How to Get Rich Buying Boring Businesses with Codie Sanchez (PFP Vault)

Today we talk to Codie Sanchez about buying boring businesses. Codie owns 26 businesses, is the founder of Contrarian Thinking, and has an incredible newsletter with over 110K Readers. We talk about: Carwashes Laundromats Mailbox Money Vending Machines How to get financing for deals How to manage multiple businesses And so much more! How Andrew Can Help You: Listen to The Business Show here. Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest! Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here. Car buying Calculator here Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ for 20% off! Shop outdoor furniture, grills, lawn games, and WAY more for WAY less. Head to wayfair.com Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at www.monarchmoney.com/PFP Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Connect With Codie: ⁠www.codiesanchez.com⁠ ⁠www.contrarianthinking.co⁠ Linkedin: @codiesanchez ⁠Twitter: @Codie_Sanchez⁠ ⁠Instagram: @codiesanchez⁠ ⁠TikTok: @realcodiesanchez⁠ Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Free Guides: The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money How to Negotiate Your Salary The 75 Day Money Challenge Get out Of Debt Fast Take the Money Personality Quiz 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.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  Longtime listeners know, one of the best ways to build wealth is to increase your income. And one way to do that is by starting a side hustle. And that's one reason why I absolutely love Whatnot. Now, my son and I, we love collecting sports cards. And we've used Whatnot to buy and sell cards. It's been a really fun way to enjoy something we love together. Now, Whatnot is a live shopping platform where people sell everything from sports cards to clothing, electronics, and collectibles. And what's really cool about it is you can turn something you're passionate about into a business. And you could do it right from your phone. You don't even need a storefront or a website. So whether you're looking to make some extra money or find great deals on your next shopping trip, check out Whatnot.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

  Search Whatnot, that's W H A T N O T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI website builder.

• 1:27Andrew Giancola?

  I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch. Their AI can help with SEO, website copy, email marketing, and more. Plus, your domain, website, email, and marketing can all live in one account, with plans starting at just $3 every single month. Hostinger builds your vision step by step. Create your website today. Go to hostinger.com/pfp and use code PFP for 10% off now. On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about how to get rich buying boring businesses with Cody Sanchez.

• 2:26Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be talking to Cody Sanchez about buying boring businesses. If you have any questions, hit me up on Instagram at MasterMoneyCo and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast. And if you want to help out the show, leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to check us out on YouTube as well at MasterMoney over on YouTube. Now today, we're going to be talking to Codie Sanchez. And you guys have heard me talk about boring

• 3:11Andrew Giancola?

  businesses in the past, because I think there's a major opportunity with boring businesses. There's a ton of baby boomers who are going to retire, and a lot of their children don't want to take over their businesses. And so what they have to do is go out and sell those businesses. And as you're going to hear, Cody's going to talk about the multiples that you can buy these businesses for. And it's absolutely amazing the deals that you can get with boring businesses. Now, this is something that there is a tremendous amount of opportunity out there. And the opportunity is everywhere. I've looked all over the country, and I've seen it all over the place where there's opportunities to buy boring businesses like car washes, laundromats, or you could look at things like plumbing companies, air conditioning companies, electrical companies. There's so many different types of things that you can go out and buy. You

• 3:53Andrew Giancola?

  just have to look in your local area. So today, we're going to be talking to Cody, who is the queen of boring businesses. She owns dozens of these boring businesses, and has a system where she buys them up and has other people manage them for her, but she is the actual owner. So today, we're going to be talking about that. We're going to be talking about car washes, laundromats, how you can build mailbox money. We're talking about vending machines, how to get financing for these deals, which is extremely important. And then how she actually manages multiple businesses. We're going to talk about so much more as well. So let's welcome Codie Sanchez to the show.

• 4:28Andrew Giancola?

  So Cody, welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

• 4:33Andrew Giancola?

  So we are so excited to have you today because you are one of my favorite followers on the internet because you talk about some incredible ways to build wealth from buying boring businesses. And you also have one of my favorite newsletters to read every single week that I think everybody should be reading. We'll link it up down below as well, but tell us how you got started buying businesses and what drew you to that market?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was in finance for a long time. I've been in private equity and investing for most of my career before I was a journalist. And so basically what I realized one day is that I was doing deals and making money for our firm at the time in the private equity space. And these deals were buying businesses and we were crushing it like for the firm. And I remember sitting there one day and thinking, wait a second, you know, the main partners on this deal are making like millions off of every single deal. I'm not making millions off of every single deal and yet I'm doing all the work on it. Why couldn't I just start doing this for myself? And so if anything ever went sideways in finance, I could have these businesses on the side.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  And so that's basically what I did is I just said, hey, there's no real big difference between a giant LBO, which is a leveraged buyout that like KKR or any of the large private equity firms do. And the small boring businesses that I buy, they're materially pretty similar. And so why don't I just start accumulating some of these for my own portfolio? And I'll use the money I earn to start investing in them. And so that's what happened.

• 5:58Andrew Giancola?

  I love that idea and I love the idea of buying boring businesses because I think there's a lot of baby boomers that are going to be retiring. And I think there's a lot of those deals available right now. And I think it's a really cool market to focus on, especially when people are looking at real estate markets or things like that where they're over leveraged. I think buying these boring businesses are a really incredible deal right now and they're everywhere. So what are some of the pros to buying boring businesses? And why would you want to buy a business instead of starting one from scratch?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Lots of reasons. One, when you start your business from scratch, you're basically betting on hopes and dreams and you're paying for the future hope of cash flow. Costs money to start a business. And so I don't love not making money on day one. I especially don't love not making money on day one and paying for potential profits in the future. Don't love it. And so if what I'm starting a business for is actually to make money, not because I have a dream inside of me that has to exist, not because I couldn't live except for, you know, building this business, but as an income source, I would rather buy a business where I could have profits the second the deal closes and use a business for that reason. And I think there's room in the world for both of those, but I like the idea of like,

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I don't really believe in the, you know, starving artist, starving startup entrepreneur. I actually think you should give yourself some space. If you want to go build the amazing thing that you want to do, create some free cash flow so that you can be in a smart, non-fear-based, non-scarcity entrepreneur as opposed to stressing about your startup non-stop. So that's why I think you should buy instead of build. The other thing is you can't really use too much leverage when you're building, meaning you can't really get loans for something that doesn't exist. You really can't get, you know, grants. You can get people to give you money for it, which would be startup fundraising, right? But only for pretty crazy ideas and at kind of tough multiples for the business. It's one of the most expensive forms of money you can get. And so I don't really love that. And that's why I sort of say I think you should buy every chance you can instead of build.

• 7:52Andrew Giancola?

  And that's the thing I love about it too, is just that you can put dollars down. And we'll talk about that a little bit later on how to do it. But you can put dollars down to actually buy something that can cash flow hundreds of thousands of dollars if you want to, depending on the deal. So it's something that's incredible that you can do and you're buying that existing business.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  That's right. I mean, the only thing I would add to that is we talk about this a lot. And I'm not saying that this stuff is super easy. It's hard work, but it is relatively simple. So like that is, people hear that and they think, no way can I make hundreds of thousands of dollars for one deal? You absolutely can. Now, can you do it if you're a terrible operator and you've never run a business before and you don't really want to work whatsoever? And you just want to buy the thing and cut a check every month? Like probably not, but if you were willing to put in work into your startup, I don't see why you couldn't also put in work into a business that exists. So yes, I agree with you.

• 8:37Andrew Giancola?

  Absolutely. And one big business that you talk about all the time is laundromats. And I think it's one of the most simple businesses to understand for a lot of people. And you recently released a really cool YouTube video on one of your laundromats. So tell us about some of those projects and why laundromats are some of the best businesses out there.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  You know, I like talking about laundromats for exactly the reason that you said. It's because laundromats are easy to exist. I have dirty clothes, I get them cleaned, I put some coins in a machine, and there's not employees on property all the time. It's a relatively straightforward business. That said, I don't always think they're the best business to start. In fact, it's really hard to get a laundromat that can do millions of dollars a year. We have one group of them that can, but it requires a lot of employees and a wash and fold service. The reason that I talk about laundromats, as you nailed it, because it's a gateway business. So I call businesses that, you know, allow people to start understanding acquisition gateway businesses, which basically mean you get a little taste and then you get hooked. You get hooked on this idea of deal making and acquisition. And I think laundromats are a great way to do that, which is why I start with those types of businesses.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Similar for like vending machines, ice vending machines. They're not incredibly expensive and they're simple. And the worst thing that you can do is have your first deal go sideways. You don't want that. You want your first deal to go pretty smooth because then you'll continue executing on them and do bigger and more complex deals.

• 9:54Andrew Giancola?

  If someone wanted to get into some of those deals and look at starting small, maybe with something like a laundromat, what would be the best way to get started running due diligence and running the numbers on that?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So I always talk about learn, earn, invest. That's the three steps. So before you do anything, if you're watching videos on Instagram, TikTok, online, whatever, I think what you should do is start with learning. The reason why is even if you buy a laundromat tomorrow, the amount that you can earn on it is capped. It has a limited upside, like most businesses do. Your ability to earn is unlimited as a human. And so I like investing in yourself first. That's why we created an education company. So the first thing that I would do is I would go sign up for our free newsletter at Contrarian Thinking. I would sign up for our free newsletter at Unconventional Acquisitions. We have a course there if you want to learn about business buying. You could also just sign up for the free newsletter, you know, no pressure either way. But I would make sure that you spend 30 to 60 days sort of immersed in this idea of doing M and A.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  The cool part is, say you never buy a business. The ability to negotiate and do deals and think about structuring and equity is something you're going to thank me for, for the rest of your life. So you don't actually have to do a deal to get an ROI on this. So that's where I would start. And I think you kind of want to get obsessed about your curiosity for that 30 or 60 day window. And then, once you have the framework for how to actually buy these businesses, you've done the course, or you've, you know, compiled your own learning methodology online, then I think you can get into the actual numbers and tactics. But first, you've actually got to understand the foundation. Otherwise, you'll be set on a wobbly hill.

• 11:23Andrew Giancola?

  Absolutely. And one of the things that you talked about is some of the ways that you can accelerate the cash flow in your laundromat. You talked about that in one of your articles, the seven income streams that you added to your laundromat. So what are some creative ways that you can actually accelerate that upside that you were just talking about?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think this is the fascinating part about businesses. Like, if you wanted to increase your income on your real estate property, it'd be really hard, right? Like, the market's got to go up. I get, you know, you could upgrade the property some degree, but you can't really go crazy. And so, it's kind of out of your control. You just have to play the waiting game, or the fix-it game, and then, you know, there's still some sort of cap. With a business, there's more options than you can imagine. So, for some of our laundromats, for instance, like, we're putting in vending machines into one. So you can do vending machine ads. You can do ads of different types of services. Like, the fold has traditional laundromats that you go in and do yourself. They also have a done-for-you model, which is like, you know, they pick up your laundry, they wash it, they fold it, they send it back to you. You could add a partnership with the dry cleaners. I typically don't recommend buying dry cleaners.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  There's a lot of issues with, like, remediation of dry cleaning facilities, so that's a different subject, but you could add a partnership with a dry cleaner. You could buy more laundromats. So if you have one, like we do, you could add a few more to it. You could buy the software that underlines the laundromat machines, or you could invest in the laundromat machines. You could add coin machines to it. So like, somebody reached out to us for a Bitcoin HCM to put in our laundromat. So I think there's about 72 ways you can add revenue streams to even a simple business like laundromats.

• 12:53Andrew Giancola?

  And I absolutely love that, because you're right. If you're managing a rental property or something like that, the only thing you could do is maybe add on to it. It's really expensive, but there's a lot of inexpensive ways to really increase your cash flow in these businesses, and there's a lot of ways to get creative with it as well. It's very cool.

• 13:07Andrew Giancola?

  So another really cool business that you profiled was the ice vending machine business. And I had one in a small town I grew up in. I remember seeing it all the time and we're like on the coastal area and we would always get our ice when we go fishing and on the boat and stuff like that. And I never thought about the business side of that, but you profiled one and I thought it was incredibly cool. So tell us more about that ice vending machine business.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a similar idea to a laundromat, which is how can you have a business that works for you without you working on it constantly and with a minimal amount of employees? Because when you start, you know, employees can be really tough to manage. And so I like high margin, low people businesses. And then as you grow, people become a different type of leverage. But I think to start out, it's better to not have a giant team for you to manage. And so these ice vending machines are fascinating, but essentially you see them on, you know, road sides at gas stations by like national parks, next to lakes. And basically you go up to them and you fill your ice chest with a bunch of ice. And they're not the ones with the bags of ice. They're the ones where the ice just kind of comes out of a chute. And essentially, the part that I like about this business is no employees,

• 14:10Speaker 01

  again, relatively little maintenance and overhead. They cost anywhere from $30,000 to $130,000, but you can finance them. And you put them on a property that's either yours or leased pretty cheaply. And you can cash flow. I mean, the numbers are all over the place, but let's say anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 a year per machine. And if you add a few of those, it actually becomes a nice little income stream in which you could actually profit to the tune of tens of thousands a year off of something that you only paid $30,000 to $150,000, let's say. That would be really hard to do with real estate.

• 14:43Andrew Giancola?

  Absolutely. It's just frozen water. You're profiting off that frozen water. And I've seen it in some cool areas, like really busy grocery stores and stuff like that as well. I love that. And then another really cool one that you profiled was your friend Lisa, who started the mini mailboxes business, as you called it. And I think it's a really, really cool business. And that's a great article. I'll link it up below as well. But tell us about that business and how Lisa got started.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Lisa's sort of similar to me. She has lots of different businesses that she does. She's always looking for ways to, one, add back to her community in Las Vegas, and, two, find ways to start businesses that are pretty inexpensive that have some sort of recurring revenue. Lisa is more of an expert in real estate, so she owns now the Engels-Vilkers franchise in Vegas. But she was like, you know, looking at storage, she was looking at multifamily, she was looking at single family, and then she came across UPS franchises. And essentially was like, yeah, maybe I'll do a UPS franchise and I'll have one of my friends run it. And what she realized is the UPS franchise business is really all about the P O boxes, where people go and they have their business and they get their mail sent to there.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  But UPS limits the amount of mailboxes you can have in your store. And so she was like, actually, it'd be better to open up my own store, let's call it Lisa's Packaging, and have a ton of these P O boxes. And basically, it's like a little mini storage center. Now, you've got to have somebody run the actual location, you have to have somebody send out the packages. So there is work here and there are employees. But I love the reoccurring model of these tiny P O boxes. It's like mini-real estate.

• 16:14Andrew Giancola?

  Exactly. That's the coolest part about it is it's like little mini-real estate. I have one of those at the UPS store and it's like 500 bucks a month. And if you have a bunch of them, the cool thing about, I think that article that you were talking about is Lisa could get more into those by just creating her own business instead of having the UPS business, which is really interesting.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. I always try to ask myself, and Lisa's the same, like, how would I do this if it was easy? If I really wanted to make income, but I wanted to do it in an easy way, what would be the easiest path to my goal? And so that's how she got to that answer instead of the UPS franchise.

• 16:44Andrew Giancola?

  Exactly. That makes complete sense. That's awesome. And another cool one that you profiled was Quinn and his vending machine business. And I think that's one where you can really start with a low cost. So tell us a little more about that business as well.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Quinn's a friend of mine and Quinn started a vending machine business after being a software sales guy. So I mean, making six figures, doing well in California, but working like crazy. I'm sure a lot of people can relate. And he basically was like, how could I do something on the side that I could scale up that would make some money for me, but wouldn't be hyper time intensive. And so he ended up buying some vending machines, you know, sodas, snacks, etc., placing them at locations around San Diego and essentially cash flowing on those vending machines. The part that's interesting is I think people think about vending machines as a logistics business, but it's also a sales business. Since he's a good sales guy, he calls up these locations and talks them into why he should be the one to be there

• 17:37Speaker 01

  and often negotiates better deals for him to get located on their property. And then, you know, now he has, I don't know, 15, 30 machines, something like that, and does anywhere from 15 to $30,000 a month. And that's from vending machines. It certainly didn't start there. But, you know, and the other thing I would say is a lot of people in the vending machine world are like, oh, you know, it's going to cost you $3,000 for a machine, or it's going to cost you $5,000 for a machine. And the truth is, it can. But again, ask yourself, like, what if it was easy? What if I didn't want to spend $3,000? And that's when you go and look for refurbished machines online. That's when you go and look for vending routes that you can purchase. And you try to think about whatever your goal is, is there an easier mechanism or a cheaper mechanism to achieve it?

• 18:20Andrew Giancola?

  And I've seen even people on Twitter just finding these vending machines where people just want them out of their hair. And they get these vending machines, they repair them, and then they start to make money off of these free machines that they built up. And then they started to build a larger business around it. So it's a very cool way to get started inexpensively, I think, especially with some of these types of businesses.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  I totally agree.

• 18:37Andrew Giancola?

  So if someone's listening to us and they say, this is a really cool idea. I want to get started buying boring businesses. Where should they go and look for them? Should they look at Biz Buy Sell? Should they call owners? Or are there other creative ways that they should start looking for businesses?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually think the best way to do it is to look to your personal network. I call it my personal P and L strategy. So that basically means, like in the unconventional acquisitions course, I think we have 13 different mechanisms to go and find a business to buy. Yes, you can go to Biz Buy Sell, but just like MLS, except on steroids, the worst businesses are usually the ones that are publicly listed. And so what you really want to do is you want to talk to the people around you. You want to talk to your landscaper. You want to talk to your video production guy. You want to talk to your dad's friends or your mom's friends. You want to talk to your boss's friends. You basically want to just start telling people that you're interested in either buying or running somebody's sort of everyday, normal business. And the more you do that, the more you realize most business owners have a dollar amount in their head.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Or if somebody offered it, they'd sell them right now because they're tired, because it's hard, because they're ready for the new challenge, because they want to retire, whatever it is. And so that's the way that you should actually do it. It takes more work than plugging in car washes onto a site like Biz by Sell, but you'll have an infinitely higher likelihood of outcome.

• 19:51Andrew Giancola?

  Absolutely. And I'll even give you an example of that where we bought a coin operated car wash and we were looking at it and it looked like it was worth somewhere around 120 to 150. So we made the offer on it. We knew they wanted more than that. It was on Biz by Sell. We made the offer on it and they actually accepted it. We just did what it was worth and then that was it. So it's a really cool way, just offer what the numbers are actually showing you and then you can go from there.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 20:12Andrew Giancola?

  Exactly. So it's, it's awesome. But say some people are listening and this is their aha moment. They want to start buying these cash flowing businesses and create wealth. So how would you recommend that they structure these deals? Should they do seller financing or should they go get an SBA loan? Or what's the best way to do that?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  I think it depends on what you want to do. I think the best deal is always seller financing if you can get it. So anytime you can get somebody to give you a business for future profits at a low interest rate for an extended period of time, that's a win. Unless you can do even better, which would be like a rev share. Buy a business that somebody doesn't even want to have, like my friend Drew Sanaki does, and say, hey, we'll buy your business for $1, but we'll give you a cut of all future revenue. That would be a pretty good deal. I mean, you could certainly go raise capital for any of these deals. So if you didn't want to put your own personal loan, you know, or personal guarantee on the line, which you have to do for an SBA, you could raise money from other people and let them take on the risk. Or you could go to the SBA and get a loan from the government for, you know,

• 21:09Speaker 01

  70 to 90% of the price of the business. So I think those are all ways that are actually really accessible. I'd say SBA loans are probably the most annoying to do, but you know, more common than the other two.

• 21:22Andrew Giancola?

  Absolutely. They seem more accessible at times too, which is interesting as well. But the seller financing is one of my favorite ways to do it because I think it's just one of the easiest ways to go about it. Especially if you're working with a seller who really wants to creatively sell or they want some cash flow for their retirement or whatever else, it's a great way to do it.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:38Andrew Giancola?

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• 25:14Andrew Giancola?

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• 25:57Andrew Giancola?

  Boxes, less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is the job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. So what is a good multiple when you're looking at some of these businesses? Or what do these businesses typically go for?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  You know, it varies wildly. The bigger the business, the more it's going to sell for, obviously. So, well, not obviously, it could be, you know, an unprofitable business. In which case that's not the case. But by and large, you have higher multiples when you have higher revenue and higher profits. I like to buy businesses right around the two to three X profits range. And so if I'm buying a business that's doing less than $5 million in revenue, I'm typically looking to pay two to three X of profits of the business. But, you know, you'll see plenty of businesses, especially right now with a lot of interest in this, selling for four to eight X profits below the $5 million mark. So it really will vary. I think the most important thing for you is just figuring out what you want from the business. Do you want a business that is break even in three years? You know, do you want a business that returns all your capital in five?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Do you want a business that cash flows at least X? Do you want a business that's maybe bigger and a little bit more expensive, but it's got an operator in place? So price is just one component of it. It's an important one, but I definitely don't think it's the most important or the only one.

• 27:33Andrew Giancola?

  Speaking of operators, I know that's one big thing. If you want to start buying a bunch of these businesses, you have to find good operators and put them into place. And that's been one of my bigger struggles. So how do you find good operators for your businesses?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really tough. I think you have to create operators. I think by and large, what I do is I have a grouping of humans who, when I engage with them, I'm like, oh, you don't exactly love what you do. You're hyper competent. You want to do something else and I kind of carry them along with me. They're typically friends and people I know, family members that run some of these businesses. You know, there are people in the military that my husband worked with before. So I think one of the best ways to do it is not experienced talent, but known talent, meaning you know them, they know you. I think that's one of the fastest and most expeditious ways to do it. A lot of times I like to steal from competitors. So like the best way to know if somebody's going to succeed as a car wash operator is if they've.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Been a car wash operator before. And so if you can offer slightly better terms, if you can give somebody equity, if you can pay them a little bit more, you can often steal from businesses who have great managers, but who aren't part of the ownership structure.

• 28:38Andrew Giancola?

  Awesome. Those are some great tips as well, because I think it's one of the biggest things. It's the most important thing to make sure that your business is successful. Otherwise, you're going to have to go back into that business and start operating yourself.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:47Andrew Giancola?

  So you own all of these businesses. How do you manage your time every day?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, at this point, I'm pretty good in having a process to make sure that these businesses are run by the CEOs or operators of the business. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes I fall into it. There are a couple of businesses that are either like too small, but legacy that I gotta offload or figure out, or they're too big and need my help in some way, shape or form. But for the most part, I try to buy businesses, have operators get into them and get out of their way. Or I invest in businesses with great operators already, and I just own part of the business and have some sort of distribution schedule, but they run the business. I'm at a stage in my career where I'm more lazy about business ownership. I don't want to go and operate these businesses anymore. I've certainly been to many a car wash. I've certainly, you

• 29:36Speaker 01

  know, scrubbed many a laundromat, but that's probably not something I'm going to do as much anymore. I buy a model called decentralized management, which basically means that I hire really great operators. I do a lot of screening on the front end, and then I get out of their way. Because no business of mine is ever like too big to fail, where it will take me down. If something's going wrong in the business, I say, okay, guys, well, that's a tough problem. You gotta run with it. I'm happy to have a strategy call with you, but I'm not getting my hands in the mix.

• 30:01Andrew Giancola?

  And I love that. It's almost like what Warren Buffett's strategy was early on, and then all these businesses grew because he let them run the business on their end. So I think that's really interesting as well. So here are some questions that we ask all of our guests, Cody. So what are some of your favorite books? Specifically, if we're going to look into buying boring businesses, what are some of your favorite books on that topic?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  You know, there's not a lot of books. There's one book called Buy Then Build by Walker Deebel. So that's one about buying businesses in general. I think the most important thing probably to do upfront is actually figure out what you want. So before I would tell somebody to just go learn exclusively about buying businesses, like one of the first segments in our course is a deal clarity portion because somebody will ask me, is this a good deal? Is this a bad deal? And I'll be like, I have no idea for you. Like it could be a great business or it could not. And so I actually like this other book that Rollo May wrote called Man's Search for Himself, not to be confused with Man's Search for Meaning, because it basically tells you what you care about as a human.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  And I think you need to figure that out first before you go and buy a bunch of businesses because you might end up buying a job and that might not make you happy, or you might end up buying, you know, a really big business that you don't have time to run. And so I would start with those two.

• 31:15Andrew Giancola?

  Buy Then Build is one of my favorite books that I've read in the last couple of years and it's just so cool. It even paints the picture for you, showing you, you can get an SBA loan, put 10% down on a million dollar business and you have a million dollar business for a hundred thousand dollars. So there's just some cool things in that book as well. So we'll link both those books down below so you guys can check those out. And this is the main one that we always ask everybody, Cody, what does wealth mean to you?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Freedom, uh, simply. I believe that financial freedom is the foundation for all freedom. On top of that, you can layer philosophical freedom and physical freedom, but without financial freedom, you know, you can't make a lot of choices. You can't do a lot of things for yourself. I also think you're a lot harder to fuck with if you're financially free. And so, um, that's always been a big purpose for me is like, I want to be big enough where I can say, I don't want to do that. No, I will not compromise my values that way. No, I won't let you do that to somebody else. And in fact, if you do, I'm going to fight you monetarily. And so I think that is what money means to me. People laugh because some of the stuff we talk about sounds get rich quick. And I'm like, well, I don't really want to get rich slow. So, you know, I'm not looking for schemes,

• 32:18Speaker 01

  but I am looking for a way for human beings to get as much financial freedom as they can, as quickly as they can, because then I think you can do really interesting things.

• 32:27Andrew Giancola?

  Exactly. That's what this entire podcast is about, is teaching people how to gain that freedom. So that aligns exactly with what we talk about all the time in this podcast. So Cody, thank you so much for coming on today. Where can people find out more about you?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I think the best spot is countryandthinking.co. We have a weekly newsletter, you mentioned it. And then also we're big on all the socials. So if you want to follow on like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or in all of those, that's Codie Sanchez.

• 32:49Andrew Giancola?

  Awesome. We'll link all of those down below as well in the show notes. So everybody make sure you go check those out and we'll go from there. Thank you so much, Cody. We truly appreciate it.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 34:35Speaker 02

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