439: Codie Sanchez Wants to Make You Financially Free

Summary

Podcast Summary: Episode 439 - "Codie Sanchez Wants to Make You Financially Free"

Introduction

In Episode 439 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, host Mike Rowe engages in a compelling conversation with Cody Sanchez, a financial strategist dedicated to empowering individuals through business ownership. Released on June 10, 2025, this episode delves deep into the realms of entrepreneurship, financial freedom, and the transformative power of owning "dirty jobs" businesses.

Cody Sanchez’s Journey from Wall Street to Entrepreneurship

Mike Rowe begins by introducing Cody Sanchez, a 38-year-old former Wall Street professional who transitioned to owning businesses in unglamorous industries such as laundromats and car washes. Cody explains her motivation behind this shift:

Cody Sanchez [01:02]: "My mission is to create 1 million financially free humans through business ownership."

Cody shares her early career in finance, climbing the corporate ladder at major firms like State Street, Vanguard, and BlackRock. However, despite her financial success, she felt unfulfilled and sought greater control over her life and work.

The Decline of Business Ownership in America

A significant portion of the conversation highlights the decreasing trend of business ownership in the United States. Cody presents alarming statistics:

Cody Sanchez [09:01]: "In 2000, private equity firms owned about 4% of all U.S. businesses. By 2020, that number surged to 20%."

She contrasts this with historical data, noting that business ownership among Americans has plummeted from 88% in the 1800s to just 6-10% today. This decline, Cody argues, has led to a nation increasingly dependent on renting and employed by large institutions, many of which are now controlled by a handful of private equity giants.

Private Equity’s Growing Influence and Its Implications

The discussion delves into the intricate dynamics of private equity (PE) and its impact on small businesses. Cody criticizes practices like asset stripping, where PE firms acquire profitable businesses only to extract value through high-interest loans and real estate holdings, ultimately burdening these companies with unsustainable debt.

Cody Sanchez [30:32]: "Private equity firms can take a business and strip its assets, leveraging debts to extract maximum profit, often leading to the company's downfall despite its profitability."

Cody emphasizes the unfairness of PE dominance, highlighting how these institutions prioritize profit over the longevity and health of businesses, adversely affecting average Americans and small business owners.

From Finance to "Dirty Jobs": Building a Portfolio of Unglamorous Businesses

Cody recounts her pivotal moment of transitioning from Wall Street to entrepreneurship. Feeling disconnected from the high-stakes, impersonal world of finance, she sought a more tangible and fulfilling path by investing in laundromats—what she terms "gateway drug businesses."

Cody Sanchez [36:34]: "The easiest, simplest business a grandma could understand was a laundromat. It was my entry point into understanding true business ownership."

She details her initial investment of $100,000 in a laundromat in her early 20s, which, despite her fears, proved successful and led her to acquire multiple similar businesses. This hands-on experience provided her with invaluable insights into the operational aspects of running a business, contrasting sharply with her previous financial roles.

The Philosophy of Financial Freedom through Business Ownership

Cody's core mission revolves around democratizing business ownership to achieve financial freedom for millions. She advocates for individuals to own tangible assets and businesses, arguing that ownership equates to control over one's financial destiny.

Cody Sanchez [55:02]: "We need to own things. We need to own businesses, we need to own real estate, we need to own infrastructure. Because in the future, we might not get paid for our labor the same way."

Cody underscores the importance of trades and home services as resilient sectors that will remain essential regardless of technological advancements like AI. She believes that by equipping individuals with the skills to own and manage these businesses, society can foster greater economic stability and personal fulfillment.

Overcoming Challenges: Risk, Humility, and Continuous Learning

The conversation addresses the inherent risks of entrepreneurship. Both Mike and Cody acknowledge that business ownership is fraught with challenges, from financial uncertainty to operational headaches. Cody shares personal anecdotes about facing potential failures and the critical role of resilience and humility in overcoming them.

Cody Sanchez [60:33]: "It's going to be hard, you're going to wish you never did it, but it'll be worth it."

Cody advocates for a balanced approach to risk, emphasizing the importance of using available resources wisely and building businesses incrementally rather than taking reckless leaps.

Freelancing vs. Business Ownership: Finding the Right Path

Towards the latter part of the episode, Mike and Cody discuss the distinctions between freelancing and owning a business. While freelancing offers flexibility, it often lacks the financial security and long-term stability that business ownership can provide. Cody suggests integrating entrepreneurial principles into freelancing to enhance income and job satisfaction.

Cody Sanchez [86:16]: "If you're gonna freelance, the move there should really be where you can play long-term games with long-term people."

Conclusion: Building an Owner Nation

The episode concludes with Cody reiterating her vision of creating an "Owner Nation," where individuals are empowered to own and operate their businesses, fostering financial independence and societal resilience. Both hosts express mutual respect and enthusiasm for Cody’s mission, highlighting the critical role of asset ownership in achieving financial freedom.

Cody Sanchez [62:55]: "Our mission is moving, but we have a long way to go. One day, I hope, you'll see a headquarters full of people who changed their lives through business ownership."

Notable Quotes

• Cody Sanchez [01:02]: "My mission is to create 1 million financially free humans through business ownership."
• Cody Sanchez [30:32]: "Private equity firms can take a business and strip its assets, leveraging debts to extract maximum profit, often leading to the company's downfall despite its profitability."
• Cody Sanchez [55:02]: "We need to own things. We need to own businesses, we need to own real estate, we need to own infrastructure."
• Cody Sanchez [86:16]: "If you're gonna freelance, the move there should really be where you can play long-term games with long-term people."
• Cody Sanchez [60:33]: "It's going to be hard, you're going to wish you never did it, but it'll be worth it."

Final Thoughts

This episode offers a profound exploration of financial autonomy through business ownership, advocating for a shift away from corporate dependency towards individual entrepreneurship. Cody Sanchez’s insights provide a roadmap for aspiring business owners seeking financial independence and personal fulfillment in today’s complex economic landscape.

Transcript

[Mike Rowe]

Hey, it's the way I heard it. And you know me. I mean, if you don't, I'm Mike Rowe. And if this is the first episode you've listened to, boy, what a treat you're in for. Chuck, I don't want to overstate it, but people have. Can you imagine? Do you actually think there's somebody in the audience right now who is discovering this podcast right here, right now, for the first time? 100%. You know how I know that? How? Because people write in and say, wow, I just heard about your podcast. I love Mike Rowe. I didn't realize he had a podcast. What the heck are we doing wrong, man? I mean, how is this possible? This thing's been on the air for nine years. It's a little crazy. It's nine years we've been doing it. Yeah, well, like you often say, you know, no such thing as a old joke if you're hearing it for the first time. That's right. And there are a few laughs in this podcast. My guest is Cody Sanchez. Did you know who she was before I brought her up? No, I did not. So what happened was I appeared on a podcast not long ago called Young and Profiting with a woman called Hala Hala Tata.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

Ta ta. And she was great. Yeah. And in fact, that's out there right now. She just collaborated with me on Instagram, Chuck. I accept her collaboration and we chatted and she told me about her friend Cody Sanchez, who I simply must know. Yep. Cody is a 38 year old woman who made a bunch of money on Wall street and then decided that she kind of had made enough money and she wanted to own businesses. But the reason I love this girl is, is that all the businesses she was attracted to were like, I call them dirty jobs businesses, laundromats, car washes, you know, unglamorous businesses. And she built this portfolio. And there are so many parallels between this woman and me and her organization and Microworks and her larger goals and mine. I'm on her website right now and you can go there. It's codysanchez.com and it says clear as mud. Well, no, clear as day. Mud is not clear. Yeah, mud is not clear. Yeah. My mission is to create 1 million financially free humans through business ownership. And, you know, a lot of people are out there talking about how to get rich and so forth, and very, very, very few talk about it through the lens of these dirty jobs opportunities and a true entrepreneurial spirit. I think she's onto something.

[Cody Sanchez]

She totally is. You know, I refer to her as.

[Mike Rowe]

The queen of the unglamorous businesses. And she knows how to make money. She figured that out on Wall Street.

[Cody Sanchez]

She likes this common sense approach in buying businesses. She started with, I think the first.

[Mike Rowe]

One was a laundromat. Right. And then she added more and more and then all sorts of other things. It's not just a common sense approach. It's a contrarian approach as well. This, too, is something that I completely understand. And we find ourselves in violent agreement early on, triangulating the various adventures and misadventures in our own careers. And I just think it's going to be a really useful conversation to anyone who has ever thought about hanging out their own shingle. I don't really care what the industry is, but this has just been on my mind a lot because, you know, we're giving away a bunch of money this month in work ethic scholarships. And I often say to the applicants who enter this world of home services, don't simply look at your skill as a thing that's going to keep you employed for the rest of your life. Look at it as a gateway into a world where you might wind up employing people and you might wind up hanging out your own shingle. It happens all the time.

[Cody Sanchez]

And she brought it up in this.

[Mike Rowe]

Conversation, that exact thing for people who are in the trades. Yeah, yeah. Cody Sanchez is great. She's got an amazing story. She's. I mean, her success is. It's. I don't even know if I should point that out. It's just kind of embarrassing to talk about money and all these things. You go to her website and read all about it, but she's doing some great work. And I just think she's coming at this from a very real, super honest place. I like her a lot. I bet you will, too. What are we calling this thing again? This is called Cody Sanchez wants to make you financially free. That's it. Yeah. She's not the only one in the world, but who wants to do this? But I don't know anybody else who's coming at it the way she is. I think you're gonna like her and you'll meet her right after this. Do, do, do do do do do do, do. Hey, parents. I don't know if you've noticed, but times have changed since you and I were in high school. This generation of kids, for instance, are facing a level of student debt that you and I never experienced or even contemplated, along with the rising cost of living and stagnant wages. If you Want your kids to have the best chance of becoming financially stable on their own. Today I recommend K12's tuition free online public schools and their career and college prep program. These are both great ways for students to explore high demand industries and get equipped with the relevant skills and the hands on experience they'll need to succeed. They'll build connections with professionals through internships and networking opportunities. They'll even get assistance with job placement, including the important business of crafting a resume and preparing for an interview. The basic but really important stuff. And if your student chooses to go to college, great K12 can help them with every step from finding the right schools for their needs to providing expert guidance on applying for scholarships and financial aid. All of it. Plus students can get a head start by earning college credits in dual enrollment programs while still in high school. Just go to k12.com row today. Learn more find a K12 powered school near you. That's the letter K the number 12.com roe k12.com roe the letter K the number 12 I'm not going to officially introduce you because I'll do that in the preamble.

[Cody Sanchez]

Love it.

[Mike Rowe]

But your commitment or your predilection maybe to the contrarian. Life rhymed so much with me when I think about. I used to call it the reverse commute. My career started to make sense to me when the primary metric was look around and see where everybody's going. It doesn't matter where they're going, just don't go there. Just go someplace else. You made a bunch of money as an investor. I think it actually says on your website you're a mogul. Is that possible?

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh God, isn't that gross? I hope not.

[Mike Rowe]

I saw the M word there.

[Cody Sanchez]

It's like when they have on LinkedIn the words self proclaimed visionary. I die. I really hope that we don't. Somebody's fired. Probably me.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, look man, the language matters and the way we see ourselves matters and the way we define ourselves matters and all of that stuff. But I guess maybe we should just start with this notion that is the reverse commute in the investing world for the entrepreneur. Is it still for sale? Is it still attractive?

[Cody Sanchez]

I think there's some good news today actually, and that is that most of us, I think were sold a bag of goods. You're located in San Francisco, so I think you know this more than anybody adjacent now.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, I actually got out of Sodom and and now I'm Sodom it. Jason.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, you know, there's a beautiful part about San Francisco, which I love, which is it's one of the only places in the world where a 17 year old can sit down with an actual mogul, not me, and be taken really serious. They can listen to their ideas and go, whoa, you see the world totally differently. Let me give you money to build that world. That's cool. But on the negative side, I actually don't think we're that happy behind screens. And the data seems to prove this behind screens. Making either investments or investments in our career of creating dating apps. Like, I don't think that's a world that makes us happy. And so we were sold this bag of goods that we had to create these Fortune 100 companies. We gotta get em backed by Silicon Valley. If we are blue collar, if we have dirty hands and calluses, we actually are lower valued both in net worth and pay and maybe even in sophistication and human value. And I think that's actually proven to be pretty untrue lately. And so the good part I think about going left when everybody's going right is the left they were telling us to do is real hard, which is competing with the smartest minds in the world with tech. I don't think you need to do that. In fact, if you look at who the richest people are in the world, they're private equity guys. And those private equity guys, they don't build apps, they buy plumbing companies and they buy roofing companies that are run by blue collar dudes.

[Mike Rowe]

This is very much a gold rush kind of analogy, right? I mean the whole world is running to the gold fields because there's gold and then there are hills. But it was Levi Strauss and it was the, you know, it was the.

[Cody Sanchez]

Shovel makers who crushed and for a long time too. You know what's interesting is we did a bunch of research and I got curious about this idea of what does ownership mean in this country and does it matter? Does it matter to be an owner of anything? And if you go Back to the 1800s when we started this country, 88% of us owned a business, owned something. And then you go to the Industrial revolution, at which point ownership drops from high 80s to 40% ownership. Because we've had machines take over a lot of what human hands did. And then you go to today and we're at about somewhere between 6 to 10% of Americans own a business. So we have like slowly become a nation of renters. Not in the home sense, but in the business sense. And you know, we're actually doing poorly because even Canada's Beaten us. We got, we got higher entrepreneurship in Canada than we do in the US about 7.8%. And so you might go like, who cares? I've been an owner before. It's awful. Employees and payroll and whatever. Which is all true, except if you look at, I think money really is just a mechanism for freedom. It's kind of a way to tell somebody like, I'm not gonna do that. Cause I don't have to and I don't want to and I'm gonna go do this other thing. And so the problem with not having ownership is 60% of all millionaires have it. And if you wanna have a lot of money, meaning more than 10 million, 80% of people have ownership.

[Mike Rowe]

When did a lot of money become more than 10 million, by the way? When did that happen?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, probably when Twitter and Instagram started showing you lamb and everything all day.

[Mike Rowe]

But is that a Northern California phenomenon? I mean, is there a kind of relativism? Your example in San Francisco, when you're, you know, you surround yourself with that cohort, it's virtually impossible not to measure yourself against the Joneses, whoever they may be. Yeah, it's a different class of Jones up in the zip codes you're talking about.

[Cody Sanchez]

I don't think before we could really see it. I mean, you think about it. Before, you used to compare yourself to people who were in your circle. Now your circle of comparison is quite large. What's virtual? Yeah, exactly. And so all of a sudden our mimetic desire kicks in as humans, because we're just little self replicating apes on so many levels. And we see, man, Mike's got a new car and Mike's got this. And I fall prey to it all the time. I'm like, oh man, they did this with this podcast. I should have. Ego kicks in. And so I think that's when this started to go a little sideways. But for most people today, I think the good news is we should stress test this. I feel both incredibly scared about what's happening in the future with tech and excited on some aspects. The interesting part, I think, is that it's scary to think how fast tech might move for us, but we're starting to see that. You go to a coffee shop, you go to Starbucks. Have you been to one lately?

[Mike Rowe]

Full disclosure, I've been to three in the last week, but only to use the restroom.

[Cody Sanchez]

And each occasion, I like this. Okay, so if you go to a Starbucks lately, you've probably seen them unless you're in like an epicenter for a period they got rid of chairs, right? Like they were supposed to be the third home. And then all of a sudden, the chairs are gone. They spell your name wrong. It's dirty. They're kind of mad you're in there. You know, the bartender really doesn't want to talk to you, or barista or whatever you call them. And so these big conglomerates got so big to your point in the very beginning, that all of a sudden.

[Mike Rowe]

You mean the part where Chuck wasn't rolling?

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, right. That was the part where Chuck wasn't right.

[Mike Rowe]

Where we made the big salient points that we could circle back to and land the plane in a way that makes people go, wow, these guys are really listening to each other.

[Cody Sanchez]

You can do better.

[Mike Rowe]

You got it.

[Cody Sanchez]

That is probably true. We can do better. But the point being that these companies got so big that they become easier to compete with, in a way. When you go to a local coffee shop, you get to know the owner. It's pretty clean. They got chairs, high bar. And I think in the future, we're going to be able to compete way more locally because so much of our life is going to be online with tech. And so we'll see if I'm right. But I think if you're young and hungry, and if you're old and hungry, it's actually not going to matter.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, well, let's riff on that then. From the standpoint of an entrepreneur, if I think about myself 22 years ago, Dirty Jobs was not my wish fulfillment. I wasn't walking around going, God, if only I could find a way to pay an honest tribute to the men and women who are doing civilized jobs that make life possible for the rest of us. Right? But nobody was doing it. That was it for me. It was like, get over there and try this thing had versions of like, had I entered that world 10 years later when like, 38 or 39 shows had evolved from Dirty Jobs and the entire cable landscape looked like a swamp or a junkyard or an ice road or a. Right. I'd have been like, no, I think maybe we ought to do something different. So for an entrepreneur, as you're like yourself, who has a soft spot for, I'll just say dirty Jobs. I mean, you cut your teeth in the, what, the laundromat business, Right? You were focused on the most unglamorous jobs. So when does that focus lose its inherent value based on circumstantial changes?

[Cody Sanchez]

Like, if the herd is already going there, that's it.

[Mike Rowe]

Where's the herd going?

[Cody Sanchez]

I think the question also is like, do you think that you created this movement? And so if you hadn't done it, would somebody else have done it? Or did your unique curiosity actually spring this?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, my unique arrogance would require me to say, oh, yeah, it was me. I came up with this. But the real wheel is much larger and it spins a lot slower. And for me, anyway, one of the big lessons is that there are no new ideas. Very, very few, really. But a lot of old ideas feel new when they come back around at just the right time. You know, when I look at Charles Kuralt and George Plimpton and Studs Terkel and Paul Harvey, these guys told stories in a. In a way that I admire, but almost nobody's doing it today. And so I got a toehold, but who knows where that toehold would have been or will be 10 years from now. Nobody's got a crystal ball.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. You know, I tend to be an optimist. I think pessimists sound smart and optimists make money. And so, you know, it's very easy to get on the Internet and bemoan things. And you sound very intelligent while you do it. It's actually sort of hard to get people to believe in themselves. It's seen as low browed brow, rose colored glasses, sort must be trying to pitch you something. In my opinion, if you're obsessively curious about something, even if the entire world is moving towards it, your obsessive curiosity is going to uncover some weird aspect of that area that no matter what is happening in the world, you can find a unique lens. And I think we can see that right now on the Internet because Lord knows you can go viral and you can find your crew obsessed about anything. You know, there are so many weirdos on this planet that I think the real unlock is your. I saw this tweet the other day, and I can't remember who to attribute it to, but it wasn't my words, it was me. It was basically. It was like, insanity is a moat in a lot of ways.

[Mike Rowe]

A moat?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. And I think curiosity is a moat and obsession is a moat. And it's like, you don't have to be the smartest, you just have to go. I didn't say, hey, whole world's going left. The world, I want to go right. I basically said, whole world's going there. I find this kind of uninteresting. This really interests me. And let's see what shakes out. And I'll probably be able to find something because nobody else will Spend more time there.

[Mike Rowe]

It's back to the relativism I was talking about before. You know, you're out with your best girlfriends and you're having a nice camping trip, and the bear comes upon you and starts chasing all of you. Well, you'll never outrun the bear, but maybe you can outrun your friends, in which case you live. Now, talk about pessimism versus optimism. How do you measure yourself? Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Well, my dad was actually a bear hunter. And that was always his line. He's a little. Sorry, dad, but he's got a little gut. He's not a fast dude. And so when he would go up bear hunting in Alaska, we'd always give him crap beforehand and say, you gotta, like, get in shape a little bit. And his line was always. He was a guide, and his line was always that he chose his clients very carefully because all he needed to do was outrun the client, not the bear. But he has a lot of great lines that I think remind me of this. For instance, you know, this idea of if they're not interesting sober, don't drink until they get interesting. And so I think about that with life, too. Like, if I'm not just naturally curious about this thing. If you're not just naturally curious about something, don't do it, because somebody else will be naturally curious. And then they're going to win. They're going to beat you.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, because curiosity always wins.

[Cody Sanchez]

Actually, dude, it always wins. It's the secret hat. If I had to choose between high iq, pedigree background, Eastern high school, I would actually choose every single day of the week. Somebody who was curious, hungry, and obsessed and maybe a little weird.

[Mike Rowe]

Why?

[Cody Sanchez]

Because I think most of work, to me, actually, I saw this from Elon Musk the other day. They're like, you know what Elon does? He goes to his company, whatever company it is, every single week with one move, which is, I'm going to come there and I'm going to figure out the hardest problem that exists that week in this business, and I'm going to try to solve it. I'm going to do that for every single company, 52 weeks a year, continuously. I'm not going to, like, mess around at the margins. I'm going to go for the hardest problem. And the only way you get to the hardest problem is by asking a ton of questions and by being pretty relentless on the answers to those questions. I don't think you have to have the answers. You just have to be willing to ask the really hard questions, which is why you were great in Dirty Jobs and what you do podcasting. You ask weird, interesting, asymmetric questions. It's also the key to investing well. It's like, the worst investors I've ever met are the ones that seem the smartest because they want to tell you all the things that they know and they don't want to find the truth. The best investors are the ones that look kind of dumb. They're like, I don't understand that. Explain it to me like, I'm five, right? And that question is such an unlock in life, because it's like, I don't think I'm dumb by not understanding this. I think you're going to prove how smart to me you are by explaining it really simply.

[Mike Rowe]

Let me see if I can prove how smart I am to you right now with the question that belies everything you just said. I probably should have asked it at the very top, but I do appreciate an asymmetrical stream of consciousness, but I also want the viewer to understand how you did this. Or that's a tricky way to frame it, isn't it? Like, isn't the world filled with people right now who are just sitting by waiting to tell you how they did it, as opposed to just explain what happened to them?

[Cody Sanchez]

Ooh, that's a good way to think about it, actually.

[Mike Rowe]

Somewhere in between, you know, because you're a very intentional person and you've done awfully well. But can you just tell me the quick cv? I hate to ask you, but I want people to understand the laundromats and the contrarian way of thinking and how you somehow wound up on Wall street only to kind of maybe leave it.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, well, I started out in finance because I thought it was the thing that you did. Like, if you were smart and you were gonna make money and be accomplished, which was important to me. My parents didn't come from a lot of money. Blue collar background. My mom was a special education teacher for 30 years. And I thought, you get a good job, you climb up the corporate ladder, you wear a suit, and that's how you show your parents that you appreciate all the shit that they did for you. So, anyway, so I did that for a long time, climbed up a bunch of finance companies. But what I realized pretty quickly is, like, do you ever, like, get in a job and look down the hallway at, like, the end of the boss? You know, the boss has his office at the end of the hall, and you look at their life and you look at their salary and you look at their Family. And you just think like, you couldn't can pay me enough money to become that guy. Like, I don't care what it is, I don't care how big the plane. I don't want that life. And so at some point I kind of woke up a little bit and I was like, oh, I don't want to become, you know, divorced three times, not like my kids, and feel like I haven't actually touched something that I've built. I just like zeros and ones online. Buy, sell, buy, sell. And so at that point, I was too big of a wuss because I was making a lot of money.

[Mike Rowe]

Who are you working for?

[Cody Sanchez]

So that would have been when I was working for State Street.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, boy.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Big, huge asset manager.

[Mike Rowe]

So there's State street, there's Vanguard, and there's Blackrock.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, yeah. Three of them own 80% of the S&P 500. Isn't that wild?

[Mike Rowe]

People have sat right where you're sitting who have written books that really look at that exact statistic and prognosticate something fairly grim.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, well, I think they're right. And people counter argument to that. Right. And say, well, that's just passive investments. And so, hey, they're exchange traded funds. They're not actively buying these companies. But Bill McNabb let a little slip go. He was the CEO of State street when I was there and said, well, actually we're very active in our governance, which is a fancy way of saying control. And so they're active in their control of these companies, which they have.

[Mike Rowe]

And they're holding pensions, which means. And there's ESG and of course there's dei. And now all kinds of. Yeah, activist agendas are being foisted upon people who really would dismiss it out of hand. They just don't understand that so much of their future is invested in the very funds that McNabb is controlling. Do do, do do do do do do do. So if you were listening to this podcast around the holidays, you probably heard me say that the single most well received Christmas gift I ever gave was the Aura Digital picture frame. And if you were listening around Mother's Day, you probably heard me talk about why the Aura Digital picture frame was the perfect Mother's Day gift. So now with Father's Day right around the corner, I know you'll be shocked to hear me recommend an Aura Digital picture frame for dear old dad. Why? Because an Aura digital picture frame is the perfect gift for anybody, anywhere, anytime. And your dad will appreciate it a lot more than another tie he'll never wear or another book he'll never read. I could go on and on about Aura's extraordinary ease of use. I've got two of these things myself and I love them. Its unlimited capacity to store all of the photos currently in your phone and all of the photos you could ever hope to take. The countless five star reviews and the way it shows up every single year in hundreds of gift guides. But rather than get bogged down with all the traditional talking points, let me simply assure you that dad will love and appreciate it just like everyone else who's ever gotten one of these things. For the dad who swore he didn't need a thing, let the Aura Digital picture frame prove him wrong. Right now, Aura has a great deal for Father's Day. For a limited time, you can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get 30 bucks off their best selling Carver matte frame. That's a U R A frames.com promo code. Mike, support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. A U R A U R A U R A frames james.com Mike.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's brilliant by the asset managers, but, you know, and maybe you've had other people say this too, but I was at a lot of the big bad boys, right? Goldman Sachs, State Street. I was also at Vanguard.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm sorry, but, God, I mean, Jack Bogle's books, did you ever read enough?

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh yeah, And I met Bogle.

[Mike Rowe]

And did you really?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, he used to sit at the cafeteria every single day at the same.

[Mike Rowe]

Table and he was a hero to me. Yeah, I don't know that Vanguard is. Well, yeah, I do. They're not the same company. They can't be.

[Cody Sanchez]

No, they're not. They're not. From a couple different ways too, by the way. Vanguard is. I mean, Sorry. Hopefully we never get sponsored by Vanguard.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, not now. They're not gonna like this.

[Cody Sanchez]

But I think it's a place where meritocracy and dreams go to die. It's like socialism, but in a finance company.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you know, I might have a shot Chuck this podcast, but there's no way they're. They're sponsoring hers.

[Cody Sanchez]

No. No chance.

[Mike Rowe]

What's your current podcast called again?

[Cody Sanchez]

The Big Deal podcast.

[Mike Rowe]

The Big Deal sponsored by anyone but Vanguard.

[Cody Sanchez]

Right, exactly. Probably going to get sued, but they, you know, I remember just being there and it's a great place to go if you just want to coast and not work that hard for a really long time. And that's cool for some people. That just wasn't me. I was kind of a psychopath. And so I went to Goldman. Where psychopaths go to live. Yeah, exactly. But I only lasted two years there. That's a whole different story. But, you know, I worked at all those big firms, and I saw firsthand, man, incentives matter a lot.

[Mike Rowe]

Sure.

[Cody Sanchez]

And the incentives in those companies are just so big and backwards, in my opinion. I actually think Goldman's. I think Goldman's the most honest.

[Mike Rowe]

Was Lloyd still calling the shots when you were there?

[Cody Sanchez]

Met Lloyd too. I was a little pee on. I was nobody. But, yeah, Lloyd actually claim to fame with Lloyd is that he comes down. We were in something called GSAM at the time, selling these private equity investments, and he comes to our office. I think I only got invited because I was double checkbox. I was like a chick and a Latina, so, like, let her in, you know? So we're around this table. I don't remember what we're talking about, but it's in. Would have been like 2009, 2010. So they're picketing outside, My grandma's calling, wondering how I could work at the. What did they call it? The succubus squid.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

Rolling Stone.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep.

[Cody Sanchez]

That was nice. That's a good one.

[Mike Rowe]

Nice alliteration.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, exactly. And so we're around this table talking about something, and I said, well, you know what we're doing over here. I start explaining it, and Lloyd goes, what do you do again here? And he actually didn't even know almost what our entire division did because it was so tiny compared to. Yeah, compared to Goldman's main business. So, you know, but I think that they. We don't need to stand up for Goldman. But I think that they got a raw rub. They actually had a really clean balance sheet. I think the government pressured them to take cash and they didn't need it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. As opposed to Alan Mulally and Ford, who said, you know what? You keep your money, I'm gonna keep my salary, you guys keep your money. And if this company can't succeed on its own merit, we don't deserve to be in business. I fell in love with that guy a little bit.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And I was working for him at the time.

[Cody Sanchez]

What?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. We hadn't met. Well, I was making commercials for the Ford Motor Company. And it was one of those moments. I'll never forget it. My partner, Mary and I were watching the news when he said that right there. I can still see the three of them there. Like these CEOs being humbled. Their legs just took out from under them. You will take a dollar a year in pay, and in return we'll bail your company out. And they come to Alan at the end, he's like, no, I'm gonna keep my money. And you tell the taxpayers to hang on to theirs.

[Cody Sanchez]

I love that. That.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, chills. Honestly, I just gave myself goosebumps because two years later some bean counter came in and figured the value of that comment was worth over a billion dollars in earned pr. Over a billion. So I know this point is somewhere lurking under everything we're talking about. But in the end, whether it's Goldman State, Vanguard, BlackRock, Ford, Chevy, somebody at some point is going to grab you by the lapels and shake you until the truth of who you are comes out.

[Cody Sanchez]

It's such a good point. You know, one positive of having these giant institutions today that I never thought I would say about like a blackrock is the ability for the US to use them internationally. So I'll be curious how that shakes out. I feel like for the most part, people like BlackRock and Blackstone have been used against us in a lot of ways. To me, it's like criminal that you can have blackrock go out and we give them all of our money right through ETFs and pensions and all the things that we invest in. So you give them your money, they take your money, they sit it on their balance sheet. That means that they have one, a huge pool of your capital to go out and buy your single family homes. So let's buy up neighborhoods all over the place. But it's not just that because they have all this capital here, they get decreased interest rates. And so even if they were going to pay the same price for the house as you were, which they're not, because they have way more money than you, they get a lower interest rate, so they could actually pay the same price as you or more and make more on the deal. And then it's worse than that because they have what's called securities lending, so they can take all the assets they have and double them, and we can't. So I think there's some real unfairness of what the institutions have done to average Americans that we got to push back on.

[Mike Rowe]

We just don't know it. I mean, we can't see it. There's so many layers. I'm going to get back to you in a second with the Laundromat stuff because I need to understand how you went from this to that. But you mentioned Private equity. And I saw something the other day. You sent it to me, Chuck totally freaked me out. What was that? Oh, I know. Private equity has lent apparently an awful lot of money to an awful lot of businesses with something that's like a back channel adjustable rate. Right. It's very similar to what happened in 08 with the banks, except this is funeral homes and nursing homes and businesses everywhere. I just read joann Fabrics is basically going out of business now. They've only got 100 stores or so and 97 of them are profitable. How can you go out of business with all that profitability? It must be the rates are going up and those loans are coming due.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. You know, they do something called asset stripping, which is, you know, they did it to Toys R Us. Famously, Toys R Us was profitable. Most of its stores were profitable.

[Mike Rowe]

Toys R Us, actually.

[Cody Sanchez]

Exactly. The stores profitable. And what they basically do. And I'm not familiar with Joanne, so I can't talk to that exact one. But in the case of Toys R Us, they buy the company, then they strip out the assets, AKA the real estate. And like a little triangle, basically, the assets sit on the right side, the company sits on the left. But they basically start making the companies pay rent for those assets that they have. And they lever up all of their assets in order for them to take as much profit out of the business as possible. But then they have called what's called a debt to leverage ratio, which basically just means I owe way more money than this company is valued at today.

[Mike Rowe]

Are they clos? Some of them could be like the collateralized loan obligation. So all of these esoteric instruments are being cobbled together into the same unholy bully base that I remember from 15 years ago. And they're finding their way into pension funds.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

The thing that scared me about this is that there's no way the American people are going to stand by and watch another giant bailout of banks. I don't think that can happen. But these aren't banks. These are pension funds. We're talking about Grandma, our parents. Those would be the people to lose everything. I just really wonder if. I don't know.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, I mean, think about this. When we started talking about the fact that we don't own things in America anymore, that we are not business owners by and large, then the next question should really be, where'd our businesses go? What happened to them? So who owns them now? And one is public companies, the big three, like we talked about. Some of them are big institutions, strategics like Starbucks, that Owns all the coffee shops. But the sneaky one is private equity firms. In 2000, they owned about 4% of all U.S. business businesses. By 2020, that was 20%. So almost one out of five businesses in the U.S. depending on how you measure the statistic, are owned by private equity.

[Mike Rowe]

So people are owning fewer and fewer and fewer businesses. PE is owning more and more and more businesses.

[Cody Sanchez]

Exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

That can't be a coincidence.

[Cody Sanchez]

And it's happening at the same time. As you see this a lot right now, you're seeing companies go public on the stock market a lot later in their stage. Well, that means that they need money still to fund these companies. So where is that coming from? It's coming from the private markets, AKA these private equity companies. So essentially there's a couple reasons that's not great. One is most people can't invest in private equity unless you're rich, AKA an accredited investor. You know, there are government classifications. And then that means that most of the money that is made by companies historically that used to go public when you and I could invest in it. Oh, Google's public now. Okay. Now that they're public, I can invest in it. I could have that big rise and I could make money along with everybody else. Well, if now Google goes public 10 years later, then who takes that delta? Who takes the money that would have been made? Well, a lot of that's private equity now. And so again, I don't think these guys are like, they're not like criminal lizards. As far as I'm aware. They're normal humans.

[Mike Rowe]

Succubus squids.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, exactly. But there is some incentives that I think we gotta get right. And these are the things when you're a small business and you get a chance to sell to private equity. Cause you've been doing this for 20 years and you're tired like you do it. And so I get it.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, a lot of people listening do understand this more or less. But I think a lot of people also, their eyes start to glaze over because there is over top of it like a patina of unreality. You know, you just hear all these terms and all of these things and for the average person, you know, it's. Why back to Dirty Jobs. I loved it when it started because it was kind of a leader in this area called reality tv, back when reality actually meant something real. So tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but it feels to some extent like your time at Goldman and your time on Wall Street. You're just surrounded by These intangibles, these esoteric ideas, these instruments of investments, and all of these acronyms which make the average person want to just throw the themselves off a roof. How'd you wind up buying a laundromat?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, well, I think, you know, one of the things. Finance people and finance in general, they want you to be confused. They don't want you to understand basis points and expense ratio and, you know, ROI and all of this. Why? Because then you have to pay them a percentage of your money for them to do the investing for you. And so there's a reason that you like, your brain goes. And it shuts off when people start talking about finance and money. There's a real reason. It's a barrier to entry. And so once I got behind the curtain, and again, I'm not that smart. I used to be a journalist, and so all I was good at was asking a lot of questions. So I asked a lot of questions. And once I figured out, I realized, wait a second, what do these guys do at, like, a base level? What do fancy Wall street people do? They take somebody else's idea, an entrepreneur's idea, and they buy it with other people's money, AKA yours and mines and pensions or a bank. That's it. So there's a profitable business that somebody else created. They didn't. They use somebody else's money and not theirs to buy it. Like, wait a second, why couldn't I do that? But, like, a lot smaller, you know, that seems like that I could understand that. And then you go to, like, the easiest, simplest grandma could understand a business possible, which to me was a laundromat. I'm like, dirty clothes, clean clothes, quarters. Not very many employees. I call them gateway drug businesses because it's your, like, it's your little ease in to this game of business.

[Mike Rowe]

A taste.

[Cody Sanchez]

Exactly. And first taste is free.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Cody Sanchez]

I am a business drug dealer. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay.

[Cody Sanchez]

And so I bought my first little Laundromat with this idea. I'm like, okay, how could I spend not that much money? For me, at that time, it was 100k, and I'm gonna buy this business.

[Mike Rowe]

How old were you?

[Cody Sanchez]

I was probably early 20s.

[Mike Rowe]

So, you know, so you're weird. I mean, you understand. I mean, I'm just thinking of all the women I know in their early 20s who scraped together 100k to buy a Laundromat.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. None. Well, and I was embarrassed about it at the time because that didn't seem cool. It was cool working on Wall street, and it was cool Doing these quote unquote, big deals. And then I'm like, oh, I know what a dead rat smells like. You know now. And I remember very well the first moment walking into that laundromat. And the. There is a real. There is a smell to an old, moldy laundromat that I will never forget. You could put me there and blindfold me and I would know.

[Mike Rowe]

Ironically, there's a similar ode to a car wash. Right. And you would think it'd be like, all, like, detergent and suds and soap. It's not. There's something else in there. Something of the grease.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, I think so, too. And, well, we won't digress, but you and I could probably compare smells with the things we've done in business.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, we're. I got time, so.

[Cody Sanchez]

But. So I bought it because I did have that moment where I hated my job and I hated my boss and I hated my. Myself a little bit, and I wanted to get out, but I had no entrepreneurial chops. Like, no idea for what to do next.

[Mike Rowe]

This can't be glazed over. You're still in your early 20s at this point.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

See, this is the thing that people can relate to, that life of quiet desperation moment when you wake up and you are just. You're not pleased with who you are, where you're going or what you're doing. And those three things combined can get heavy. And, you know, I think it's hard for a lot of people just to shake all that off and. Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Well, we lie to ourselves. Like, you lie to yourself. That, like, when I achieve this next thing or this next thing or this next thing, then I'll be okay. And I had the kind of beautiful fortune of achieving a few things that I thought were my peak early. Like, I was pretty successful in finance kind of early. And I was like, oh, I'm still miserable, and I hate this. So when that happened is when I was like, what's the exit plan? Like, I gotta get out of here. And this was. So I would have been mid-20s, because then I went through what we. My. My midlife crisis. I got divorced. I was married at the time. I got divorced, and I started buying up these little businesses. Kids at this point, no kids. And, you know, and wish him well. Good guy. Just like, two different life plans. And so I bought this first business, and I thought it was horrifying that I didn't tell my parents and I didn't tell anybody because I was pretty sure I was gonna fail. And then it kind of worked and it started making some money. And then I was like, well, we could just keep doing that. So we bought a few more of them.

[Mike Rowe]

This is the laundromat.

[Cody Sanchez]

The laundromat.

[Mike Rowe]

What was it called?

[Cody Sanchez]

Man, that's a good question. I think it was called C's, but not like my C. Like S E, A S like that. And I need to, you know, when you go back and you think too, before there was social, like, I wish I had more pictures of it, and I wish I could change. Show the journey. You probably have them because you're on tv.

[Mike Rowe]

What? The picture. Oh. Oh, I'm the worst at this. But you're right. If I want to be reminded of something I did 20 years ago, or even 30, I can find it on YouTube.

[Cody Sanchez]

That's wild.

[Mike Rowe]

It's beyond wild.

[Cody Sanchez]

That wasn't normal for everybody else. Like, we didn't, you know, I had.

[Mike Rowe]

An iPhone, but it's not normal for anybody. There's a very unique feeling, and I only share it because I think other people will experience it as a result of different things. But I can tell you when you come home late at night and you've had a couple of pops before you go to bed, and for some reason, you're on YouTube and you find video of yourself doing something that you have no recollection of doing. Now, in my case, it was selling stuff in the middle of the night on QVC.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

In, like, 1990. And when you see the undeniable proof that you have done, that's you, Those words are coming out of your mouth, but you have no idea what that guy who is you is about to do next. It's very unsettling.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, it is. Well. And, you know, I kind of hold by this idea that if three years ago you. Doesn't make you cringe a little, you're probably not doing it right. Like, you gotta keep leveling up the game.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

So that's how I talk myself to sleep each night. But, you know, I do remember thinking back then, like, I hope nobody finds out that I own this thing, you know?

[Mike Rowe]

Sure.

[Cody Sanchez]

And then we bought a few more, and I partnered with a dude who was the handy person. Cause I was basically a glorified financier at the time. And he had done real estate before, so he kind of knew the gist. So this is what I talk to people about today. It's like, you don't always have to know the thing. Sometimes the answer is a who, not a how, you know?

[Mike Rowe]

Sure.

[Cody Sanchez]

Sometimes the answer is Not a startup. It's a business you buy. And so if you're not as smart as I am, you know, or not smart like me, you don't have a brilliant idea, you don't have a ton of cash, you don't have massive skills. Like, okay, then we could borrow somebody else's.

[Mike Rowe]

Last month I was down in Florida giving a talk to a big utility company down there. And afterwards, the woman in charge of human resources pulled me aside to tell me that she had seen every single episode of Dirty Jobs, but that nothing she had seen me do on the tv, from castrating lambs to replacing a ruptured lift pump at a wastewater treatment plant could compare with the challenge of hiring talented people here in 2025. I told her that she was not the first HR manager to pull me aside and tell me that very thing. And then I suggested she post a job for [e-mail] roe and watch what happens. Did she? I don't know. It's not like we stayed in touch or anything. She was just a nice lady who wanted to say hello and commiserate about the difficulty of the current job market. But look, if your company is struggling to hire top talent, honestly, I'm giving you the exact same advice. Post a job for [e-mail] ro and watch what happens. Spoiler alert. It's going to work. Four out of five people who post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com ro find a quality candidate that same day. And ZipRecruiter's pre written invite to apply message. That's a game changer. And one more reason why ZipRecruiter really is the smartest way to hire. See for yourself. Try them for free at ziprecruiter.com row that's ziprecruiter.com roe the smartest way to hire. Did you quit your job before you bought the laundromat?

[Cody Sanchez]

Absolutely not.

[Mike Rowe]

So you hedged?

[Cody Sanchez]

Neither did I tell my boss at first. I do remember it once.

[Mike Rowe]

You didn't tell anybody?

[Cody Sanchez]

No, no. I just kept it super quiet. But I kept my job. I mean, for like years and years and years and years. Even after I had bought a ton, you had to pry my salary out of my cold, dead hands at the end because I was so freaked out about could this thing survive?

[Mike Rowe]

We are so different, but we are the same people.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, every.

[Cody Sanchez]

You jumped.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, no, I hedged. First of all, I thought about QVC for a long time. Like, you Thought about the laundromat. I didn't tell anybody about it. It was a thing I did early in my career. It was just a rung on the ladder. It wasn't until later that I realized how important a rung it was, and to the point where I. Where I'm happy to talk about it now. You're doing the same thing with your unglamorous businesses. And for me, I was hosting Evening magazine when I sold the idea for Dirty Jobs, but I still wasn't convinced it was going to work. I stayed at Evening for another year. So, yeah, I love Risk, and there's so many books out there written by people who assumed a big, giant chunk of it, but in the end, man, that's not really me.

[Cody Sanchez]

I actually hate Risk. I don't like it at all, which my parents don't agree with me on this, but deep down, I don't like it. I believe in the monkey bar strategy, which is like, I'm not gonna jump to the next one until I got a hold of the winch.

[Mike Rowe]

It's basic.

[Cody Sanchez]

And I think that's okay for humans to do that. I actually think these days, everybody online tells you, like, go all in, burn the bridges, sleep in the garage, burn all the ships. Yeah. I'm like, why? Like, it could take you back if you need it. That seems inefficient. And so I don't think you should feel bad at all for wherever you are, using the resources that you have and tiptoeing a little bit. Now, my problem is if you don't tiptoe, you got, like, you gotta make some forward movement. And I do think that at some point, the universe tries to tell you a thing or two, and then if you don't listen, it, you know, kicks you right in the gut at some point.

[Mike Rowe]

And that point, typically, is the middle of the lake.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, I very nearly called my business that, to tell you the truth.

[Cody Sanchez]

That's a good line.

[Mike Rowe]

Lab Rat became the working title, but for a while there, it was Middle of the Lake. Because what do you do if you're not sure you can make it across? Well, if you're going to turn back, don't wait till you get to the middle. Yep, Very true, though, because it will paralyze you. Right. There's always that point.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't care if it's a bad marriage, a bad job, a bad date. You know, there might be a moment in the middle of the dinner on that date where you're like, you know something? We're this close to getting to the middle, and I know I don't want to get to the other side. I'm going to go powder my nose and never come back.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you something embarrassing, but, you know, I really wanted the marriage to work back in the day. I think marriage is so important. I'm married now, and it's like, it's my favorite thing in the world. Like, this is so fun.

[Mike Rowe]

You get like Chris, guy I met. Yeah, he seems okay. Yeah, I like, you know, for a Navy guy.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, he's amazing. And we have the best time, and I don't think I could do as much as I do without a really strong foundation, which is what he is. But back in the day, I wanted to work so hard. I worked for so long going through all these therapy and whatever, but eventually I had to put a date on my calendar. And I was like, if we haven't figured out by this date, then that's my. Either you keep going forever or you get off the bridge. And so I actually now we have a line at my companies. It's called calendaring, which is like when you have those big hairy decisions that you don't want to make, that. That, you know, you need to put a date on the calendar, and then you keep your most important promise, the one to yourself. And I try to do that now.

[Mike Rowe]

Promise made is a debt unpaid.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, that's a good line. Sounds like that's from the Bible.

[Mike Rowe]

No, it's Robert Service, the cremation of Sam McGee.

[Cody Sanchez]

Interesting. What is going on up. You got like an encyclopedia up there, don't you?

[Mike Rowe]

I know I don't have any original thoughts, sadly, but I do glom on to a lot of things I heard.

[Cody Sanchez]

Me too.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you already. You had three interesting quotes, all of which you attributed to your dad.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh.

[Mike Rowe]

Which is also to your credit. But there you are buying Laundromats, not losing sight of the shore. From what you left, you're not yet to the middle of the lake. When do you let go?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, I actually had to get pushed out of the boat, so I didn't let go. I got pushed out of the boat two times. I do think if you're an entrepreneur, you're actually just pretty unemployable, which is to the point that I got management challenge. Is that what you call it?

[Mike Rowe]

That's what I've been called. Mike, you're a nice enough guy, but here at our particular system, you've been deemed a management challenge. And we were thinking it would be awesome if you just waited in the car for the rest of your life.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, that's me. I call myself unemployable. Now we have, like, a little sticker, basically, that I like it. I wear it with pride. But, you know, back then, I was like, you know when you're young and you just think you know everything? And so I give my bosses some credit, because I was really like, you guys are messing this up. I know you have a billion dollar business, but let me tell you what I know. Now. I do think I was right in some of it. My guess was we were gonna do better on the Internet with investing and getting investors and finding deals than we were going to steak dinners in Mahogany Boardroom, Eiffel Towers. And they didn't agree with me, and it was okay. The CEO at the time was amazing, but he did the best thing ever for me, which is, I often think when you get fired, my favorite line is, I'm sorry, and congratulations, because it's a great gift, actually, if you take it. And so he didn't fire me, but he basically said, cody, I'm tired of you pushing me on this. We're going left. If you want to keep rowing right, get your own boat. You can't do it on mine. And I was like, that's fair. And so I left the company, But I was such a wuss that I went and got other partners. I didn't think I could do it by myself. And I wish if you could do one thing differently, I think it's like, almost every time, you can bet on yourself more often than you feel comfortable. And so I didn't do it that second time. And so it had to happen again. So I got pushed out, like, halfway through the lake and then again, like, two quarters through the lake. And finally that last one, I said, all right, I get it, universe. I need to do something by myself and see if I could stand on my own two feet. And that's when I fully took all the money that I had been making and I invested in and businesses all by myself. I bought them out entirely. And then eventually, I started yapping about it on the Internet.

[Mike Rowe]

So, wait, you had a nest egg?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And how. What percentage of that nest egg did you invest in these unglamorous businesses?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, I called mine. I like to call my nest egg your view fund. And I think it is just there for that moment where your temperature gauge gets so high that you're like, I literally cannot tolerate another moment of ridiculousness. And at which that Point you pull the trigger. And so that I had invested it kind of throughout. So I had. So I might have had five or six businesses on the side at that time. And I had replaced my salary with this business income. But I still was like, you know, when you run a business, you could still have a month where your expenses are so high you wipe yourself out. And so even though I was making more, I was like, you know, my math isn't always math incorrectly.

[Mike Rowe]

Are they all laundromats at this point?

[Cody Sanchez]

No. There's a car wash in there. There's a cross border trade company. It's kind of a weird thing, but I ran a business in Latin America for a while, so there was some diversification and it wasn't that thoughtful. It was kind of like, it's kind of like I collected them like whatever was around me and it kind of made sense. And I got a guy here and a guy there. And then I finally started putting it into hyper gear. And when I left that last company, I doubled down on laundromat, I doubled down on car washes. And then I started talking about it on the Internet.

[Mike Rowe]

And was that your own podcast or were you making the rounds? Talking about, like, I mean, it's a great story. You know, it's the. You left a sure thing.

[Cody Sanchez]

Mm. Yeah, well, I didn't have a podcast. Our podcast is brand new. It's only like eight months old. And so I didn't have that. It was just a newsletter. I think there were two types of people. People who think by talking and people who think by writing. And I'm a think by writing. I really like to get my ideas on paper. So I started writing a newsletter in 2020 when everybody was kind of going crazy.

[Mike Rowe]

I thought when you had time.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, I did. Yeah. Before that I was running around checking on the businesses, buying more of them. And so in 2020, I started my little newsletter called Contrarian Thinking. And the idea was, why can't we question anything anymore? Why is it not okay for us to talk about stuff?

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, because you'll be a denier if you do.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, that was big. You know, my husband was still in the military at the time, and so there was a lot of that going on. And I just wholeheartedly disagreed with a lot I saw going on in the world. I mean, before I was investing in these. These businesses, I ran a business in Latin America. And so I have been. I mean, we had a business in Argentina that when Christina Fernandez nationalized all the companies there, that was the president she took my whole business and what we did overnight became illegal there.

[Mike Rowe]

What were you doing?

[Cody Sanchez]

We were selling third party investments in money market funds. So it was basically just she wanted to keep all the money in Argentinian currency and she didn't want to have offshore funds, so she made offshore funds illegal.

[Mike Rowe]

See, that doesn't sound like a laundromat to me.

[Cody Sanchez]

No, that was finance back then.

[Mike Rowe]

It might be laundering.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, but not a laundromat. That's what she tried to make it. If you invested outside of Argentina, you were not a patriot. So anyway, so I had seen governments do overreach before, like live and felt what that looked like and gotten to know my friends who lost everything. And Argentina was. Is a sad country in many ways, or was back then. And so when I saw that in 2020, I was like that, let's talk about some stuff online. And that's when we created Contrarian Thinking as a newsletter. And at first I started thinking about how do we just talk to people about asking the right questions. That's what we do in investing. And then I realized everybody thinks that their question asking is good. Nobody thinks they're bad at this. So I said, well, what's the Trojan horse to get people to think differently? And I think the Trojan horse to get people to think differently is to give them something they really want, which is money. So we actually started talking about how do we make money? How is money key to financial freedom? Because I think when you have skin in the game and you have something to lose, then you're a little bit more thoughtful on the actions you take. You don't burn down the house you own. Right? Sure, you build it. And so that was my idea on why we started talking publicly, because I ideologically think the world's a little bit better if all of us have a little bit more money and a little bit more ownership and that maybe we could talk about that.

[Mike Rowe]

When did you feel like you did it? I mean, so like you're writing a newsletter, you've got multiple businesses. I don't even know how many people start paying attention to your newsletter. You start making the rounds. And now I've seen pictures of you in really large events and lots of very enthusiastic people with that lean and hungry look, applauding with gleams in their eyes as they, as they sit there waiting for the knowledge to wash over them so they can have the playbook on how to. How to what? Become an owner. Is that basically what you're all about?

[Cody Sanchez]

I want them to become an owner. I think what they want is control. They want control over their lives. They feel like other people have made decisions for them. They feel like they can't figure out how to make money. They feel like housing is more expensive than ever. And my job, I got fired from it and it's not keeping up with inflation. And I have no control. I am like sort of at everybody else's mercy. And the way I think to push back on that is to become an owner. So we call it Owner Nation. And the idea is, how do we get people to own something? I mean, if you think about it in AI, if AI makes humans less relevant in a lot of ways, they take our jobs away from us. What is a tangible asset that is hard to take away from you? Well, it starts becoming brick and mortar businesses. It starts becoming real estate. It's like, I think we're in an asset ownership race and we don't even realize it.

[Mike Rowe]

An asset ownership race. What are the assets in question?

[Cody Sanchez]

We need to own things. We need to own businesses, we need to own real estate, we need to own infrastructure. Because in the future we might not get paid for our labor the same way. And I think about it like, let's say some of your dirty jobs. The plumber, you have roworks, which I love. We need more of that. We need more trade school graduates. What's then the next step? Okay, you can't probably be the guy holding the drill or holding the hammer forever. So what happens as you go through time? You need to learn leadership and finance in order to become an owner. Why can't more plumbers be the ones that buy their businesses instead of private equity guys? I bet the plumber who understands the business and is interested to grow could grow it better than me from Goldman. And so that is where I want to get people. I want to get them. You get them trades and skills that they need and society needs to build. And then I hope they overlay that on. Okay, now that I know I can build something with my hands, can I build a business around it too?

[Mike Rowe]

We're in violent agreement. For me, I'm a slave to a kind of chronology. And I talked to Dave Ramsey about this. I've talked to a lot of people about, you know, financial literacy and where that ought to live in the hierarchy of entrepreneurial needs. So with microworks, we do start with, look, if you have a work ethic that we're persuaded is genuine, and if you're willing to learn a skill that's in demand, then I believe that's the first collective box you have to check. But it's odd how often the analysis stops right there. Because the next question is, now, even before you say, can you think like an entrepreneur? Are you interested in that? I ask, are you willing to travel? Because that is adjacent to entrepreneurship, right? And there is a thing going on now in our country that's shocking. People have become so sedentary and so resistant. You know, this is the country. This is manifest destiny. You know, the whole thing was based on a willingness to. To go to where the opportunity is or the work. And so if you've got a work ethic and a skill that's in demand and you're willing to go to where the work is, then you're probably real close to being an entrepreneur. You just might not know it yet. That's why I wanted to talk to you frankly, because what's the. How do you know when you're at that point in the lake, crossing the entrepreneurial lake, when do you know? Because look, end of rant. But a lot of people, the more things you own, the more things own you. Keep your life simple. Do you really want all the headaches that come from ownership? And oh, by the way, eight to nine out of ten small businesses fail. So all those things I believe are still true. So what's the case?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, I think you're right. The problem is, why take the risk.

[Mike Rowe]

The very risk that I know you're adverse to. Every time I turn around, it seems my friends over at PureTalk are giving me another reason to feel really good about switching from Verizon. And this month is no exception. Right now, just in time for Flag Day and Independence Day, PureTalk is partnering with the Allegiance flag company to make sure every man and woman who served this country receives an American flag that was actually, wait for it, made in America. What a concept, right? The Allegiance flag company makes the very best American flags, period. And PureTalk is dedicating a portion of every sale this month to get as many of those flags to as many deserving veterans as possible all over the country. I think that's pretty great. Yeah. I also like the fact that PureTalk is a no contract wireless company with a money back guarantee and plan from just 25 bucks a month for unlimited talk, text and plenty of data. And that the average family of four can save 1000 bucks a year when they switch to the most dependable 5G network in the country. But what I really like is that PureTalk is a wireless company who actually stands for something. And this month, you can stand with them. Switch now and start saving money today and enjoy the fact that a portion of every sale this month will help get an allegiance flag into the hands of a deserving veteran. PureTalk.com Roe that's PureTalk.com Roe Pure, pure, pure talk.

[Cody Sanchez]

Pure, pure, pure, pure.

[Mike Rowe]

Talk.

[Cody Sanchez]

A couple things. One, it is miserable. It'll take longer than you think. It'll be harder than you think. You're going to wish that you had never done this game of ownership before until the very end. It would point. It'll be worth it. And you won't be able to go back and you won't really want to. And the way you know this is, look at the people who have taken the risk over time, who have built the business, who have jumped out in the middle of the lake and kept swimming. How many of them go back to a job? That's what I always chuckle about on the Internet. These guys are like, don't tell people that anybody can own a business. It's really hard out here. I'm like, great, quit. Quit and let me employ you. You won't. Why? Because it sucks. But it's awesome at the same time. It's terrible and it's worth it.

[Mike Rowe]

You can't jump out of the boat too soon. Otherwise, the minute it gets tough, you'll just swim back because you can jump out in the middle and what's the point in turning back? You might as well keep going. You have a quote from your dad on your website, and I think it's something like, you don't know you're in the game until you come home one evening and sit there with your head in your hands, despairing about all you've done.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, isn't that nice, dude?

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, I don't know if that's reverse psychology or what. I love it and I understand it. I understand it because it's like back to curiosity. Why is curiosity so important? Because you can't have it without humility. Why is humility so important? Because the minute you lose that, the minute you're going to become complacent, you're going to make a stupid mistake, whether you're hunting for bear or trying to buy a laundromat.

[Cody Sanchez]

I think, I mean, I'm in agreement. I mean, I remember I called my dad one night when I had a business that I thought was going to go under, and it was one that was a little bit more public. People would have known I was associated with it. I was really embarrassed I had let some really stupid Things happen and let some people run the business that I shouldn't have. And it was nobody's fault but mine. And I called him and it was like the middle of the night, and I don't even know if I don't think I told anybody else about it. And I told him about this, and he kind of chuckled because he's a longtime entrepreneur. And he said that line to me. He said, you're not really in the game until you've sat head in the hands in the dark on the couch with no idea what to do next. And I remember that line often because that means you're just in the game. And I think expectation is half of happiness. And if you know that at some point you're gonna have that difficulty, you just go, okay. I know when I go to the gym, it's gonna hurt. Like, it's gonna hurt before I get fit. And I think that's the same thing with entrepreneurship. And if it was easy, for the record, it's not that everybody would do it. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth it. I don't think you can spell rich without risk. Like, you have to take risk if you wanna get financial freedom. I don't know of any other way. Maybe one day you will, but I actually. I don't know of any other way.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm sorry. I just noticed Chuck is producing here. He's put your website up on our monitor.

[Cody Sanchez]

Look at this.

[Mike Rowe]

Your mission is to create 1 million financially free humans through business ownership.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yep, that's the plan. We keep a little tracker, too. That's why I like Dave Framsey. He. I just said his officer. Yeah, and you know what? I love man? That man lives his mission. I'm sure he told you. He has a 600 million dollar piece of real estate there. Four buildings, not a dollar in debt to build it. And then I was like, come on, show me the credit cards. Like, you're not running this thing really? On debit cards? No, no, he is. You know, and then I talked to his team about, well, you know, what do you guys do if, like, this business needs some cash? And that one, they said, no, no, independent. We run at the speed of. Of cash that we make.

[Mike Rowe]

This is so interesting to me. And again, not to get too sidetracked, but it's like debt. I have this thing called a sweat pledge. Everybody who applies for a work ethic scholarship has to sign one. That's it on the wall right there. It's that blue thing somewhere on there. It says, you Know, I'd rather live in a tent and eat beans than. Than own something I simply can't afford. You know, it's the only four letter word growing up in my household that was really off limits. Interesting, right? But you talk to Robert Kiyosaki, you talk to a Grant Cardone. There's so many different people out there who would be like, well, wait, wait a second. If you're trying to grow your business and you're. They're very debt friendly. And so I guess my question here is, you know, I don't know how many people are listening and I don't know what they need to hear. And I wonder if you worry from time to time. And I've asked Dave the same question. Aren't there people who would do very well to assume a certain type of debt under certain circumstances? And aren't some of those people likely listening right now when you talk about the fact that you would never do that? And do you worry sometime? The advice business is tricky and consequential, you know.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, it's a good point which you make, which is I try to tell often what has worked for me, and then I say, you got to do you. The only thing I know for sure is that it worked in my case and some stuff didn't. So I think it is important. This advice business like you talk about is a funny game. On one hand, I think it's kind of criminal. There are all these people that have had massive success and made all this money and they don't share how. I kind of think we should. I think right about the time when you no longer want to talk about money, when you don't want to tell people how you got there because it feels kind of gross and icky, is probably when you should, because young Cody would like to know, like, I want to know how to do that. Don't tell me to manifest and you know, glitter rainbow, my way to this. Like, I don't, like, tell me, don't tell me. You got lucky and you just worked really hard. Like, give me the path. And so I share a lot because I'm like, man, young Cody would be like, all right, let me sift through some of this, but trust that I can handle whatever truth you have. And so that's where we default. We default on the side of like, we'll overshare. This is exactly how I did it. It worked back then. I don't know if it'll work today for you, but here you go. If you want to try.

[Mike Rowe]

It's Just so confounding to know that there's so many different roadmaps to get you to the same basic place. I go back to Jack Bogle. I go back to Burton. His name Malkiel.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, yeah. Random walk down Wall Street.

[Mike Rowe]

A random walk down Wall street, right? Even Henry Hazlett, right? Economics in one lesson, you know all like, it's like, those are guides, right? But there are a lot of peas and carrots in these things, right? There's a lot of, like, be patient. There's a lot of, oh, look, if you want to invest, you know, the Intelligent Investor, another great book.

[Cody Sanchez]

Benjamin Graham.

[Mike Rowe]

Ben. I mean, right? So this isn't mysterious. Watch your fees. Invest for the long term. When you see the cost of a company, get cheap that you've invested in, celebrate the sale and get more. Don't sell, for God's sakes. That just makes you a traitor. All of these things I believe to be true. And there you are in this PE adjacent world working for big investment banks whose entire edifices have been built upon fees and things and so forth. So it's like, it's confusing out there.

[Cody Sanchez]

Here's my problem. I just. I kind of go back to just like explain it to me with napkin math. So I do like what Buffett said. Buffett said. I think it was Bezos that asked him. He's like, hey, why do you tell everybody your strategy and what you're doing? And Buffett said, because nobody wants to get rich slow. And I always love that line. And so we have it in the office, which is like, get rich slow. This idea of like 15 years is okay to play the game. The problem is, I think a lot of people, Buffett hates debt. Like Google Warren Buffett debt and see all the quotes he has about him. Here's the problem. Buffett's got a shit ton of debt. So sometimes I think we got to watch what people do, not just what they say, because it sounds good and is a better thing for a PR cycle. I think there's some really good debt to put on. The problem is my barometer is if you can't tell the difference and explain it to somebody smarter and richer than you on why this debt is better than that debt, you probably shouldn't do it. And so I think the problem lies with people do personal guarantees on things that they don't have to create a life that they don't really need to. Go back to the quote from Fight Club. And so that's my line is like in most games in life, finance and money isn't that doesn't take you being that smart, really. It does take you doing some independent learning because they don't teach it to us in school properly. And then the best business school is being in business, man. And I think. And this is where I differ from Dave, although I love the man and he's got probably a bigger bank account than I do by far, so maybe you should listen to him and see he's done.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, I disagree. I don't think you can non Starbucks your way to enough money to feel secure in the world today. I think buy coffee, but go earn more money. And so he is amazing at getting people out of debt, which is super, super important.

[Mike Rowe]

But these people probably aren't the entrepreneurial types that you're talking to. He's swinging with the fatter part of the bat. I think he's talking to regular people. You know what I mean? And that's why, again, it's like, to me, the real devil in all of this is the cookie cutter advice.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, it's a good point. You gotta take. I mean, my mom always says we do the best with what we got when we add it. And so I think that that's true. You do what you can with what you have. But I push back on this idea that more people can't be entrepreneurial. Like, for instance, let's play a game and earmuffs your crew in case they get crazy ideas here.

[Mike Rowe]

My crew. Somebody wake up the crew.

[Cody Sanchez]

So let's say that they want to work for you forever because they like you and they love their jobs and they want to keep going and they don't want to run their own business. Okay, now what could they do to get some skin in the game? Well, even if they're employees who work for you, they could say, hey, Mike, this month we got two ad slots that are available on the podcast. They're unfilled. If I go out and I fill those ad slots for us, even though that's not my job, can I take a cut of that?

[Mike Rowe]

And you'd go, damn skippy.

[Cody Sanchez]

Of course. But how often do you get asked that.

[Mike Rowe]

Chuck? You want to go with 0.0 or 0.1, 0.1? I think. No, you've actually done that.

[Cody Sanchez]

Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

You've done. I mean, everybody here knows that we're super lean and super weird and that.

[Cody Sanchez]

You'Ll give them upside.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

So I think that's what I want entrepreneurial people to think I want. We call it owner mindset. You don't have to own the building to get part of it. And I think I learned this in because in pe. Here's how this works. You want to know how those guys get so rich and they stay together forever? It's because they don't actually make their money through salary. Right? They make their money through distributions to owners and through something called carry. We can leave that alone for now.

[Mike Rowe]

Carried interest.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Well, carry is how you get money on a fund, for instance. And so that carry percentage is how most of them get around some of the tax law and make their money. But in this instance, why I say they don't make their money from salary is because it's really important. It means over time, as Chuck costs you way more money, let's say Chuck gets more senior. Chuck, you know, is more valuable. He requires more money every single year, let's say. And so, yeah, let's say that. So at some point you might say, man, I could hire like three Chucks for this price. Oh, my God, Chuck's gonna kill me by the end of this podcast. What would be an interesting way to change that? Well, it would be to say, well, I'm going to cut him in to every deal he does and executes for us. That's what private equity does. And so their incentive aligned to stay together forever because there's not this, like, big chunk of overhead on top of them, AKA salary, which is what an owner looks at. The moral of the story is, I think in more businesses than you could ever imagine, you have the ability to negotiate upside down and to get skin in the game. Either equity in the company, part of a deal, a bigger sales cut. So even the people who are following Dave Ramsey and currently massively in debt, I just want them to stop telling themselves why it won't work for them to make more money. Why? Their boss will say, no, why it's not possible, and instead say, how could it work if I was going to negotiate some upside? And the only formula that you need to know, I think, to negotiate upside, is how does the business make money? Can you affect the outcome of the business? Can you help the business make more money? And what is that worth to the business, AKA profit?

[Mike Rowe]

Can you help the business make more money outside of your job description, Currently. Right. The thing you signed on for. Yeah, that's the siloing that I think is that requires a contrarian mindset because we're just so enamored of systems. This is. Look, this is what my business card says. It says right here, this is what I do. So why would I do anything other than what it says? I would need a new card and I don't have any more room in my wallet. Right. I mean, it's just like. But I mean, it's not a ding on anybody, but it's the fault in our stars. It's just how we think. Unless. Unless we're taught to think different.

[Cody Sanchez]

Exactly. And as long as you can incentive align yourself and you can make it so, like, the business owner wins and you win, so the business owner makes more money and you make more money, you'll get it more often than you won't. And so those are the type that's like the financial advice I wish we had, which is like, there's no downside to you negotiating if you're giving first and only, taking after you give.

[Mike Rowe]

I get it. I'm not a very good businessman, but I. But I love my business and the business is doing well. And since you've invoked his name, you know, Chuck is uniquely qualified. I've known him 45 years. You know, Sad but true. Yes. I mean, we're. We're high school. We're asshole buddies from high school. Right? I mean, Taylor, look behind you. Look at this poster that says, work smart and hard. All right. That poster was based on an old opposite poster at the bottom there that was hanging my guidance counselor's office. Taylor was on a set one day. I think they're doing Stillwood. We actually filming. What were you even doing there? He's filming, like the most important camera in my life is a behind the scenes camera. And we were shooting something for Caterpillar and he's filming. And part of what I wanted to do that day was recreate this dumb poster that was in my guidance counselor's office. But I needed an aspirational looking model to stand next to me. So I said, hey, man, do you want to put your camera down and just pose as this guy next to me? So I'm holding a high school diploma that I can't afford, and even though I'm, you know, certified, I don't have a job. I got a big pile of debt. And there's Taylor looking aspirational. That's probably 12 years ago. 10, 12 years ago.

[Cody Sanchez]

It's quite a jawline, too.

[Mike Rowe]

It is a jawline. Yeah. Yeah. And he hasn't changed. Dorian Gray. I mean, it's annoying. Come on over and stick your head in.

[Cody Sanchez]

Stick your face in the guy.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Come on over here and let her see. Yeah, because that's what happened. I Mean these guys both. I mean, Chuck made his. And I want to ask you about freelancing next and I want to be respectful. You got another 15 minutes?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, totally. So wait. Also we have to show. I don't know if you can find it Chuck, or if this would be annoying otherwise. I can find it on my phone. But we did a version of this that I didn't realize was based off of you, but it was Main street over Wall street. And we had on one side we had this like kind of beat up Wall street looking guy, a little overweight, disheveled. And on the right hand side we had this hot plumber, like jacked, tool belt, tan. I don't even know how you would find it. And the funniest part is when we launched the book Main Street Millionaire, we put it on billboards all over Wall street and then we put it in front on LED trucks in front of blackrock and Blackstone's headquarters in New York.

[Mike Rowe]

I love it.

[Cody Sanchez]

It was hysterical. And basically the moral of the story is like this is what we used to think was cool and smart and led to riches. And now, I mean there's this, there's this guy online, we should shout him out. His name's Max for Cracks and he's an Instagram guy and he has this whole series about blue.

[Mike Rowe]

Is his last name for cracks or is it Max? Four cracks.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, Max and then the number four cracks, I think. And he has this whole series on blue collar cosplaying and how young people are cosplaying blue collar.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

And I think we have this 180 happening that really wasn't even going on for Dirty Jobs. I think, oh no, this is new.

[Mike Rowe]

You're talking about turning around a tanker, right? You're talking about myths and misperceptions and stigmas and stereotypes that surround certain types of work. And those things take years to shed. But they do shift and they do change. And it really is exactly what we were talking about before. There was a time when a blue collar worker with a certain set of skills had the admiration of everybody in the neighborhood and the respect, right? How did that change? I've got theories on that. And how do you bring it back? And is the workforce ever really and truly balanced? Is Wall street and Main street, are they ever perfectly positioned? I would say no way. No way. It's a constant push me pull you. To quote Dr. Doolittle. But my point in saying all those things was there is something to say in the Warren Buffett category for delayed gratification he's my buddy for 45 years. That counts more than the fact that he wasn't recording on the first two minutes of the Best Shit we did today. Okay, I'll forgive that, because I got the other thing. This guy has been with me on Dirty Jobs and somebody's got to do it and half a dozen other shows, because when I asked him if he would put on some clothes that didn't even quite fit and do something that had nothing to do with his job description or his business card, he said, sure. Yeah, those people matter and they win.

[Cody Sanchez]

Over time.

[Mike Rowe]

Over time.

[Cody Sanchez]

And actually, I think we just wrote an article at Contrarian thinking about meritocracy being back and it being cool to try again. And I think that's right. I mean, I loved Timothy Shamalay or however you say, his last name speech when he said, and I know it's not cool to say, but I tried really hard on this role, and it was five years of my life, and I'm really proud of this thing that I tried for. And that was not that cool to say before. You know, it was like, oh, you know, it was great, and I'm so glad to be here and, you know, save the whales or whatever celebrities do when they win an award. And so I think, actually, for the first time in a while, it's cool to try again. And that meritocracy might be coming back.

[Mike Rowe]

Like everything else, it's on the wheel. And virtue becomes vice and vice becomes virtue. And if you're a contrarian or if you're looking for the reverse commute, you'll take a position no matter what it is, as long as it's not where the herd's going. And that's what's happened to virtue. That's why that sweat pledge gets me in trouble every year.

[Cody Sanchez]

Really?

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, my God. Well, in 2020, when ESG and CRT and all of the acronyms had conspired and big companies like Lockheed Martin and Korn Ferry had officially stricken words from their employee manual and handbook. Words like ambition and drive and, believe it or not, work ethic. These terms all became, I don't know, dog whistles or some sort of coded language for the white patriarchy or some such nonsense. Right? Right. So words started to mean different things. And virtue, everything was stood on its head. But it's just to the point. You know, at some point, entrepreneurship is by definition, aspirational and great, and then it's not. Somehow it falls out of favor, and that's a sucker's Bet. Because look at. Look at what the big firms are doing. Look at. Oh, is this the billboard?

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, yeah, that was it. Yeah. We put these trucks all over the place.

[Mike Rowe]

No, that's fantastic.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. He looks great, right?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, man. Poor Wall street guy couldn't even tuck his shirt in.

[Cody Sanchez]

I know. They were. They thought that was pretty funny. We had all these Black Rock and Blackstone dudes taking pictures of it and, you know, whatever. Again, there's. I don't. I really believe no matter how you make money, as long as it's ethical and moral, there's no bad or good way to do it if you're out there creating value in the world. Because I love Dave's line. Ramsey's line is actually. Profit is just a certificate of service. So when you make money, it's just that somebody else feels like you have provided them value. And I like that idea. So, no. Shame on Wall street, but I think they've gotten enough credit, so now it's like, how do we. How do we bring this back? And. And that, I think, is really, really important. And, you know, the other thing that we see for the first time in a while, I think, is this realization sort of across the board that we like to touch things. I mean, you see it everywhere online. You see the trad wife movement getting big again. You know, you see people want to have their little gentleman's farm or work on the farm and opt out. There is this move back to, I want to build with my hands, and I think it's good for society and. And probably a good counterbalance to the fact that we go like this all day long with our kids again, you.

[Mike Rowe]

Know, the trad wife thing is a great example. That's short for traditional wife.

[Cody Sanchez]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, like, there's a home EC connection.

[Cody Sanchez]

Did you see that? They're bringing that back.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I mean, our whole. The whole reason for the space we're sitting in right now is to get shop class back in high school. But home EC is adjacent. Yeah, right. Financial literacy, like, those things were primal, fundamental building blocks. And, you know, it's like a big game at Changa. You start pulling out those lower pieces, which we did, things start to get a little wobbly up there.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. And there was this great south park episode. Did you see the one where there's the dad with the stove that's broken? You see this one?

[Mike Rowe]

No, but, my God, tell me more, because that's so good. I mean, it's only the greatest satire in the history.

[Cody Sanchez]

That's incredible.

[Mike Rowe]

Since Jonathan Swift.

[Cody Sanchez]

Maybe every time that I really want to understand the world, I go to the great philosophers of our age.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep.

[Cody Sanchez]

South park, as one does.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Matt Stone, Trey Park.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. They're incredible. And so there's this episode where dad standing kind of angrily in front of the two kids in the kitchen, and he looks at his stove, and the front of the stove is broken. And he's like, you know, kids, you know, this stove is broken. You guys don't know how to fix it. Cause kids don't understand how to fix anything anymore. And the kids are gonna stand, and they're like, okay. And so he's like, let me show you what I do. So he reaches in to p. His wrench. No, his cell phone. And he calls the handyman. Right?

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

And the handyman comes over to the house, and the handyman looks like a handyman does. And then they're missing a part, so he can't fix the stove. So the dad's about to look real dumb in front of the kids, right? Because the kids, hey, this was his dad moment. I can fix things. So he kind of starts mouthing off to the handyman, and the handyman's like, listen, Brad, or whatever his name is, I got so much work, I don't care. I don't need you anymore. And the dad looks foolish, and he opens the. The door to the house, and the handyman leaves. And as he leaves, he, like, shows his gold chain and his Escalade out front from all the work that he's doing a handyman in.

[Mike Rowe]

Right?

[Cody Sanchez]

And the idea was so funny to me because it is this idea of we used to look at this group of people and think, well, they don't make any money. If I just hand them an extra 50, I can boss them around and fix that stove. Now try calling home services and see if you can get somebody out to fix something. And then secondarily, like, there's a deeper, visceral, philosophical nature to this story, which is, we don't know how to fix things anymore. We've given up some personal sovereignty. We don't know how to garden. We don't know how to fix. We are not handy. And that bothers me. And so I think everything that you're doing is incredible because we got to get back to being able to do things.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you said it earlier. You know, if you reduce work to nothing but a paycheck, if you reduce it purely to its economic, transactional component, then there is no argument, really, against ubi. There's no virtue. You just Stripped it all out and then now you're getting closer to the matrix. Now we're batteries. We're just plugged in and we're just waiting and somebody or something else is going to get it all done. Look, I think it's really important that you're making a persuasive case for these non glamorous industries. Real quick, what others would you list? If people are listening with an entrepreneurial spirit who are willing to work and want to be around this, what are you partial to?

[Cody Sanchez]

Now we have a list of 130 boring businesses. I love to invest and build and buy. You can go to contrarian thinking and grab that. Let's talk about some top fives. I love anything home services. We are never going to not need to live somewhere as long as we have these bodies. So home services are great. I really like thinking about the trades overall. There's a moat around those businesses. So trades businesses to me are interesting. My robots and AI will take over that later.

[Mike Rowe]

You're talking about H vac, electric, foundation repair.

[Cody Sanchez]

Anything that requires a certification, like what you do at Mike Roeworks is a great business. Has more of a moat than a home services which is like window cleaning, painting, roofing, et cetera. I also think there's a real play in professional services even with where technology is going. So selling things like accounting to small businesses, we're still going to need personalization. I also think there is this independent individual business on a go forward basis. You called it freelancing, I think earlier. I think in the future you won't be a freelancer. You can actually use technology around you to create your own one person business. And I think that will be real.

[Mike Rowe]

I am most interested in that. I really am. I mean I've freelanced my whole life. And the war here in California on the gig economy is real.

[Cody Sanchez]

Isn't that bizarre?

[Mike Rowe]

AB5 is real. The pro act in Congress hopefully will be walked behind the barn and shot in the head soon, but we'll see. But there is such a visceral suspicion now. I mean it's. There's a cohort in the government that wants everybody to be an employee very much.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, and why? Because they're at the highest tax rating of any individual.

[Mike Rowe]

Your income is taxed. Right. You are probably, statistically speaking, renting.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

At this point.

[Cody Sanchez]

And you're easier to be controlled because 85% of businesses, small businesses in the US don't have one employee. So if you're a government, what do you want to do? If you want to control the most people, people, you centralize them in one location, aka 25% of the businesses. And then you can mandate whatever you want because it's much easier to control a few executives who have control over tens of thousands of employees than it is to go after 100% of Americans who have independent centers of gravity as a business.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

So top down control is not good. We've seen this story before. Wherever possible, we should try to have some form of decentralization, not centralized government.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. I think it's worth riffing for a minute on the difference between an entrepreneur, small business owner and a freelancer. Because as I understand it, or the way I think about it, is freelancers, they don't have a business. They have many, many, many businesses. Their business is going to where the next gig is and doing it. And I was never happier, really. I'm pretty happy now. But when I was truly freelancing, you know, partly because I didn't have any debt and I didn't own anything and it was a very much of a sort of a paladin kind of life back then for me. But I still think that's such a great experience for so many people to have, but they never have it because they just get straight into the employee world and then it just feels like the longer you're there, the harder it is to split.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, I think here's what the stats say. The stats on freelancers say they make less money and they have less security freelancing than they do in employment. So I'm of two minds. One, you get to choose. Why do we tell the government that I have to be an employee or an owner and I can't be a freelancer? That's ridiculous. That should be up to me. And then second to me is I think if you're gonna freelance, the move there should really be, where can I play long term games with long term people? Who cares what my tax structure is? The long term game could be, you know, yeah, I come and work for you, but I also do this other thing on the side and that's where I freelance. Or hey, I like to work with three people. And I have sort of a business that has three clients, but it's really just me freelancing for three people. What I think is wrong is the government mandating it. I guess I'm biased. Here's my bias, which is that I think short term games and transactional relationships don't make us as happy as long term games and non transactional relationships. And I think a Lot of times the reason we like freelancing is because we hate the people we're doing shit with or we don't like them enough to hang out with them for long.

[Mike Rowe]

Or it doesn't matter because you touch everything like it's hot and like them or don't like them, you're going to be on to the next thing before too long.

[Cody Sanchez]

That's right. That's how a lot of like production crew works, right? Absolutely. And so they're like, ah, you know, yeah, they're the worst. But I'm only here for another three weeks, so we're going to do it.

[Mike Rowe]

That's right.

[Cody Sanchez]

And I think instead there probably is a place for you where you could be super highly valued and you could have some ownership, even some equity in the company maybe eventually. And so I guess my pushback to those people is like, man, I think you might be worth more than you're giving yourself credit for and there might be people out there looking just for you and then you can stay with them forever long you want. But don't play short term games because I think that always ends badly.

[Mike Rowe]

I just constantly come back to my disclaimer, you know, summer doesn't go straight to winter. Right. There's, there's fall and there's spring and I don't know where you. Not you, Cody Sanchez, but who is ever listening. I don't know where you are right now in your evolution of stuff. There are people listening right now who I believe absolutely probably should be employees. There are people who should absolutely get in the middle of the lake and roll the dice, because why not, if you feel called to do it? There are people who should. So many people should be freelancing who aren't. I just can't tell them apart, you know, But I think where we ought to land the plane here, I mean, since your website made it clear, you know, you're, you're really about ownership. Do you know ownership works? Have you heard of this before? Kkr, of all people.

[Cody Sanchez]

Wow. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I met a guy over there called Pete Stavros and he, like you, believes very strongly in these home services companies. But he's looking at these entrepreneurs who've owned it for, you know, a generation or two. And there's no financial event for them. They can't get out of it. So they basically encourage some of the rollups that I've heard so many unflattering things about. Okay. But they do this other thing, which is they'll take an ESOP plan.

[Cody Sanchez]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

And they'll run it all the way down to the front line. So this company, now I work with Groundworks, who actually sponsors this podcast from time to time. I was at their meeting two years ago in Virginia beach when they made 5,400 men, most of whom had high school. Some more, but right. They made them owners of the company. And Cody, you stand backstage and you look out and you see those people with their families weeping and feeling like really having the kind of skin in the game you're talking about for the first time. So I guess I'd just like your thoughts on, you know, when you look at unions and when you look at these roll ups and when you look at private equity and you look at ownership in general, it just feels like there might be more than one way to skin the cat.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh yeah. At the end of the day, what I want is, I don't care how you do it, but I want you to have somewhere where you say, I do have skin in the game. Me being here, I'm so valuable to this place in some way, shape or form that they have decided to give me a part of it even when I am no longer working there anymore. And I think if more of us have some little aspect of that because we are so valuable, then we will care more because we are incentive aligned. And I think the world is all about incentives. And so to me, I think you should chase your first couple hundred K that you make relentlessly. They say life gets easier up until then. And I think you should chase this idea that everybody who's willing to do hard, sweaty work could eventually be an owner. And if you do that, I think that life might be a little bit easier.

[Mike Rowe]

You're a complicated cat, man. I mean, really, my husband's here.

[Cody Sanchez]

You can tell him that too.

[Mike Rowe]

You're a capitalist with some very, very populist ideas. You've obviously assumed a great deal of risk, but you're risk adverse by definition. You've made an awful lot of money and now you've got this site and this mission and you're gonna make a million people owners of something or another. How far along are you? Do we know yet?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, well, we've had people buy about $350 million worth of businesses. Those are about 270 people who have done that over the past two years. Since we started tracking. We've had about 2,000 people that have gone through our course and said that they have increased their earnings by more than 10%. Now that's self reported. So I don't know. Could Be good, bad, or otherwise. But we're further along than I thought. Every single one of those people that buys a business, those businesses, on average have. Have five to seven employees in them. And so how we end every one of our meetings is don't be the boss that you hated, because I think that's where most entrepreneurs start is with the boss you didn't like. And so I think our mission is moving, but we got a long way to go. So one day, I hope. I saw Dave the other day, had a cruise with like 3,000 people who he helped get debt free with. And he has this wall, and we're building a wall right now, too, with the face of every single person that we've helped buy a business, and then every single person who says they are their version of financially free. And so I don't think that's $10 million. I think it's whatever that is for you. And so I hope we're able to do it. And one day you can come down to Austin and you can see the big headquarters and there'll be a bunch of people who changed their lives. And that's cool to me.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, let's make it a date. I will absolutely do that. I want to hit Rogan again sometime this year. I'm working on some things in Texas with Microworks that, God help me, I think could actually work. Texas, in so many ways, can lead the charge on all this. All the stuff we're talking about.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Come down. Can we get you to transplant from California? Better tax code.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, look, honestly, can you do anything about the weather?

[Cody Sanchez]

No. Also, no. No ocean in the places we live.

[Mike Rowe]

So, like, I'll figure it out. But I love what you're doing, and I really appreciate you coming out here making the time for this. Tell me, where should people go to just get it? An absolute dose of Cody Sanchez right in the pick line.

[Cody Sanchez]

Cody Sanchez on all socials. We're really big into Instagram and YouTube right now, so I would go to those two and then our newsletter, contrarianthinking co. Tons of free newsletters. Two every week for you to figure out how to buy a business or just make more money. You get your choice.

[Mike Rowe]

I love it. All right, I owe you one. If you still got the podcast cranking when I'm in there and you're hard up for guests, just say. Just say so.

[Cody Sanchez]

I'd love to have you on.

[Mike Rowe]

I would love to drag your listeners through the sewer.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, good.

[Mike Rowe]

It would be fun.

[Cody Sanchez]

I do know the smell. I've Been down there.

[Mike Rowe]

Now, you know. You said that's where we were going to land the plane. With smells. Do you know all smells are particulate?

[Cody Sanchez]

I know. Which means that. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

The worst.

[Cody Sanchez]

Not okay to know.

[Mike Rowe]

You think it through. It's like, oh, like I'm smelling something unpleasant. No, not really. What's happening is that particle is getting in your blood, and now it's in your brain.

[Cody Sanchez]

It's not okay.

[Mike Rowe]

Chuck farts two minutes later.

[Cody Sanchez]

I beg your pardon?

[Mike Rowe]

He's in your brain.

[Cody Sanchez]

I mean, you've been in way worse places than I have, but, man, I don't know if there's a worse place than one of the businesses that we did a video on than a highly used porta Potty on a hot construction site. That's easy for you.

[Mike Rowe]

No, it's not easy. It's a little more nuanced. I thought sewers, septic tanks, porta potties. I mean, how could it get worse? A grease trap.

[Cody Sanchez]

That is actually true.

[Mike Rowe]

A deep grease trap has components of all the cholesterol, all the. And there's just something that's. You can. You still know you're sitting in food or something. Food, like. And it just makes the. Again, it's the particulate gets on your teeth. But you know what I mean. Dirty Jobs was built around going to places like that, not just with people who did the work, but who laughed while they were doing it, who were in on the joke. They're only the best people on the planet.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Shep Boys is the Porta Potty company, and he's the man. Former NFL player.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

Badass. And when we went to his company, his line is, I would be like, oh, my God. Because you break the seal to, like, get the hose down there to shop it out. And so when I first did that, so. And he's like, don't vomit in there, because then we have to clean it. So that was a reasonable response. And it hit. I smelled it, and he just leaned in real close to me, and he goes, smells like gold, don't it, baby?

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, final thought. If you're not convinced that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the great satirist of our age, there's footage out there you can find of. Of Trey being interviewed on a pig farm. And as he's answering questions, he's feeding the swine bacon. It's like, visually, it's really all you need to know.

[Cody Sanchez]

You know, who's not sponsoring your podcast? PETA.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. But I think I got a shot with South Park.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. I think you do too.

[Mike Rowe]

Trey, you're awesome. Thanks.

[Cody Sanchez]

Thanks, Mike. This is amazing.

[Mike Rowe]

When you leave a review, only five stars will do. Not just one or just two, or just three. We were hoping four more. As in one more than a four. Oh please. One more than four. Just a quick review with five stars too. From you. Five stars will do.

[Cody Sanchez]

Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret.

[Mike Rowe]

It doesn't have to be.

[Cody Sanchez]

Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host.

[Mike Rowe]

You seek it out and download it.

[Cody Sanchez]

You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad.

[Mike Rowe]

Did I get your attention?

[Cody Sanchez]

You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads ads, go to libsynads. Com. That's L, I B S Y N Ads. Com. Today.