How to Build Your Business without Hating Your Life

Summary

BigDeal Podcast Episode Summary: "How to Build Your Business without Hating Your Life"

Host: Codie Sanchez
Release Date: May 12, 2025
Podcast: BigDeal
Duration: Approximately 15 minutes
Focus: Strategies for hiring effective operators to streamline business operations and enhance personal well-being.

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1. Introduction: The Power of Hiring Operators

In this episode, Codie Sanchez delves into the critical role of hiring competent operators to manage and grow a business, enabling owners to focus on scaling without becoming overwhelmed or disillusioned. The central premise is that by delegating operational responsibilities to skilled professionals, entrepreneurs can maintain a healthy work-life balance while ensuring business success.

2. Understanding the Role of an Operator

Codie emphasizes that the primary goal for business owners, especially those managing enterprises exceeding a million dollars in revenue, is to assemble a team that operates the business more effectively than the owner themselves. She states:

“In business, unlike sports, we don't fall to the levels we practice, we fall to the level of those we hire. This is the secret rule of ownership.”
(00:28)

An operator serves as the captain and all-star of the business team, handling daily operations while the owner focuses on strategic growth and acquiring new ventures.

3. Tale of Two Operators: Learning from Success and Failure

Codie shares a compelling narrative contrasting two types of operators to illustrate the impact of hiring the right person.

a. The Dark Side: A Cautionary Tale

She recounts a personal experience where she and her partner purchased a 12-year-old business with the expectation of significant profits. They entrusted the operations to an operator they considered "family" and a friend. Initially, everything seemed aligned, but soon discrepancies surfaced:

“We realized, holy hell, we've actually been taken for a ride.”
(00:26)

The operator mismanaged funds, diverting profits to personal expenses, leading to financial strain and a breakdown of trust. This ordeal underscored the importance of not over-relying on personal relationships in professional settings.

b. The Bright Side: The Success of a Competent Operator

In contrast, Codie highlights a successful partnership with a dedicated operator:

“The guy who runs one of our portfolio companies, he works harder than we do, treats the business like it's his, does what he says he's going to do, is better actually at running this business than we are.”
(03:30)

This operator's aligned incentives and exceptional management ensured the business thrived, allowing Codie and her partner to enjoy life while their investments grew.

4. The Symbiotic Relationship Between Owner and Operator

Codie explains that a successful business owner-operator relationship is symbiotic. While the operator manages daily tasks, the owner provides strategic direction and resources. This mutual dependence fosters a productive environment where both parties thrive.

“Your investment, their expertise together. That's how you have success for both parties.”
(06:30)

5. Strategies for Finding the Right Operator

Codie outlines a comprehensive approach to identifying and recruiting effective operators, sharing practical tips based on her extensive experience:

a. Create an Operator Avatar

Develop a detailed profile of the ideal operator, considering skills, experience, and personal attributes. Codie shares her process for finding Bobby, an operator who perfectly fit her business needs:

“The most successful operator of this business look like? In my case for Bobby, I was like, well, he would have marketplace experience because he has already run a marketplace. He would be relentless...”
(07:14)

b. Steal Proven Talent

Identify and recruit top performers from competitors. Codie emphasizes the importance of targeting individuals who are already excelling in similar roles.

c. Ex-Military Personnel

Former military members often possess the discipline, leadership, and decision-making skills essential for effective operators. Codie recommends leveraging veteran programs and job boards to find suitable candidates.

“Former military members often make incredible operators. Disciplined, they establish hierarchy. They can make decisions under pressure.”
(05:30)

d. Utilize Specialized Recruiters

Engage recruiters with expertise in your industry to find top-tier talent. Codie advises against short-term cost-saving measures that compromise long-term business success.

“If you know one thing it is to be true is that your business will never be successful if you cannot find and attract top talent.”
(06:00)

e. Competency Collector

Always be on the lookout for competent individuals. Carry business cards and network proactively to build a pool of potential operators.

“I sniff out competence like a German shepherd on a cocaine trail at the airport.”
(05:45)

f. Friend Flywheel

Cultivate a reputation as someone who can connect others with opportunities. By helping others find talent, you'll create a network of reciprocity that benefits your own hiring needs.

g. Social Media Hiring

Leverage social media platforms as hiring funnels. Building a strong online presence attracts candidates who resonate with your business's mission and culture.

“Your social media is a walking billboard. Use it as a hiring funnel.”
(06:15)

6. Practical Tips from Real-Life Experience

Codie shares anecdotes from her journey, highlighting the importance of thorough vetting and alignment of values:

“Other people wanted to come work in for him. And one of my sneaks to figure out if somebody is actually a leader... If they name a few people and say we could figure them out, I could probably talk them into unique pay structures. We can move this. That's a leader.”
(06:10)

7. Conclusion: Empowering Business Owners Through Delegation

Codie wraps up by reiterating that while it's possible to run a business without an operator, partnering with the right operator not only alleviates the burden but also drives the business towards greater profitability and sustainability.

“Do whatever it takes to find a great operator. I believe you are capable of building big beautiful companies.”
(07:14)

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Key Takeaways

• Hiring the Right Operator is Crucial: A competent operator can manage daily operations efficiently, allowing business owners to focus on growth and new opportunities.

• Create a Detailed Operator Profile: Define the ideal operator's skills, experience, and personal traits to streamline the hiring process.

• Leverage Diverse Recruitment Channels: Utilize strategies such as targeting proven talent, engaging ex-military personnel, and harnessing the power of social media.

• Foster a Symbiotic Relationship: Ensure that both the owner and operator rely on each other's strengths for mutual success.

• Be Proactive in Talent Acquisition: Continuously network and keep an eye out for potential operators to ensure a steady pool of qualified candidates.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• “I sniff out competence like a German shepherd on a cocaine trail at the airport.”
  (00:00)

• “In business, unlike sports, we don't fall to the levels we practice, we fall to the level of those we hire.”
  (00:28)

• “The most successful operator of this business look like?... He would be relentless.”
  (07:14)

• “Your social media is a walking billboard. Use it as a hiring funnel.”
  (06:15)

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This episode serves as an invaluable guide for entrepreneurs seeking to scale their businesses without compromising their personal well-being. By implementing Codie Sanchez's strategies for hiring and managing effective operators, business owners can achieve sustainable growth while enjoying a balanced life.

Transcript

[A]

I sniff out competence like a German shepherd on a cocaine trail at the airport. Today we're talking about hiring people to help do the work for you. That's the power of a good operator. You do what you promise, they do what they promise, and the checks get deposited while you're living life. Now, before you get all excited with dreams of other people doing your work, let's talk about the tale of two operators. Turns out you should always use the word family really carefully. We realized, holy hell, we've actually been taken for a ride.

[B]

I think you are out of your mind.

[A]

If you have a business that's doing over a million dollars in revenue and you don't have spend specialize for business, this episode is for you whether you own a business or want to buy one. Because your goal as the owner of a business is to hire a team that runs your entire business better than you. So if you're going to buy a business, I'm going to teach you how to find that operator and hire them. If you already run a business, I'm going to teach you how to think through making sure your operator is the right one so you can own the business, not be owned by it. So in business, unlike sports, we don't fall to the levels we practice, we fall to the level of those we hire. This is the secret rule of ownership. And it's really hard here. The captain and all star of your team is your operator. The one who runs the plays day to day while you fund it and find your next deal. Or while you are working on the business, not in the business. Now, before you get all excited with dreams of other people doing your work and growing your bank account poolside, let's talk about the tale of two operators. Tale one the dark side. This is actually a true story. The keys to the business, they're mine. I just bought a 12 year old business that would profit each of us a few hundred thousands of dollars a year. Or so I thought. My operator found me the business, promised to run it as well. Perfect, right? Months pass and the business is growing slightly slower than we thought. But like that happens, we've asked for a few updates, We've had a slight push and pull on the business. But you know, we give the operator a lot of rope. We trust him. It's his first business takeover with me. But I actually, you guys, I like love the guy. I mean, he's basically family. We're like best buds. I think I know all about him. I think we're totally aligned on my best interest Then one night on our annual family summer vacation, I get a weird email from my accountant. Turns out our operator was on vacation, too, and the accountant started running the numbers in his stead. My other guy's gone. Small problem. The math. It's not math. So, trying to call, the operator isn't answering. And after several late night phone calls, which the operator wouldn't pick up, and many more texts, which he definitely left me unread, we realized, holy hell, we've actually been taken for a ride. Our little business was living on fumes, likely funding our operator's European vacation from the profits of a business that are apparently far from profitable. So. So after many sleepless nights, months of work, lost friendships, we finally get the business back from him. And we turn it around. We didn't turn around totally. It wasn't a success like I wanted to. And it turns out you should always use the word family really carefully. Now, tail two is the bright side. What does a good operator look like? Well, you have conversations like this. So I call my operator, changed his name here, so, so that he doesn't get embarrassed, I say, what is this deposit for? 14,850. I ask while checking one of our bank accounts. Oh, that's a Portco payout. Name change. Just send it through, he replies. Mailbox money. It is possible. You see the guy who runs one of our portfolio companies, he works harder than we do, treats the business like it's his, does what he says he's going to do, is better actually at running this business than we are. And he has fully aligned incentives, which means that he makes money when I make money, and he doesn't make money when I don't make money. That's the power of a good operator. You do what you promise, they do what they promise, and the checks get deposited while you're living life. Is it always perfect? Sadly, no. Does he make mistakes? Yeah, I think he'd be the first to admit that. But once you have worked with pros, you'll never allow for another amateur. So at this stage of the game, the most common question I get from new owners, maybe like you, is this after I buy the business or after I build up the business? How do I manage the damn thing? And if this is how you're feeling, don't stress. Most new owners don't know how to run a business that they've acquired. Most owners who run a business don't know how to have an operator, and.

[B]

They can't fathom how.

[A]

Entrepreneurs like myself oversee anywhere from 10 to 30 businesses at a time. Now, the truth is, you guys scale is really hard, so please don't buy three businesses simultaneously. But we all start off as beginners and this game is one that can be an oddly fun mixture of bull riding meets tequila shot drinking. I guess because once you get to a certain level, I have a lot of businesses. You can see them all on main street holding company. You know, I think there's like 22 listed on there and I only run really one. Many want you to believe that business ownership and operations is really difficult. You, the average person, can never do it. How dare I? Cody, simplify.

[B]

And how dare you try.

[A]

And my response to them is always, okay, if it's so hard being an owner, why don't you go back to being an employee? At which point they will chuckle and say, well, yes, I guess it is better than that. But I'm different. I'm something special. Now, the key to running a bunch of businesses and not driving yourself crazy is an operator. Do you actually need one? Short answer, no. I've bought many businesses to replace a job and then ran it myself to start. Long answer, I think it's way more fun than doing it all yourself. So consider my own experience with a laundromat. This might shock you, but. But I do not in fact know how to fix a washing machine. My husband doesn't even allow me to wash our own clothes for fear of my ineptitude with our like, residential machine. So you can only imagine the first day I walked in as the owner. I would have rather swam with sharks than be tasked with laundry operations like mixing soap for large wash bashes, opening coin collectors. Like, I had no idea what I was doing, you guys. Even operating this simple, boring business required skills and knowledge I didn't have. I would have been like an embarrassment if that was required. Thankfully, I had a guy. My guy brought the expertise needed to keep the business running smoothly. His role was essential. He was my operator. So this brings us to the crux of the owner operator relationship. Owning a business where your daily involvement is minimal can feel strange. You might wonder if you're even necessary to the whole operation. Before you ask, the answer is yes. Your operator often relies on you as much as you depend on them. Symbiotic relationship, your investment, their expertise together. That's how you have success for both parties.

[B]

The most effective way you learn is by modeling, right? You want to ride a bike. You watch somebody ride a bike. You want to chop food fast with knives. You line up those carrots and you chop them and you do it again and again until you get it right yourself. This is how we teach people how to do acquisitions. This isn't curriculum or online courses. We model for you exactly how acquisitions are done every single week in our deal reviews. Live until you trial with your deals. If you are thinking about buying a business, we have facilitators, experts and ambassadors that are doing deals and they'll show you live what it takes to get it done. This isn't easy if you do it by yourself. So we want to be the hand to hold. If joining something like that sounds like what you need to buy a business, you're welcome to jump on a call with my team. I let's see if you're a fit for our community.

[A]

So let me tell you a couple examples of how I found a couple of my operators. One of my operators, Bobby, he runs our business buying marketplace called Biz Scout. I found Bobby because I was on a long search for somebody who could run this business that I had bought. But I wanted to grow. Step number one to finding a great operator is to create an avatar for that operator. And I spend probably the most amount of time of anything I do creating my. Not just my job description, not just the job application, but actually my avatar. I close my eyes and I think about this, which is what I want you to do. In a perfect world, what would the most successful operator of this business look like? In my case for Bobby, I was like, well, he would have marketplace experience because he has already run a marketplace. He would be relentless. Cause this is going to be really hard to build. So I probably would want somebody that was like a former athlete or, or had been at really hard companies, super hard charging. Then I was like, I would also want him to be good at sales. I think a lot of the job of being operators of companies is selling people to come with you and also selling your customers and also selling third parties and vendors. So I wanted him to be good at sales. He also needed to have technical ability. He's gotta be able to understand the technology and hire engineers. And then I wanted a history of winning. I really never believe in hiring people when they are on a losing streak. Just like I don't believe on betting on sports teams when they're on a losing streak, it's the same thing. They've gotta break that streak and then they can come and work for you. And so out of all of this, I found Bobby. I went through, I don't know, 50 plus resumes to find Bobby and what I found was Bobby won. He was Brazilian jiu jitsu and also did different types of fighting. So athlete he was almost also a former basketball player. Bobby also worked at a couple really high performing companies including Seatgeek and Amazon. Bobby also had a history of winning. He had grown both marketplaces he was at substantially. He was great at sales. He had led sales teams before and a sneaky one that's good for an operator. Other people wanted to come work in for him. And one of my sneaks to figure out if somebody is actually a leader or a manager that nobody wants to follow is asking them this question. Amazing. I don't know if we're gonna have the budget for it but if you came over to our company is there anybody that you think we absolutely have to bring over that you're like gosh these guys on my team are so good. We totally bring them. If they say nobody red flag. If they name a few people and say we could figure it out, I could probably talk them into unique pay structures. We can move this. That's a leader. So in my case hiring an operator was mission critical because I wanted the business to become a well oiled machine under his daily supervision. I wanted to do more deals and add them on and finance them and build toward our future growth. So we brought two totally different skills together but worked together really nicely to create more profits. And that's the name of the game. And if I hadn't found Bobby I probably would have been really miserable running this business. I would have been miserable. I did not want to run this marketplace and my own business. I actually think it's really hard to run multiple businesses at once. I highly implore you to not do it. So here is how I find Bobby's. Let's see if we can find one for you. 1. I like to steal proven talent. Let's say you're buying a car wash. Start getting to know going to and calling all the top competitors in your area. The best talent does the job already. But for somebody else, the best talent is not looking for a job. Don't sleep on stealing proven talent from other businesses, especially ones where you love the business. That is number one, burn it into your brain. This is how I get most of my talent. Number two, ex military. Former military members often make incredible operators. Disciplined, they establish hierarchy. They can make decisions under pressure. Programs for veterans are a fantastic place to scout for potential operators. Most of the veteran hires I've made were through like the Seal Future Foundation, Goldman Sachs Veteran Integration Program, Veteran Career Training, Transition Assistance program. You can also get the word out on veteran jobs boards. There's a lot of them. Now I may be biased, I'm married to a former Navy seal, but in my mind, veterans are big. I also find, and this is personal bias, that man, the special operators are probably the strongest candidates from those. Now the next one is recruiters. I know this seems obvious. I think you are out of your mind. If you have a business that's doing over a million dollars in revenue and you don't have specialized recruiters, it is their entire job and they do this for a living. So don't be short term greedy, AKA you don't want to pay a recruiter and long term stupid, AKA you're going to get the worst candidates. If I know one thing it is to be true is that your business will never be successful if you cannot find and attract top talent. If you cannot find and attract top talent, somebody else will do it better than you will. So whenever I go to find a recruiter, I look for a recruiter with subject matter expertise. When I ran a financial company, I went out and I recruited a recruiter. I went to all the recruiters in the space and I said, okay, who are the best recruiters? I got references on them. I reached out to former people that they hired. I reached out to former companies that they recruited for. Imagine that like there is a recruiter right now in your industry with the biggest hire that you're struggling with the most right now who literally can pick up the phone and in 15 minutes of you telling them the avatar that you want and giving them the incentives you're going to give them, reach out directly to the person that you need to hire. And this has happened for me again and again and again. Number four, competency collector. I sniff out competence like a German shepherd on a cocaine trail at the airport. Once you know the scent, you can't help but jump on it. And I think people say business cards are dead. They've never hired operators for blue collar businesses before. Keep a few of your cards on hand. Then every time you see somebody go above and beyond, give them your card, collect competence. You'll never know when you could need it next. I hire a lot of employees just by saying finding people who get shit done. We call them the GSDS Number five, the friend flywheel. We all occasionally get that person who asks us if we know anyone for XYZ position. Here's, here's the catch here be the person that takes 10 minutes every time someone asks to try to connect them to someone, try to actually find the person that they're looking for. At the very least, give them a few names. Why? Because you're going to ask for a favor one day. Too small actions of giving ripple into big time waves. So if you're the friend people go to for talent, they'll be the same for you. Number six, one of the last ones, Social media hiring. I consider this the superhighway. Your social media is a walking billboard. Use it as a hiring funnel. When you build in public, your billboard stands on people's commutes for free. This done right brings you competent candidates who are more likely to understand your mission and believe in it. I've spent years building up a really big social following and that means that one post leads to hundreds or thousands of potential hires. You know, recently we received over 500 applications for an operator job listing for one company. They came from my social channels alone. And in fact, if you guys are ever looking for jobs, go to Contrarianthinking Co. Scroll to the bottom for careers and there's tons of them on there. We're always looking to hire. Make sure that you and your business have that same because I think the amount of money you make will always be limited by the level of talent you can attract. So don't shortchange yourself. Do whatever it takes to find a great operator. See you next week. I believe you are capable of building big beautiful companies.

[B]

Hey, I have something special for you for being such a loyal listener. Because you're here with me all the time, I get asked by a bunch of you, how do I tell if I should buy a business or not?

[A]

Should you buy a business or not? What price should you buy a business at?

[B]

How do you structure your deal? I got you fam. So I'm going to gift you our deal calculator. Every time I look at a deal, I grab the numbers, plug it in here and see how much money I could make or lose if I did a good or bad deal. So this is my gift to you. And if you're serious about buying a business, we want to help you. You can talk to my team about if you're a fit for our business, buying community or curriculum. No matter what. Here's your free gift. And if you need a hand to hold, I got you too. Hey crew, this is so cool. The podcast is growing like crazy and it's only actually because of one thing. You. I don't know if you know this, but the only way the big deal pod grows is when you share it with somebody else.

[A]

We don't do ads.

[B]

We don't do pay for play. We don't go on other people's podcasts and talk about it.

[A]

So if you think there was something.

[B]

Helpful here, if we made you money, we made you think about your business or life differently. The most beautiful thing you can do for me is share it. And the most beautiful thing you can do for someone that you care about is to share it with them. Help them grow alongside you. So please share the pod. That's how we grow. And also tag me on anything you share. I love resharing other builders across Instagram, Twitter, and all other platforms forms. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You're super important to me.