How to Completely Change Your Life in 60 Days (Or Less)

This episode breaks down the exact frameworks that separate people who set goals from people who actually achieve them, why most people are scared of growth and how to name those fears out loud, and the specific systems that will help you lock in, focus, and finish the year strong. From the four numbers you should track in business to why mental masturbation is the single reason most people don't win, you'll learn how to look at what you built, visualize what you want, and execute like your life depends on it. In this episode, you'll learn: Why you don't need more time, you just need focus Kat Cole’s “hotshot” rule Why thinking about your goals is not the same as doing the work The Disney flywheel principle Why most people are scared of growth ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: 59 Days to Dominate 2027(00:00:31) The Timeline Truth: You Need a Deadline, Not More Time(00:01:32) The 2027 Strategy: Look at What You Built(00:02:22) Small and Consistent Beats Sporadic: Track Your Progress(00:04:42) Where We Lost: The Brutal Truth About What Didn't Work(00:05:42) How to Focus Like Your Life Depends on It(00:06:38) Context Is Everything: Nothing's Good or Bad Except by Comparison(00:08:01) 2027 Goals: Do Fewer Things, Focus on What You Really Want(00:09:07) Visualization: The Disney Flywheel and How to Build Yours(00:10:56) The Hotshot Rule: What Would the Best Version of You Do?(00:11:30) The Contrarian Flywheel: How Content, Events, and Products Connect(00:12:58) Anti-Visualization: Prepare for What Will Go Wrong(00:14:30) Go Out and Execute: Mental Masturbation Is Why Most People Don't Win(00:17:23) The Theme for 2027: Does It Convert, Compound, and Pay for Itself?(00:17:57) Make It About Them: Why Your Team Needs to Win Too(00:19:22) Definitions Change the World: Results Over Activity(00:20:38) Name Your Fears Out Loud: Why Most People Are Scared of Growth(00:21:44) Talent Has Nothing to Do With Success: The Commitment Advantage ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.

• 0:30Codie Sanchez?

  There are only 59 days until the new year. Time is running out. So if you want to set yourself up to absolutely dominate 2027, you gotta make sure you close out 2026 right. Today, we're going to focus on how to lock in, focus on yourself, your business, your goals, what you need to know, what you need to do to finish the year strong, what I do uniquely in my business and my goals to do this exact same thing. And Codie Sanchez, and we've got some big goals for 2027. This is the Big Deal Podcast. Let's jump in.

• 1:01Codie Sanchez?

  Okay, I want to talk about setting your timeline first. You know, the truth is you don't need more time. You need a deadline. Nine times out of 10. And this is true in my business as well. In fact, I think it's not usually about time. It's about the F word, focus. How much time are you spending on the things that actually change your life, make you more money and help you grow? And so I think about this when I put together something called the 2027 Strategy. I don't know, you guys can't probably see it right here. You can't if you're on YouTube, but I put together something called the 2027 Strategy. I do it in all my all hands meetings on how to grow like a startup and run like an owner. So this idea is like, how can you do this for you? How can you do this in the business? And where we basically start is thinking about this idea of like, you can actually make massive change in a short amount of time.

• 1:45Codie Sanchez?

  You just don't realize it yet. You can change your business with a few decisions inside of a month. You can change your body inside of a couple of months. And you can probably change the entire trajectory of your life inside a year or two years. If you think about it in the grand scheme of things, that ain't that long. And so I like to think about what would the business or my life be if I made some massive changes today? So what we have to do before we can go forward is look at what happened historically. So I always have a section that's like 2026, what happened? In business, I like to look at the math first. How much revenue did we make? How much percentage growth did we have this year versus last year? How many team members did we increase this year versus last year?

• 2:28Codie Sanchez?

  And then how many new customers or clients did we bring on board? If I'm thinking about it personally, I think, how much money did I make this year? How much more money did I make this year or last year? How much did my title change or my responsibilities change this year versus last year? And how many direct actions can I attribute to myself as we grow? I think about those four every single time. I call it the look at what you built. I also like to think about like small and consistent beats sporadic every time. So I want to look at the small things, like for instance, this year it was, okay, we launched a book, right? And so for me, I went from, you know, top 30 books in the world to top three business book on Business Money and Amazon.

• 3:13Codie Sanchez?

  And, you know, number one in entrepreneurship, number one in business leadership, number one in motivational business management, number one in small business. Like where did you have something that was kind of small for you, but grew? In the beginning, for me, it would be even small things like what did I buy this year that I really wanted? Like, did my place get better? Did I end up like getting a better car? Did I end up following through more often? Was my Strava app updated more often because I went on runs? You know, did I get to the gym more frequently? Like, where could I just track my little moment by moment progress? I always look in our business, I look at the numbers first because you gotta make money. Then I look at usually our reach, how many people follow us? So in 2025, that was about nine million people.

• 3:57Codie Sanchez?

  This year, it's over 15.8 million people that follow across all social sites. So 3.4 on Instagram being one of the largest, 2.3 million on YouTube. You know, a couple million across podcast platforms. So what is like the small thing where you can track your surface area? Because that's usually how luck increases. The more places you have an area to touch, the more lucky you get. And then I like breaking it down. Like, maybe you do this with your family or friends. I like to think about wins by team. So here it's like, all right, content. You hit, you know, 15.8 million followers. The book hit number one in six Amazon categories. Events, we had more events than we've ever had before, 2.3X more.

• 4:42Codie Sanchez?

  We have thousands of new members in both the Academy where we teach people to buy businesses and Boardroom where we teach people how to build businesses. And we had over 130 members that bought businesses this year. That's cool. So where are like the micro numbers in what you do? And then I like to look at like, what is the activity that we did? So this year, for instance, I would look at, oh, we built some tech products. We had never done that before. We built this thing that allows business owners to track how they're going every single year. That's kind of cool. And then I would look at like, what worked or what didn't? This is called the not everything worked, here's what didn't, or the where we lost segment. Where did you lose this year? You know, for instance, it can train thinking, we grew our shared costs faster than the business did.

• 5:24Codie Sanchez?

  79% increase in costs, revenue up 41%. So we grew a lot, but our costs went up a lot. You know, we also, for instance, made a couple of big mistakes this year. And so I like to write down my mistakes. We did $1.3 million in tech spend that ended up being totally useless and absolute waste of money. And then we projected 17.8 million followers this year and only hit that 15.8 million. So like, there are some goals you just don't hit. Write them down. I like to know it. I also like to think about what we're changing with that. So if what worked is we doubled revenue, basically, you know, team grew, number one launch.

• 6:03Codie Sanchez?

  What didn't is that the costs were super expensive, that ad costs really went up, event costs went up. So what are you going to do about that? And I think the second, you know, part I like to focus on is how to focus like your life depends on it. So, you know, a reminder to myself that I actually keep on a sticky note. This is the sticky note says, you are going to win because you're an absolute psychopath no one can keep up with. The only reason that we win more often is because we review so that we can imitate, iterate and innovate. We think about, you know, the things that are not happening in the life that you want right now. How can you make sure you're honest about what those are and then go to the next level to my game? Like, I think it's really just a reminder that life is you against you.

• 6:46Codie Sanchez?

  And no one else can win that game. There's only really you playing against yourself. And it's hard to not get distracted. So that's why racehorses wear blinders. What can you do in your life to sort of focus next year? And one of the best ways you can figure out what to focus on is what worked this year. And I think you are probably one year away from other people calling you lucky, which is cool if you keep doing this. You know, I also think about putting it in context, like nothing's good or bad except by comparison. One of my favorite mentors at Goldman Sachs told me that. I would tell him numbers like, I want to be a millionaire. And he would say, okay, cool. Like, where are you now? Why that number? Like, give me some context as to why that matters. And so for us, I think there's two ways to build a company.

• 7:31Codie Sanchez?

  At my company, you have path A, which would be like raise a lot of money. And then investors set your agenda. You have to grow at any cost. You have layoffs when cash runs out. And then path B is like build profitably, which means you set the agenda. Growth can sustain you, the upside stays with you. What's the downside to this? A lot more risk if you're using all your own money on the table, a lot less risk if you raise money from other people. And so think about like, where are you limiting yourself in some ways? I don't like to have a bunch of investors on my cap table except on hyper growth companies. So I just don't do it. Where are you doing the same thing? Yeah, maybe you have less risk right now because you're an employee, but you have massive upside because you're at a company like ours that almost doubles every year.

• 8:14Codie Sanchez?

  I think a lot of times we think we have to make a big, huge, scary change. And I go back to thinking about some of the greats like Confucius, who says, "The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." Like, do you have to make a huge, massive change? Or do you just make a couple of small ones? And a lot of times that comes down to like, what are you going to do next? So we have a segment called 2027, where are we going? And for that, I think about Cal Newport says, "Do fewer things at once." You know, Sam Altman talks about figure out what you really want. Don't chase after all the other things. And so for us, I like having not more than four targets for me. For you, that might be like how much money you want to make.

• 8:56Codie Sanchez?

  It might be like what you want to spend your days on. It might be like what you don't want to do, anti-goals. And it might be like a hobby or something like, you know, I want to have another kid and go experiment and have fun with them. I want to go do a couple of Masogis this year. In business, for me, it's almost always revenue, growth, how much profit I want to make and how many new customers I want to get. That's almost always my four. So that's what they are this year. And basically I want to double again this next year. And so I write that down. I say it out loud because then other people will help hold me accountable. And they can do the same thing for you. And after you do that, you start to kind of like visualize what you want your life for your business or your career to look like. Like, for instance, I think one of the best ways to visualize is by to look at other examples.

• 9:41Codie Sanchez?

  So for instance, I look at Disney in some ways as a comparison to our company. You know, they basically in 1987, if you go all the way back, they had $2.9 billion in revenue at the beginning. In 2024, they had $91.4 billion. That's 32 times revenue growth in 37 years. How? They actually built a flywheel, like all of these companies all together. And if you look at the screen, what you basically see is that they own hundreds of companies. Like, you know, they have really three main sections, film, TV and streaming, parks and products. But every one sort of feeds into the other one. So if you own the rights to a Marvel movie, then you get to sell those merchandise products,

• 10:26Codie Sanchez?

  like the little, you know, Marvel characters at stores across the US or at their parks. And so sometimes I think if I want to visualize my life, it's easier to mimic somebody else's. That's called memetic desire. So where in your life can you look at somebody else and say like, oh, I do want that aspect of their life? Let's select that as part of like the Disney idea here. And so anybody who's great does this. You know, this weekend in Austin is F1, Formula One, which is basically people driving, right? Really fast. And in order to drive really fast in a car requires really quick reflexes, right? If you're too slow, you won't hit the turns. So they actually have to visualize before they get in there exactly what they're going to do to minimize how fast their reflexes are.

• 11:11Codie Sanchez?

  And that's the same thing you have to do. I don't believe in just manifestation. Visualization is different. It's, it's kind of. Built on evidence, right? You're like, I know this is likely to happen next year, so I'm going to execute on these things because of it. And actually, I just interviewed a guest today who's a friend of mine, Kat Cole. She is the CEO of AG1, a multi-billion dollar company. And she has this visualization tactic called the hot shot rule. We'll talk about it. But if you had to encapsulate it into one sentence, it's basically envision someone you admire taking over your job, your role, your life, and then ask, what's one thing they would do differently? That is really empowering because it doesn't always have to be you. So what's the best version

• 11:55Codie Sanchez?

  of you? And what would you be doing differently? And how can you mimic that? And that's kind of how I think about Disney. So for my business, I'm like, okay, if I want to think about Disney as this massive flywheel, I want to think about contrarian the same way. Every team spins the wheel. So at our company, we have content that's high, podcast, YouTube, Instagram, et cetera. That feeds to events, our growth accelerator workshops where we help business owners scale, our academy workshops where we help people buy businesses. That leads to our products, which are academies, year-long commitments in order for you to help your business get scaled, or help you buy a business with our advisory and investment group. Then we move them to lending, perhaps. We have a

• 12:37Codie Sanchez?

  lending arm of the business. If you need capital for your business, or you need your business, you need capital to buy a business. Then we have technology products. That's like BizScout. So that's a marketplace that helps you find a business to buy and then track the whole business buying process. Or we have Boardroom Pulse, which is a product that lets all of our advisors track you and your business and see how to get to your next million dollar revenue line, connecting directly into the back of your business. Then we have Contrarian Thinking Capital, which is where we invest in businesses that you either buy or sell. And also, we invest in our boardroom companies and watch them grow. And that's how we have companies like Resy Brands. And then we have Contrarian Thinking Capital Venture Arm, which is multiple funds where we

• 13:21Codie Sanchez?

  invest in super growth startups. And so this attention becomes sort of a flywheel across everything we do. And, you know, I think every time you can visualize not only the win, but what would get in your way is a failure, you'll win more often. So a lot of times, you know, when I'm putting together a memo, which I'm putting together right now, I'll say, okay, here's my idea and brief and everything. Then I'll, I'll talk to my little AI and say, here's all the things that I'm worried about that I think could go wrong. Put all of the things I'm worried about that could go wrong in here and give me solutions to them. So I was just working on one of our deals with our investment partners. And I was like, I am worried that we're not tracking all of our investment partners to see if we're being fully compensated on all of our royalties. I think

• 14:04Codie Sanchez?

  we have a, we have a hole there. And so I'm honest with it. It gives me a solution for it and you move forward. And you have to, you have to practice this like anti-visualization, a brutal awareness of the truth of what life is going to throw at you. You know, in the words of like Arthur Brooks, a dear friend of mine, also an incredible podcast episode. If you search Arthur Brooks, I think I've had him on two or three times. He talks about anticipating what it will be like when you die. And, and so there's actually a manifestation that you do to visualize what would happen with you when you die. What could go sideways? What will happen as you decay, as you fall apart, as you become, you know, you know more. And the reason why you do this is because

• 14:46Codie Sanchez?

  you sort of normalize yourself to really bad things. And then they're not so scary when it happens to you. So I often think like, don't just tell me your goals. Tell me all the things that are going to happen to you in your way, and why you're not going to let those stop you. And that'll help you overcome a lot. Then we get to like, the next segment, which I think is, go out and execute. You gotta go do it. So if we're, we're focused on our goals and we've done the mental prep of visualization, what does action actually look like? And so that's this segment. I basically start talking here about like, okay, what are we rolling out next at CT? You know, for us, it's going to be scaling, acquisitions, and investing. Those are our three pillars. We're going to roll out new content for every single one of them. We're going to roll out more niche content. We're going to have a new cast of characters, not just Cody. And in

• 15:31Codie Sanchez?

  order to do that, we also want to make sure that we're investing in way more businesses that we work with. And so, you know, as I think about that, what's my next visualization of execution like? Well, I can't exactly mimic Marvel or Pixar. So I look at another example of somebody I want to, want to mimic. And that's like Vista Equity Partners, you know? They built an operating team as their deal team. That's what we do here. So, you know, at Boardroom, when you come and you learn how to scale your business, we do that with our advisors. Those advisors will be the same people who flag you for us to invest in you. And so, you know, I think a lot of times, if I was, we think that we have to do this all ourselves. We think that thinking about the thing is actually

• 16:13Codie Sanchez?

  doing the thing. But in truth, without being a little crude here, you know, mental masturbation is the single reason why most people don't win. And that's like, you talk about your goals, you think about your goals, you visualize your goals. And instead, you gotta just start doing the work. This is the do the work segment. Because you don't really get lucky. You, you get up early, you fail and start again. You show up every day, you ignore your haters, you build even when you want to, you never stop trying. And then eventually, you achieve the thing that you want to do. But most people aren't willing to do that portion of it. We're really happy to manifest and visualize and super unhappy to do the actual work. And so, you know, I always liked the Mark Andreessen, which is that arbitrage returns to merit, determination, hard work, and toughness. Basically

• 16:56Codie Sanchez?

  meaning, most people who are successful today, if you dropped them on a desert island, and you gave them no money, but they had the same capitalistic structure there that allowed you to build a business again, would probably become successful again. And that it is a little bit to do with your unfair advantages and privilege and all that. But it's mostly to do with how hard are you willing to work and what are you willing to do to get there? And so, I think on average, it's more about your determination and your next steps than just your visualization. But it helps to put it all down and to like, actually have visuals of your life and what you want. And so, you know, I think when we imagine our business on a go-forward basis, right now, we don't do billions in revenue. You know, our businesses do nine figures in revenue. But in the

• 17:41Codie Sanchez?

  future, will they? And if so, who's done it before? Because doesn't that make it more real? This isn't like magical unicorn land. Lots of people have actually built up big businesses and crushed it. And so, can you? I think the, the overarching thing is to have a theme for your life. So next year, what is our theme? Next year, our theme is, does it convert, compound, and pay for itself? What does that mean? I want to focus on our organic content as opposed to ads. I want to focus on, can we convert people into our ecosystem? I want to focus on, do they find us really valuable? That then means that they want to pay us more money and we get to increase our LTV. And are we cost-conscious? Because I don't want to raise third-party capital. I want to do it all ourselves. Those are my themes for the year. I usually don't have more than four.

• 18:27Codie Sanchez?

  And then, if you're going to have a team, or anybody in your life, your husband, your, your, you know, wife, your, your kids, your family, your friends, you have to think about how every theme ends with them, not you. Like, why is your wife going to be on board with you working more this year and going more part at it? Why is your husband, why are your friends going to be on board on it? Well, you have your themes, so organic conversion, LTV cost. And then you talk about you. What does this mean for you, family? Well, maybe it means more money for the family to go on vacation. Maybe it means more growth and opportunities and an ability to do things that you love and you're happier. Maybe it means more freedom. You'll have a higher title, so you won't

• 19:09Codie Sanchez?

  have to come in every single day. And so, you have to like, have it revert back to how it's going to help the other people around you in life. Otherwise, they will be roadblocks instead of bridges. And you want to build a series of people around you who are going to be bridges and door openers, not door closers or door stops. And so, in my business at least, I have a segment of it that says like, what changes for you with this plan? And it's not just, we're going to build a billion dollar business. Why, why does anybody care about that? You know, but me, I own most of the company. They don't. What do they care about? Hey, if you change this thing, you might have more money, you might have more freedom, you might have more opportunity. And here's exactly the

• 19:49Codie Sanchez?

  numbers you have to change. And then, like, I think definitions change the world around you. And the more you pay attention to the words you speak, the more that you can actually create and architect the world that you want. And so I think really, humans do well learning by, not, not by a statement, but by good versus bad. You know, it's really hard, hot, hard to explain to a baby that a stove is hot. But if you have a baby touch something that's cold, and then you have him get close to something that's hot, you can go cold, hot, you can go good, bad, right? And so for us, it's like, okay, in our business before, it might have been activity, not results. Well, we want to flip that. We want results, not activity. So somebody at my company says, hey,

• 20:31Codie Sanchez?

  it was a great event we went to last week. I'd be like, define great? What does that mean for us? A great event for us means we hit 92% of our revenue goal, we converted X number of members, and we helped those members achieve X dollar amount. If it's like, the post went viral. Okay, well, what does that mean? Good viral, bad viral? Do people hate us on the internet? Or do they like us? Do they drive sales? You know, if it's like, members love us. You're like, what does that mean? How do we quantify that? Do they renew, refer, and review us? The three Rs. So words can really help you dominate. And what I say, I would say too, is like, I actually think that most people

• 21:12Codie Sanchez?

  are scared of growth, that that's why most people don't change their lives. And, and growth can feel scary because it's new and you don't know what it is. And so, I think naming the fears out loud that you have inside of your head that you're concerned about might help you. Like, fear number one would be, man, if I put these big growth goals on myself or my company, that means more work, but am I going to make like, the same amount of money? You know, or fear two, does this just mean like, new priorities every quarter and more stuff getting thrown at me? Fear three, how am I going to be able to keep up with all of this? You know, that feels like a lot. You're just going to replace me with somebody else? And instead, you've got to flip it and go, I hear you on those fears. Instead, here's what it means. You know, more money, more opportunity, more freedom, better

• 21:55Codie Sanchez?

  days, less guessing, less chaos, et cetera. And then how you do that? So for us at CT, that would be like, profit sharing, like promotion and more performance opportunity, like raises tied to your numbers, like more employees that get to work for you. So you don't have to do everything that you don't want to do all the time. And I guess the last thing I'll say is that, there's a lot of talented people in the world. And maybe you're one of them. But what if talent has almost nothing to do with your success? And most people will die on the hill of, one day, someday, maybe, I don't know, as opposed to, I made a goal, I committed to it, I said what I wasn't going to

• 22:35Codie Sanchez?

  do, I said what I was scared of, and I did it anyway. And I visualized myself here, and then I did the work on top of it. You know, there's a reason why the people with the highest Q and IQ in the world are not the most successful people. Because it's actually not really that much about how smart you are. It's about what are you willing to do consistently, way past the point that everybody else would find it comfortable. That's my idea for you. If you want to dominate this year, that's how I would start. And if you want to see some of these visuals, I'll put them in the YouTube video for you. Because I think the coolest thing about an end of the year is it allows for a new beginning of next one.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.