#637 How To Acquire Businesses & Build Wealth w/ Codie Sanchez

Codie Sanchez is a reformed journalist, turned institutional investor to cannabis investor and advisor, to now Founder at Contrarian Thinking and Cofounder of Unconventional Acquisitions. In this conversation, we discuss cash flow, buying businesses, angel investing as a scam, mental toughness, due diligence checklists, and much, much more. ======================= Gemini is a leading regulated cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian that makes it simple and secure to buy, sell, store, and earn bitcoin, ether, and over 40 other cryptocurrencies. Offering industry-leading security, insurance and uptime, Gemini is the go-to trusted platform for beginner and sophisticated investors alike. Open a free account in under 3 minutes at gemini.com/pomp and get $20 of bitcoin after you trade $100 or more within 30 days. ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Cody Sanchez is a reformed journalist turned institutional investor to cannabis investor and advisor, to now the founder at Contrarian Thinking and co-founder of Unconventional Acquisitions. In this conversation, we discuss cash flow, buying businesses, angel investing as a scam, mental toughness, due diligence checklist, and much, much more. I really enjoyed this conversation with Cody, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Gemini. Gemini is a leading regulated cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian that makes it simple

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  and secure to buy, sell, store, and earn Bitcoin, Ether, and over 40 other cryptocurrencies. They offer industry-leading security, insurance, and uptime. Gemini is the go-to trusted platform for beginner and sophisticated investors alike. You can open a free account in under three minutes at Gemini.com/pomp, and you'll get $20 of Bitcoin after you trade $100 or more within the first 30 days. Again, Gemini.com/pomp, and you'll get $20 of Bitcoin after you trade $100 or more within the first 30 days. Gemini.com/pomp. Go check it out. Cameron and Tyler have built a great business, and I think that you will enjoy using it. Next up is Crypto.com. With over 10 million-plus users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  and sell 100-plus cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Pretty good deal. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn high rates of return on various assets like Bitcoin and others. And then you can get $25 when you download the Crypto.com app with code Pomp. Again, go download the Crypto.com app, use code Pomp, and you get 25 bucks. You can also get 8% back instantly or 100% back on Spotify and Netflix using their Visa Card. Go check them out today. Crypto.com. Not only do they have a great URL, but that's the place where mass adoption is happening. Crypto.com or click on the link in the description. All right, let's get into this episode with Cody. I hope you guys enjoyed this one.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Cody, how are you?

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Life's good, man. No complaints.

• 2:40Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. I'm super excited about this. I already told everyone, I think this is going to be one of our best conversations here, so please don't disappoint. No pressure.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:49Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Maybe let's go through your background first, and then we're going to get into some actionable ideas around what people can do to build passive income and from an investing perspective. But what exactly is your background? How did you kind of build all of this?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Well, I started out actually as a conflict journalist. So I was running around Mexico, US Mexico border, writing about human trafficking, drug smuggling, anything where humans had sort of kinetic connection along a man-made border. And I got a little actually just disenfranchised. Being a journalist is a tough gig and you end up being excited about terrible things happening to people. And that didn't sound like a good life for me. And so I ended up figuring out, you know, I was talking to one of my mentors at the time and I asked him, my last name Sanchez, a bunch of other people across the borders, last name was Sanchez. I was like, what's the difference really? And it's not American, it's not Mexican. It was like one difference, which is that I came from a middle-class family. We had some money.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  And so I was like, well, I think power is really just money in a different form, and I don't know anything about money and I need to learn about it. So I climbed up the corporate ladder and a bunch of financial institutions, you know, how do you know if somebody worked at Goldman? They tell you in five minutes. So I worked at Goldman, I worked at Vanguard, State Street, and then I ended up building this relatively large asset management firm at a firm called State Street. Got recruited to build one at a company called First Trust, a couple billion dollars later, and assets under management, not revenue. We had a big business that was servicing a bunch of people down south. And the only reason that I had The ability to do any of that was because there was sort of, I mean, it's what you guys did too. You find this opportunity between narrative and numbers.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  So the narrative is Bitcoin sucks, you know, 10 years ago or whatever, when you guys first started investing and thinking about it. It's too nascent. We don't understand it. It's used by a bunch of Latin hat hackers. Well, Latin America was the same. It was like, oh, narco, you know, uh, we're cartels. We don't want to go down there. So I was like, actually, the numbers look great. There's huge growth prospects in the country. I'm gonna go down there and build it. So I did, sold out of my shares there and then looked for the next arbitrage opportunity, which I saw in cannabis. So I started investing in cannabis, then became a partner to cannabis, a private equity fund. And continue to invest in that space. I've stood on the board. And then the next thing I started looking at was SMBs, small and medium businesses. So where could you, in my opinion, I look at this world today, I'm like, God, everything's so expensive.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  There's no value and I'm not smart enough to compete in a place where everything's expensive and all the players are playing. And so I saw this opportunity in small and medium businesses to start investing and buying mom and pop businesses. Because big PE firms play up here at least $10 million in rev. And then down here, it's just us little guys that get to play. So it's one area of value in a big world. And so journalist to investment banking to finance to private equity to now I buy and hold companies. I can't really use comparison to Warren Buffett, but like his holdco structure is a similar structure that I have now.

• 5:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so we got a ton to get into. Uh, one of the ideas that you have that I think is really, really fascinating is this idea of 20th century versus 21st century finance. What does that mean and how do you kind of delineate between the two?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Well, 20th century finance to me is what our parents did. It's one income stream. It's again what you guys talk about with Bitcoin and crypto, which is it's all about decentralization, right? You don't have a single point of failure. You have multi-points of failure, which allows you to have more safety and security amongst other things. But it's the same with incomes. So what I see is the biggest failure and the pandemic proved it for all of us. Is that most people, one out of 100 people will die wealthy. The rest largely die. Sadly, poor, and I think the reason that is is because they have a single point of failure. They have one income stream and corporations, they are incentivized to make you have one income stream, right? Like employers do not like you to have multiple jobs. They do not like you to be

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Bitcoin rich and also work at their company typically. And so that's 20th century income and finance in my mind. You have a single point of failure that is your income. You stay at one place and you have a pension until you die. And 21st century is what millionaires do today, seven to 12 streams of income. And you used to think that that was so hard to get, impossible to get, but it's actually not. Today, more than ever, it's easier to have multi-income streams. In fact, you could do with a hundred dollars by investing in something like Fundrise, which is hard asset real estate in an app. You know, you can do it by investing in cryptocurrency and staking or earning on top of them and having a cash flow. So what I talk to people about is, how can you go from your one income stream and use that one income stream to get you 10 or 12?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Because in my prediction, it's going to get worse, not better. And people who only have one income will be the ones left holding the bag.

• 7:38Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about cash flow or income, is that the first thing? Like you need to have the cash flow in order to be able to execute any of these investing strategies?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Well, you need, let's do it two ways. One, I don't like deals where you don't get cash flow right away. That's why I'm not a big fan of angel investing. We could talk about that later. But when it comes to investing today, I like to put money down on the table and get money back day one. That's called cash flow investing. And we can talk about ways to do it. It's just that most people don't know how to structure deals. And I get it. I only learned this for being in private equity. But so, so first thing is, any deal you do, you should look for payment day one. It is not a good deal if you do not get paid until 10 years, because most angel investments will go to zero, not 100 X. And so you need to invest with that in mind. Now, you do have to have some money to start investing typically, or you can use

• 8:29Speaker 02

  your sweat. So it's either you have equity or you have sweat equity. And what I talk to a lot of people about is even if you're working with somebody, even if you have a job, you like your job, you want to stay there. You should be trying to move towards ownership instead of employment. And you can do that as an employee by asking for things like revenue share, where you take a percentage of the revenue that you help bring into the company, or profit share, which is probably more likely.

• 8:52Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the first deal you did, walk us through, how did you find the deal? How did you negotiate it? And then do you still hold it? Did you think about selling it at some point? Like, how do you think about like, what the end of that, that investment looks like?

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the first deal that I did by myself completely, I still hold. It was a terrible deal. I won't say the name of the company because I don't want to hurt the operator's feelings. It was a terrible, terrible deal. I went and it's like sort of the five tenants that I talk about now. I bought a company that was too big because I was cocky. And so it could have broke me. I could have lost all my money doing this first deal. The accountant left basically two weeks in. So I'm in like a dusty room full of ledgers trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the service-based business. And they're a mess. The operator was not trusted talent or tried talent, meaning I didn't know the operator and he hadn't done the job before, which is now something I look for with every

• 9:49Speaker 02

  deal. And then lastly, I had invested in what is called a turnaround business. This is what the biggest issue that young people do is we get all excited. We're like, I'm gonna go buy a small business. Look at that laundromat over there. It's a nightmare. It's dirty. Like, the machines are old. I'm gonna totally redo all of it. Small problem. Never ran a business before. Never ran a laundromat before. Never turned around a business before. So that's like the people who go and buy houses that are nightmares and then they want to flip it. And their first flip is usually a disaster because you have no idea what you're doing. And so instead, you should take a little bit of the safer bet on the first one and then go do, it's called a hairy deal, then go do a hairy deal that's a little bit harder as you go. But that was my first deal. Now, 12 years later, the deal is profitable. It's a win. It's good to go, which is why I like to do, I

• 10:34Speaker 02

  think it was like Naval that said, not long-term deals with long-term people. I like to do the same thing with my businesses. Find good ones, hold them forever, never let go of the cash flow.

• 10:43Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the process now in terms of locating a good business? Right? We'll talk about kind of structuring the terms, executing the deal, etc. But just when you look at a business, is there like a checklist that you have or something you go through to determine this is worth doing more work on and I potentially could hold this for a long period of time?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. You gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta have a due diligence checklist. And that's what it's called. Due diligence basically just means, am I buying a terrible business or is this actually a business that I think I fully understand what I'm buying? And like, again, because people understand mortgages and this is more normal than in real estate than small business buying, I compare the two. So, you know, when you go buy a house, what do you do? You get an inspector to come look at your house and make sure that it's not just pretty on the outside, but a total nightmare within. You do the same thing when you're buying a business. So, you know, there's a pretty standard due diligence checklist and you can look online in almost any industry you want to buy. Say you want to buy a car wash, like you love the idea of quarters in, you know, money in your bank account. Great.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  So what you should do is you can go on the internet very easily and you can look up car wash due diligence checklist. There's a ton of them all over the internet. I mean, I have some of my own that are proprietary. Every PE firm out there, private equity firm out there, has a due diligence checklist too, for everything, single industry that they go into. And you make sure you run through the task lists, just like you would if you were buying a house. And then there are people to help you called business brokers. You can have a sell side or a buy side business broker. That would be like your real estate agent. And then you can also have consultants on the type of business you're going to buy. And they're pretty cheap, actually. Usually what I do is just call up some other business buyers that are not in competing areas and just say, hey, I'm thinking about buying this. Tell me your biggest mistakes and tell me the biggest mistakes that I could avoid from talking to you.

• 12:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes a ton of sense. I love the idea that you talk about all the time around, just like knowing the language of deals or knowing the language of finance and how important that is, especially when you start looking at the difference between price and terms. I always joke with people like, I'll pay you a billion dollars, I'll just pay you a dollar a day until we're done, right? And so walk through a little bit as to what your advice to folks is in terms of how they could get much more proficient in the language of deals or the language of finance.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, if you remember this like one line, you'll be ahead of 90% of people, which is, you can have your price and my terms, or my price and your terms, but you can't have both. And the part that you don't tell them is that if you control the terms, you control the price. And so I always try to push people to understand the terms. It's kind of boring upfront. You know, there's these things like ratchets and warrants and options. And you know, it can be overwhelming when you first start. You're like, you know, Cody, I just figured out what a mutual fund is and like how to get in my Robin Hood account. And now you're talking about warrants and potential options on future, future price execution. Like, that's a little confusing. But quite honestly, if you think about finance, here's what we're really good at.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  We are highly paid in finance and we are highly paid. We make, you know, 2% of every dollar you give me in finance, I take from you if you invest in any of my funds, if I'm in private equity. And then 20% of the profits of any deal we do, I take from you if you're in my funds. And that's how private equity is structured. And so everything in finance is written and said to make you feel dumb and people in finance feel smart. And the, the truth of the matter is none of us are rocket scientists and this is all so standardized that if you take, you know, a weekend to get to know some of the terms, you are going to be able to run circles around not only your future bosses, but anybody you do a deal with.

• 14:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You've previously said angel investing is largely dumb. I think that'll be kind of sticker shock to some folks. What do you mean by that?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I was talking to a couple of my friends that just did rolling funds right now and similar people that you know. But, um, you know, the thing with angel investing is I truly believe you should not be angel investing unless you have two things. One, a million dollars. If you are a, you know, a credited investor with actually a million or more, I think you are much better off getting cash flow today and not trying to give somebody money to fund their dreams. The only caveat I have to that is if you have an unfair advantage, an absolute unfair advantage, meaning you work in Silicon Valley or these days Miami or Austin at some of the top tech startups out there and you have an insane amount of deal flow that nobody else can get into.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Or you have a unique skill set that allows you to invest in deals that nobody else can get into. And, and that term proprietary deal flow, meaning like I have deal flow that nobody else has, is usually 99.9% bullshit and or crap. Sorry. I don't know what I can say here. And then also, um, the last thing I would say is, um, most people who angel invest. It is, you can make a killing if you have unique deal flow a hundred percent. But for the most part, you gotta do ten, twenty, thirty, forty deals to get there. And if you have less than a million bucks, you're honestly not going to be able to do it. And then what nobody tells you is, it's not just the ten K or fifty K you put down first.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  All these companies raise a ton of money. So then you have dilution. So you better, if you're gonna invest ten K, you better expect to invest a hundred K to keep your same percentage.

• 16:01Anthony Pompliano?

  You also say that public markets are kind of dumb. I agree with this one for sure. Explain what you mean by public markets being maybe a place to avoid.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Well, I first started realizing this because I looked at the Forbes one hundred list and I was like, oh, I think I want to be on that one day. Like, how do we do this? And, um, and what I realized from the Forbes one hundred list is nobody on there is on there from public stock investing. And then people are like, no, Cody, Carl Icahn, you know, and you're like, wait a second. Actually, Carl never does market deals. You think Carl's on his Robin Hood account, putting in his trades? No, Carl is behind the scenes, buying secondary shares, affecting the outcome, getting on the board, harassing everybody. It's highly aggressive. Same thing with Warren Buffett. I mean, I was at Goldman Sachs when Warren did that deal where he invested in Goldman. And everybody was like, oh, I feel good about Goldman because Warren invested.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  I'm like, long term, that was a good trade, but Warren invested in a private deal that was hugely different than you going out and investing in the stock market directly. So the biggest investors out there, they don't make their money from putting in a trade and in a buy signal or using some sort of technical, uh, stock tracking. And all the stuff that people talk about with, with, even with Bitcoin tracking, which you know about this so much more than I. But I giggle because they're like, look at this new amazing way that you can chart the future price of Bitcoin. And I'm like, this is called point and figure charting, and we've been doing it in finance for decades. And actually, everybody stopped using it in two thousand eight because I was at Goldman and all our hedge funds blew up. There were black box proprietary tech, there's that word again, that was using point and figure charting and got killed.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  So have money in the stock market, but don't expect that to make you a billionaire because it won't.

• 17:43Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about allocating capital between the stock market, private market deals, like more angel investing technology type companies, and then buying businesses that drive cash flow for you?

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so from an asset allocation standpoint, I'm a huge believer in diversification, which is like, kind of like, yeah, of course. But the problem is, most people aren't actually diversified. They have income streams from one source, ninety to a hundred percent, and then they over-index in whatever area they know the most about. And people are like, but wait, remember the book Zero to One? Peter Thiel, he's really smart. He said to do one thing. I wouldn't go head to head with that guy. But what I would say is, if you make all your money in real estate, or let's say finance, so me, in finance, I worked in finance for years, and your pay is highly correlated with what the stock market does. And then I realized, wow, all my money is in the stock market, and I work in the stock market. If something goes sideways, I am the opposite of decentralized.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  And so what I started to do was look at non-correlated asset classes. Basically, like, if I own this thing and the market goes up, it goes up. If I own this thing and the market goes up, it goes down, right? And what you find is, anything that is publicly listed has a lot of correlation. They all do the same thing. You know, when the market goes down, all of them usually go down. And there's some caveats around that, right? But these days, my portfolio is pretty broad-based. I have about fifty percent of my investments are in small and medium businesses. You guys talk about pandemic-proof businesses as opposed to recession-proof, which I think is a smart differentiator. And so I have a lot of essential services in there as well.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Then I have a very small percentage in stocks, like ten percent, less in bonds. I have some crypto holdings, I probably need more. And I have an allocation that's pretty big to real estate, hard assets, commodities, and other illiquid asset classes. Oh, and then I hold a ton of cash. So we can talk about that, too.

• 19:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you hold so much cash?

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's a dichotomy today, right? Like, somebody asked the question, they were like, how can you, how is it that cash is king and that also cash is trash because of inflation? And I was like, the truth is, it is both. It is literally both today. You need to have a way to protect the cash that you have from inflation and the fact that our government's printing debt like it's going out of style, or printing money like it's going out of style. But you also have to have cash because... Because in my belief, you want to do what Baron Rothschild said, which is buy when there's blood in the streets, especially when it's yours. And so if you think like me that the world will not always continue to be, you know, at all time highs, eventually the dance will end. You want cash because liquid assets won't allow you to take advantage of it. And

• 20:22Speaker 02

  if you look like it's actually, I should have brought the stats, but you could Google it. If you look at VC, private equity funds and the vintages or the years that they started investing during recessionary periods, those are always the best performing funds. So you want money that you can access the second things go sideways, which is why you need cash, but you also need things to offset inflation like crypto, real estate, different types of cash flowing assets and small businesses.

• 20:53Anthony Pompliano?

  We've got a whole bunch of ideas that you sent me in advance of things that people can do in order to buy businesses or sectors that could be interesting for them to kind of get started and make it actionable. The first one is modular homes. And you wrote just in all caps, "The Future." So what is modular homes in terms of being the future? And what do you think people could do there?

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Well, I think we're a ways away from it still. So excuse the enthusiasm. But for instance, I get really excited whenever I can buy something that I'm a value investor in a way, a value cash flowing investor, which is not usually normal. So whenever somebody says there's a market like real estate at all time highs, I mean, we just bought a property in Austin, it's absolute chaos down there. I'm always looking for how can I get into the asset class, but in the cheapest way possible. And so modular homes are essentially these 3D printed homes or factory built homes, factory built is more normalized, that are made for quite a lot cheaper than the average. So our house that we bought, so we bought a house in a mountain town, and it's on about an acre of land. And with the house, it was like 3,000 square feet. I think the whole thing was we bought about, we bought it for

• 21:59Speaker 02

  about 900K. Now, in this mountain town, the average home price is about 2.1, 2.3 million. I can't remember the exact amount. So somehow I am able to get in at a bigger plot of land and a great location. With a price tag that's about half, uh, it more than half, um, at less than half of the price of traditional real estate. And the reason why is because modular home developments are new. So modular homes, you going out right now and buying a factory home, you can see them, they're all over Pinterest. Everybody thinks they look cool. Um, but you do not want to buy a singular modular home because it doesn't scale as well. What you need to do is go out and find developers in the U S that are building modular home developments.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Their economies of scale for massive factory printing will mean that you can buy at one third to one half the price. And if I was a developer, I'd be doing this all day long because the factory built homes are cool looking. Um, they're much more efficient because about 70% of construction is waste.

• 22:58Anthony Pompliano?

  It's absolutely nuts. Um, there's a, a number of businesses. I don't want to name any of them to give free marketing. But, uh, in, in terms of, uh, the, the various businesses, uh, one, there's a bunch of efficiencies that they gain. So you don't get that waste on kind of the construction site. But also too, is I think that there's a lot of consumer, um, kind of preferences changing, right? People don't necessarily need, uh, to live in a city. So there's more demand for people who want to go live in some of these areas. And also too is, uh, what type of home do they want, right? And, and kind of what do they need actually? Do they need a seven car garage? Probably not, right? And so I think that you get a, a number of tailwinds along with the actual unit economics changing. And it seems like that's, uh, kind of a, a bet that you think is worth taking.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah. I think, um, you know, anytime you get to invest in innovation at a discount, that's pretty wild. Um, so I think that's an opportunity in the modular home space. Now, I haven't found that many companies that I would invest in that are modular home builders yet. Because they haven't figured out the scale portion of it yet. But I think if you could do a factory built home and you could own the land and part of the development company, you could cash flow from it today. But you could also benefit from the potential innovation going forward because wouldn't it be crazy, man? I couldn't, could you imagine if you were like, what's the brand of your house? You know, if it's not like, where do you live and what, you know, what does your house look like? It's like, oh no, I live in a, I live in a, a pomp house, right? Because just like everything else, it would be scary.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Just like anything else, everything will eventually be branded and I think your house will be too.

• 24:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, makes sense. Laundry mats. I actually own one in a very weird way, much longer story. But we own, a partner and I own some of the real estate and we also own some of the business as well. And they print cash. It's crazy. So what is the opportunity thing from a laundromat? And kind of how could somebody go from I own no businesses to getting in this game?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's funny. I wrote about that on Twitter and it kind of went a little viral. And then everybody's like, so what do you do for a living? You just own laundromats? And it's like, oh, no, that's one of, one of the things I own. But, but the, the reason I talk so much about laundromats is because it's accessible. When I go start talking about buying businesses, most people are like, must be nice privilege. And it's like, wait a second, wait a second. The, the reason that I talk about buying businesses is because it has actually been only done by PE firms for so long. And so we've got to start with a business that is not so intimidating. And the laundromat, it's like you have a space you lease, you have machines that you utilize. People put in quarters and you print money on the other side of it. You got to clean up the place a little bit. You've got to have somebody do some maintenance on the machines. But it's really not a lot more than that.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  And so I like to talk about laundromats because like you said, they actually, they cash flow beautifully. The price for them, probably it's worth a little bit more now because I've been spouting off about it for a while. But, um, you know, is usually two to three X the profit. So when you go to buy a laundromat, if a laundromat makes a hundred thousand dollars a year, you can typically buy them for 200 or $300,000. And if people are like, also sounds great. I don't have 300K lying around. They don't realize there's something called the SBA. And the SBA, the Small Business Association, will give you a loan for 90% of the purchase price of a business that has books that they can track and confirm the profits from. And so just like you could go out and buy a mortgage and put 10% down, you could do that on a business.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  If you were to go and buy a house right now, a single family with a mortgage and try to cash flow it, the average, uh, single family makes about $464 a month. $464 a month is what you make from putting down hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a laundromat, I'm making five, 10K a month. It's a totally different game.

• 26:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's incredible. Mailbox Money, which is a great name, but what is, uh, what is Mailbox Money? How can you do it?

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, you need to have her on. She's a riot. So a friend of mine, Lisa Song Sutton, is similar to me. We have this idea of buying boring businesses, holding them forever. And I think it's that immigrant hustle. She's like first Gen Korean. But essentially what it is, is so I was looking at the self-storage space. Lots of people are. I think we're both friends with Nick Huber, Sweaty Startup. I was like, this looks interesting. It's a way to get into real estate, but with a higher return on that monthly cash flow we talked about. Because I'm always like, show me the cash. I want to see it every month. But the thing with self-storage is now you got everybody and their brother in that space. And it's become overhyped and expensive for the most part, in my opinion. And so I was like, so how can we do this cheaper? Then I was talking to Lisa, and she's like, I own this mail center.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  So you know how you got to ship out a package? You don't always go to FedEx or UPS. You could go to like Cody's Shipping Center up the street or something, right? So I always thought those businesses were kind of interesting because of the packages. And maybe they make a bunch of money sending back and forth and all the tchotchkes in the store. Wrong. They're real estate businesses. They're mini mailbox real estate businesses. So you charge anywhere from 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 dollars a month for a little P O box. And the key is UPS knows that this is the game. So they mandate that you can only have like 100 mailboxes in a UPS franchise. I hate franchises, by the way, so I never buy a UPS.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  But if you own your own store, you could cram 200, 300, 500, 1,000 mini little P O mailboxes in there. And every single one, you're making 20 to 30 dollars a month. Lisa's mailboxes sell out within six months because everybody and their brother's doing what we're doing, right? We got LLCs. We got things we need to send. We're starting our side hustles. And so the business is booming, but there are not enough mailboxes. That's mailbox money.

• 28:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about that business specifically, is it something where it's people in a local area? They come into the physical location, they like get their mail out of a P O box? Or is there like a digital component where then somebody's going into the P O box at the business? And like taking a photo of the mail and then people can access it online? Like, how kind of digitally native or digitally up the curve are these types of businesses? Versus literally just, we have a mailbox, you rent it from us, come in, get the mail whenever you want, and like leave us alone?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, most of them are the latter. So digitally native is not normal in small business at all, as you know, that's the opportunity. Um, I think so. Most of these businesses and Lisa's too, they don't offer digital services. It is completely, you go in, you check the mail, that's it. Um, and so that would be 90% of them. The cool opportunity, I think, on top of this is you buy a business like this, you buy a pack and ship center. You input immediately those another 100 to 200 mailboxes. So you've increased your revenue by a few thousand dollars a month. Um, with a couple of mailboxes that cost you a couple of hundred dollars to buy. And then on top of it, maybe you do offer that service, especially in a place like Miami where people are having, you know, potentially two locations or go back, going back and forth between New York.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  And they just want to make sure that their mail isn't piling up, piling up. You could have a scanning service in that and charge it a premium, then you might be able to charge a hundred dollars a month for a service like that. So I think those are interesting, but most people don't do that.

• 30:04Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about buying real estate at auction, how does that work?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So my friend Erin Amuchastegi is amazing at this. What, what I tried to do, and I think what people should think about doing if they're going to get multiple income streams, you can't be an expert at everything. You know, if I want to go and really understand crypto and Bitcoin, I would have to spend hours and hours and hours and hours. Or instead I could follow somebody like you, and I am a subscriber to your newsletter, and every single day I could learn a little bit more about the asset class. And I could invest alongside you in deals, or I could give you money in deals. And so that's typically what I do with all these asset classes. I'm like, all right, Lisa, I'm going to invest in your business over here in mailbox money. Erin Amuchastegi, I want to go with you and I want you to teach me how to buy real estate at auction. This is so cool. This guy came from nothing. He has no like formal college degree, um, super blue collar.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  And he was doing what everybody does in real estate, which is just selling houses back and forth. He flipped a few houses. And then he found out about this thing called real estate foreclosure auctions. And he's located in the state of Texas where they have a, um, they, they sell houses on the courthouse steps. So every single month they release a listing of all the houses that are going up for foreclosure. And with that listing, you can comb through it and prepare to go. On the courthouse steps and bid on these houses. The amazing part is, and even in a market like this today, you are able to buy houses for, let's call it anywhere from thirty to fifty percent discount to the market rate. You can get actually a higher discount if you go and knock on the individual doors themselves to actually buy properties.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  And so Aaron has this whole thing where, you know, he's now worth tens of millions of dollars. He's bought thousands of these houses. He now keeps about two hundred and fifty houses or so um as rentals to cash flow. And he bought them all on the courthouse steps. There's obviously particulars with this, like you've got to actually, you need to do a little bit of research if you're gonna do something like this. He has a book on it. I think the book's basically free. Um, he just does it to be a nice guy. And then what I love about this business too, and this is what I talked to more business owners about doing. He owns this real estate foreclosure business, right? So he's out there buying houses at auction and anybody can show up to these auctions. It's totally free. So you can just go and check it out. I've gone with him. It's really cool. But then on top of it, he was like, how else could I add value to this main business?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  And he was like, well, what if I took a SaaS company that lists all of the houses that are for sale right now? That's a subscription-based business that people like him buy. What if I bought that business? And then I put some money into it and then had that business grow even bigger. So he bought his first SaaS company. And then he's like, and then what if I bought the the company that goes out and does door knocking to try to buy businesses beforehand? And it has a SaaS subscription model to it too, geolocation and stuff like that. And then he bought that company. So those are called rollups and I get really excited about that in any industry. Um, ancillary service rollups because you can add one company to your already existing company. And that's the only time, I know people these days like to say math isn't real,

• 32:58Speaker 02

  but that's the only time that one plus one actually could equal three or five with strategic M and A.

• 33:04Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about um M and A, you've said multiple times like you shouldn't build things, you should buy them. Why that is like so contradictory to I think what most people are being fed in terms of like, go start a company, go angel invest in companies. Why buy not build?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you I think you have to think about it from two perspectives. So if you have, you know, I don't, if you're um, if you're the creator of a theory. And you have this idea and you're like, this thing needs to exist in the world and like, I shall be the creator of it. That's awesome. You should go start that business. Most people start businesses for money. They're tired of working at their job. They don't make enough money. They want freedom, whatever the case may be. Most of us work because we like getting paid, right? And so what I like to teach people is to divorce the two. So instead of building a business for cash flow, if what your goal is, is to make money, then buy your profits. Don't go and

• 33:59Speaker 02

  try to guess that the idea that you have is going to eventually make you money because that's often not the case, which is why, you know, we have more than 90% of startups fail and the average entrepreneur has a salary of $60,000 a year, even as the CEO of a business for more than 10 years. Think about that for a second. Why would I go and try to do that when I could go on some of these websites like BizBuySell, Flipper, e-commerce slippers, when I could look in my little local laundromats in my area and see this business right here makes $180,000. I'm gonna buy this business for 3X 180K using an SBA loan and day one of me owning the business, I'm going to start

• 34:40Speaker 02

  cash flowing 180K a year. And then I can take that cash flow and if I want to create the next Ethereum or whatever the idea is, I can do it from a place that doesn't have to bankrupt my family and these like war porn horror stories we have of like, I did it all from my garage and my basement and then I lost it. Like you don't have to do that. And in fact, the average person just wants their family and community be better and healthy. And so they should probably buy a business and not build something or then build something from a place not of fear and scarcity they can build it when they have a little bit of a cushion.

• 35:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I've got both my brothers here and they've got questions for you as well. Joe, John, what you guys got?

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Hey Cody, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. My question would be really just around getting started, right? I think we touched on this a little bit earlier. But I think generally when people think about diversifying their income streams when it comes to passive income and looking at different industries and businesses, they get a little scared that they're not an expert at any one singular industry, right? So how do you think about starting to do that and getting educated? Is it just partnering with specific people in those industries like you mentioned earlier? Or is there another strategy that you think works well?

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, a couple of things. First, I think you should start from where you are. So like, one of the first guys that I started talking to about this and taught how to do it is a guy by the name of Mark. And Mark was a digital marketer. So he basically did PPC. He did, you know, helped people buy ads and stuff online. And Mark would charge, I don't know, $2,000, $5,000 a month to run these ad strategies for companies. But a company's not going to continue to utilize Mark unless the $2,000 to $5,000 that he's charging them is turning into $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, right? He's got to make more for them than he spends. And so Mark was making these other people millions of dollars. And sure, he would increase his fee, but you know, he could only do it so much until he wouldn't be competitive with the rest. And Mark knew he was good.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  So what I told him is why don't you do an acquisition through sweat equity and do something called a profit share and equity alignment for your work? And so Mark ended up saying, hey, keep the 2K to 5K. Instead of that, I want 10% of the company, which equals the, I don't know, $50,000 you'd pay me over the course of the year. And I want 10% of the profits for the next three to five years. And I want 25% of the profits for everything that we're going to do this year. And so Mark was able to actually buy a business with $0 down and using his sweat equity. And now he's a 25% owner of this business that nets him a couple hundred thousand dollars a year instead of his $50,000. So that's step one.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  If you have a skill that does one of two things, brings in revenue to a business or helps decrease costs for a business, you can do a revenue or profit share acquisition. That's step one. All you do is change the terms of your contract with them. The second would be if you're like an accountant, right? I think the easiest place to start is you have a skill that you already know, accounting. Why don't you go try to acquire an accounting firm? Or because an accountant's a pretty incredible skill for acquisitions, you could account, you could, you could buy just about any type of business. But I like to tell people, start where you are. So like one of the first businesses that I bought was a plumbing company.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  And the reason I bought it is because I had a family member that was a plumber for a long time and ran a plumbing business. So I was like, I'm gonna buy this. I know the finance side. I couldn't unclog a toilet if my life depended on it, but like you know about things like that. So let's partner together on this deal. So find another person who is complementary in your skill set.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  Like that. John?

• 38:13Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, thanks, Cody, for doing this. I really appreciate it. Um, I actually have two questions. So one of the first ones, and I'll just ask them both and then answer them at your leisure is, where do you go to find already established businesses? So you were talking about the laundromats and stuff like that. And then also, why do you hate franchises so much?

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Is it like the kickback? What is it about franchises that you don't like?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, start with franchises because that was fun. I love controversy. So I hate franchises, one, because I hate being told what to do. Like, that's the whole reason that I would start my own businesses and I got out of finances. I was an insufferable employee, like absolutely worst. Anytime, you know, anytime you get in a business, people are like, yeah, this isn't the right way to do it, but we've done it this way forever. So let's just keep doing that, right? And I was, I was always inept at being able to say yes. And so I hate franchises because they have massive rules. So anytime you're part of a franchise, if it's a good one and actually worth the 15 to 20 to 25% you have to pay them, they're going to have all these rules and regulations. And I'm kind of like, you know what? I think I know better and I don't, I don't want to listen to your rules. So that's reason one.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  If you're going for freedom, which is what I talk about a lot in owning a business, why would you give up some of that freedom to somebody else to ultimately be your other boss? I don't like it. Second reason is I don't want to share my profits. Why would I have to share 10 to 25% of my profits with somebody else? And you might say, well, because they're going to teach you how to do the business. Well, if they're going to teach me how to do the business, that's a one-time endeavor. I can learn all of that by paying a consultant upfront. Maybe I pay them more, or maybe I pay another business owner more to give me all of his SOPs, his processes, but I'm not going to pay that business owner 25% to teach me that for the rest of my ownership of the business. No, thank you. And then third is, I like to protect my downside.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  And with franchises, they can mandate a bunch of things for you. Like I have friends that owns McDonald's franchises and McDonald's will say, okay, we're rebranding everything. We need new signage everywhere. Here are the new rules and regulations with COVID that you're allowed to do or not allowed to do. It's going to cost you about a hundred thousand dollars to five hundred thousand dollars. So go ahead and have that implemented in the next 90 days. I'm not interested in that. So that's why I don't like franchises. You can make a bunch of money though, so that is fair.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I forgot your first question entirely. What was that again?

• 40:31Speaker 04

  No worries. Where do you go to find businesses? So if you say you're interested in laundromats, where would you go? Do you scour the internet? Do you try to network? What do you do?

• 40:40Speaker 02

  So the best way to do it is offline. If, you know, like what, what Pomp is saying is like, well, that's funny. I guess you guys are all pomp. That's a little confusing. I never thought about that before. Okay, so the, the best thing to do is not to go native, not to go digitally native. Why? Because that's the easiest path, right? Anytime you have the path of least resistance, you have typically the least return. And so the best way to do it is actually this. So the, the, maybe like the second or third business I bought was, and I just own a part of that business. I own about 40% of the business. That business was a service that was provided to me. It was in the media sphere and I was paying this guy like a pretty, you know, $2,000, $3,000 or something like that a month to provide this service to me.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Let's say that it was video production. And, and this guy had a business that was doing okay. I could tell he kind of had a job. He, he, he had this business so that he could have a lifestyle. He was the operator of the business. He was in it every single day. And I was like, hey, you know, let's call him Tom. Tom, do you want to grow your business? And he was like, yes. stupid question. Of course, I want to grow my business. And I was like, okay, well, I pay you two to three K a month. I think that I could get you probably anywhere from 10 to 20 new clients that were similar to me, and we could increase the prices. And I think some of your systems and operations aren't that great. And like you could do these couple of things in your business with 10x. Why have I invested money in your business? Give me a look at your books. Just tell me high level, how much profit you make in a year.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  I'll give you a reasonable return, you know, anywhere from, you know, 1.5 to 3x. Um, the investment that I would make in it, and I want to own about 40% of your business, but I'm also going to help you grow the business. So we ended up doing a deal where I only invested $10,000 in this business that was doing about $100,000 in profit. But I ended up bringing them about another $100,000 in new clients. And now I own 40% of a business that does 350, 400,000 dollars, something like that of profit a year. That is totally doable. So look at your, look at your checking account and your um, credit card. Where are you spending money consistently over time? And do you know the owners of those businesses? Can you talk to them about, can you invest in their business alongside of them?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  I think that's one of the most underserved ways to find businesses. And then the next thing that you want to do is like, talk to your dad's friends. Like, talk to your financial advisor, talk to your attorney, talk to your accountant. And look for the gray haired wave, which are all the retirees that are moving out of their businesses. That are tired of COVID lockdowns and, you know, this, the move to digital that don't want to do that. They've been running them for decades. And have face to face conversations in your community. Then you can do it online on some of the sites that I mentioned before, like Biz by Cell, Flippa, E-commerce, Flippers, etc.

• 43:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Cody, before we let you go, uh, the most important thing to talk about, I think is mindset. Uh, you've um, been very clear, I think, about uh, having a different mindset than most people. Um, and as I was preparing for this conversation, I was reading through a lot of the things that you've written. And if I had to sum it up, I think that we see eye to eye in that a lot of people are complacent. They're soft and uh, they basically just make excuses, right? It's, hey, I can't do something because ABC, you know, thing. Uh, talk a little bit about your mindset. Um, you've got this line, victimhood is a killer, which uh, already people are getting all worked up about probably.

• 44:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And uh, and kind of just like, why the mental side of this or the um, uh, perspective that you hold is such an advantage when you're investing?

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I, yeah, I mean, I think my joke is you can, um, you can enter the race for who's the biggest victim, but you're not going to like the prize. And, um, and, you know, I think one of maybe the only reasons I can still say that is because I'm a Latina and I'm a woman and, you know, maybe that checks two boxes. But the truth of it is, if we actually want to help people and not race to who is the best at virtue signaling, um, if we want to help people, we would never put them in a victim mentality, because that tells you that you are small, weak, not powerful, and that the things that happened to you, um, were not things that you can overcome. We would want to put them in a victor mentality, where you have been through trials and tribulations and difficulty, maybe more than other people.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Maybe you've been through atrocities, but you are still alive and breathing, and so you are a victor. And that is a different mentality. And, and I think today, more than ever, the saddest part is that so many people get upset by that. Like, how would you get upset by the idea that you allow somebody to name you a victim, and somebody comes along and says, you know what, you're more powerful than that. And actually, I have a bigger belief in you, and you can do bigger things. And people are like, no, don't tell them that. Get them back down there. And I think that is the travesty of our day and age, is the narrative has been so flipped. So if you could really take one thing away from everything you talk about, and, and all of you talk about, and I talk about, it's not the tactics, which is a lot of what we talked about today, it's, it's every time you hear that little voice in your head that

• 45:45Speaker 02

  says, I can't, I, I'm not smart enough, I'm not able to, just flip it and instead say, how could I? How could this work? How could I accomplish this? And I wish more people would do that. I mean, I'm, I'm married to a former Navy SEAL, and so, you know, when I talk about tough, it's comical, because like, we do a workout together and I about die. Um, but what I've learned from those guys is that mentality, like, when you ask them what it takes to go through BUDs, none of it is physical. My husband would tell you, it is, yes, you have to have a baseline physical, um, foundation, but it is completely mental. And it is, can you laugh? Like, he, he, his, his thing, when he was going through BUDs, was every time...

• 46:25Speaker 02

  They would do something terrible to them like go, you know, swim 400, you know, miles and then roll around in the dirt and then don't sleep for seven days. And they would get in his face about it and be like, what do you think about this? He would tell him a joke and he would laugh every time a difficulty was presented to himself. So to this day, every time he gets hurt, he's always like, oh, man, that hurt. And that change of mentality is everything. And I, I wish I could impart that on more people.

• 46:50Anthony Pompliano?

  We, we talk a lot about on the show, uh, not being on defense, but being on offense. And obviously, you know, there's some basic things people have to do. They got to, they have to have income. They have to get out of debt. They have to kind of be educated, but being in that offensive mentality, uh, I think is so powerful. And, uh, I'm going to forget who says it. Um, but, but I've seen the video multiple times kind of go viral online where somebody's like, you know, uh, I want to be in shape. Go work out, right? I want to, uh, make more money, get a second job, right? It's like this idea of like it, there is a complexity. If you want there to be complexity, but the most basic level of motivation and action is literally just go do it. And it feels like the investing strategy that you take,

• 47:35Anthony Pompliano?

  uh, has some level of, you have to understand how to find a deal, how to vet a deal, how to structure some of the deals, but there is an element of just go look for a business to buy, right? And whether it is, um, you know, uh, what I'll call like the Amazon strategy that you employ, which is, you know, my cost center of video editing should become a profit center for me.

• 47:57Anthony Pompliano?

  It just feels like it's somewhat common sense and basic stuff. It's really the execution that has all of the value in it.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just get more owners, get more owners and less employees. And even my employees and the people that work for me, I'm always letting them into deals and telling them to bring me ideas and, you know, having them put more money into deals. Um, because that creates loyalty more than any $15 minimum wage is going to create. And so, um, I think that's exactly right. And I, you know, A lot of people push back on this and it's usually for two reasons. One, they're scared and then two complacency. And so if you can get over the fear and realize that, you know, pretty much everything you want is on the other side of the things that you're too scared to do. And then you can get past the idea that you're not good enough or you're not going to be able to hack it.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  I mean, think about all the free resources online. I think the, maybe the other problem is that there's too many options. And so people get paralysis by analysis and they just sit and end up watching Netflix instead of it. But it's, the truth of it is, none of this is as hard as people make it out to be. And I think almost every hardworking human could go and buy a business today. You do not have to be a PE, you know, expert or savant to do it. Um, flip side of this is, uh, this is why it's kinda easy in America at least to be successful. Because so many people are willing to tell you why it won't work and why they can't do it. And while they're making excuses, I'm making money and that's the difference.

• 49:32Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you don't know who this person is, but, uh, we have a friend, uh, Danny Boy Hustle Hard, who, uh, Jo and I have gotten to know and, and John is a fan from afar. And he constantly posts on Instagram. Now usually with a great plate of food, but, uh, he will say, you know, America, pretty good country, huh? Like, you know, come on, Cheech, pretty good country, right? Like, and, uh, I love it because it always reminds me of like, yeah, that's right, Danny. It's pretty good country, man. You know, like we got it pretty good here and, uh, you know, taking that for granted is pretty stupid for, uh, for those that do that.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 50:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Joe, John, any, uh, any other questions from you guys?

• 50:09Speaker 03

  No, I'm all good.

• 50:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Danny Boy Hustle Hard is gonna be so excited, he made his way into an episode. Last time we mentioned him on the podcast, he posted for six weeks about, uh, you know, the podcast.

• 50:20Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Cody. Listen, thank you so much for doing this. Where can we send people? One, let's send them to the newsletter and maybe Twitter or anywhere else you want to send them?

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Those are the best. I think newsletter contrarian thinking.co. This is where we do cash flowing ideas and contrarian rants every week. So if you're into that, usually our differences, hopefully I've done all of these things. It's not just theory. So we give you the actual play by play and then Twitter, just Cody underscore Sanchez. Also, are you guys on Tik Tok? Because that is such a, I mean, talk about anti-American, that part I don't love, but talk about a growth platform. We're also now on Tik Tok. So I think if you're a young hustler, Tik Tok's pretty good for you. If you're more sophisticated, check out Twitter. And if you want deep dives, do the newsletter.

• 51:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I have to ask, are you and the rest of your company doing dances? Are you guys posting educational content? What is getting posted on Tik Tok?

• 51:11Speaker 02

  This is how far we've fallen. I did do one of those stupid dance. Have you seen this? Like this one? I did do, and I sent it to my whole team and said, you know, we have lost all self-respect.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  But, but no, that was my one and only dance. Now they're like short snippet videos about the ideas. You kind of get people thinking about ideas. We have a side hustle series right now. And it's like side hustles that don't suck because most side hustles just, you know, suck up your weekend and don't make you any money. And so we have sort of 21st century side hustles right up right now, which I think is just like great, quick snippets. But I've been amazed at the growth that's on that platform. It just goes to show the first mover advantage for any social media platforms is real.

• 51:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's a, it definitely seems to be growing incredibly fast. So that's a great tip for everyone. All right. I've put the, the link in the chat for everyone to, to go subscribe to the newsletter, but I really appreciate you doing this so much. Goes without saying. Everyone really enjoyed it. I have not seen folks this excited about buying businesses ever. So your, your message resonated and we'll definitely have to do it again in the future.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. Can't wait to see the three pomp brothers on Tik Tok.

• 52:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Somebody said a pomp talk house and I stopped reading the comments.

• 52:24Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Thanks, Cody. Thanks, Cody.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Thank you, guys.