot of cross-pollination they're super rigid and so for some people that's amazing it was awful for me but the lesson I learned there is there is this one time uh I was brand new to the job so I was like a year in and I was right out of college and I was killing myself for this job because I didn't know anything about finance and so every day I went in there thinking they're gonna find out that I don't know what I'm doing and then they're gonna kick me out of this place and everybody else it was part of the program had these fancy degrees I went to a party school basically and so um I had this idea Ollie I I really believe in whatever you're bringing you know you talked about the fact that you're Pakistani and a doctor and now you do this stuff online as well you have this unique amalgamation of skills right that not very many other people have and so I had that at the time in a different way I was in finance and I also spoke Spanish and and was Latino and they were trying to break into Latin America and I had this idea for them on how to do that and so I went and pitched it to my boss because at the end of our rotational program um you got put in different spots so I was trying to come up with my own job basically which is a great way to make more money and do what you like to do is make your boss's job easy come up with a solution that you can solve and uh and I came up with this idea and he was like this is actually pretty good Let Me Pitch it up the ladder so we did they were like great we're gonna do it would you be able to move to do this job yes I'm in I'm breaking my lease I'm telling my parents I'm doing all this stuff three hours later he calls me back to his office and he sits me down kind of like this in a little room and a little one little glass rooms and he's like um I'm all excited I think I'm [ __ ] moving to Latin America this is gonna be amazing and he's like uh what do you think your peers think about you and I was like uh no idea I thought we were talking I don't know what do you mean and he's like uh well you know your peers think you would leave dead bodies behind you to get ahead I was like and I'm you know 21. so I'm like trying not to cry you know I'm I don't even know what emotions are going through me and I'm like you're gonna I I need to explain a little bit more Ron I don't understand what you're saying and he's like you know we went to run you up the ladder and this is the feedback you know from your peers and so I just kind of I was like can you explain to me why like do they mean physically I'm kind of little like I don't think I could be murdering anybody anytime soon but okay and he's like well for instance you know when you're at work you don't plan any of the lunch parties or the outings like some of the other people do when they come to your desk you're very focused you're not talkative like you don't help them solve their problems and basically you know that duck how they show the duck like gliding but underneath these like this you know that was me and so I was just trying to keep up but what they saw was closed selfish self-interested focused when what it really was is I was just I was barely treading water and that taught me that I never want to be at a place again where somebody else's perception of me could be the thing that holds me back it had to be my performance um and and he said that line to me which is what is that line everybody always says it's like perception is reality and I remember he looked at me and said that and I said that's so ridiculous it's absolutely not reality and uh but that is true and so if you're in a big Corporation perception is reality it is politics gamified and so you have to play the game which is something I always was bad at doing um so what happened next so then uh he gave the job actually to somebody so he took my idea and he gave it to somebody else in the program which was crippling for me at the time and I continue to work for Vanguard but I immediately put my resume out you know I was like nope not doing this again and I looked for the opposite of Vanguard which was Goldman Sachs it's like where is there a place that couldn't be more of a meritocracy uh anywhere else in the world and it was Goldman and that was right pre-crisis so I didn't know the world was about to end and I was going to go to the place that everybody hated but that's what I ended up doing and I did I don't know 12 or 15 interviews to get into Goldman and then ended up becoming one of their youngest analysts which was cool female analysts and um and I went and moved there the interesting part is like maybe seven years or eight years later I ended up the woman who took that job uh that I created ended up coming to work for me was my co at my company two companies ago and uh and then when I exited that company she became the CEO so yeah so it worked out great and uh and then I you know and and I had some like vengeful feelings for the manager for some time um but then I realized man the reason that I am where I am at in the world and he is where he's at in the world which are very different places are because of your ability to lean in and do the right thing like what he should have done as a manager is like coached me through that and explained how we could get the job and figure it out whatever and instead he crippled to other people's pressure which is what happens at corporations so now he's still a middle manager at Vanguard and I'm wherever I am now and I think that's because you have to make the hard choices and um and thankfully he gave me an opportunity to do that one of the things that we've been we've been talking a lot about recently internally within our team is kind of women in the workplace yeah and unconscious biases and all and all this stuff and I recently read lean in by show us handbook which I thought was really good um if someone is listening to this who either is a woman in the workplace or is working with women in the workplace workplace what advice would you would you share based on your experiences well um a couple things first and foremost choose being the Victor over being the victim always and I found it to be a huge benefit that I'm a woman in the workplace huge because I look different than everybody else especially in finance I'm much more memorable um you know I have a different way to engage with people and so I liked Cheryl's book a lot too and I like this idea of like you know I don't know what if you change the story what if your story is not the man's out to get me and men are XYZ and we have this conflict in the workforce what if it the story is instead I'm incredibly powerful as a woman uh I look a little different than everybody else and because of that I'm gonna have a massive success and what if all these men could be my Advocates one of my mentors told me something that I thought was kind of kind of true he's like the men that work with you typically either want to they want to Father you they want to friend you oh they want to [ __ ] you right there's like three types and you've got to figure out pretty quickly which one of those three they fall into and then you use that to your advantage and you know I did that pretty specifically if there's a guy who wants to Father you that's amazing that's a mentor figure right and you can lean into that you know feeling of like oh my daughter or you know I want to help a young woman get along great if they want to be friends with you then great you know you work that angle and the third are the ones you have to be careful of but there's also power in that too and I think a lot of people today we want to like kill our sexuality in the workforce and I don't really think that's necessary actually I think you can be you can flirt you know you can use the natural chemistry that happens between men and women to your advantage and you can do it in a way that's ethical and you can do it in a way that's moral and you can do it within your own personal code and the code of the company um but don't wrap up your power I mean I remember when I first started at Vanguard I cut my hair really short I have a lot of hair so I just looks like a mushroom you know it's not good for anybody involved and I barely wore any makeup and I worried like awful boxy suits and I thought that I had to like become a man to get into the workforce and it could have been more opposite you know I could have been exactly who I wanted to be um and that probably would have been more powerful but it was a lesson I had to learn now that I guess you're you're you know running all these companies investing all these businesses yeah how does being a woman feed into that if at all does it change your approach compared to if you were let's say hormuzy for example uh yeah I mean I think I think as a woman there are some truisms like I try to smile a little bit more it you know I can come off as a little aggressive or too intimidating as a woman so for instance we have the sign in my studio which is kind of funny that just says smile [ __ ] really big like right in front of the camera because I get serious and I think about it and then I realize oh my God in all my videos it's like I'm yelling at everybody all the time and so um I do think that we have to be honest about where we came from as men and women and our Natural Evolution which is we were often thought of as nurturing it's not as normalized for women to be aggressive and you know whatever we and so lead into that as opposed to be pissed off about it because the world doesn't care either way and so why would you be mad about something that will have no effect um and so now I think you know for instance if I was going to buy your business Ollie and I was a man I might buddy up to you you know we'd go to the 19th hole and play some golf we might smoke a cigar we'd hang out and do Harry Pottery things like you would have like a natural thing you're comfortable doing with men and when I'm a woman I have to come at it from a little bit different of an angle so instead of doing that I might I might I might reach out to you and do something in like the safe zone right so like coffee or lunch but I would be fun about it I'd be like tell me about you like what's going on that's cool what are you wearing like I'd make jokes I'd um I kind of feel more familiar than I think at Alex hermosi if you've met Alex he's kind of like yes great you know what he's big and he's actually got a great sense of humor but his that would not be great coming from me you would be like she doesn't really like me what's happening there that would be a weird interaction yeah and so recognizing that it's not flirting but it's it's like familial right um and so I find with owners especially most owners are 65 plus years old so they're of a different generation right and so my conversations with them end up falling often into the father category so it's like you know tell me about your history like who how many years have you been running this 40 that's incredible like what was the moment like when you open it up when was the last time that you almost felt like you had to give up on this business because it was so miserable did you ever go bankrupt like and so being really curious with them I think as a woman you can do and if you did that as a man often it's almost hard you're like no I've never gone bankrupt you got bankrupt you know so like use your ability as a female to to be more empathetic nice love it this is a great advice um so you joined Goldman yeah and what was the story at Golden socks go I actually loved Goldman in a lot of ways um Goldman has an incredible culture because they know who they are and they attract the people that they should and they what's the opposite of track they repel those that should not be there and I think that is a hack in business I'm sure you found it uh with employees too you kind of know an archetype of it's I don't mean gender or race or any of that I mean the thinking of a human that will fit well in ali abdom um you know you need somebody that you can trust in your home right you need somebody that has like a kind of a kindness to them you probably couldn't have somebody that was really sharp elbows in here blowing everybody around right if they only wanted to wear suits they're not going to fit for you and so you have to actually repel the people that would be miserable at your job and uh and Goldman's great at that and so I really liked gold Med for that reason they cut 20 of the workforce every year so that's oh that's hard wow okay yeah um so every year you would I mean every day at that place I think I didn't see the Sun for like seven months because I started in Chicago and so you would get in the office at seven You'd Stay you'd work out at the office you'd eat at the office and it was an incredibly intense culture um but I learned so much from it one of my favorite Frameworks from Goldman that I took is you know basically uh they have a couple different levels of humans at Goldman but when you're an analyst you're you're doing everything right there's no no is not in your vocabulary at that level and um and I had a a boss uh James Yount who um was very intense former military and he came in one day and uh gave gave me a few minutes you know when he was walking into the office because I was one of the first people in and he doesn't usually give anybody a few minutes that's very rare and so I said to him hey I'm new you know 30 seconds can I walk you to your office yeah sure great said uh I'm new uh I don't have a crazy background I didn't go to Cambridge or whatever you're sort of similar you seem like you really pulled up yourself by your bootstraps like two or three things that you think I could do in the first 30 days to differentiate myself anything and he was like no it's one thing like okay great he's like be here earlier stay later that's it and I was like really okay so I just did that for a year I was just in before anybody else and I stayed later than anybody else and I got promoted faster than anybody else and I made more money faster than anybody else and so um what I liked about Goldman is they told you and it was just like how much pain can you tolerate and that tolerating pain for a period up front led to a lifetime of now I don't have to tolerate much pain at all like we get to do this during the day I have a full staff you know I get to hang out a lot you know we make YouTubes like what a what a it's unbelievable that we make money doing this and that was because I I took I took a lot of pain early this episode is very kindly 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an alternate universe could you have enjoyed that process while also getting all the benefits from it question like I I think I did enjoy the process I think I learned to love pain and struggle and uh and there were the only thing that was the hard for me is being really really tired I can see that why that's a torture tactic because there were days where you had to focus and I would be like you know I'm like I'm barely here right now um that was really tough but actually the long hours working on an interesting problem set is is not a problem but I think it is a and I was just thinking about this this week I had a tough week this week stuff going on in the companies lots of work no sleeping and um and I was writing about reminding myself why do I keep doing this I don't technically I need to keep doing this you probably don't technically need to keep doing this so why and the reason is because I think that the struggle is a bit of an honor and I think if you want to know what the key to happiness is it's struggle if you want to know what the key to wealth is it's struggle if you want to know what the the key to making a lot of money is it's struggle and the more that that you can realize that iron actually does sharpen iron and the more sort of difficult things you can champion and do the more likely you are to have a successful life um I I think it's a life hack it's a secret that these days we don't want to hear now everybody wants you know I want to do the least and make the most I want to hire the least amount of people and have the biggest company I'm a solo entrepreneur that will never employ anybody that makes millions on the internet and you can do it too without any work of four hours a week like that's the thing that we've said we want and then I think about it for a second I stand back and I'm like is that really what we want like what happened to billion Empires what happened to leaving legacies what are you going to do in the other 52 hours of your week and so I don't think you have to struggle forever but I think periods of struggle make the periods of relaxation really poignant and with one without the other is like a day without a night nobody wants to live in a complete pleasure and happiness always because it diminishes and so I do think you need it I mean what do you think because you went through worse sleep deprivation in medical school than I did yeah this is the thing that I'm not sure about like um I've been looking a lot into this in the process of writing my book um where you know there's that quote from Muhammad Ali which is um you know I thought about quitting but I said you know don't quit suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion and this whole thing of like I suffered for 10 years and then it was worth it at the end of it because I held up a trophy kind of vibe yeah and that has never really sit right with me because if you know when when I was when I was when I was talking to to Alexi he's he said something which I I think about quite a lot which is that you know when I when I was when I was 20 I would have given everything to be a millionaire and when I was a millionaire I would have given everything to be 20 again and so usually I feel like these periods of struggle When We're Young in particular like like if we look at the regrets of the dying on the on the deathbed basically everyone says I wish I hadn't worked so hard and I think for people who are very driven there is a kind of a default tendency to over invest in work and under invest in relationships and health and I know a few people for whom that has screwed them up because they've gotten to their let's say mid-30s 40s whatever they've chased the corporate ladder or success in entrepreneurship or whatever they might think that thing might be their whole life and then they look around and they're like oh crap all my friends are married with kids and I and I've just been chasing chasing the green dollars yeah and I I wonder if like the way I've always tried to approach it is you know when I was going through med school building YouTube channel working as a doctor it was always around how can I make this process enjoyable and energizing for myself so that it doesn't feel as if I am struggling or grinding and stuff yeah and maybe that's that kind of millennial like wanting to have their cake and either two kind of situation but when you said when you said struggle is happiness that's where I was like oh I'm not sure I I would venture that balance is happiness and there are periods of struggle certainly because growth comes from struggle almost certainly but then there's the other side of it which is and happiness comes from you know having friends to hang out with and taking care of your health and all those things as well so yeah yeah I've yeah what do you what do you think well I think you're right I think it's important not to assume that struggle can only be in work so I think you're right about that we talk about something called a third degree human basically like a third degree black belt and so we have a triadic contrarian thinking that's civilized the Mind makes Savage the body build the bank account so the idea is the civilize the Mind makes Savage the body is an ancient Chinese proverb translated but basically that yeah you want to how do you civilize the mind you read incredible things right you have interesting conversations you question things you struggle with that voice inside of your head that's always telling you negative perceptions right and you try to not tame the beast but understand it and that's like one type of struggle right and then you have make Savage the body which is a different type of struggle it's like the struggle to eat well you know the the J like I don't know like do you find Joy I find a lot of joy in an incredibly hard workout like a yoga session where you're just dripping sweat but the music's incredibly difficult and I so maybe there are different types of humans too but I find that when I kind of take it to the edge that there's this there's Beauty in it there's like Beauty in how far can you push your body you know how far can you push your mind how much can you create yeah and then maybe that is where happiness kind of strides the bigger issue I think I see today is that so many people so many people seem like they don't have a purpose anymore and like We're a nation of people who their deathbed they say that because they chose a job because of outside mimetic reasons that they stuck with for 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years or they looked for Fast Cash and fast rewards and never found it as opposed to I don't know about you but I get so lost in the moments where I'm doing the thing I should be doing you know when I'm writing really deeply when I'm thinking really deeply when I'm having an engaging conversation but I'm struck like even right now I'm like I'm struggling to think of how do I say this exactly but there's like I'm finding it very interesting you know it would not be interesting us talking about the weather which would be super easy us watching a Mindless TV show that is so uninteresting to me so maybe we need a better better definition of struggle yeah yeah I think that's it because uh yeah as you were describing that um the whole you know shopping the mind of the body thing I think it's like one one example I often think of is you know during lockdown I got a PS5 I started to play Horizon zero Dawn and I switched it to very hard difficulty it wasn't quite Ultra hard which is just a bit torturous but very hard was like a good sweet spot yeah where my housemate would see me just like trying to clear the same Bandit camp for about three hours because it was on very hard difficulty and you had to get the right like headshot to make sure that they're new to you and all this kind of stuff and at the end of it would be like oh yes I'm glad I spent the last three hours on very hard difficulty yeah I could have breezed through it in five seconds on story mode difficulty but like what what would be the point of that like exactly that there is joy to be found in the challenge itself but at the same time if that's I think where the where where I think about this idea of balance you know that's three hours from like I don't know eight to eleven PM while it's locked down but you know if that was four hours five hours six hours seven hours and the rest of my life is suffering now I might be struggling on very hard difficulty on our Horizon zero Dawn or even Ultra hard but I'm unlikely to be particularly happy because the rest of life is not quite in Balance totally and so I kind of think of it as these moments of moments of challenge you know in the in the book we we've got a chapter around play like if you can find a way to approach your work in the spirit of play which is often with a sense of wonder and curiosity but a decent sprinkle of challenge as well yeah that's what makes it fun and that's kind of been my Approach for well since Medical School how do I take this Challenge and find a way to make it fun or if I'm doing something really boring how do I apply a challenge to it to make it more fun than it currently is so yeah I totally agree I mean I think I think we forget sometimes that most humans if you go to ask it's one of my favorite games they do it a lot to Uber drivers like uh I'll say something like you know what what was your day like today like what did you I just want to see a different perspective so here in London I think that's interesting like how many hours you've been driving what's going on and then I like to ask them when was the last time that you did something so hard you could barely stand it and the reason I like to ask that is because every time I ask myself that I realize oh shoot it's been a little bit hard longer than I anticipated you know when was the last time you stayed up all night working on something because you couldn't help but do it right and when you ask yourself that question then it makes you push yourself slightly to find those things and in moments where I haven't done that in six months let's say I realize ugh I have been grinding I've not been struggling I've just been sort of on a low level grind which I think is soul killing and oftentimes they'll tell me something really interesting like I just had a baby you know three months ago and I I never thought I could survive in that moment what was happening and that was that was really cool there's actually this great book called The Men the mission and me it's about uh a Green Beret so special forces in the U.S and and he has a line in there that basically says there is nothing more motivating than a mission you're unsure you can solve and uh I think I think that's why we're put here as humans um but who knows at the end of the day might just make me feel better on long nights so you you said one of the well one of the problems might be that people don't don't have a purpose um what's what's your purpose what's the thing that's driving you to do all the stuff yeah a couple things one time you know I think it's really useful if you're wondering what your purpose is if you're struggling with am I doing the right thing day in and day out I like to think about a tombstone and mine and I remember one time I had a crazy dream and in the dream I basically walked in the cemetery as one does and my Tombstone came up in front of me and at the time I was in private equity and it just said like managing director Cody Sanchez and I was like oh gross what that's gonna be the Legacy I'm like a managing director and a private Equity Firm kill me and so I think sort of looking at your Tombstone and it doesn't have to be work related it could be you know father that might be an incredible thing to have a new Tombstone right and so uh that made me change my perspective and now I hope the legacy is that we bring more humans into ownership that's the second deal I'm playing idea I'm playing around with which is I think more humans need skin in the game uh in some way shape or form it's the only way to feel like you have you have ownership in this world you have something that you are striving for and building and most people rent their Apartments these days or their houses most people work at jobs where they don't have equity in it only 15 percent of humans actually own stocks which would be equity in companies by and large we're becoming a nation or a world of renters when we started you know over the last century just finally becoming owners after years of serfdom and so um that is my mission is I want more human beings to have their little their little plot of land figuratively or physically because I think that that changes the way we look at the world then we start to become stewards of it then we start become stewards of our country you don't burn down the building that you own right you fix it you renovate it you build on it so that's what I hope our mission is I hope when I'm dead I hope there's a bunch of people that would never have owned anything and now own something and they get to pass that on to the next Generation because otherwise just the guys at the top own everything I mean one out of four houses last year got by three companies in the U.S single family houses we don't even own our homes anymore and so that I think needs to change so how much is that the thing that drives you versus uh you know I struggle with this myself figuring out is it purpose or is it actually money or status or power that are the other or the likes on the Instagrams yeah which we have status and I can convince myself that yeah you know there's likes on Instagram it's important for my parasource relationship with my audience which translates to bottom line profit but like you know who am I kidding I sometimes ask myself I mean I think it's easy to guys are just you know they're the the Milestones on a map right that get you to a final destination and so a kpi would be something like likes on your Instagram or social media followers it's very easy for me to get caught up in the daily or weekly numbers because I'm a numbers person and so I have to be really really careful that I zoom out we do something every week at my company called the weekly WhatsApp and basically I zoom out for a 10 minute segment of our our company meeting where I will talk about something really high level so I'll share a quote from Like A Book Like Jocko willinks about the honor of leadership and how it sucks to be a leader but it's also incredible um and then I'll talk about a testimonial from somebody who who we helped and so we'll highlight that and maybe that testimonial is about like somebody specifically on the team so I try to zoom out once a week but for sure I think you know at the end of the day we're selfish self-interested beings that are try trying to continue to survive um you know if you look at Evolution like that we need to procreate and we need to survive a certain amount of time so I think you have to rewire your brain a little bit to not just only focus on you but there's no doubt about it I mean I like the ego of it uh I think it's super fun seeing our videos go viral I think it's super fun making money it's a giant scoreboard and I think that's what money is at the end of the day the rich I don't think continue to do things for the money the rich do things because it's a game and they want to win on the scoreboard um that's my take for now there's a there's a book I've been reading uh was a studded reading called I think it's called the road to character um where by David Brooks I think what he talks about I like David um like there are resume virtues and then there are eulogy virtues the things that you would write on your resume and then they're the things that people will tell you would say at your funeral and his argument in the book seems to be that the money stuff tends to be not the thing that people would say at your funeral um so how do you think about this ballot like again I'm asking because this is something that I genuinely think about every day like this this balance between striving for the numbers to go up versus I don't know the other things that make up a a holistic and well-lived life yeah well my husband and I do um we do bi-annual bucket list trips and those are typically something difficult so we're going to for instance um go to Mongolia uh on Horseback uh for 12 days and we want to meet with this one tribe A friend of ours it's one of the last tribes that rides reindeers like caribus in Mongolia and so we're going to do a thing that's perceivably hard we're going to do it together which I think is really important and um and I think once when we do like one or two of those kind of things a year so I hiked you know Mount Baker we're also going to go do this Exploration with whale sharks with a friend of mine who does National Geographic whale shark tagging and I imagine uh that if somebody was to give a eulogy of us at some point there will be hopefully that we're 70 80 years old doing bizarre things like that um and so I think I don't know how to live a really sporadic spontaneous life like I get so wrapped up at work and doing The Daily Grind maybe like a lot of people do it's hard for me to go do the the wild things continuously so there's a very simple thing that seems to work for me which is just I sort of schedule the ridiculous and that sounds like you shouldn't do it but you know some of my favorite stories to write or or read about are like Ernest Shackleton right like best oh so good he wrote the best job description of all time which was but you've definitely seen it it's a little paper cut out and it basically says um men needed for a Dangerous Mission and it says things like uh survival unlikely return questionable you know pain absolute and he received thousands of people that applied for this job and I think the reason is because we want that crazy mission right like we want to be the Indiana Jones in the next film in some way shape or form and so um I don't know how to live a big huge life except to have experiences and so so I don't know do you do anything like that where you try to go on one or two Wild Adventures a year less so wild adventures but more so I'm I'm also a big fan of scheduling the bucket list items yeah but my version of a world Adventure was I was like oh it's on the bucket list to go on a fishing trip so I went on a fishing trip two weeks ago and that was very nice yeah I love that um but it's not it's not been as wild what do you want on your eulogy I think uh I also I also thought about the the the tombstone thing a couple years ago and I landed on good father good husband and inspirational teacher and I realized that for me if I could teach people that's a thing that I think I would I would love to be able to say it at my funeral yeah it was a nice guy and all that nice just family and friends blah blah but like yeah helped you know if if I could have the sort of impact on someone that Tim Ferriss had on me through his stuff where it nudged me on a completely different kind of life path that I would have been otherwise then I think that would be pretty sick like if someone leaves their job to start a business because they Vibe my stuff or someone starts a YouTube channel that takes off because they've opened my stuff like you know things like that or even someone you know does better in their exams because they've opened my stuff and that helps them kind of live their dreams that to me is like the thing that I want to do for now yeah so wait I have two questions one do you care if people perceive you as a nice guy is that important to you yeah why oh good question why why is it important that people perceive me as a nice guy probably because I have a fundamental need to be liked and admired and appreciated and stuff yeah interesting yeah yeah I always I like to double tap on the nice thing because I think I think it's lovely to want to be nice because a world full of [ __ ] doesn't sound good for anybody nobody wants that but I've always rather been I would rather be respected than liked I would rather um my best teachers weren't just nice right they like push you a little bit which maybe you could do in a nice way so I'm always curious if people now it's hard to not always be perceived as nice because you get a lot of pushback on it and maybe it's a story I'm telling myself too but I'm always curious on that idea of nice and doesn't really matter um maybe you could be kind but but you have to be nice yeah but I think by nice I mean I mean kind rather than like nice has a lot of like other things brought up in like being a doormat and all that kind of stuff that's associated with this but yeah when I say nice I mean it as like a just a sum of like kind good person yeah thoughtful desperate kind of stuff yeah like I mean I could work on on all those things more for sure it's pretty nice um I also was hugely influenced by Tim Ferriss we're actually in the same group chat with him and I remember when when you know our mutual friends three put put us into that put me into that group chat and I saw that Tim was in it I was like I went and texted him I'm like I'm not gonna do anything weird but I am so excited because Tim Ferriss was I think one of the first people for a lot of us that made us feel like we could actually architect Our Lives yeah you know nobody told me that before Tim yeah everybody was like no no here's how you do it you wear the suit you do the thing and then I think he was the first one it wasn't necessarily that I only wanted to work four hours it was like oh wait but I could choose uh so I think that's incredible and so I think the other thing to ponder too which I think about too is what do you want to become known for and also doesn't matter because at the end of the day will be dust completely unremembered just like the greatest Emperors of all time so I mean you can't even remember the last name of most of the greatest people who ever ruled the planet um and so at some point I think perhaps none of it matters but do it anyway yeah plus finding yeah I I kind of think um in a funding finding joy in the journey yeah um and having a destination in mind short but recognizing that like you know from all of the people I spoke to all the stuff I read it's just like no one ever finds happiness at the end of The Journey they find it on Route and so great let's try and you know coming back to that point of enjoy the enjoy the present day while we're working towards that destination I agree totally um so we're in Goldman Sachs right now what what happened next in in the career yeah so after Goldman um well basically so I was I'm divorced and remarried uh but at that time I was dating somebody at Goldman and he was leaving to go to a job in Dallas so I wanted to really continue the investment banking thing and go to New York and go International um but he was moving and so I ended up moving with him which maybe is one of the things I regret at some point but it ended up working out so I was leaving Goldman the only option at Gold Medal that's right can I just double check uprooting your life for the sake of a relationship yeah what are your thoughts well I have a bias there right because it didn't work out great um so take that with a grain of salt but I think more important if you uproot your life for somebody into another life that you want to live incredible but I think be really careful about uprooting yourself for another into a life you don't want to live and so in this instance I had always wanted to work internationally and I had wanted to build big businesses and instead I moved to Dallas Texas I get a huge house with the white picket fence and a country club membership you know poor guy didn't stand a chance right like that was just not part of the vision of my future that I wanted and I think he thought I would change and I thought that he was okay with who I was and um and the disconnect lay in there so now when I think about a relationship like with my husband now we're very big on um what is the vision we both want out of life it's not just are we compatible as humans and do we like each other but do we want the same big things because if you ollie really want kids and to live in London and to do XYZ and your person is tied to Bangladesh and wants no children then it kind of doesn't matter how in love the two of you are because the lives that you want will continue to pull at the seams um and so I think be really cautious about this idea of you know I'm just really compatible and I'll drop everything for this other human which leads to resentment at least it did for me um so I wouldn't do that again okay and yet I've moved many times for my husband and we go through Cycles so we'll talk about them like for this for the three year period we're in right now this is my cycle you know I'm building this business that requires a lot of travel he travels with me often and we're building it together for the three-year cycle prior he was in the military and so we had to be based wherever he was based um and so we had this vision of the future that was combined and even now we work a lot and we we try to not use the word sacrifice ever we say like we make decisions or we prioritize um and we prioritize for the ultimate Vision which is we want to live this big life and leave this big Empire behind us and we want to build something so big that our kids can come into it I'm hiring my father now I hire a bunch of my friends into the business and I want to fold our work and our life into one so we're willing to do things to achieve that so you moved to Dallas what happened next so I moved to Dallas and then if you are listening for instance and you want a job really bad maybe this is a case study for you so at that time I was at Goldman and um I wasn't that high up I think I was an associate at the time and so I wanted to go and run a bigger company and I wanted to do it inside the investment realm and largely I wanted to do it in what's called institutional so I wanted to sell to big companies pensions Sovereign wealth funds whatever and to get that job basically uh I had to I had to fly to three different continents to interview on my own dime um I got to know every single hiring manager at this company called State Street I sent like a custom ball signed because I figured out the manager really liked this one baseball player I basically I like smothered them I just smothered them to a point which the guy finally was just like Jesus Christ like okay fine we'll hire you for something it's not exactly what you wanted but we'll hire you but I got turned down something like four or five times by this company for a ton of different roles but I think what people don't realize is relentless persistence is so rare that if you really want a particular job in a particular Company If You Can relentlessly pursue it in a way that feels a little uncomfortable yeah um that would be inappropriate and borderline stocking if you were to do it to a significant other you can largely get it and so I got this job at State Street where I headed up one segment of the country and I was selling Investments cash Investments to big companies and then uh I left there to go to a company called first oh no no I wanted to leave there to go to Credit Suisse which these days maybe not so much but in fact then it was good and uh and I did the same thing I basically applied for this job flying to New York and I flew to London to meet with them I flew to San Francisco and I got turned down twice for the job I got really really close and then they said no and then I got really really close again and they said no and gave it to another woman but the third time they came back to me and they offered me the job and at that point I was like nope because I got another one at this company called First Trust but I have never just been given or offered the job or just given or offered the opportunity it's always been it's always been relatively painful and so I think if a lot of people could take more permission in the fact that we think that that's okay in entrepreneurship these days like yes just keep going for the clients keep getting after it but if you want a traditional job too you will be in I mean I was making millions of dollars a year uh with no risk because I was doing it on a company time traveling around the world learning and engaging with presidents of countries um and and I was able to do it because nobody else was that Relentless in their Pursuit I was much too young to have that job yeah yeah this is something that um you know in lean in he calls us something about like uh Tiara complex or something like that where um in particular apparently women in the workplace feel like if I just put my head down and do a good job someone will put a TR on my head and will give me a promotion and what she says in the book is that like it would be amazing if that were to happen in in the real world no one has any time and everyone is like just doing a zillion different things so you have to you have to put yourself out there um and it sounds like that's like sort of to an insane degree that's what you did yes I like the idea of the Tierra complex I think it's a fine line you know these days uh people will say things like always ask for what you want you need to temper the always asking the way that I asked made it a win-win for everybody right I would find problems within the companies and say I think I can solve this for you you know what are you paying somebody right now pay me half like I was always trying to give them such a win that a no would feel wrong yeah like a grand slam offer right yeah and uh and that I think is what is missing from a lot of the asks today you must get them too I get DMS constantly can I learn from you can I do this they're very sweet but they're very selfish actually and so if you wanted to do a good ask it would have to be something where you have obsessed on that person so much you know so much about them that the thing you're going to offer is so valuable that they would be crazy not to take you up on it um and we actually we have a YouTube video that's coming out I wonder if it'll be out by then maybe Christian's back there um and it's about it's about this we basically came up with this idea of we think that you know you're one degree away from basically almost any mentoring want in the world and that they are much easier to get than you could ever imagine just everybody does it wrong because they take a shotgun approach right so it's DM DM DM DM DM DM low level unspecific non-tailored non-value-added Outreach and they wonder why it doesn't work when you want to get a high value Target what do you do do you ever shoot it at them with a shotgun no you have a sniper rifle you spend a ton of time on the preparation for it it's called prepping the environment and you would want to make sure that the wind direction is correct you want to make sure the sun is correct and it's the same thing I think when you want something out of life including mentorship and so in this instance we basically showed three different ways that we take an idea to get in front of somebody and we make it a reality and we actually got Christian in front of like somebody that he looks up to a big podcaster and um and we did it without money and we did it without networks and they had to reach out independently so it is much easier than ever to get a mentor you just have to treat it like a sniper rifle never like a shotgun what do you mean by Mentor yeah that's a good question I don't like that word that much but I think most of the mentors in your life come from like one small engagement right you sit next to somebody on a Plane by accident I meet you somewhere randomly we started engaging in DMS on the internet right and now I learn from you actually on many different things and so right and so and how did it start it was really low level so I think it's it's a bit like um it's like a Tinder swipe right or a bumble swipe you start by just like oh yep I'm gonna swipe left on you I'm gonna make a very small engagement that might be at a conference I'm going to walk up to Ali abda I'm going to introduce myself and I'm going to say hi I'm Cody Sanchez I love your stuff I'm going to DM you I think something might be interesting for you later and you'd go okay whatever cool thanks nice to meet you that's your Tinder swipe you've shown engagement then your second level is going to be when you reach out to them it should be something really value-added with no ask hey ali uh I saw that you have these videos coming up I pulled the top 10 best uh performing videos for small accounts but huge viral videos and I just said it to you here I hope it's interesting you'd be like oh great thanks and then you have a tiny opening and then you basically are like opening the window opening the window opening the window until finally you have a relationship and then the relationship can become a mentorship but it starts with actually you giving something to that person um and I think there's very easy ways to do that but people don't want to spend that much time on one person because they're scared what if Ollie who I look up to so much and I try to do this thing and then it doesn't work but that's a terrible way to think about it it's what if I could give Ollie some value and wouldn't that be incredible for all the value he gave for me if you do that a couple different times one of them will eventually return it but you don't have the expectation yeah why do you think people get this so wrong it's easy you know it's so easy to do the little DM Outreach and it's scary I really give people credit for that you know sometimes I like to ask when I meet like famous people um and and I know they know another famous person that I actually really look up to I'll say like what do you thick do you really like this person are they a good good person and the reason why is because if they're not I don't really want to meet them I don't want to have that hero fall from high right I would rather just read the book learn this stuff great like if I met Tim Ferriss and now I've engaged with him he's a very nice guy but if if I met him and he was terrible oh that'd be so sad wouldn't it and I think that's how they feel about a lot of us they're like what if I get this thing and I don't didn't really you know and it doesn't make me happy uh what if I reach out to ollie and he's awful to me and so I think it's scary and people are lazy so we were um she got this job with first was it first First Trust First Trust then how did that end up transitioning into what you're what United that was incredible so that the CEO of that company he hates being on the Internet so he's not gonna like me talking about this but he's a he's a billionaire multiple times over uh it's an incredible company it was a cult-like uh atmosphere I actually don't like the um environment very much it's very broey Finance you know strippers and whatever but uh he he himself is probably the best public speaker I've ever seen and he did a great thing with me so I met him early on and I was running a company at the time that was much bigger like billions and billions of dollars in Revenue my division at State Street and um he was just starting in Latin America he wanted to grow the Latin America business and I met him and he's like I really would like you to come work for me and I was like like how big is it what's happening he's like no there's nothing there I was like Jim you know no I run this huge thing I don't want to come over here and build this little thing for you who are you guys anyways you're only based in the US no thanks and he was like I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen I was okay it's like you're gonna say no you're gonna say no you're gonna say no then you're finally gonna say yes and it's going to be the best decision of your life and I was like it's confident and then we started engaging but I'll never forget that you're gonna say no you're gonna say no you're gonna say no you're going to say yes and he was right and so he basically taught me the power of building a culture which I'm sure you felt it too before I ran a business I thought like I would never have read a book about culture yeah no absolutely not I would never actually have read a book about leadership to be honest I thought like I don't know I'm over here I don't I don't know and the more money I've made the more I realize if you can lead and if you can create culture you are Limitless if you cannot do those two things you're very limited and so actually we should spend all the time on culture and Leadership there's there's a great quote that says if you want to if you need to build a boat do not teach your men to go and build planks and build rope teach them instead to yearn for the vast and Endless Sea right and it's so true if you want to be a successful leader you actually need to teach your people to yearn for the thing that you want you need to teach them that the mission of getting three million followers on social and the lives are going to change is so big that they should be thinking about it non-stop because is the difference between an individual contributor who does okay things in life and a leader is really can you sell a dream so big you replace somebody else's that's what it means for somebody to come work for you a dream so big that it replaces somebody else's and uh and so that's what Jim did to me at First Trust he sold me a dream so big even though at that moment it was not big it was nothing that he replaced my current reality actually and I went to work for him and I'll never regret that because despite me not really liking the culture and a lot of the managers there I respect the hell out of him because I learned a lot about there's this line in Dune have you read Dune oh Ollie you have to read it I think I'm about three hours into the audiobook at the moment oh yeah the audiobook yeah well so um there's a line in there that says something about um like the day is so sweet um when the sound of your bees hum and it's one of the dictators and he's basically talking about at this moment he has his team of people out searching for this guy um but I always like that line because it makes you realize the full power of having a hive of people who are out spreading your gospel or your sermon or your dream if you actually want to leave this Legacy of leadership it's not going to be very big if you just do it by yourself you have to have these bees surrounding you out buzzing and so he taught me that at first stress and I stayed there for the longest I've ever stayed at a company five years before I started my own private Equity Firm one thing that I was intrigued by was a tweet thread that you did um in at the end of 2022 you said after 13 years in finance and managing hundreds of millions here are 21 truths that will make you more money than any business degree and I wonder if I can just feed you some of these things and if you can just Riff on them and we'll just see see where that takes us um so number one if no one thinks you're crazy you're too late yes true um actually I have a guy who's become a mentor of mine his name is Bill Perkins and he's a sort of a well he wrote die with zero he's a great guy and uh he actually reached out to me uh a few times on the internet and then we invested in a company together and so I went to his house and his huge compound it's beautiful in Austin and we're walking along the lake and he sat down with me and he was like um you know I really respect everything you're doing the small business stuff is super interesting he's like but do you think that you have been around small for so long that small has infected your thinking and I was like oh bill that was tough and and he said you know with the amount of views that you guys have and the mission that you guys have you should be investing in building you should be bigger than Blackstone that should be how big your dream is and he literally texted me I was in I was in France yesterday and I was working on a bunch of different stuff and he texted me he'll text me randomly these little things but basically it was um exactly that it was um if you're sharing what you're doing and somebody doesn't roll their eyes or think you're crazy you're doing it wrong and uh this was obviously way after I did that tweet thread but I think he's right something shifts when you hang out with billionaires they just have more zeros and so their aperture is bigger they realize that a lot more is possible than you do because they've bended the the world to their will in a lot of ways and so I try to live by that even though sometimes it's painful the market isn't saturated your business just sucks a lot of these are lessons to myself um and that one's true I've had multiple businesses actually we had a product at contrain thinking called Cash Flow and um it just wasn't a good product it was trying to be something to everybody which makes it nothing to to no one and uh so if you're struggling in your business often we say we need more sales we need more X if only I had attention but I try to ask myself what if it was easy what would the product look like then and when I do that I typically realize oh I just have the wrong product or I have the wrong person or I have the wrong team um the right relationships are better leverage than money true especially in this day and age I was um I was with one of my friends who is a general partner at Andresen Horowitz and um I was asking him because we both invest in startups I was saying well what should we do with uh our investments we want to go this way we want to go that way and we were going back and forth and I said you know could we invest a little bit in injuries and Horowitz so we could learn about it and and he said something funny to me he's like money is such a commodity you couldn't pay me to take yours and I was like really I'm like what does that mean he's like do you know Sequoia only takes non-profit dollars now one of the biggest Venture Capital funds in the world will only take non-profit money they literally limit the amount of capital that they have and instead what matters to them is access which is really what people mean access and ideas those are the things that actually move the world what do you mean access so you can have a lot of money right I know a lot of people that do but I would rather trade once you've hit a base level of cash I would spend as much as possible investing in growing your skill set and getting access because if you can get in a room with if you can get in a room with well people like like you and some of the people were talking about before if you can get in a room with a bunch of creators and you become friends with them and you Ali Abdel talk about my product Bellow water on your podcast that is worth how many millions of dollars in ad spend that I probably wouldn't have but my access to you turns into millions of dollars because the economy of today's eyeballs it's actually not Capital increasingly money is going to become more commoditized and attention will be the commodity yeah and so that's what I mean by access yeah I was I was I was I was having dinner with a friend who's um a very successful author uh and we were talking about like Book Sales strategies and all that kind of stuff and he said you know the single biggest thing that has ever moved the needle for my book sales is random relationships I made like five years ago and it's just like somebody made at a conference someone used to track a friendship with and because you've had that conversation you now know the person turns out that person happens to grow into a massive YouTuber a massive podcast right now when you message them saying hey I've got a new book out they are delighted to make a video about your book and it just completely it's that's that's the sort of thing that you can't actually buy with cash you buy it with I guess relationship equity and just just being generally Pleasant to hang out with and taking the time to like fly places to meet people and all that stuff yeah well I think in this day and age we have a declining trust with institutions we don't trust institutions by and large and we have an increasing trust with individuals we've become more tribal than ever and we've become less institutional than ever and because of that our relationships with individual humans are worth more and if you actually look at the international trust index which is a real thing you can do it by varying countries you see overall countries are declining on their trust indices and so I think the ability for you to connect one-on-one with a human will be one of the few things that differentiates the fact that AI can now create an Ali abdal or can create a Cody Sanchez and we're going to really have to question the things that we see with our eyes and only be able to believe the things we can feel with our hands at least that's where I could imagine it goes nice growth is the Small Things magnified uh I went to another one of my friends headquarters who runs a very big company um and uh and I went to the bathroom I went to go wash my hands as I was washing and hit my hands in the bathroom an employee came up and she washed her hands and then took the paper towel clean the inside of the sink cleaned the countertop I thought what a nice employee that's super nice I was putting on lipstick or something another person came in grabbed a paper towel cleaned the inside of the sink cleaned the countertop so I stopped this like low level marketing person and uh and I was like what are you doing like what what's going on there why are you cleaning that all up that way and she was like how you do anything is how you do everything right and just kind of like looks at me like don't you know that and then walks out and I thought wow I just got schooled by a low-level marketer and now my team is so tired of me saying that I'm sure but the small details really do turn into the big things and so often in our life we let them swim slip it doesn't mean you have to be obsessed with every detail um but to create a culture where your employees who maybe even make minimum wage actually clean up the sink around them clean up messes that are not their own that are not part of their job description is a superpower and so we're working on how do we get everybody to want to clean up the kitchen sink how do you square that with uh 80 20 We There are an infinite number of things to do let's focus on a few needle moving things cleaning those things is probably not needle moving so yeah what if it is though and so I think um you think about Disney CEO right Bob Iger famously what did he do every time he walked into a park he stopped and he picked up a piece of trash somewhere he went out of his way he would pick him a piece of trash and then he would go throw it in the trash can now why would Bob Iger do that his time for doing that is worth infinitely more than mine because it's a signal in a world of noise to say we clean up around here we have such um respect for this place that we do the small things and we make sure that we clean up messes that aren't ours so you know it goes down to for instance I had to let somebody go a couple weeks ago and the reason why I let that person go is because they sent out an email to uh people who engage with us and inside of that email the email was done so sloppily and um with a lot of stuff that would be helpful for us but not the individual that I realized oh you don't you haven't accepted our culture which is that we help humans we don't get helped by humans and that was a very small thing theoretically but every time somebody from my team engages with people in the real world they're they're one of my tentacles right they're a representation of me and so I have to make sure that when I send out the email it's lovely it's helpful for another person we're giving before we're taking and hopefully you felt that in our engagements and that's what I want my team to represent too and so I do think those little things actually matter now the real question is you don't have to do everything so that's the difference so you don't have to do it all but the things that you do you should do well um and that's another thing Bill Perkins taught me is he was like if you are focusing on All the Small Things you'll never do the big things and so how does that relate to the two that seems like that would conflict but what it really means is hire somebody incredibly well to take care of your travel planning and to take care of your you know emails in your inbox but teach them the way to do it right then you don't have to do it but if you're going to do something do it right it's painful and I'm not great at it all the time believe me my husband also loves to then say these things back to me later which is very obnoxious so be careful what you put out in the universe nice um give free value with zero expectations and you'll get 10x returns down the road yeah give give give OS uh it's it you know you know there's the law of reciprocity right we humans feel like we have to give something back if we are given something and so um I think if if I could if I could leave one thing for humans listening it would be uh give first and be curious if you could do those two things I think you'll go so much farther than you could anticipate a lot of people in this day and age think that in a world of scarcity and a lot of people take take take take I have a friend actually loose friend who um he's notorious for uh asking for introductions and things and he always ask asking us and in some ways he's gotten far but he's also gotten known in our community as a person who will always ask you for things and so you be you become very careful about giving things and asking for him I never ask for anything from him because I know it's going to have like this 3s X return on the other side and that's what you don't want to have in life it'll get you quick pretty far but those people always come back down again yeah yeah I think about this a lot like the the ROI on free is way higher than the ROI on almost anything transactional or anything paid um and yeah there are so many instances in my life where I mean I guess building a Content business is just basically all about that yeah um well I mean we have a mutual friend Alex and him and I talk about this a lot what do you think the mafia does first to indoctrinate people to bring people into the mafia Circle they give something that's why like the mob bosses go around and they make sure you know the kid has food who doesn't have food on his table and they make sure the people that they come in they give them cash up front now that's a dark side of it but the reason why they do that is because then when you've taken something you've taken a favor and when you've taken a favor you have this little bit of a debt right and again you don't want to take it from a dark perspective but um there's a reason why that's often how sort of these tribes and Cults are created is immediately they give something to you because they know that they're going to ask you for something later it's that famous like one day I'm gonna call you and ask you for a favor thank right um and so it's real in the world your first hundred thousand dollars comes faster if you earn before you invest yeah too many people want to take a dollar and invest in the stock market and have a Robin Hood trade do well for them or a Bitcoin go up or down or an nft and I think it's completely wrong you should optimize first we have a strategy called learn um which is basically we want you to focus first on earning money before you do anything and the reason why is because you can't uh if you have money it's always easier to make money rule number one in order to make money you have to first do the thing that is easiest and highest Roi that's typically not going to be that you put a dollar into the stock market and it makes you a hundred thousand dollars but what you could do is you could negotiate a salary increase of five to twenty percent each year or buy annually and you're much more likely to then be able to invest that money intelligently but a lot of people you know instead of first earning and then learning and then investing they go invest learn earn and I think that's the opposite of what we want to do too many people have seen people make a lot of money in investing and it's a long game yeah yeah I think that's so true it's like uh uh sometimes I'll I'll get friends asking me like hey you know you're you're into investing like what should I invest my money in and I'm like hmm the easy answer is S P 500 but yeah I I think that's not actually the answer like what's the goal here let's figure this out and then you know find out that oh they'd love to become financially independent or they'd love to have an extra few thousand dollars a month to kind of I don't know go on holiday or whatever thing might be I'm like okay so if we if we if you continue investing in the S P 500 you'll get there maybe 30 years from now is that what you want or like and ultimately what it comes down to is like increasing your own ability to earn money whether through investing in your own business or investing in your own skills yeah it's just way higher Roi than the seven percent returns you'll get by investing in the top 500 companies in the US 100 the r require view is infinite the ROI of an investment is capped and so I think you want to invest to beat inflation I mean that's originally why we have investing is that the cost you know the price of money decreases every single year due to the government and so we have to have some sort of investing so that we our money doesn't get eaten in the way by inflation that's what we should expect seven to ten percent per year would be great if we could do that continuously anything above and beyond it unless you're actively involved in the investment which changes the game uh isn't going to make you rich it's just going to make you beat inflation okay so buying boring businesses buying the local dry cleaner restaurant Cafe kind of thing seems interesting but what sort of people would you recommend that to I guess compared to starting your own business versus investing in the s p versus buying houses for Real Estate rental type stuff how how does that work yes one startup if you have a dream so big you can't sleep for the want of it then do that that should be your startup if you just want cash flow this is the path for you I think and here's a couple thoughts one real estate on average in the US at least a one rental property makes about 476 dollars a month in profit that's not enough yeah yeah so might make less than that you have to buy a ton of them and how much cash do you have to put down an annoying the huge amount huge amount not to mention you have giant risks from the loans um so I think real estate by and large is a great way to keep wealth and to invest so that your wealth grows slowly over time it's not a great way to make wealth now buying a business is a lot more work and it's a lot more risk theoretically because you're building it's probably not going to burn down you have insurance anyways and it can't go to zero very easily business if you do it wrong theoretically could so there's pros and cons but a small business I like owning a bunch of them especially if you can do it in things that you want to play in a little bit like for instance if you're an accountant I might buy an accounting firm right why just work in one when you could own one um if you are like me and you're in content and you actually really like what you do like I want to spend my time doing this maybe I buy a laundromat and my mom runs the laundromat right or maybe I buy a property management company and my brother runs that property management company which is in fact what I've done and so um I like to do deals like that where you don't have to be the one running them it could be your friend that you know your friend that you've worked with for a long time wants to operate one of these companies and you are just the one putting the deal together and you want to continue to do your own thing so it buying a business is really because one you want the cash flow and two maybe you want to get closer to your local community which is big for me what advice would you give to 16 year old Cody who maybe she's she's got a thousand dollars through mowing the lawn and through tutoring maths or something and she's got a thousand dollars and she's like I want to invest this thousand dollars how would you approach that conversation with your young younger self well I'll tell you what I tell my cousins now we're right about that age so to my 16 18 year old cousins I say take the big risk now while you have no responsibility the more responsibility you get the scarier the risk becomes when you have kids when you have a mortgage when you have a big paycheck that you could lose it's scary to go start a business to think about buying a business to think about being the operator in a business but when you're young you should take all the risk humanly possible because failure doesn't really matter when you're young I don't think you should take a thousand dollars and invest it in anything when you're young unless you're investing it in yourself or you're investing in a big risk like trying to potentially turn a thousand dollars into a hundred thousand dollar business purchase interesting but not Bitcoin or NFL no no no no I mean there's uh in investing we say um we say that those people are speculators not investors and there's a whole generation of people that have been taught speculation not investing anytime you have the last man fallacy which is that the person who comes in next that you're going to sell to is the one is the dumb one that's going to be holding the bag you should know that you should run away from that because you're the last man we don't want to be a nation of people who are trying to kind of dupe people into being the next person to buy it at a higher valuation than we did we want to have assets that are so good that you think like Warren Buffett and you want to hold them for 30 years you have to pry that business out of my cold dead hands because it's a great business and I think because we had that fast money run of nfts and Bitcoin and stocks people get confused and you know the other thing that's that's so true is really good Finance people who trade stocks have something called a black box they don't even tell their sales people that go and rep their product what's inside of their algorithms it's firewalled you can't see inside why because I would never tell somebody my unfair advantage that everybody else could go replicate immediately if trading is the way that I make money so anybody that teaches trading online is totally full of it in my opinion because if they had great secrets they would never share them they'd just pile as much money as humanly possible into it and buy a bunch of Bentleys and so I'm really cautious on speculators and I'm really bullish on ownership so how might said 16 year old said cousin actually invest that thousand dollars you invested in yourself I think you need to learn at that point you have to learn then you increase your earnings then you invest no 16 year old should be taking their thousand bucks and putting in the s p in my opinion they will make so much more money by taking that thousand bucks and going and learning how to create a bunch of YouTube videos or going and learning how to buy businesses or going and learning how to talk to people and negotiate whatever the case may be I would take the thousand bucks and I would consider it your little MBA money and I think spend like that until you can start putting you can do the S P 500 put in 10 of your savings in I've done that for a long long time but that won't make you rich it'll just potentially be an inflation yeah um how do you feel about these days the balance of you can learn anything for free on the internet therefore you don't have to pay for it versus the value of paying for things there's a lot of research that supports the fact that if we do not pay for things we do not appreciate them it's why we have products that have costs at my business because your likelihood to accomplish something if you put skin in the game is infinitely higher and so we actually see it it's fascinating the more we charge for products the more likely they are to actually finish and accomplish them when you get something for free you tend to not value it right I mean you think about all the giveaways at a conference as opposed to something that you buy and so we give away 90 of our content for free with the hope that people will take their own action but if you actually want to take action put skin in the game I mean my husband and I like to do little bets so if I want to go right now I want a six pack so I'm working on that so like we'll have a little bet so we'll have a thousand bucks in and whoever does X thing related to Fitness First gets the thousand bucks and it's just enough painful where you're focused on executing on it and so that's why we charge for our products and I think if you have a product you should always charge for it because people will value it more how does that Vibe with do things for free do things for free but if you want to do things to accomplish them pay for them it's it's the same thing as like accountability buddy I mean if you really wanted to accomplish something you do two things you'd get an accountability buddy to hold you uh to a higher standard and you'd pay for help to get it done I have a personal trainer you know I have a nutritionist I work with um because I want to get there faster and I will go to the gym if I'm going to lose 100 bucks uh if I miss my training session whereas often I will not go to the gym if I don't pay for it because it's easy to not um yeah I think it's like in in fields like you know if you want to learn if you want to learn how to play tennis better it's just kind of assumed that of course you would hire a tennis coach but I think one of the one of the good things about information being free on the internet is also one of the downsides of information being free on the internet that people think oh great the fact that there is a eight hour long YouTube video on how to code in Python means that I should not pay for this bootcamp but actually you know paying for the thing gives you a lot gives you accountability skin in the game gives you a community gets you out there and yes there are a lot of self-starters who absolutely can learn stuff for free on the internet but I found this as well like with my with my YouTuber Academy I'll have friends messaging being like hey can I can I get on this course yeah and I in the very first cohort I would be like yeah of course and not a single person even ever logged in to make their account no but now so now what I do is yeah I say pay the five thousand dollars and if you complete the homework I will refund you the five thousand dollars and they all do it and some of them just so some of them have started YouTube channels at the back of it and have now quit their jobs because they had that skin in the game others have done the six videos and said you know what it's not for me can I have my 5K back and I'm like yeah sure here you go here you go but at least they've done the work and it kind of forces some level of accountability right well it also shows that you value yourself as the Creator because oftentimes what I found is my friends my friends friends family will want to have a phone call right about buying a business and the reason that I started on the internet creating content uh was basically I didn't want to answer the same question a million times I'm not as nice as you right so I was like no no phone calls no coffees dear God help you if you ask to pick my brain like also gross visual like I don't want any part of that and so um so I started creating the content because I was like I don't want to have the same conversation 372 times and so um I think it shows that you value yourself when you start to charge for the services that you render it's really actually an important transfer of value and it's and you know also I have a big proponent that you shouldn't ask friends for discounts you should pay premiums and in fact if you want to support your friend's business share it and pay for it and most people forget those things I would never ask a friend for a discount and I never have even when I didn't have a lot of money because I want the honor of getting to pay for their hard work what a beautiful thing you want to give to charity you want to be known as a charitable person but you don't want to pay for the things that your friends spent their precious hours creating it's actually a little bit of an insult so I'm very big on that and I think our information is so good that what we charge for it is so cheap that you are crazy to not pay for it because if you went to Harvard first of all you couldn't get this information they don't teach private equity in this way and I had to spend you know seven months with a vitamin D deficiency at Goldman so that I could learn this stuff and work 70 hours a week and now you get it in a compressed way I'm so thankful that there are humans now on the internet that create and share and I can pay for it could you imagine if you could get a supply chain class from Jeff Bezos I would pay so much money for that but most people do the selfish thing which is they don't share the information now we've kind of gotten it weird and twisted because there's a bunch of fraudsters on the internet who didn't do anything who are creating things sounding like they did they've tainted the whole thing but in actuality most humans in finance the same as we get rich quietly we don't share our practices it's a black box and now there are humans that will actually tell me how they did all of this and give me the information I get to pay for that's a incredible and and so I think you have a moral prerogative to charge for it because more people will actually take action and if what we care about is legacy and humans taking action and that's what feeds our ego or our Tombstone or whatever um then I just follow the numbers and that's what the numbers say nice Cody this is an episode you want to follow definitely do a part two table all of the things content all of them more about the business stuff uh maybe in Austin want to come visit sounds like a plan um any final piece of advice for anyone who's Vibe with their maybe two hours for this interview so far um who who likes what you have to say and who kind of Vibes with your way of thinking any any pieces of advice maybe just that a capable Optimist is worth six times more than a brilliant pessimist there's a whole world of people who want to tell you why you can't do things it's actually very cheap and easy it's super easy to tell somebody why something's not possible it's actually quite hard to convince somebody that they can and so I think listening to things like this and getting people to believe that they're capable is hugely powerful so I think it's really cool the platform that you've built and I know you've influenced lots of people including me oh thanks very much appreciate it yeah thank you so much for coming on my pleasure all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform then do please leave us a review on the iTunes Store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that would be awesome and if you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode so thanks for watching uh do hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Views: 334,024

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali, Abdaal, Ali Abdal, Abdal, Deep Dive With Ali Abdaal, Deep Dive, Ali Abdaal Podcast, Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal Podcast

Id: zHiRzcXftPw

Length: 94min 50sec (5690 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2023