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The Personal Finance Podcast
How to Get Rich Buying Boring Businesses with Codie Sanchez (PFP Vault)
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- [00:00]
Andrew
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- [00:36]
Cody Sanchez
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- [00:49]
Andrew
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- [04:06]
Cody Sanchez
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
- [04:08]
Andrew
So we are so excited to have you today because you are one of my favorite followers on the Internet because you talk about some incredible ways to build wealth from buying boring businesses. And you also have one of my favorite newsletters to read every single week that I think everybody should be reading. We'll link it up down below as well. But tell us how you got started buying businesses and what drew you to that market.
- [04:27]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, so I was in finance for a long time. I've been in private equity and investing for most of my career before I was a journalist. And so basically what I realized one day is that I was Doing deals and making money for our firm at the time in the private equity space. And these deals were buying businesses and we were crushing it, like for the firm. And I remember sitting there one day and thinking, wait a second, you know, the main partners on this deal are making like millions off of every single deal. I am not making millions off of every single deal. And yet I'm doing all the work on it. Why couldn't I just start doing this for myself? And so if anything ever went sideways in finance, I could have these businesses on the side. And so that's basically what I did, is I just said, hey, there's no real big difference between a giant lbo, which is a leveraged buyout that like KKR or any of the large private equity firms do, and the small boring businesses that I buy, they're materially pretty similar. And so why don't I just start accumulating some of these for my own portfolio and I'll use the money I earn to start investing in them. And so that's what happened.
- [05:33]
Andrew
I love that idea. And I love the idea of buying boring businesses because I think there's a lot of baby boomers that are going to be retiring and I think there's a lot of those deals available right now. And I think it's a really cool market to focus on, especially when people are looking at real estate, estate markets or things like that where they're over leveraged. I think buying these boring businesses are a really incredible deal right now and they're everywhere. So what are some of the pros to buying boring businesses? And why would you want to buy a business instead of starting one from scratch?
- [05:58]
Cody Sanchez
Lots of reasons. One, when you start your business from scratch, you're basically betting on hopes and dreams and you're paying for the future. Hope of cash flow costs money to start a business. And so I don't love not making money on day one. I especially don't love not making money on day one. In pain for potential profits in the future. Don't love it. And so if what I'm starting a business for is actually to make money, not because I have a dream inside of me that has to exist, not because I couldn't live except for, you know, building this business, but as an income source, I would rather buy a business where I could have profits the second the deal closes and use a business for that reason. And I think there's room in the world for both of those. But I like the idea of like, I don't really believe in the you know, starving artist, starving startup entrepreneur. I actually think you should give yourself some space if you want to go build the amazing thing that you want to do. Create some free cash flow so that you can be a smart, non fear based, non scarcity entrepreneur as opposed to stressing about your startup nonstop. So that's why I think you should buy instead of build. The other thing is you can't really use too much leverage when you're building, meaning you can't really get loans for something that doesn't exist. You really can't get, you know, grants. You can get people to give you money for it, which would be startup fundraising. Right. But only for pretty crazy ideas and at kind of tough multiples to the business. It's one of the most expensive forms of money you can get. And so I don't really love that. And that's why I sort of say I think you should buy every chance you can instead of build.
- [07:27]
Andrew
And that's the thing I love about it too, is just that you can put dollars down and we'll talk about that a little bit later on how to do it, but you can put dollars down to actually buy something that can cash flow hundreds of thousands of dollars if you want to, depending on the deal. So it's something that's incredible that you can do and you're buying that existing business.
- [07:41]
Cody Sanchez
That's right. I mean, the only thing I would add to that is we talk about this a lot. And I'm not saying that this stuff is super easy, it's hard work, but it is relatively simple. So like that is, people hear that and they think, no way can I make hundreds of thousands of dollars for one deal. You absolutely can. Now can you do it? If you're a terrible operator and you've never run a business before and you don't really want to work whatsoever and you just want to buy the thing and cut a check every month. Probably not. But if you were willing to put in work into your startup, I don't see why you couldn't also put in work into a business that exists. So yes, I agree with you, absolutely.
- [08:13]
Andrew
And one big business that you talk about all the time is Laundromats. And I think it's one of the most simple businesses to understand for a lot of people. And you recently released a really cool YouTube video on one of your Laundromats. So tell us about some of those projects and why Laundromats are some of the best businesses out there.
- [08:27]
Cody Sanchez
You know, I like talking about Laundromats. For exactly the reason that you said it's because laundromats are easy to exist. I have dirty clothes, I need them cleaned, I put some coins in a machine and there's not employees on property all the time. It's a relatively straightforward business. That said, I don't always think they're the best business to start. In fact, it's really hard to get a laundromat that can do millions of dollars a year. We have one group of them that can, but it requires a lot of employees and a wash and fold service. The reason that I talk about laundromats is you nailed it because it's a gateway business. So I call businesses that allow people to start understanding acquisition gateway businesses, which basically mean you get a little taste and then you get hooked. You get hooked on this idea of deal making and acquisition. And I think laundromats are a great way to do that, which is why I start with those types of business similar for like vending machines, ice vending machines. They're not incredibly expensive and they're simple. And the worst thing that you can do is have your first deal go sideways. You don't want that. You want your first deal to go pretty smooth because then you'll continue executing on them and do bigger and more complex deals.
- [09:29]
Andrew
If someone wanted to get into some of those deals and look at starting small, maybe with something like a laundromat, what would be the best way to get started? Running the due diligence and running the numbers on that.
- [09:38]
Cody Sanchez
So I always talk about learn, earn, invest. That's the three steps. So before you do anything, if you're watching videos on Instagram, TikTok, online, whatever. I think what you should do is start with learning. The reason why is even if you buy a laundromat tomorrow, the amount that you can earn on it is capped. It has a limited upside like most businesses do. Your ability to earn is unlimited as a human. And so I like investing in yourself first. That's why we created an education company. So the first thing that I would do is I would go sign up for our free newsletter at Contrarian, thinking I would sign up for a free newsletter at Unconventional Acquisitions. We have a course there. If you want to learn about business buying, you can also just sign up for the free newsletter. You know, no pressure either way. But I would make sure that you spend 30 to 60 days sort of immersed in this idea of doing M and A. The cool part is say you never buy a business. The ability to negotiate and do deals and Think about structuring and equity is something you're going to thank me for for the rest of your life. So you don't actually have to do a deal to get an ROI on this. So that's where I would start. And I think you kind of want to get obsessed about your curiosity for that 30 or 60 day window. And then once you have the framework for how to actually buy these businesses, you've done the course or you've compiled your own learning methodology online, then I think you can get into the actual numbers and tactics. But first you've actually got to understand the foundation, otherwise you'll be set on a wobbly hill.
- [10:58]
Andrew
Absolutely. And one of the things that you talked about is some of the ways that you can accelerate the cash flow in your laundromat. You talked about that in one of your articles, the seven income streams that you added to your laundroma. So what are some creative ways that you can actually accelerate that upside that you were just talking about?
- [11:12]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, you know, I think this is a fascinating part about businesses. Like if you wanted to increase your income on your real estate property, it'd be really hard, right? Like the market's got to go up. I get, you know, you could upgrade the property some degree, but you can't really go crazy. And so it's kind of out of your control. You just have to play the waiting game or the fix it game and then you know, there's still some sort of cap with a business. There's more options than you can imagine. So for some of our laundromats, for instance, like we're putting in vending machines into one. So you can do vending machine ads, you can do ads of different types of services. Like the Fold has traditional laundromats that you go in and do yourself. They also have a done for you model which is like, you know, they pick up your laundry, they wash it, they fold it, they send it back to you. You could add a partnership with the dry cleaners. I typically don't recommend buying dry cleaners. There's a lot of issues with like remediation of dry cleaning facilities. So that's a different subject. But you could add a partnership with a dry cleaner. You could buy more laundromats. So if you have one like we do, you could add a few more to it. You could buy the software that underlies the laundromat machines, or you could invest in the laundromat machines. You could add coin machines to it. It's like somebody reached out to us for a bitcoin ATM to put in our laundromat. So I think there's about 72 ways you can add revenue streams to even a simple business like laundromats.
- [12:28]
Andrew
And I absolutely love that because you're right. If you're managing a rental property or something like that, the only thing you could do is maybe add onto it. It's really expensive, but there's a lot of inexpensive ways to really increase your cash flow in these businesses. And there's a lot of ways to get creative with it as well. It's very cool. So another really cool business that you profiled was the ice vending machine business. And I had one in a small town I grew up, and I remember seeing it all the time. And we're in, like, on a coastal area, and we would always get our ice when we go fishing and on the boat and stuff like that. I never thought about the business side of that, but you profiled one, and I thought it was incredibly cool. So tell us more about that ice vending machine business.
- [13:01]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's a similar idea to a laundromat, which is how can you have a business that works for you without you working on it constantly and with a minimal amount of employees? Because when you start, you know, employees can be really tough to manage. And so I like high margin, low people businesses, and then as you grow, people become a different type of leverage. But I think to start out, it's better to not have a giant team for you to manage. And so these ice vending machines are fascinating, but essentially you see them on, you know, roadsides, at gas stations, by, like, national parks, next to lakes. And basically you go up to them and you fill your ice chest with a bunch of ice. And they're not the ones with the bags of ice. They're the ones where the ice just kind of comes out of a chute. And essentially, the part that I like about this business is no employees. Again, relatively little maintenance and overhead. They cost anywhere from 30 to $130,000. But you can finance them and you put them on a property that's either yours or leased pretty cheaply, and you can cash flow. I mean, the numbers are all over the place, but let's say anywhere from 20,000 to $40,000 a year per machine. And if you add a few of those, that actually becomes a nice little income stream in which you could actually profit to the tune of tens of thousands a year off of something that you only paid 30 to 150,000. Let's say, that would be really hard to do with real estate.
- [14:18]
Andrew
Absolutely. It's just frozen water. You're profiting off that frozen water. And I've seen them in some cool areas, like really busy grocery stores and stuff like that as well. I love that. And then another really cool one that you profiled was your friend Lisa, who started the mini mailboxes business, as you called it. And I think it's a really, really cool business. And that's a great article. I'll link it up below as well. But tell us about that business and how Lisa got started.
- [14:38]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, so Lisa's sort of similar to me. She has lots of different businesses that she does. She's always looking for ways to, one, add back to her community in Las Vegas, and two, find ways to start businesses that are pretty inexpensive, that have some sort of recurring revenue. Lisa is more of an expert in real estate, so she owns now the Engels Volkers franchise in Vegas. But she was like, you know, looking at storage. She was looking at multifamily. She was looking at single family. And then she came across UPS franchises and essentially was like, yeah, maybe I'll do a UPS franchise and I'll have one of my friends run it. And what she realized is the UPS franchise business is really all about the PO Boxes, where people go and they have their business and they get their mail sent to there. But UPS limits the amount of mailboxes you can have in your store. And so she was like, actually, it'd be better to open up my own store. Let's call it Luis's Pack and Ship, and have a ton of these P.O. boxes. And basically, it's like a little mini storage center. Now, you got to have somebody run the actual location. You have to have somebody send out the packages. So there is work here and there are employees. But I love the reoccurring model of these tiny PO Boxes. It's like mini real estate.
- [15:49]
Andrew
Exactly. That's the coolest part about it, is it's like little mini real estate. I have one of those at the UPS store, and it's like 500 bucks a month. And if you have a bunch of them. The cool thing about. I think that article that you were talking about is Lisa could get more into those by just creating her own business instead of having the UPS business, which is really interesting.
- [16:04]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, that's exactly right. I always try to ask myself, and Lisa's the same, like, how would I do this if it was easy, if I really wanted to make income, but I wanted to do it in an easy way, what would be the easiest path to my goal? And so that's how she got to that answer instead of the UPS franchise.
- [16:19]
Andrew
Exactly. That makes complete sense. That's awesome. And another cool one that you profiled was Quinn and his vending machine business. And I think that's one where you can really start with a low cost. So tell us a little more about that business as well.
- [16:29]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, so Quinn's a friend of mine, and Quinn started a vending machine business after being a software sales guy. So, I mean, making six figures, doing well in California, but working like crazy, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to. And he basically was like, how could I do something on the side that I could scale up that would make some money for me, but wouldn't be hyper time intensive? And so he ended up buying some vending machines, you know, sodas, snacks, etc. Placing them at locations around San Diego and essentially cash flowing on those vending machines. The part that's interesting is I think people think about vending machines as a logistics business, but it's also a sales business. Since he's a good sales guy, he calls up these locations and talks them into why he should be the one to be there and often negotiates better deals for him to get located on their property. And then, you know, now he has, I don't know, 1530 machines, something like that, and does anywhere from 15 to 30 thousand dollars a month. And that's from vending machines. It certainly didn't start there. But, you know, and the other thing I would say is a lot of people in the vending machine world are like, oh, you know, it's going to cost you $3,000 for a machine, or it's going to cost you $5,000 for a machine. And the truth is it can. But again, ask yourself, like, what if it was easy? What if I didn't want to spend $3,000? And that's when you go and look for refurbished machines online. That's when you go and look for vending routes that you can purchase and you try to think about whatever your goal is. Is there an easier mechanism or a cheaper mechanism to achieve it?
- [17:55]
Andrew
And I've seen even people on Twitter just finding these vending machines where people just want them out of their hair and they get these vending machines, they repair them, and then they start to make money off of these free, free machines that they built up, and then they started to build a larger business around it. So it's a very cool way to get started inexpensively. I think, especially with some of these types of businesses.
- [18:10]
Cody Sanchez
I totally agree.
- [18:12]
Andrew
So if someone's listening to us and they say this is a really cool idea, I want to get started buying boring businesses, where should they go and look for them? Should they look at Biz by sell? Should they call owners? Are there other creative ways that they should start looking for businesses?
- [18:24]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I actually think the best way to do it is to look to your personal network. I call it my personal P and L strategy. So that basically means like in the unconventional acquisitions course, I think we have 13 different mechanisms to go and find a business to buy. Yes, you can go to Biz by sell. But just like mls, except on steroids, the worst businesses are usually the ones that are publicly listed. And so what you really want to do is you want to talk to the people around you. You want to talk to your landscaper, you want to talk to your video production guy, you want to talk to your dad's friends or your mom's friends, you want to talk to your boss's friends. You basically want to just start telling people that you're interested in either buying or, or running somebody's sort of everyday normal business. And the more you do that, the more you'll realize most business owners have a dollar amount in their head where if somebody offered it, they'd sell them right now because they're tired, because it's hard, because they're ready for the new challenge, because they want to retire, whatever it is. And so that's the way that you should actually do it. It takes more work than plugging in car washes onto a site like biz myself. But you'll have an infinitely higher likelihood of outcome.
- [19:26]
Andrew
Absolutely. And I'll even give you an example of that where we bought a coin operated at car wash and we were looking at it and it looked like it was worth somewhere around 120 to 150. So we made the offer on it. We knew they wanted more than that. It was on Biz Buy sell. We made the offer on it and they actually accepted it. And we just did what it was worth and then that was it. So it's a really cool way. Just offer what the numbers are actually showing you and then you can go from there. But love it. Exactly. So it's, it's awesome. But say some people are listening and this is their aha moment. They want to start buying these cash flowing businesses and create wealth. So how would you recommend that they structure these deals? Should they do seller financing or should they go get an SBA loan or what's the best way to do that?
- [20:00]
Cody Sanchez
I think it depends on what you want to do. I think the best deal is always seller financing, if you can get it. So anytime you can get somebody to give you a business for future profits at a low interest rate for an extended period of time, that's a win. Unless you can do even better, which would be like a rev share. Buy a business that somebody doesn't even want to have, like my friend Drew Sanaki does, and say, hey, we'll buy your business for $1, but we'll give you a cut of all future revenue. That would be a pretty good deal. I mean, you could certainly go raise capital for any of these deals. So if you didn't want to put your own personal loan, you know, or personal guarantee on the line, which you have to do for an sba, you could raise money from other people and let them take on the risk, or you could go to the SBA and get a loan from the government for, you know, 70 to 90% of the price of the business. So I think those are all ways that are actually really accessible. I'd say SBA loans are probably the most annoying to do, but, you know, more common than the other two.
- [20:57]
Andrew
Absolutely. They seem more accessible at times, too, which is interesting as well. But the seller financing is one of my favorite ways to do it, because I think it's just one of the easiest ways to go about it. Especially if you're working with a seller who really wants to creatively sell or they want some cash flow for their retirement or whatever else, it's a great way to do it.
- [21:11]
Cody Sanchez
Exactly.
- [21:13]
Andrew
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- [25:17]
Cody Sanchez
You know, it varies wildly. The bigger the business, the more it's going to sell for, obviously. So. Well, not obviously could be, you know, an unprofitable business, in which case that's not the case. But by and large you have higher multiples when you have higher revenue and higher profits. I like to buy businesses right around the 2 to 3x profits range and so if I'm buying a business that's doing less than 5 million in revenue, I'm typically looking to pay 2 to 3x the profits of the business. But you know, you'll see plenty of businesses, especially right now with a lot of interest in this selling for 4 to 8x profits below the $5 million mark. So it really will vary. I think the most important thing for you is just figuring out what you want from the business. Do you want a business that is break even in three years? You know, do you want a business that returns all your capital in five? Do you want a business that cash flows at least x? Do you want a business that's maybe bigger and a little bit more expensive, but it's got an operator in place? So price is just one component of it. It's an important one, but I definitely don't think it's the most important or the only one.
- [26:15]
Andrew
Speaking of operators, I know that's one big thing. If you want to start buying a bunch of these businesses, you have to find good operators and put them into place. And that's been one of my bigger struggles. So how do you find good operators for your businesses?
- [26:26]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's really tough. I think you have to create operators. I think by and large, what I do is I have a grouping of humans who, when I engage with them, I'm like, oh, you don't exactly love what you do. You're hyper competent, you want to do something else. And I kind of carry them along with me. They're typically friends and people I know, family members that run some of these businesses. You know, there are people in the military that my husband worked with before. So I think one of the best ways to do it is not experienced talent, but known talent, meaning you know them, they know you. I think that's one of the fastest and most expeditious ways to do it. A lot of times I like to steal from competitors. So, like, the best way to know if somebody's going to succeed as a car wash operator is if they've been a car wash operator before. And so if you can offer slightly better terms, if you can give somebody equity, if you can pay them a little bit more, you can often steal from businesses who have great managers but who aren't part of the ownership structure.
- [27:20]
Andrew
Awesome. Those are some great tips as well, because I think it's one of the biggest things, it's the most important thing to make sure that your business is successful. Otherwise you're going to have to go back into that business and start. Start operating yourself. So.
- [27:29]
Cody Sanchez
Right.
- [27:30]
Andrew
So you own all of these businesses. How do you manage your time every day?
- [27:34]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, you know, at this point, I'm pretty good in having a process to make sure that these businesses are run by the CEOs or operators of the business. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I fall into it. There are a couple businesses that are either like too small but legacy that I got to offload or figure out, or they're too big and need my help in some way, shape or form. But for the most part, I try to buy businesses, have operators get into them and get out of their way, or I invest in businesses with great operators already and I just own part of the business and have some sort of distribution schedule, but they run the business. I'm at a stage in my career where I'm more lazy about business ownership. I don't want to go and operate these businesses anymore. I've certainly been to many a car wash. I've certainly, you know, scrubbed many a laundromat, but that's probably not something I'm going to do as much anymore. I buy a model called decentralized management, which basically means that I hire really great operators. I do a lot of screening on the front end and then I get out of their way because no business of mine is ever, like, too big to fail where it'll take me down. If something's going wrong in the business, I say, okay, guys, well, that's a tough problem. You got to run with it. I'm happy to have a strategy call with you, but I'm not getting my hands in the mix.
- [28:43]
Andrew
And I love that. It's almost like what Warren Buffett's strategy was early on, and then all these businesses grew because he let them run the business on their end. So I think that's really interesting as well.
- [28:52]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [28:52]
Andrew
So here are some questions that we ask all of our guests. Cody. So what are some of your favorite books? Specifically, if we're going to look into buying boring businesses, what are some of your favorite books on that topic?
- [29:01]
Cody Sanchez
You know, there's not a lot of books. There's one book called Buy Then Build by Walker Dieble. So that's one about buying businesses in general. I think the most important thing probably to do up front is actually figure out what you want. So before I would tell somebody to just go learn exclusively about buying businesses. Like, one of the first segments in our course is a deal clarity portion. Because somebody will ask me, is this a good deal? Is this a bad deal? And I'll be like, I have no idea for you. Like, it could be a great business or it could not. And so I actually like this other book that Rollo May wrote called Man's Search for Himself, not to be confused with Man's Search for Meaning, because it basically tells you what you care about as a human. And I think you need to figure that out first before you go and buy a bunch of businesses, because you might end up buying a job and that might not make you happy, or you might end up buying, you know, a really big business that you don't have time to run. And so I would start with those two.
- [29:58]
Andrew
Buy, Then Build is one of my favorite books that I've read in the last couple of years. And it's just so cool. It even paints the picture for you, showing you you can get an SBA loan, put 10% down on a million dollar business, and you have a million dollar business for $100,000. So there's just some cool things in that book as well. So we'll link both those books down below so you guys can check those out. And this is the main one that we always ask everybody. Cody, what does wealth mean to you?
- [30:18]
Cody Sanchez
Freedom. Simply, I believe that financial freedom is the foundation for all freedom on top of that, you can layer philosophical freedom and physical freedom, but without financial freedom, you know, you can't make a lot of choices. You can't do a lot of things for yourself. I also think you're a lot harder to fuck with if you're financially free. And so that's always been a big purpose for me, is like, I want to be big enough where I can say, I don't want to do that. No, I will not compromise my values that way. No, I won't let you do that to somebody else. And in fact, if you do, I'm going to fight you monetarily. And so I think that is what money means to me. People laugh because some of the stuff we talk about sounds get rich quick. And I'm like, well, I don't really want to get rich slow. So, you know, I'm not looking for schemes, but I am looking for a way for human beings to get as much financial freedom as they can as quickly as they can. Because then I think you can do really interesting things.
- [31:09]
Andrew
Exactly. That's what this entire podcast is about, is teaching people how to gain that freedom. So that aligns exactly with what we talk about all the time in this podcast. So, Cody, thank you so much for coming on today. Where can people find out more about you?
- [31:20]
Cody Sanchez
I think the best spot is countryandthinking. Co. We have a weekly newsletter. You mentioned it. And then also we're big on all the socials, so if you wanna follow along and like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, we're in all of those. That's Cody Sanchez.
- [31:31]
Andrew
Awesome. We'll link all those down below as well in the show notes. So everybody make sure you go check those out and we'll go from there. Thank you so much, Cody. We truly appreciate it.
- [31:38]
Cody Sanchez
Thank you for having me.
- [31:58]
Andrew
Sam.
- [32:51]
Cody Sanchez
It.