Codie Sanchez on the Secret for How to Gain Financial Freedom EP 541

In this episode, Codie Sanchez, author of Main Street Millionaire, reveals the secret to gaining financial freedom by acquiring cash-flowing “Main Street” businesses. Drawing from her experience as a former Wall Street investor and now one of the world’s leading small business experts, Codie shares her proven framework for building wealth through overlooked but profitable industries like plumbing, construction, and cleaning. Discover why the current market is ripe for generational wealth creation, how to identify and close winning deals, and how to multiply your success without losing your mind. Packed with actionable strategies from her book, this conversation will inspire you to rethink wealth, ownership, and what it means to build a life of meaning and financial independence. If you’re ready to take control of your future, this episode is a must-listen! Link to the full show notes: https://passionstruck.com/codie-sanchez-on-how-to-gain-financial-freedom/Call to Action: This episode is a blueprint for anyone ready to redefine their approach to wealth, embrace financial independence, and create a life of meaning and impact. Whether you’re looking to escape the grind, invest intentionally, or build generational wealth, Codie Sanchez’s practical strategies offer the tools you need to start transforming your financial future today. Sponsors:Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit. Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSION. In this episode, you will learn:Why acquiring cash-flowing “Main Street” businesses is a reliable path to financial freedom. The secrets the wealthy use to build generational wealth without taking outsized risks. How to identify, negotiate, and close deals on profitable small businesses. The 7 types of businesses you should avoid and why they can be financial traps. Practical strategies to 10x your growth after acquiring a small business. How to manage multiple businesses simultaneously without burning out. Why the current market conditions are perfect for building extraordinary wealth. How owning a business can create both financial success and a fulfilling life. Connect with Codie Sanchez: https://codiesanchez.com/For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals. Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help you grow. Learn more and sign up here. Speaking Engagements & Workshops Are you looking to inspire your team, organization, or audience to take intentional action in their lives and careers? I’m available for keynote speaking, workshops, and leadership training on topics such as intentional living, resilience, leadership, and personal growth. Let’s work together to create transformational change. Learn more at

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

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  We have a real aging demographic shift that we've seen all around the world and is starting to accelerate as this baby boomer generation, the youngest of which are now starting to retire. And this generation is the big predominant owner of small businesses. And there's two things going on with that. That means that you have a ton of supply, right? So always good to buy something at a discount if there's a big supply. The problem, though, is most of these owners don't know how to sell their business. They don't know how to prep their business for sale. They don't know that their business is even sellable, and they certainly don't know how to price it. And so we have to educate the populace in how to train business owners to think about transferring their businesses. So everybody gets a fair price and a fair exchange.

• 0:45John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck.

• 1:27John R. Miles?

  Hey, Passion Struck fam. Welcome to episode 541 of the Passion Struck Podcast. I'm your host, John Miles. I want to thank you for joining me on this journey to live a more intentional, purpose-driven life. Whether you're a longtime listener or tuning in for your first time, you're part of an incredible community that's committed to transformation, growth, and taking bold steps toward your dreams. Before we dive into today's episode, if you're new to the show, we have over 540 episodes packed with actionable insights and inspiring stories. Not sure where to start? Check out our episode starter packs on passionstruck.com/starterpacks or Spotify, where you'll find curated playlists on themes like leadership, mental health, and personal mastery.

• 2:10John R. Miles?

  And if you want to dive even deeper, sign up for my Live Intentionally newsletter at passionstruck.com for exclusive insights and tools to help you unlock your full potential. Last week, we had two phenomenal guests who shared incredible insights. First, Heather Moise, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, inductee into the World Rugby Hall of Fame, and Canada's most decorated all-around female athlete, joined us to discuss the power of mindset in overcoming obstacles and achieving success. Heather shared her strategies for pushing past limitations, redefining resilience, and cultivating a gold medal mindset. Then, Dr. Josh Axe, renowned health expert and bestselling author, joined me to discuss his latest book, Think This, Not That: 12 Mindset Shifts to Break Through Limiting Beliefs and Become Who You Were Born to Be.

• 2:54John R. Miles?

  In this inspiring conversation, Dr. Axe shared practical strategies to overcome self-doubt, shift your mindset, and unlock your true potential. His actionable advice and personal stories make this episode a must-listen for anyone ready to reframe their thinking and live with greater purpose. And finally, in my solo episode, I tackled the concept of psychological wealth: how to build a rich, fulfilling life by focusing on your mental and emotional well-being. We explored strategies using the story of the Grinch who stole Christmas on how to cultivate inner peace, resilience, and joy, regardless of your external circumstances. If you're looking to elevate your mindset, these three episodes were packed with practical takeaways. Now, on to today's episode, where I am thrilled to be joined by someone who's redefining

• 3:39John R. Miles?

  how we think about wealth, ownership, and financial freedom: Codie Sanchez. Cody is a former Wall Street investor turned small-business expert, entrepreneur, and founder of Contrarian Thinking, where she is known for her wildly popular newsletter that teaches unconventional ways to cash flow and building generational wealth. She's also the author of the game-changing book, Main Street Millionaire, which launches today: How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary Businesses. In today's conversation, Codie shares her groundbreaking approach to achieving financial freedom by investing in what she calls sweaty and boring businesses. Think plumbing, cleaning, and construction. These overlooked industries, she argues, are The secret to creating extraordinary wealth without the risky gambles of startups

• 4:24John R. Miles?

  or the grind of climbing the corporate ladder. We'll explore the key trends she sees shaping the future of wealth creation, including why private investing, buying established local businesses is the ultimate pathway to financial independence, how the unsexy industries of Main Street are experiencing a blue collar renaissance, making them prime opportunities for smart investors, and the power of buying businesses that are already cash flowing, helping you skip the startup hustle and focus on scaling success. Cody's mission is bold, to create 1 million financially free humans through business ownership. In our conversation today, she not only shares her framework for acquiring businesses, but also dives deep in the mindset shifts required to embrace this unconventional

• 5:08John R. Miles?

  approach to wealth. If you've ever felt stuck in the grind or wondered how to make your money work for you while building something meaningful, this conversation is a must listen. As Cody puts it, your money and your meaning are on Main Street. As always, you can always watch this episode on our YouTube channels, John R. Miles and our clips channel at Passion Struck Clips. So get ready for a dynamic, no BS conversation that will challenge your thinking and inspire action. Let's dive in with Codie Sanchez. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 5:50John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely honored and thrilled to have Codie Sanchez on Passion Struck, a person my community has wanted on the show for so long. Welcome.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 6:00John R. Miles?

  Cody, I'm going to start in an unusual place. I'm going to start by saying how much I admire your husband's journey as a Navy SEAL. As a Naval Academy graduate myself, and having deployed alongside Teams 3, 8, and 10, I have an immense appreciation for the SEAL community. And my father was also UDT Class 16, so the connection runs really deep. And as I was prepping for this interview, I happened to listen to your podcast where you were interviewing Chris and our mutual friend Gabrielle Lyon, where you guys were talking about health, fitness, and incorporating those habits into relationships. And what I wanted to ask is, what's been the most impactful habit or mindset

• 6:42John R. Miles?

  from his SEAL training that you've seen spill over into both of your lives?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Chris doesn't say he's going to do a thing and not do it. His ability to keep his promises to himself, I think, is one of the biggest reasons why he's as successful as he is. It starts with a really core understanding that if you lie to yourself, then you are more likely to lie to everybody else and you're more likely to not achieve the things that you really want because you're telling the universe and you all the time that you aren't that serious. And so I take that away from Chris often. He also jokingly in the gym often says to me, when I don't want to do more or when I don't want to go, he'll say, are you a good white shark or are you a great white shark? And I find that very annoying, but also really true.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  He just doesn't sacrifice much at the altar of I'm tired, it's a long day, it's too much, or I don't have enough left in the tank.

• 7:40John R. Miles?

  Well, I love that and thank you for sharing because I always like to see how these things and relationships intertwine. So I want to start out here, Cody, you have a mission to create 1 million financially free humans and it's not just about wealth. The core thing that we discussed here on Passion Struck is really empowering people to design a life of meaning and impact, which I think is what you're trying to do as well with your mission. What inspired you to pivot from the corporate grind like we both started as in our previous lives to championing this movement of intentional ownership?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  I think if you don't like where you are today, try looking forward to the boss, the person that you work for that's 10 years down the line from you. And I think what you'll pretty quickly realize is that you might not like the person that you see as future you in 10 years. And that was the case for me. I was constantly like this other human that I could grow into if I stayed here, if I did the status quo, if I kept just doing what was expected of me, is somebody that I'm not going to like very much. And so I decided to make a change. And it was pretty much at that moment when I started to buy businesses, when I started to invest in outside companies, when I started And invest in other private equity funds. And because I was, I was throwing little fishing lines

• 9:01Speaker 01

  out into the water to see what I could catch. And I wasn't sure what the right move was. There were so many options in front of me. I was overwhelmed by the number of optionality in the world. And then I was scared to leave because I wasn't sure that I could do it on my own. And so that whole process led me to thinking, well, maybe I actually could take risk and go do something bigger than myself. But it took a long time to figure out how and why.

• 9:27John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. And today, I think the core thing that we're going to be discussing is this whole concept of breaking free and redefining success on your own terms. And we're going to be discussing your book, which comes out the day this podcast is released, Main Street Millionaire, How to Make Extraordinary Wealth by Buying Ordinary Businesses. Congratulations on this book. It's been a long time coming.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks.

• 9:53John R. Miles?

  So I want to start here. So many people chase the hustle culture. I know I did it for many years, whether it's startups, promotions, or side hustles, only to think they're making strides and feeling more and more unfilled with meaning and hope and aspiration. How does your approach of investing in small, local businesses shift the narrative and allow people to create a life they love?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Here's what the data tells us. The data tells us that when you work in a small business, sixty percent of the time, you like what you do for a living. The average corporate employee, eighty five percent of the time, does not like what they do for a living. So we have a bias, I think, towards groups of humans that have connectivity, that feel like we are working together on something important. When we become a number, a cog in the wheel, it decreases our happiness level. So I would say, first of all, if you don't love your job, maybe try a smaller company. Maybe try a company where it is really materially important to them that you show up every single day. And I think that is something that we stopped feeling. I know when I worked at Goldman and Vanguard and State Street and all these big companies, I didn't really matter to the company. If I disappeared, it didn't matter. In fact, at Goldman, they

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Cut about twenty percent of the workforce every single year. And so I was nothing but a number. And if I grew really highly inside of the company, I still probably wouldn't matter. CEO hypothetically might not matter at a company like State Street or Goldman. But that would really be like the level of staff that is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, the business starts to crumble. And so if you can go from being somewhere where you're not needed to be needed, I think we're happier. Human beings, in my opinion, you need to feel useful. Utility leads to happiness. And so in small business, you have that. Now, the second thing that we've seen and why I wrote the book is that we are moving away from small businesses. Small businesses are like the little goldfish that are getting eaten up and eaten up by the bigger and bigger fish. And those bigger and bigger fish are private equity.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  So right now, if you don't like the job that you have, if you don't make enough money, we've thought that the only real answer were that you had two paths. You could, well, get a better job or a different company or a different title. So stay on the corporate grind or go do a startup. Now, I think people who do startups are incredible, and I'm really glad they exist in the world. I'm one of them. But I don't think that everybody should go do a startup. In fact, I think you are very rare if you are going to go and start something from nothing. And you're going to brave the truth, which is that most startups do not make money. Most startups fail, ninety percent fail within the first ten years. Most startups never are profitable ever.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  And the few startups that are, the average entrepreneur that starts a business makes anywhere from thirty to sixty thousand dollars a year. And so I think we were told a little bit of a lie that to start up was how we made our millions. Well, that is not true. Now, if you have an idea that is inside you, that you would die for the want of it not existing in the world, that keeps you up late at night, that you want to grind on for twenty hours a day, or at least twelve, then do a startup, then create that innovation that we need in the world. And we'll be better for it, and we should thank you for it. But if what you really want is to make a little bit more money, to have more freedom, to not work with people you don't like, to work with people you do, and to be able to still continue to get paid, even if you're not working hours.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Then I think the path to ownership of small businesses is the way. And it's the way that we've forgotten. Most of us are not the 10% that are going to go. I mean, not even the 10%, though. Point 0001% that is going to go build the next Tesla or Tinder. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that we aren't useful. In fact, our community needs us to own these small businesses. These small businesses are profitable. They have a higher success rate than startups and they lead to pretty happy lives.

• 13:45John R. Miles?

  It's interesting. I had a book come out earlier this year in February and I did some deep dives into the Kaufman Foundation. And was even just looking at census reporting and some of the things that were showing trends of businesses over the past 20, 30 years. And outside of this change that happened with COVID, both ownership in small businesses and entrepreneurship were on a 30-year decline. And when you look at this compared to the rise of large companies, which they describe as companies over 500 people, it has this inverse climb that creates this incredible gap. And so one of the initiatives I got involved with here in Florida,

• 14:29John R. Miles?

  we have a ton of veterans because of all the military bases here. And a lot of times veterans getting out are always saying, what do I do next? And so I was part of this thing called the Florida Association of Veteran-Owned Businesses, which was trying to promote making Florida the Mecca for people to do small business. Yet I saw so much resistance in people wanting to take this path. And where I'm going with this is you described these small businesses as hidden gold mines. Just like those veterans I mentioned, why do you think so many people overall overlook these opportunities?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  We started as a nation of owners in the 1800s, 80% of Americans owned their own business. By 2020, that number is somewhere between 6 and 10%, depending on how you report it. It is easier to control an employee, it is easier to tax an employee, it is easier to grow a few large institutions, have protections around them than it is to have a diversified, non-centralized citizen base. And I think that is why. And so we have let a few companies continue to get bigger because that's the natural state of things. We humans, once we get power, we want more of it. And so as companies get big, they have more lobbying power. What do they do with the lobbying power? Well, they lobby governments for more

• 15:52Speaker 01

  regulation. Why? Why would they want to be more regulated? Because they can afford the expense of it and the new guy cannot. In tandem, the big corporations have more buying power today. I mean, if you look at how Blackstone, BlackRock, KKR, some of these companies use our money, but particularly, let's say, BlackRock or Blackstone, they have very large public funds where they manage our pensions, our 401Ks, our mutual funds. They take in our capital, then they use our money against us to buy our single family homes, to buy up small businesses inside of their private investment portfolios. And it's worse than that, actually. Because they have so much capital that we've given them, they get decreased interest rates as well on their capital and increased leverage

• 16:35Speaker 01

  rates because of how big they are. And so they can buy our houses for more money and they can buy them with a lower interest rate than we do. And so they outbid us on the very assets that we're supposed to be part of an American dream. And I think that is happening right now in homeownership, but also I think it is happening even more materially in small business. Private equity in 2020, I'm sorry, yes, private equity in 2000 owned about 4% of private companies in the US. Flash forward to 2020, that's about 20%. These aren't bad guys. I was friends with a lot of people in private equity, I still am. They're incredibly intelligent, incredibly skilled individuals, but I don't think that because they have perverse tax incentives such as not to get

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Really technical, but the way that they do carry in capital gains and how much low over a tax basis that gives to them. Plus, they know how to raise capital. They should be able to buy out our businesses from under us. And we've all felt it. You've gone to your favorite neighborhood store after it's been replaced with a CVS or a Walmart. You've felt what it's like when you go to a local coffee shop and that coffee shop has been bought out by private equity. It's really hard to not suck the soul out of something when you've never stepped foot inside that company and you just see it as numbers on a spreadsheet. And that is what these large private equity firms do. It's just perverse incentives. And so you can't really get mad at the snake for biting

• 18:00Speaker 01

  you when you know that's what snakes do and what they are created to do. They're not wrong. They are just created that way. And so my pushback on this is, yes, I think there are some regulatory changes that could happen, but also let's take back our businesses ourselves and not wait for the government to do it for us.

• 18:18John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. And you probably don't know this about my background, but I've spent about 12, 13 years in and out of private equity. When I was a senior executive at Dell when I lived in Austin and I left because I was recruited by Hellman and Friedman to become the chief operating officer of a tech company. And I saw that side of it from being an operator and then I was partner in a private equity firm about 10 billion in assets and did a lot on the investment side. So I saw both side of it, but I have to tell you recently, this became really real for me in a personal way. You were just talking about how many homes that these companies are buying up.

• 18:58John R. Miles?

  And I live here in Tampa Bay where Hurricane Helene in one night displaced 12,000 homes that were flooded, including mine. And all of a sudden, when you hit this market that's owned by private equity who are miles and miles away from what's happening and you as a person.

• 19:21John R. Miles?

  Trying to find a rental can't because they're not shifting quickly enough to the urgent needs of the population around. Plus, they're not doing the cleanup, everything else. It really shows you localization versus this umbrella effect that these companies have. So.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  That's a great point. And I think that's a really good point, too. When a dog takes a shit on your lawn, you clean up your lawn. Why? Because it's yours. Because you don't want that sitting on your front yard. But when you don't own the house, when you don't really visit the house, when that is just an asset and not a home, you treat it real different. And so I think that happens overwhelmingly in these areas. And it's, again, I mean, you were in private equity, so it's not bad people. It's pretty brilliant people. But it is not great that we take away a community feel from a community. And I think at some point, we should all go and become

• 20:22Speaker 01

  spectacularly wealthy. And I love that. And I think it's very possible for us because there's more money than we can ever imagine. But do we have to do it by sucking the life out of local communities and not having localized strategy and incentive alignment? And I think the answer is, for the everyday, average person, these issues are too big. It's like, all right, well, what am I going to do about Blackstone or KKR? I have no idea. Well, let me tell you what you can do. You can go and actually get ownership in a small business yourself. It is an asset that will be valuable. You can build that up into a nice little, little mini empire of yours in Piedmont, North Dakota, in Scottsdale, Arizona. And in that, you can then transition it to the next generation and make just as much money as if you sold it to private equity,

• 21:07Speaker 01

  by doing seller financing or creative financing for the next generation to take it over and keep a percentage of equity ownership in the business overall. I think that's the other thing that private equity guys do is they catch us at the moment of weakness. You've been in your business for 10 or 15 years, you're fucking, you're tired. Your kid doesn't want to take it over. You got like some issues, some HR employment issue. You don't really know. How to exit the business yourself. You need some liquidity and capital because all your money is tied up in your business. Ninety percent of small business owners' net worth is tied up in their business. And somebody comes to you with a really attractive multimillion dollar offer to buy your business. What do you want to do? Yeah, you want, that sounds nice. I would like to take that offer.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  But hey, I live down the street from all of these guys and I still got to go to church with all my clients on Sunday. And when they run my business into the ground, or when they sell it for parts, or when they take my name off of it, maybe I'm going to feel something about that. Cause I spent thirty years of my life building this fucking place. And if there was another option for me to sell my business also for millions, but not to somebody who is going to slice it up for parts, change the name, et cetera, I would probably do that. The problem is there's not an educated enough populace that knows how to buy these businesses to compete with those offers. Cause as we know with private equity, it comes with a lot, it comes with a lot of handcuffs that you don't recognize. There are some weights that they put on your feet when they buy your company, because these guys are smart. They know how to minimize risk.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  And so they're going to make sure that you're doing earnouts, you're doing milestones. They're going to make sure that, that all of the capital isn't given to you unless X, Y, Z happens. And so I think there's a real opportunity for people who understand how to do deals to come in and even compete with those guys at some level. Because the word's out on how they treat a lot of owners that they buy their business from.

• 22:59John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you for sharing that. And I think that really depends on what private equity firm it is. Some are much more hands on, some are much more hands off, some put operators into the companies, some do not. Some manage by spreadsheet, some allow some more object, some allow for some more subjective, subjectivity in how they treat the businesses. But you're right, there, you, you picked the wrong partner and it's going to be a messy situation. I want to dive into your rich framework here in a second, but one of the things I learned the most when I was in private equity is to look for shifts that were happening before they happened. We used to call them inflection points in the market. And it's interesting because you mentioned

• 23:45John R. Miles?

  that it only takes one to five percent of the population to change the course of history, which would be a huge societal shift. How do you see what you're writing about in this book and small business owners contributing to this kind of shift?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Well, if we know that only 6% of Americans on average own a small business, then what do we know? We know if we actually got 1 to 5% of Americans to additionally own a small business, we've anywhere from 20% increased to double the amount of owners in this country. Why do I think that's good? Well, if we have a bunch of owners in this country, they're a lot harder to push around. It's harder to require, for instance, that owners, because we have a diversified group of companies as opposed to a few Fortune 500. If we have hundreds of thousands or millions of companies, then they're harder to regulate, for instance. If you want to say medical mandate here or there to the big Fortune 500, well, they can come after you and sue the shit out of you.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  But if you have a ton of companies, then that's much harder to do. That's why decentralization is really good for protection. It's the same thing with this idea of Bitcoin or crypto. When we don't have one single point of failure or one single point of friction, then we usually have healthier ecosystems and marketplaces. We want this in everything, really. We want this in food processing. We want this in logistics. We want this in our power sources and everything and everywhere. If we can have decentralizations and multi nodes, it's usually better for society, in this case, better for consumers and citizens. What I think is happening today that's a little bit different is that for the first time ever, we have a real aging demographic shift

• 25:26Speaker 01

  that we've seen all around the world and is starting to accelerate in the US, which is this baby boomer generation, the youngest of which are now starting to retire. And this generation is the big predominant owner of small businesses. And there's two things going on with that. That means that you have a ton of supply, right? So always good to buy something at a discount if there's a big supply. The problem, though, is most of these owners don't know how to sell their business. They don't know how to prep their business for sale. They don't know that their business is even sellable, and they certainly don't know how to price it. And so we have to educate the populace and how to train business owners to think about transferring their businesses so everybody gets a fair price and a fair exchange. And then we've got to train the sellers

• 26:10Speaker 01

  to realize not to just shut down their business or sell to a big corporation or sell to private equity, but instead maybe think about how to keep the ownership local. And the last thing I'd say there is there's lots of studies that show that if you spend A dollar at a local business, so you go to a local handy, you go to a local hardware store, 60 cents of that dollar stays in your local community. If you go instead to Amazon and you buy the wrench or you buy the hammer on Amazon, less than 10% or 10 cents goes to your local community. And so this idea of like own local, buy local together, I think is really important if we feel like we want communities that we want to live in because prosperous communities end up being

• 26:53Speaker 01

  communities that have higher happiness levels, higher safety levels, et cetera.

• 26:58John R. Miles?

  I love that you bring that up because this weekend I'm attending Localtopia, which is this big festival in St. Petersburg that draws probably, I'm guessing 100,000 people to the downtown streets to support the local vendors. So a huge believer of this. I want to go to the topic of limiting beliefs because so many people I found feel stuck in their financial or career paths. And as I was preparing for this interview, I put out to my audience that I was going to interview you. And I happened to get a question for you from one of my listeners in Nigeria, Victor, who wanted me to ask you, would you agree that two different individuals practicing

• 27:41John R. Miles?

  the same principles could achieve different results based on their environment or circumstances?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Another way to say that everything is contextual, which I think is very true. I'm not sure there's too many things that are complete black or white instances, mathematical equations until we prove them wrong, perhaps. Scientific equations until we prove them wrong, perhaps. But I do think by and large, we are all an amoeba put into a Petri dish that is a byproduct of the other things that go into the Petri dish alongside us. We're contagious and we are easily influenced by our society and by our culture and by the people surrounding us. So one of the reasons why we created Contrarian Thinking and our Contrarian Academy, which is where we teach people to buy businesses, is because you do become the average

• 28:29Speaker 01

  of the people you surround yourself with, both in weight and bank account, in title, in merit. status, it's wild when you start to realize how contagious we are. And that's why I relentlessly cut out negative naysayers in my life because they are actually making me make less money, be healthy on average, be happier. And life's hard enough as it is when you have people who are cheering you on to win. The last thing that you need is to let those who don't want you to win into your ecosystem.

• 28:59John R. Miles?

  Well, I love that. I wrote about that in my book. I call it the mosquito principles. Sometimes the people closest to us are the most benign, but threatening people we have in our lives. And so you got to get rid of the the bloodsuckers, the invisible suffocators and the pain in the asses from your life.

• 29:18John R. Miles?

  So I wanted to just ask you one follow up on what you just said. So for someone who's faced in that environment that we were just talking about, do you think they should focus on changing their environment? Or do you believe they should work to adapt within it?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I mean, the easiest thing to do is pick up your feet and move. I do believe there's a real power of place and it is hard to be something different in a place that is not different. And so if you are surrounded, I mean, just think about it this way, we talk about it. If you if you want to change your life, get in a room where other people's Tuesday is your dream day. I could pretty much tell you with increased certainty that in our members of our community who are trying to buy businesses, as soon as they join one of our accountability pods, their likelihood of buying a business goes up by about 50 to 60%. As soon as they come to one of the events in person that is tailored for their subsegment, the likelihood of them doing their first series of LOIs and PPMs is increased by about 100%. So like proximity is

• 30:16Speaker 01

  power and it does matter. If you want to stop drinking and you went and hung out with a bunch of CrossFitters, none of them drink and they all go work out every day, you probably are going to decrease your drinking. If you want to stop drinking, but you hang out with friends every night at the bar, you're probably going to have a hard time decreasing your drinking. And so yes, you could build incredible willpower, or you could get into an environment where willpower is not even really necessary because proximity and habit kicks in.

• 30:45John R. Miles?

  I think that's a great example, and I haven't had a drink since August of 2023. And I realized early on in this journey that I was spending too much time doing those types of things, and I wanted to break from it because I was not able to focus on the things that truly mattered. But to your point, I had to really distance myself from the people and the places I was going to, because if you don't, it just keeps drawing you back in. So I think you make a really good point. So I want to shift the conversation to intentional wealth creation, because when I was reading the book, I equate the rich framework as

• 31:26John R. Miles?

  a pathway to intentionality, really, because each step in the framework aligns to deliberate actions that lead you to financial goals and eventually personal success. So I want to start out with the first, research. You emphasize that finding the perfect fit business is part of this phase. How can someone intentionally, because I think this is important, align the business that they choose with their value system and long-term goals?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Well, I think tools limit mistakes. So if you want to succeed more consistently, you should try to steal somebody else's 10,000 hours and use the tools that they've used to already get the thing that you want. And so what I do in the book is I give you what I call the perfect fit diagram. And so basically, this is overlapping three circles that talk to you about your passions or what we call obsessions. I'm more interested in what you're obsessed with and what you're passionate about, your skill set, what you are uniquely skilled at in the world and like doing, and then your network. Where do you have other people who can help you achieve the things you want with more speed and certainty? We take this, you do this exercise to look at those three things and then put it into

• 32:41Speaker 01

  your deal box. And a deal box on investing is similar to what we in private equity might call our investment thesis. So what is the thing that you are going to invest in that will be the blinders that you keep on for all the Distractions of potential investments. If you want to close a deal with higher likelihood, it's not that you should actually open your aperture and look at more deals. You should get really clear on what is a good deal for you. And so this is an exercise that I think if people follow through with it, will accelerate your deal buying journey much faster. It'll also accelerate your career and your ability to negotiate, because you're going to have the rarest of things, a knowledge of what you want, which most people do not have.

• 33:20John R. Miles?

  And in that same chapter, you show a pyramid, which I really liked. You titled this, "Competition is for Losers: Why Small Businesses Are Easier to Buy." And you're right, most people who talk about acquisitions refer to businesses doing 100 million or more in annual revenue, the ones that private equity companies typically buy up that most of us can't afford. And so what you show on this is the Fortune 1000, upper middle market, lower middle market, and small businesses. And I think you're right here. All the buyers are trying to compete for the top part of the pyramid, overlooking the profitable small businesses. This is where there's plenty of opportunities, like you say, but there's surprisingly fewer fishermen.

• 34:05John R. Miles?

  So if you're someone who's listening to this, trying to think about how do I even approach this large fish of small businesses? Where do you start on your research? Like, how do you even start probing this? Because I know for many people, it could feel overwhelming.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't think that buying businesses is easy. I think that it's worth it. I think that ownership is actually one of the hardest things that you can do. But it's really the only thing that I think over the long term leads to financial freedom consistently. And so it's not easy. And if you want quick, or easy, or immediate, or no risk, you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't play this game. And you should probably play a game that has a lot less risk and a lot less potential reward, and that's totally fine. And this may just be something that is a phase of your life, too. But, well, I mean, I think where you should really start is, whether it's my book or somebody else's, but you want to actually understand the full landscape. So it's not actually where do you start? It's what is your knowledge base? So I have an Employee that owns some businesses on the side too.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  And he said something really interesting to me once. So since he started working with me and I taught him how to do acquisitions. That was three years ago. He's bought three businesses. Maybe he's done four now. And before that, he had been working in business, very successful salesperson for 11 plus years. And had never bought a business before, had never done a partial equity deal, had never owned half of anything or a part of anything. And what was interesting is he said to me that he was talking to one of his mentors and his mentor said, "Do you think that no deals existed prior to you meeting Cody? Prior to you learning acquisitions, were there no deals around? No, of course not. It's that you couldn't recognize them. And I think your opportunity will always be limited by your ability to recognize it.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  And so if one day you want ownership, you need to start with understanding what does it even look like to get ownership? What does it look like to buy a business? How do we use this language of money, which is to talk about deal making and structuring? And once you have that down, then you can go to the next level. The next level would be like, all right, I've read the book. Now how do I go into something deeper? Maybe it is a course, maybe it is a community or an academy of people. How do I go from the education to starting to begin the implementation? I think where people go wrong in business buying is they start with, this is a cool idea. All right, I learned a few things about buying a business. Now let's go buy one. And instead, it should probably be maximize your education until you can say you're quite versed in how to buy businesses.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  You could have a conversation with you or I on doing a private equity deal. And you would understand everything we're saying. And if we probed you on some questions, you would be able to respond in kind. Then you might be ready to start looking at acquisitions. But what I've found is there's some real hubris that comes along with acquisitions and also that exists a lot in finance. Like one of the things I find most interesting is that people who have been in finance, but never done a deal, always talk like they know how to do a deal. But if you've never done one, then it's just theory. It's not actual practice and it's a totally different thing buying a business by yourself than it is doing it in a corporation. That's why I had to start with some smaller ones and I scaled my way up continuously.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Because I wanted to make sure that I was an expert before I started putting my expertise into action.

• 37:21John R. Miles?

  And for someone who's looking at the type of business they should invest in, I know people have come to me constantly saying, why aren't you creating a consulting business? And passion struck and I worked for Booz and Co. And I was a senior leader at Arthur Andersen. And running a consulting business is very difficult. It means that you have to get everyone tied to a common methodology. If they're remote from you, there's just a ton of oversight, making sure that they're following the script and doing it consistently, et cetera. Not that you can't do it, but there's easier businesses. So what would you recommend are some of the green light businesses for people to focus

• 38:04John R. Miles?

  on and maybe some of the red light ones that are more difficult to do?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  First, I'd say this, if you've ever spoken to a business owner in any sector and asked them, is your industry or sector easy? You already know what the response is going to be. They always say no. Business owners are really funny. We're always really negative about the industry we're in. We think it's hard. We think it's risky. We think that other people shouldn't get into it. We think the grass is greener somewhere else. So what I will say first is like, every business is hard. And are some of them harder than others? Theoretically, yes, for that type of entrepreneur. And it really depends on who you are. Now, there are like a list of businesses that I don't like because they're just more complex or complicated. For instance, if you've never run a business before and you have no experience, but you

• 38:49Speaker 01

  go into industrial manufacturing, you go into biotechnology, you go into, I don't know, complex mergers and acquisitions and starting a business in it. That, that requires a lot of historical knowledge. Instead, you might want to start with a business that is so simple, you could explain it to your grandmother. And this is how I talk about these businesses. Where is there a business where you fully understand the business model? You're like, that's why I always talk about laundromats, but we could use another example. You're like, all right, this guy paints houses. And he charges for the paint and he charges for the service to come to the house and he could put it on a recurring revenue model and he could have some commercial contracts and he could have some residential contracts and he probably does door to door marketing, maybe

• 39:32Speaker 01

  a little SEO and social to get it. He needs to know how to price the location, but we could probably figure that out. That's a pretty straightforward business. Okay, I could understand that business and thus I could get into that business. Now, am I going to be as good as somebody that's already been in it? No, of course, I've got to, I've got to learn the ropes. But I think you're asking to yourself, do you really understand at a core level, how this business makes money? And we have what we call the money pathway in the book, which basically shows you, for instance, in what would be a good example of a business, Kim Kardashian. So Kim Kardashian creates a new skincare or a new lip gloss. So she creates a new lip gloss. She posts about it on her socials. She gets sales from people clicking

• 40:16Speaker 01

  on her socials and that is how the business makes money. So it's create a product, market the product on her social media, collect the cash for the business. That is her money making deal journey. For a laundromat, it might be put up new signage outside of laundromat, give discounts in the local newspaper, get customers to come in to the laundromat to use the service, sign them up for a monthly program that allows them to get it all at a discounted cost. That's how we make money. So you really want to understand your business, how most businesses don't have more than three to five steps for how you get attention to product to closing capital. And that's what you need to understand in each business that you would buy.

• 41:00John R. Miles?

  For someone who's listening to this thinking, I want to buy a business, but I don't have the cash flow. What would be your first recommendation of how they could think about this differently? Because there are many different ways to invest in a business without you having to raise the capital yourself.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  You said it perfectly. You don't actually have a money problem ever in raising capital for a business. You have a knowledge problem. You don't understand all the different ways that people get money that is not out of their bank account or out of their own assets. Those can be ways. We teach 21 different ways to buy a business using varying capital structures. In the book, we focus a lot on one called creative financing, which is basically, how do you get the seller of the business to align with you on wanting to put up capital for you to buy the business? So use the future profits and revenue of the business in order for you to buy the business. That's called seller financing. But there's 62 ways from sideways to do this. You could do a Rob's account. You could do a line of credit. You

• 42:00Speaker 01

  could do a HELOC. You could raise capital from third-party investors as equity. You could raise capital as debt. You could do equipment factoring. I'm sorry, you could do equipment financing. You could do invoice factoring. You could use the equity from another business that you have and give it to that current business owner in order to buy their business. You could ask for a percentage of future sales in order for you to do some sort of partial equity deal that you bring in capital for. So there's all these ways to make money. It's never that you don't have money. It's that you don't have knowledge. And that really unlocked something for me in finance, because when I started buying businesses, I didn't have millions to put on the line. So I had to be really creative in how I did my first series of deals. And now even today, I'm

• 42:42Speaker 01

  very creative on deal structuring. There's no way I'm going to do a business transaction that's just dollar-for-dollar acquisition. I'm going to do some sort of earn-out. I'm going to do milestones. I'm going to ask for a discount and warrants and options if we do X, Y, Z. Creative deal making.

• 42:57John R. Miles?

  And I think the next place to turn to is the C or command in your framework. And I think sometimes people go into a business saying, I don't even know how to do it, not realizing that there's different approaches. For how they could build an A-team around the business, which may not include them leading it. They may, like many private equity groups do, bring in a caretaker for the business to hit the milestones that they want to achieve. What's your advice here?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  I mean, we have Lloyd, for example, who's a member of my community, and he bought a laundromat, still wanted to run his day-to-day business, and so got a general manager to run the laundromat, and then bought another laundromat. So now that GM manages both. So if Lloyd, let's say, was in a top-level private equity operator that's going to be able to attract top-level talent, well, he bought a different type of business that he could attract a general manager-level talent. And I think he pays his GM something like $50,000, $60,000 a year to run these two laundromats. These aren't a huge, a huge cost. So the better that you are, the better talent that you can attract. But you want to buy a business, not a job. And that means that it has employees inside of it.

• 44:04John R. Miles?

  And then lastly, I wanted to talk about the H in your framework, which is harness. So how do you tell listeners or viewers what success looks like for the movement for ownership you're advocating? Meaning, when you're trying to harness this for a win, what should they realistically look for as they're investing in a business on the other side of it?

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Well, it really comes down to what do you want? I mean, when I buy a business, I want that business to make me a certain amount of money each year. I only do deals that cash flow. So that might be, we might only want to do cash-flowing deals. And then you might want to exit. You might want to, in three to five years, say, hey, I want to build up this business to do X, and then I want to sell it to another strategic. And I'll probably, your first deal probably won't be your best deal. And so you might want to have a space in which you're like, I'm either going to exit the business, or I want to add on more, because I know maybe my first deal was a little bit too small. But at the end of the day, the difference between often you and the bank account that you want is just how fast do you move. And it turns out that the faster you move with decisions

• 45:12Speaker 01

  that can't bankrupt you, but that are like small decisions consistently moved over time is what leads to, is what leads to more money. And so that's what I would impair upon people is, no matter what, I've never met somebody who regretted getting educated on deal-making and learning how to structure deals, ever. I think it is the highest-level skill one can have in business. So at least go and learn the skill, and then decide if you want to be an owner, and then decide when you're ready to actually do a business transaction.

• 45:40John R. Miles?

  Okay. And, and as we wrap up, Codie, I'd love to explore the bigger picture behind your message. You described this as a silent war between Main Street and Wall Street. You have it right behind your back. Why do you feel this battle is so critical? And what role do individuals play in turning the tide?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Well, listen, we have a perfect vehicle insight into what can happen if we don't buy these businesses. And I think that is Japan. We can see in Japan right now, real centralization of ownership, massive shutdowns of business. The government concerned that there'll be 10% unemployment if they don't figure out a way to transfer these businesses. And so, one, it's a great opportunity for people to build wealth if they're willing to put in the work. But also, it's an opportunity to save our country from living under neon signs by big corporations that all report into Wall Street eventually. And so I think this movement is one that we will see within our lifetimes. And it will either go our way or it won't.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  And, and so I hope that people believe what I know to be true, which is that if you get ownership, if you have skin in the game, if you own part of a house, you don't burn it down, you build it. And I think that's what this mission is all about.

• 46:51John R. Miles?

  I love how you write about this. Our country does not need more dating apps. We need more drop shippers playing middleman with manufacturers. We need more young entrepreneurs to carry the torch. They are the ones who can save the small businesses that power our local economies. Well, Codie, thank you so much for joining us today. I know you're very searchable, but if there was one location you would tell people to go to, where would it be?

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Probably be codiesanchez.com. That's where the book is, all of our event information. We're having a big celebration on the 12th. So thank you so much for having me, John. And I hope that all of your people go out and become owners.

• 47:27John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you so much, Codie. Long time coming and such an honor to have you on the show.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Well, same. Thanks for being a good private equity guy. Okay, I'm gonna run, John. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Nice to meet you.

• 49:49John R. Miles?

  And becoming a more impactful leader. Whether you're a team leader, an entrepreneur, or simply looking to strengthen your communication skills, this episode is packed with transformative insights you won't want to miss.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  The whole point of hiring people is to encourage them to make a contribution. I mean, there's no point at all in hiring great people and then telling them to sit down and shut up, which is really what bias, prejudice, and bullying in different ways do to people. I think it's important for leaders to learn how to teach their teams to disrupt bias in the moment. If we ignore these comments, then we reflect and reinforce them.

• 50:25John R. Miles?

  Thank you for spending your time with us today. If you found value in this episode, please share it with someone who could benefit. And keep applying what you learned to live what you listen. Until next time, live life passion struck.