← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Loading summary
Transcript147 lines
- [00:00]
Grainger Announcer
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off and Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off and Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need, all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:01]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. If you've been coasting on your intellect, thinking that genius alone is going to get you to the top, today's episode is going to hit you right in the face. Success isn't just about raw talent or innate genius. It's about harnessing the power of being relentlessly curious. Today's guest is not just another talking head. She is a powerhouse whose mastered the art of turning financial woes into defining moments of growth and opportunity. Cody Sanchez is a living testament to how curiosity can lead to not just financial wealth, but a richer, more fulfilling life. We're talking about radically transforming how you make decisions, own your outcomes, and harness the power of contrarian thinking to find joy in life's most difficult challenges. If you're tired of playing small and ready to take control of your life's narrative, gear up. This episode is going to revolutionize your approach to wealth, leadership and personal mastery. Now I bring you Cody Sanchez.
- [02:01]
Cody Sanchez
Here's the thing that everybody should do if they want to get rich but nobody wants to listen to, which is fascinating to me, is that amateurs do lots of things and pros do the few right things. And how is that possible? It's because pros teach other amateurs how to do all of those little things that they don't need to do. And so they have leverage, right? So pros don't have to be busy. Amateurs do have to be busy because they can't differentiate what is right and effective yet. So I think there's this portion of your life where you have to you have to do incredible amounts of hard work because you can't delineate what is good versus what is busy work. And every one of us just needs to realize that some point. And the only way you start to realize what is good versus busy work is through skill acquisition. One of the skills of which is what is effective versus what is just filler. And so you know, you don't even, you don't even have to pick up numerous skills. You can be like what Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett talk about, which is making 3 to 5 really high signal to noise bets over your entire career and sitting lazily on your asses for the rest of the time. I mean, what Munger talks about all the time, that in fact their strategy is only one thing, which is when they see big risk, they go in huge if they think that risk can be rewarded and they do not go in if they do not see a huge risk reward. So they just are professional no sayers. And that's because they learn to differentiate the difference between busy, busy work and good work. And I think that is where most people should strive. Can you strive to actually determine what actions to take that that will make movements or change? And it's really, really easy to say, but hard to do? I mean, think about it in your business. In my business, every single day there's a to do list so big I will never ever finish it. And I have to determine every single day what is the one thing that if I do, it becomes the fulcrum on which I get to place a lever that moves a giant boulder. And if I can't continuously get closer to that one thing, the business will fail. And I think that's how most of us are, is we have to be able to figure out what does a fulcrum look like, what does a lever look like, and what do just a bunch of pebbles look like that are going to do nothing for me. And that's actually quite hard.
- [04:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. Skill acquisition matters a lot. Getting that leverage matters a lot. We've painted a dark picture about where we're going, but I don't think either of us are afraid. Paranoid. Yes. Uh, because only the paranoid survive. But when I say I'm paranoid, what I mean is I'm trying to see the angles.
- [04:45]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [04:46]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm not taking that it's going to happen easily for granted.
- [04:50]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [04:50]
Tom Bilyeu
So I, my channel can be rightly accused of quote unquote doom and gloom, but I'll just blame all of you because that's all you click on in a headline. But the What I hold myself accountable to is every word out of my mouth is something I actually believe. So I believe all the things that I'm saying. I just don't have crippling fear. The only thing that, that maybe unnerves me, even though I'm a huge proponent of it, is AI. We'll get to that later. So, anyway, potentially quote unquote, dark period coming from a recession standpoint. I say dark because a lot of people who aren't paranoid, who either don't have the intellect or have not put the time in, or just don't have the right set of ideas, whatever, they're going to get blindsided. I love too many of those people. So it does appear as a dark time to me.
- [05:35]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [05:35]
Tom Bilyeu
However, you have a quote from Baron Rothchild that I think bears bringing up.
- [05:41]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own, maybe especially when it's your own. And he became a titan of industry, probably one of the richest men ever on an inflation adjusted basis. So I think he did okay. And you know, I was thinking, I, I pulled some, some data for us for this conversation today because here's the thing, if you haven't been, if you haven't been through a recession yet, you're going to survive this next one too. I mean, if you look historically, and we can show this graph too, we survived 90, 99, you know, 20, 20, 2008. Those were just the recessions during my working years. And if you look at what happened after all of those recessionary periods, not all of them bounced back in a V shaped recovery, but all of them have bounced back. And so the best predictor of the future is the past. It's not perfect, but it's likely that we will continue to survive as country and as individuals, just like we have historically. And so I think even though it's scary out there, realizing a sale is coming can also be really, really powerful.
- [06:43]
Tom Bilyeu
What do you mean sale?
- [06:45]
Cody Sanchez
When the market goes down, everything becomes cheaper. You've already seen that Austin's one of the worst hit real estate cities in the country. So if you're looking to buy real estate in a market that has Tesla moving to it, that has Dell, that has a bunch of Google headquarters moving to it, a bunch of Facebook employees moving to it, a bunch of AI it's like one of the defense AI centers of the. But it's, you know, the average house in Austin's down somewhere between 20 to 30%. And so what does that mean? Well, interest rates are coming down and houses are 20 to 30% cheaper. And so you can buy a house for less money at less interest rates than you could a year ago, and probably your pay hasn't gone down by 20 to 30%. And so in this market, you're going to have a bunch of opportunities to buy things at sale. And most people get their money. I sort of think about it like the unprepared transfer their money to the prepared during downturns. And so if you do not listen to channels that are doom and gloom about what might come, then when it comes, one, you won't recognize it, two, you won't act on it, and three, you will actually lose from it because somebody else will take advantage of your panic. And so one of my biggest missions is just getting people to see the pattern. Because once you see, oh look, this happened in 2008, it happened in 2020, it happened in 99, it happened in 90. And by the way, there's signals right now that show the same thing, well then you might be prepared for what's coming. And it might not scare you when you see that, you know, auto loans are at the highest level since the last recession, auto loan defaults, that you might not see that credit card delinquencies are at all time highs. And that might not scare you. You might instead go, okay, well something's coming on sale. So how can I make sure I have enough cash to do something with? How can I circle up a couple friends so we could make a investment in property during this period? Because the other thing that's interesting, those big scary people we talk about all the time, blackrock, Blackstone, all the big companies, they get a credit crunch too. You know, they, they cannot get as much access to capital as they can during normal markets. So that's another one. There's very few times where the poor get to steal from the rich and one of them is in a downturn if the poor are actually thoughtful enough about preparing for it. And you can't do it in a big way, but you know, most of America will die broke, alone and fat. And so if that's the case, one smart house acquisition, one smart multi family acquisition is enough to set up a family for generations. And it's just continuing to take those small steps in a period where most people are acting emotionally.
- [09:20]
Tom Bilyeu
Walk us through. So you are, I've heard you speak to people before like this. This is the time you need to be ready, as you were just saying, but you also need to act. So what is your very Uni brrt strategy for not only getting through a recession, but really taking advantage of it.
- [09:41]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. So we have a strategy about how to buy businesses during a recession. And we talk about you buy a recession resistant business. So think a plumbing company, a landscaping company, a company that you work in. You could even buy part of it during a down period where maybe your boss needs a little bit of capital or your boss needs you to go out and bring in more clients for them. And you do that in a recession resistant sector. You raise prices because most small businesses are underpriced somewhere from 30 to 300%. And you add technology and this generation in particular, like if you are young and hungry, you are 10 to 20 to 100x more tech competent than the average small business owner. And so your ability to work alongside one or take over a small business and add technology that makes things cheaper, faster, better is probably quite high. I mean, in fact, I was with this cleaning company this week that we might invest into and all these guys did their, their window cleaning. They're a window cleaning company. They went from unemployed, laid off during COVID from pretty good jobs and no money, you know, trying to figure life out. Their first year in business in a window cleaning company, they did $200,000 in revenue. The next year they did $500,000 in revenue. This year they'll do somewhere between $700,000 in revenue. And these are two kids that are both sub 28 years old, one with a newborn baby on the way. And how did they do it? They added incredible social media marketing, so they do really funky videos. They added really incredible branding and merchandising because can you name one window cleaning company? Of course not. Nobody can. So how could you as a young person get on board with a business that's very simple but hasn't been sexed up by the Internet and hasn't been sexed up by adding technology? I think those are all around, it's just on the Internet. I think people look down on those types of businesses because we were told for so long, let's go become a doctor, a lawyer, let's go to school, let's go to college. What if you're actually happier with a little dirt under your fingernails in a company that you own, where you get to get out of your house occasionally away from a screen and get to know your neighbors in your community? Turns out you might be happier than working at McKinsey or Bain for 60 hours a week under somebody else's thumb. And that is something that not enough young People I think know yet it's really interesting.
- [12:06]
Tom Bilyeu
I think you've got your finger on something that is, that is going to be a cultural shift of massive proportions. I had a friend over last night shout out to Dean who was walking me through his new thesis. So he's, he's done everything in from helping finance films, creative producing to SPACs to traditional investing. I mean, just all, all over the place. And he was like, hey, I've got a new thesis. And he was like, we're going through this really interesting transitional time. You're going to have a ton of baby boomers retiring, but they're not going to have anyone to pass their business on to. You've got a lot of people frustrated. This is going to start to sound familiar here. Working traditional jobs, they don't want to be in investment banking. And so the new play is going to be skip college, buy a business. And I said, my friend, I have somebody you need to talk to. But I imagine a lot of people listening to this. If they're new to your world, that is going to sound ridiculous, especially in a time where we're going into a recession. So if they don't have access to money, they've never bought a business, never run a business. Why would this be a good idea? How do you, for a second just, you're here to persuade. You're here to help make that revolution actually come true. What do you tell people?
- [13:26]
Cody Sanchez
First I say, don't do it if you don't like pain, because owning a small business is painful.
- [13:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Owning any business is painful.
- [13:32]
Cody Sanchez
Owning any business is painful. And there will be nights that you will regret it. But here's the flip side. The second that somebody tells you you shouldn't do it, and yet they are an owner or they run their own business, you ask them, why didn't you go back to being an employee for somebody else? And they won't have a good answer. They'll say, well, I'm unemployable. Well, I had no other choice. And the best don't listen to what people say, listen to what people do. And what people do is when they get a taste of freedom, they either want to partner with other people on more deals and businesses, or they want to work for companies that they're obsessed with. They don't want to have to work for companies that they don't like doing things that they don't want to do for money anymore. And so I will say it's painful, but it is worth it. And that for most people running A small business is not rocket science, especially today. I think it's never been easier to start a small business than as evidenced by the amount of businesses that have been started somewhere between like 2 to 5x, the number of businesses that were created over the last three years as the past 10 years. And that's just determined by like LLC and entity creation. But it's never been harder to have a profitable business. So most small businesses, 90% of them, never even hit the $1 million mark. And so with that out there, I've always had this idea of, well, it's really hard to figure out product market fit in a small business, right? Like most businesses, somewhere between 30 to 40% of them die because they couldn't find product market fit. Just they had an idea and nobody wanted their idea, right? And so I'm kind of like that. I don't, I don't know that I have a crazy idea that somebody's going to want to buy. I never had that. And so instead I'm like, why don't I just buy a couple of these small businesses and I can partner with the founder of the small business? And I know that somebody already wants it because they have revenue and it's profitable and I could just help it grow. And so we see that again and again and again. But nobody taught us this in school because it's, there's risk, right? When you go and get a job at McKinsey or Bain, there's no risk of you losing money. You know, they're going to pay you a salary which is largely guaranteed unless you get fired. And yet when you go and buy a small business, you could lose money and you could not make money and you could owe money from debt. And so I think people are so scared of that, they're, they're terrified of failing. And my point is, like, the US Actually has an incredible system called bankruptcy, which a lot of countries don't have. This is an ability for you to wipe the slate if a business doesn't work out for you. Well, what's the best time to wipe the slate when you really don't have anything anyway? So when you're young and you don't have a lot going on, I don't know why you wouldn't take a huge risk and try to buy into a business, try to earn into a business, because you're, because you're a general contractor and you work in a construction business and you can't progress any further in the construction business. So you go to a competitor that you realize is 65 years old plus. And you say to him, hey, what are you doing with your business? Are you going to sell it at some point? Are you going to run it forever? You're going to give it to your son? No, you're not. Well, maybe somebody like me could buy into part of your business and I could earn into it using the profits and pay you out over time. Like, would you ever consider something like that? And it turns out small business owners don't have other options if they're under $10 million in revenue, for the most part. So there's a lot of these small businesses that will just close as opposed to get transferred. And I think, I think you know by now we've taught, I don't know, five, six thousand people how to buy businesses across our courses and in our mastermind. And they bought something like $262 million in revenue.
- [17:05]
Tom Bilyeu
Wow.
- [17:06]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. And these are people who are like former teachers, engineers, um, they're doing seller financing, they're doing SBA loans. And what I've realized, I can almost tell immediately if somebody will be successful at it or not, like if they'll buy a business or not. And the way I can tell if they will be successful or not is do they complain about how much work it is? And if they say this is a lot of work, you know, I just kind of want the deal to fall in my lap. You're probably not going to be successful buying a business. The ones that say that they're willing to do the work, it's fascinating. I haven't seen one of them go sideways yet. We've seen three people's deals go sideways, and all of those were because they didn't want to keep working on the business. And so I think, I think hard work is really an underrated. An underrated thing in a society that wants nobody to work and everybody to take.
- [17:57]
Grainger Announcer
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [18:28]
Cody Sanchez
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple Suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [18:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you have a mental model for why that is?
- [19:00]
Cody Sanchez
Why everybody wants that these days.
- [19:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Not necessarily why they want it though. Maybe that's part of the answer. But why you're. I think you're rounding hard work to something. Yeah, I don't think you literally just mean work hard, but since we've already gone into detail on that, so whatever that thing is that you're rounding it to, do you have a mental model for why that's so important?
- [19:20]
Cody Sanchez
I see what you mean. Well, one of my favorite questions to ask when I interview people is when was the last time you worked all night on something by your choice and what was it?
- [19:30]
Tom Bilyeu
What did you do literally for me, like.
- [19:32]
Cody Sanchez
Well, yeah, for you. I know what it was.
- [19:34]
Tom Bilyeu
For you though, I bet the last time I worked through the night. It's a good question. I think that was for the comics. That was the last time because we had a deadline to pitch and so I had to hit that deadline.
- [19:46]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [19:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that was the last time. It's through the night.
- [19:49]
Cody Sanchez
And you know what would be a fun thing is there are many people I bet listening to this that would say, I have never worked through the night for something. I've never wanted something so bad that I was willing to sacrifice sleep for one night. Which like Brian Johnson is not going to like, you know, he wants us to sleep. Which I get it from a health perspective, but there is such a joy in working on something that is really hard but really fun. And you know, my husband is former military and a Navy seal and when I look at his relationships, I'm in awe of them. His friendships from that time, you know, they've become my best friends. They stay with us, we stay with them. We're great. You know, we're God godparents to his kids. We have this, this tight knit community that's almost impossible to break. If I needed to bury a body, they would just ask me the coordinates and they would be there. And, and the reason that he has that is because they went through something really hard together. And people wonder why they. I mean the youth, I read this quote the other day, the youth today, especially young women sub 30, say that not a single person really knows them. Not one single person. We have a crisis of, of Friendship and family in the US and faith, lowest levels of that across the board. And I was talking to Arthur Brooks the other day, who just wrote a book with Oprah, who's one of, I think, the great thinkers on happiness.
- [21:14]
Tom Bilyeu
Oprah or Arthur?
- [21:15]
Cody Sanchez
Arthur. And Arthur said, there's four things that determine happiness, and that is faith, family, friendships, meaningful friendships, and work that serves. And he's like, we've done decades of research on this at both Harvard and at aei, where he was previously. And he's like. And so it's no surprise that people are more unhappy than they've ever been because they feel more disconnected than they ever have, because they have no purpose in their life and nobody to share it with.
- [21:44]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, so that was a response to me asking, the thing you call hard work is the under appreciated thing. And we ended up talking about faith and family and friendship. That's really interesting. So I'm gonna see if I can tease apart the way that you think.
- [22:03]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [22:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. So part of this is you have a base assumption that working hard is in and of itself if tied to a thing that you love. Is the reward in and of itself.
- [22:17]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [22:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Is it love first, hard work second, or is hard work, in your mind, an inescapable need?
- [22:25]
Cody Sanchez
That's a good question. I know this. That everyone has had a moment where they're so miserable working on the thing that they're working on that they almost can't stand it any longer. They just want to quit. They do quit. They make irrational decisions because their. Their misery gauge at work is so high. And I've felt that before. And if I go back and about, why did that hard work not make me happy? What. What was the root cause of that? I think it is at the moment in which you feel like you have nothing else that you're learning. So I coordinate hard work with learning. I'm usually learning something if I'm working hard at something, I coordinate that with working on something that matters. So if I. If I've lost my why for why I'm working. And then lastly, if I'm working with people that I don't aspire to be or don't want to be around. So it's sort of this, like, people purpose and this learning component that if I have those three things, the hard work is really fun. But if I don't have those three things, then perhaps the hard work feels futile, unnecessary, and more like labor than work.
- [23:38]
Tom Bilyeu
I'll be curious to hear if this resonates with you. There's a Spiritual component to your mission to get people to consider buying small businesses. That now I'm. I've always known that was true, but I didn't know why it was true. Now, teasing that stuff out. So some of this is a, an aspect of a life well lived for you.
- [24:00]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. Like did you ever work in a cubicle?
- [24:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [24:03]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. Did you work in a Cuba when you didn't work for yourself?
- [24:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [24:07]
Cody Sanchez
Have you seen the Tucker Carlson response to oh gosh, postmodernist architecture?
- [24:16]
Tom Bilyeu
I've no. But I've seen the headlines. Now you make me wish that I had clicked.
- [24:19]
Cody Sanchez
Beautiful. I can send you the clip afterwards if people are curious. But. But basically he's in an interview with somebody, can't remember, and he says post modernist architecture is a. I'm going to simplify.
- [24:35]
Tom Bilyeu
Meant to suck your soul out.
- [24:36]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's basically like it's, it's. Yeah. Meant to demise humanity. You know, postmodernism is a direct affront to humanity. It wants to suck the human out of us. And how he ends it is he basically says, and no privacy at all. And then he says very intensely, it is because they do not value you. They do not value you as a human. You are a number, nothing else to them. And that is why potus, modernist and cubicles demoralize humans. Because they are showing you with their actions that you mean nothing. You mean nothing to them. And when I watched that, I thought, God as a creator of things, which is how I think about building and what we do here too. Everything that I put my name on is like a little piece of me, right? The things that I'm creating with my hands, there's a reason that I'm doing it. I only have so many seconds and minutes and hours in my life. In fact, we have very few of them. And so why would we put our workers in these instances that show that we don't care about them at all? That it's like copy, repeat, copy, repeat, copy, repeat. And I'm a capitalist, so I understand the idea of, of profits and losses and needing to be capital efficient. But I also really believe in humans and I believe in our ability to elevate one another. And that if I find Tom in his zone of genius, in a place that has power for, for Tom, I believe in the power of place, then I will have a Tom that outperforms on an incredible level. And I don't mean distractions, which is where I think Google and all of them got it wrong. Foosball and nap chairs and whatever we don't need to be children, that when we stop working, we have to go play around with something else in order to distract ourselves from our work. We don't need that. But we do need to see beauty around us because we're capable of it. And why wouldn't we? And so I think you're right. There is part of this that I think is almost spiritual. And the place where I found the most flow state. Just like athletes do when they. When they do their craft, I find the same thing when I'm caught in work that means something. And I think for people to say, you should have work, like balance, you should not work all the time, you know that that is. Is bad for your mental health. It's like, what the fuck do you know about what flow is? Is flow. Netflixing and drinking on Friday evenings? Because it doesn't have to be. But if it's. If that's for you, let it be, you know, and I'll do me.
- [27:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that's not flow. Flow, I will say, has a definition, but that won't be met by that anyway. Probably not. The important part of that, the spirituality. So I can feel you trying to make the world a better place, which I love. It is very much why I do what I do. As I said earlier, I think we are in a battle for ideas. Yeah, one of the ideas. So everything is downstream of ideas. So they grip us at the individual level, they grip people at the collective level. And so it really matters what we push and promote. You have a very unique stance on, hey, there's a thing that you're probably not thinking about that's not currently in the zeitgeist as the cool thing to buy. The boring business, the gateway business that will make you realize that these are being run by people no smarter than you to sort of co op the Steve Jobs quote. I think that's really important. And I think that marrying that back to your message is going to be really important so that people understand, hey, I'm trying to me, Cody Sanchez, I'm trying to reach out into your soul and help you find that path to the thing you secretly want, which I, Tom Billu, will round to fulfillment. I think that's what everybody wants. And so I have a mental framework for why hard work is so important. I think we have an evolutionary algorithm that runs in our mind that absolutely mandates that we work hard and that nature only has two levers, pleasure and pain. Nature, over God knows how many hundreds of thousands, millions of years, has been shaping us from amoeba to now saying surviving is going to be hard. And my job, as nature, is to keep you alive long enough to have kids that have kids. So there are going to be certain things that I'm going to incentivize. And if you get a tremendous dopamine rush or whatever, when you work really hard and make progress towards a goal, now all of a sudden you're going to want to do that. Because, man, if. Have you ever watched a TV show alone? No, I need to, like, start getting a kickback from Amazon, who I think hosts the show. I talk about this so much. That gives a real glimpse into what all of humanity was like until, like, a thousand years ago. I mean, it is hysterical how hard it is to stay alive to just, like, find enough calories to live. It's bananas. You don't have to go. I read so much history. You don't have to go much more than a hundred years back in time to hear where it was like, oh, we were just trying to get from here to Oregon, you know, and we were suddenly eating slugs. Oh, and then we ran out of those, and so we had to eat each other as we died. It's like, yo.
- [29:34]
Cody Sanchez
So we all play that game, didn't we?
- [29:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. Oregon Trail. So life is a level of hard that we don't understand. So evolution had to make doing hard things internally rewarding. So that we just have this algorithm that says, oh, you worked really hard. Well done. Good on you. And if you aren't working hard, it's going to feel wrong. That's part one. Part two is entropy. And if I could come up with a simpler word, but that. That really is the right word, meaning that all things are fighting against you. If you want to jump, high gravity yanks you back down. If you want to start a business, other people are going to start a similar business. If you're doing well, people are going to copy you. One of my favorite stories from our time at Quest. So when we launched Quest, we looked ridiculous compared to all the other companies in the health and nutrition space. They all looked what we call veins and chains. So it was all aimed at bodybuilders. Nobody was using food porn. It was just all tough guys, big muscles, veins bulging, literally. Chains draped around their neck, red and black. I mean, taking a page out of Hitler's playbook, which, if you've never read Minecamp, I'm really doubling up on my learning from the psychopaths day here. But he just lays out like, oh, this has a certain psychological reaction. So we're like, we're going to be everything that that's not. We're going to be blue because it peaks creativity. We're going to be food, porn. We want to feel like welcoming and inviting. And we did so well. Three years later, I walked to somebody else's booth at a trade show because I thought it was ours. And I was like, these motherfuckers, like, they've literally just copied everything that we're doing.
- [31:11]
Cody Sanchez
Yep.
- [31:12]
Tom Bilyeu
So anyway, you get everything is fighting against you. And if you don't get real pleasure out of working hard, you just won't ever be able to overcome entropy. It, it will. There are just so many things fighting against you. And so to, to be able to run a business is really what you've said, hard work and what I call the physics of progress, which is just, it's iteration. You, you, it, it's very important that you do the steps. But if you can work hard and run the physics of progress, you really can pull this off. But I think people need to contextualize. Oh, this is a spiritual journey. I'm doing this as somebody who's pursuing fulfillment. I'm doing this as somebody who looks out at this particular moment, which I certainly do. I think you share. And we're at a tipping point for the wrong ideas taking a hold of people. And so we're talking about business, recession, et cetera, et cetera. But this is really about what ideas should win. And hard work, recognizing you can buy a business if you so choose. If autonomy is a major driver for you, it could be a real path out. But I, I think if people fail, if people just hear the Cha Ching of the cash register and they don't understand that you're speaking to their soul as much as you're speaking to their pocketbook, they'll get lost.
- [32:38]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the best books of all time for that is Atlas Shrugged, which has had some political connotation, which I don't know why, because it really is about this idea of the joy and finding the thing that you are uniquely built to create on this planet. And you know, there's one quote I love from it that's to summarize, it's basically like what a tragedy to let your spark go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the shadows of the could be's, the what ifs, the maybes. And that always stuck with me of this idea of. And at the end of the day, I hope I show up at the pearly gates rung Dry saying to God I had not one drop left. Which was a paraphrase from an Emma, Emma Bombeck quote that I is one of the quotes I go back to a lot, which is like, what else is in there? Like, having this curiosity for yourself about what else are you capable of doing is so powerful. You know, every time I was just at lunch with, with one of my team members and my husband and we were talking about what was the hardest thing you've ever done. Like the hardest thing you've ever done. Think about like one instance and you know, we talked first physically. And so I remember one of mine, it was like hiking a mountain. I was super miserable. It was blizzarding. It was a very high mountain, There were crevasses, you know, whatever. And it turns out I don't like hiking, I don't like the cold and I don't like heights. Right. And so it was just like, it was miserable. You had to poop in a bag. You know, it was just like not fun multiple days.
- [34:03]
Tom Bilyeu
You lost me at pooping.
- [34:06]
Cody Sanchez
But I'm glad I did it because I need to have more of those hard moments to realize how lucky we have it in life. And I do think we're kind of as humans, we're. We kind of forget how lucky we have it. We have such short term memory to history, which we do not study enough and even to our own history remembering what we've been through before and thus are probably capable of doing in the future, you know. But I remember we have a company called Main Street Holding Company where we own all of our small businesses and that's where we buy other people's businesses or invest in other people's businesses. And you know, I remember almost every single one of those businesses at some point having a moment where I thought we were going to lose everything. You know, I remember one company approachment where, you know, we got all of our money stolen from, from a guy that we thought we were best buds with, you know, and then was like kind of public about it and how much that hurt. You know, I remember when we had our first car wash deals go through and we thought we were going to sell for a huge amount of money and then the whole thing fell through. And then, you know, we almost didn't have the, we didn't have the grit to like keep going. We were so close to the finish line. It's like seeing the marathon right in front of you end and then all of a sudden they're like just getting 10 more miles, you know, and we Weren't ready for that. And so I remember all of those hard moments and I think those build you up and enable you to kind of keep going. And you build up these calluses, right? It's just like weights at the gym at some point, like you don't feel them as much. And anytime I feel it too much, I go to a book from a grade. Like we were talking before. I'm reading Ted Turner's book, Call Me Ted right now. And it's incredible because he goes through like the things that bother, you know, he goes through his difficulty like it's Tuesday. Then I was like, well then we lost a hundred million dollars on the games over there. And that he literally says it like that moves to the next line. And I like rewound it a couple times. And I said to myself, I want to be so big and have created so much wealth and prosperity that I can say we lost a hundred million dollars off that. You know, think about that. But there's a guy out there who that is the way that he thinks. And then for all those people who are like crunchy granola, hate making money, you know, think the world's gonna end all about climate change, what did he do with his billions? He owns now the biggest bison preserve in the world and has single handedly brought back almost the level of bisons in his area, which I think is, is Wyoming. So guess what? Money can do a lot of good too.
- [36:32]
Tom Bilyeu
No doubt. What is the single hardest thing you've done?
- [36:42]
Cody Sanchez
The single hardest thing I ever did was get divorced when I went through that previously. So that was emotionally the hardest thing I've ever done. You know, you make a promise to somebody, you say you're going to be together for life and then you break that promise. And I, I tend to try to keep my promises. And so that was really hard for me.
- [36:59]
Tom Bilyeu
And did you initiate?
- [37:01]
Cody Sanchez
I did, yeah. And realizing that, you know, when you're young and your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed and you listen to what everybody else says your life should be, as opposed to having your own internal guiding frameworks, creed, vision for life, then it's very easy for somebody else to supersede theirs on top of you. And I think that's what I allowed to happen to me. I superseded my family's on top of me, my mom's, you know, his. And I tried to be a painting that somebody else painted as opposed to my own. And I think that happens to a lot of young people because we don't spend that much time Asking ourselves like, who do we want to be? What do we stand for? What does our name mean and what do we actually want to work towards? And we would, we would be. Time would be better spent in universities if we spent more time on that as opposed to amoebas and Pythagorean theorems.
- [37:52]
Tom Bilyeu
How do you come to know thyself?
- [37:55]
Cody Sanchez
I honestly, I don't know another way besides doing things so hard that it feels uncomfortable constantly. And then deciding if you want to keep doing those things or not. You. I've only ever learned about myself through negation. I don't like this because I tried it and that wasn't great. I don't like this because I tried it and that wasn't great. I'm not smart enough to go, I like that and I want to go after that I kind of have to trial the things and realize I don't like them. And then I sort of ping pong my way to finally something that I think is me. And so I think that's a lot of us too. And it's okay to have varied career paths. It's okay to make a lot of mistakes. You just try to not make ones that are lifetime early. And so, you know, I'm a big proponent of marriage. Being married is the best thing that ever happened to me this go round. And the strongest partner I have by far has ever been Chris in any sense of the word. But I probably wouldn't have made that decision that early without fully knowing myself through, having gone through a lot of hard things and realizing what I was willing or not willing to continue.
- [38:56]
Tom Bilyeu
You've got to get your calendar right. Like if you don't maintain, if your calendar doesn't reflect your actual priorities, you're in real trouble. So I keep a list that I call important things. And the important things are what is the most important thing that I could be working on right now? And I will just tell any, any stage entrepreneur, but certainly beginning stage entrepreneurs, you're going to have trouble prioritizing. And the reason you're gonna have trouble prioritizing is because you think you're dumb. But in reality the problem is no one's good at prioritizing until they've done it a lot. And then you begin to get a sense of, okay, this is the, to quote Tim Ferriss, this is the lead domino. If I do this thing, it'll make everything that comes after it easier. So you'll start to identify those things and you're gonna do those until you can't do them anymore, either from fatigue or there's just nothing more to do. And now you're waiting for somebody to come back to you, whatever. Then you move on to the second thing. But I find everybody gets paralyzed by I don't know what to put in first place. And so now you have seven things in first place. And so I, and I constantly fight with my team about this. You stop being weak. Like, what's number one? Like, you're allowing yourself to be emotionally paralyzed because you're like, oh, it's all important. Yes. But you can only execute on one thing at a time. So what's that one thing? And so I'm just ruthless about that. That.
- [40:09]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [40:09]
Tom Bilyeu
So the beginning of my day, so I'm up usually at 4, 4:30 in the morning. I don't let anybody on my schedule until 9:00am, 9:30, if I can push it. And then I don't let anybody on my schedule after 1pm I like that. So there's a narrow window where I've already gotten four to five hours worth of work in the beginning. So I'm doing my most important, all execution. Then I take meetings, I make sure everybody's moving and they have whatever questions they need answered. And then I'm in it. I'm in product and I'm in marketing. Those are the two things I'm just like, obsessively focused about. And so I'm available. I'm with the team. Which, by the way, going to guess because of how many businesses you own, you don't operate like this. During COVID I was like, word, go wherever you want. You can move away. No big deal. Now I'm like, you better get in the office. Like, we are back in a big way. It is so inefficient to not have people here.
- [40:58]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, well, we, we just bought an office in Austin for the same reason. I've especially found, you know, I have an incredible team because they'll tell me, they'll be really honest about it. Like, one of the guys on my team who runs part of the creative thing, he's like, yeah, I'm just. I just don't work as hard when I'm not in the office. I'm like, I can't believe you just said that to my face. But also, thank you.
- [41:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Right.
- [41:17]
Cody Sanchez
And, and, and I think it's true because most all of us have willpower issues, and all of us can benefit from a little eye over the shoulder. And the reason why I think we can really benefit is because I remember when I was at Goldman Sachs, and they were watching us like crazy. I was never on social media. I was never dicking off, because I wanted to get out of that office. I knew I was going to have to do long hours, and I wanted to get out of there when I was done. I never understood the Silicon Valley foos, make them stay here all the time thing. I'm like, come here. Give it intense. Maybe do a workout break or a walk in between. Come back to intense, and then go live your life, you know? And if you're like me, you're going to work way more than that. But, like, be here when you're going to be here. Like, think about work. Like meditation. You should be so singularly focused that all distraction sort of fades away. And if you do that, then you actually have to. You have to work less because you're so much more effective. But I remember early on in my career, you know, it's why I couldn't stay at Vanguard, actually, because I was sitting at a desk and I was trying. I was like, you know those ducks where underneath the surface, they're paddling like crazy, but on top they're smooth? That was me. I was drowning. I didn't know anything about finance. I'd come from journalism. I. Everybody was smarter than me. Everybody went to Harvard and Stanford, et cetera. I went to Arizona State, Harvard of the west, as you said. And. And I remember one of the. My teammates came up and was trying to talk to me about lunch planning and stuff, and I was like, cece, I. I'm focused. I don't have time to talk about any of this. I'm. I'm here, man. We could talk, like, after work, but, like, I'm here right now. And that happened, like, a few times. And I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I just couldn't be distracted, because then I lost my focus entirely. And I probably have a little ADHD, and so it would derail me for, like, 30, 40 minutes. And I remember that happened. And then my boss at one point was like, your team thinks that you would leave dead bodies behind you. And I was like, huh? Really? Why? They're like, well, you don't pay attention when they come up to your desk. You don't do party planning. I was like, guy, I am here to do a job, and I am going to. I would never, like, run over somebody to do the job, but I will be singularly focused to get it done. And so that is, I think, what it takes.
- [43:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Are you backed off that or are you. Because now, as a CEO, I have to imagine, yeah, you gotta make people feel a little more warm and fuzzy. Or have you found a way to
- [43:38]
Cody Sanchez
be like, yo, I have good people who are more warm and fuzzy than I am. So I found in life, like, you are who you are, kind of. And every time I try to become somebody that I'm not, first of all, it comes off as inauthentic. And second of all, it doesn't really work. So if I come in and I'm too warm and fuzzy, nobody's gonna buy it. I am fun. I think. Like, I'm aggressive, but I'm fun. So I'll make jokes. And I do something every Monday called, and basically it's just a little PowerPoint 10 minutes that I give to the whole team. And in it are a few things, like our culture code. Every single week, I go through what the 13 values are. I pick, like, one one person who wins, like, something for one of our values. And in that, there'll be some funky, fun stuff for each of them. And so I will, like, I will cheerlead the shit out of the company during that period. But when somebody needs a hug, they know not to come to me about it for sure. Now, I think the counterpoint to that is I've always taken care of my people. Like, as long as you are good to your teammates and to the company, like, I will have your back. Like, if you need a new job and this isn't the place for you, I will help you find a new job. I won't fire you. Like, I will handhold you. You know, if you have a health issue, I'm going to take care of you. But, like, I don't think you have to be warm and fuzzy. I also hire, like, a lot of. We're. We're really honest about who we are in interviews, which I think is really, really. And if, if you. You know, I was a terrible employee at Vanguard because they're super touchy feely, you know, kind of socialists. And I liked Goldman. I liked capitalist kind of jerks, but they were really smart. And so I liked that. I wanted the pressure. And so now when people come in interview with us, I'm like, hey, like, talk to me about, like, your favorite moment of pressure. Talk to me about when you did the thing that felt unreasonable to get the goal. And I tell them up front. Our interviews start with all the. About the company and why I'm awful to work for. And if they still like it after that, then they might be a win. But otherwise, at least they know, you
- [45:38]
Tom Bilyeu
know, we have a very similar thing. So it's our culture doc. You can't come into interview unless you've read it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the funny thing is, I've had multiple people say, hey, we've lost a lot of candidates when they read the culture doc. And I'm like, that's the point. Because I want them to know who we are. And if you're not about that life, then this is not the place for you. I. I am trying to win a championship, nothing short. I'm not trying to be an also ran. I'm not trying to play and get a participation trophy. I'm flat out, I'm trying to beat Disney.
- [46:11]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [46:11]
Tom Bilyeu
And that, that is a big task. And the odds of success are very low. And so I want to have fun, but I also want to be surrounded by hardcore that are here to win. And the document says exactly that. And yeah, it is very aggressive. And so, yeah, we have weeded people out. But what I always say to the people, saying, like, hey, are we sure? Like, this thing is really aggressive. I'm like, it found you.
- [46:34]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [46:34]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm like, what's your favorite thing about this company? The people. Exactly. Like, we are a very specific flavor.
- [46:41]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, yeah.
- [46:41]
Tom Bilyeu
And if you like our flavor, I like to think we're like black licorice, which I love. Now, I know for some people that is the most disgusting thing in the universe. And so I'm like, but we're that kind of specific for the right person. Like, we will be the favorite place you've ever worked. And for the wrong person, we will be trash. So for any of my entrepreneurs out there, let me tell you, right now, culture is one of the most important things. Product, market, fit, more important, make more money than you spend, more important. But then, like, culture is going to be a huge deal for retention for employees enjoying what they do for you, getting things done in a way that you're proud of. Like. Like, as I always say to people, hey, Lisa and I ran the experiment of what it looks like when you don't have the right culture. And it's ass.
- [47:27]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [47:28]
Tom Bilyeu
And we hated it as much as anybody else. And not liking being at your own company, that's really lame.
- [47:34]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, that's awesome.
- [47:35]
Tom Bilyeu
And so when we founded Impact Theory, we're like, never again. Like, culture is going to be a main thing that we hire against, that we hold people accountable to. We have something. Do you know Ray Dalio?
- [47:46]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, yeah.
- [47:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, God, I love this guy. So for people that don't know. He built the largest hedge fund in the world. World. Amazing. And he has this thing in this culture that he calls dots. So everybody can give everybody else, like a score on whatever, 30 different criteria. And so we have a bunch of those criteria that are part of our culture, Doc. Like, are people being hardcore, etc. Etc. So we can all rank each other.
- [48:08]
Cody Sanchez
I love that. You know what I find fascinating is the stuff when I was poor or not where I wanted, that I ignored is the stuff that. That makes you millions and then tens of millions of dollars. Like culture, like leadership. I used to think, what? Like, I'm just here, I get a job done, I want to get rich, I want to do the thing. This is how it goes. And so, you know, I think it's really interesting. Whenever I'm with builders who have built a lot, they all want to talk about the same stuff. It's like, how do you get more humans to want to do the things you want them to do? Culture, leadership. And if people want to have real success and you want to do it in a way where you're not killing yourself all day, those two words are like two of the most important words in the English language. What's funny is I'm sure if we did a YouTube video and the title was how to build a 100 million dollar culture, people would be like, snooze. But if you're like, how to Make a Million Dollars with the vending machines in 30 days and millions of views. But guess what? The one on the left, the. The first one. 100 million dollar culture is so much more valuable than the vending machine video. And so if you can push through what you. To listen to, which is literally the candy, the vending machine, the sweets, and you can actually want to eat the broccoli. Oh, my gosh. That's where all the magic is. It's actually funny because I was sitting with this the other day. I went to team three of the Navy Seals, 40th anniversary of being in existence. Right. It's cool. So this was the. The team that my husband was at, and we go onto the new base. It's incredible. Like, we take a tour through, you know, these halls where, like, our friends, their gear when they were, you know, killed in action is sitting there, and my husband, a flag with his name written on it that was, like, taken away from ISIS and showed our. Yeah, it was just incredible. Right?
- [49:59]
Tom Bilyeu
That's heavy.
- [50:00]
Cody Sanchez
It was. It was really cool. It was cool to see the steps that land from from people that you've known before. But what stuck with me from a business perspective is we're sitting, we're looking out at the ocean, it's beautiful. And we're sitting listening to five people speak. Admiral McRaven, who's probably one of the most, you know, well respected living team guys. It's Johnny Kim. Anyway, both a Navy SEAL and an astronaut and a doctor.
- [50:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus.
- [50:30]
Cody Sanchez
I mean, total underperformer. Yeah.
- [50:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Not doing anything in his life.
- [50:33]
Cody Sanchez
Exactly.
- [50:34]
Tom Bilyeu
Some people.
- [50:35]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. And the current head of, of Team 3. See, what was fascinating is you had Admiral McRaven, he gave this incredible speech, right? Like best selling author, one of the most senior guys in the military. You had the head of the team, you had overachiever, Johnny Kim, astronaut, doctor, etc, but then at the very end you had what's called the CEO, I think, excuse me, if anybody in the military is listening, I'm probably this up. But he's like the head enlisted guy. So there's officers and then there's the enlisted guys and they work hand in hand. But the chief enlisted guy is a badass. So I won't say his name because I don't know what's public or not. But anyway, he, at the very end of this like couple hour long segment, it's emotional. They're, you know, mentoring some of the people that have died. I was looking at it from a team perspective and from an inspiration perspective and all of these speeches were like relatively formal. They were good. But at the very end he comes up and he has 12, seven or 12 team guys in full kits. So like machine gun or AR or something, all decked out with their gear, helmets on and they go and they line up on the other side. And so it's like very jarring, right? You see them walk across the. And, and what they are is they each represent members of the team that were killed in action over the years. And what was incredible is he closed out the ceremony and they would yell out the name of, of the person who was killed. So it'd be like, you know, Brandon Looney. And then everybody would yell hoorah, right? They yell really loud and then they'd shoot off the machine gun. And so by the end of it, everybody's crying, everybody's yelling. And that guy had set the tone. He wasn't the leader, he wasn't the highest member of the team. But if there was one speech and one person you remembered and one person who everybody there, 600 people would say is like epitome of what they wanted Team three to be, it was that guy. And, and I think about that a lot because people sometimes think you got to be the CEO, you got to be McRaven, you got to be the head of the team. But, like, this guy was what they call the heart and soul of the team. And I think that that is something really important to take with you for the members of your team and for the people listening who aren't at the top. Like, you don't have to be at the top to be the person that everybody goes to. And that stuck with me ever since that day.
- [52:57]
Tom Bilyeu
It's really powerful. So as somebody who walked a very unconventional path, started with nothing like, how do you walk that path? How do you go from being that guy to running something?
- [53:11]
Cody Sanchez
You know, this, this. I think this guy's an interesting one to stay on for a second. You know, we have a saying, we do the work. I, I think it's a well known saying. We just say it at contrarian thinking too. But I think one of the ways that people don't realize is super easy to get ahead is there's two things. Curse of competence, which means there are actually very few competent, hard working, driven people in this world. Way more than I think people realize. And you've seen it before. Like, you've seen when somebody goes 10% more than the norm. It's pretty rare, actually. Like, how many people have you had come in here and not impress you? Just be kind of like everybody else. And then you notice the guy who's like, like, oh, no, he's here before everybody else. Oh, he stays a little bit later than everybody else. Could be 10 minutes on both ends. Oh, he like submitted a brief and an update without being asked, like, do the work. Be that one competent human in a ocean of humans who are complacent instead of competent. And then the second thing I think that surprised me about how easy, quote unquote, easy it was to succeed is, is that most people say they want things, but they say it almost like hopes instead of wills. And so, you know, my husband and I kind of talk about this a lot, and we're like, like, do you want it or are you going to do it? And he has this annoying saying, he always says to me, which is like, you know, are you a good white shark or are you a great white shark? And he says it to me. He says it to me often when we're working out, which is when I really want to murder him. But it's, it's like a little family motto. Like, are you going to be kind of okay and good? Are you going to be great? And the difference between good and great is 10% and nobody strives for it. And so for people listening, I mean, I don't know, look like, how easy is that? Be there 10% earlier and stay 10% later than some than everybody else at your company for six months. Like, watch what happens. And if that doesn't get noticed at that company, go to the next one or build the next company in the 10 minutes that you're there in the beginning and the end. It's what I did at Goldman Sachs. I got recognized by the most senior director and then I had multiple job opportunities after that. I wasn't smarter than anybody else. I didn't go to any fancy schools. I didn't have an MBA then, but I worked slightly harder than everybody else. I was competent and I did a little bit more than everybody else. And that was it. It.
- [55:43]
Tom Bilyeu
When somebody's aggressive, when they are working harder than other people, when you can tell they want it, there's, it's a joy to be around. Like, there really is something. I talk about this a lot. Like, don't make me drag you. Oh, don't make me drag you. I'll drag you across the finish line if I have to because I am going to succeed. But Godamn, like, if you can make me sweat. That's thrilling feeling when I'm around people that I'm like, whoa, all right, look at this person. Like they're really showing up, they're playing to win. It's intoxicating. It's just for the right person. For me, that's a thrill to be around. I love that so much. And that really will get people a lot farther than they think.
- [56:25]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [56:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Now how did you actually start learning? Like, do you have a process for how you learned all this stuff? Because you were just saying earlier you're now a finance person, like you really understand the finance of a deal, but you weren't a finance person. So you went from journalism to act like straight up Goldman Sachs. Obviously there was something in the middle. But like, how did you go down the process of learning something that you did not previously know at all?
- [56:51]
Cody Sanchez
What I've been amazed by in life is that most people don't ask questions. They pretend like they know things.
- [56:57]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [56:59]
Cody Sanchez
At the time, top, all the way to the bottom.
- [57:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Why?
- [57:03]
Cody Sanchez
Because they, they think that if they ask questions, they look dumb. And what I found is I was trained as a journalist to do one thing, ask questions and Actually, the better the question, the better the result as a journalist, that's all. That's the only thing. And so I never associated asking questions with, with looking dumb. In fact, I don't care to this day. I ask stupid questions all the time. In fact, when we look at a deal, I'll often say, explain to me me this like I'm six. And then if they bring me a very large deal. Sam Zell is famous for this. I'm a big Sam Zell fan. He wrote the subtle. No, am I being too subtle? Famous. They called him the Grave Dancer and
- [57:42]
Tom Bilyeu
he was a grave dancer.
- [57:44]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's quite the name, huh? He was famous for turnarounds of real estate businesses. So he would take them out of the grave, they would say, danced on it. But he would take these businesses that were going to fail and then turn them around and build them to something huge. And Sam just passed away actually. And he famously, when they would bring him a deal, like some multi hundred million dollar deal, they were gonna do one deal, they threw it in front of him, big deal, had a deal, book, professional, all these stats and everything. And he just flipped it back to him and he said, should we do the deal? The guy's like, well like, you know, I have 400 pages prepared here. And he goes, give this deal to me in a one page brief and then I'll know you understand it.
- [58:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Facts, facts.
- [58:25]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [58:26]
Tom Bilyeu
And it's so important. Oh my God. I'm constantly telling people, say your thesis in a single sentence. Yeah, because if you can't say it in a single sentence, you don't understand it.
- [58:34]
Cody Sanchez
You don't understand it. And I realize this for myself too. In fact, if you want to get ahead quickly, I think, you know, associating yourself with people who already have the things that you want is really important. One of the easiest ways to do that back in corporate land was everybody fought for one job and that was the chief of staff job job. You wanted to be chief of staff to one of the senior leaders. And the reason why is because you learned one what do they care about and how do you learn what they care about from the daily briefs you put together for them. And so you actually got a way to steal their 10,000 hours by looking at the very few things that they looked at every day that determined what was important for them. And so briefing has become really important at my company and people get annoyed with me on this.
- [59:14]
Tom Bilyeu
I was going to say like, I know need to do briefs.
- [59:17]
Cody Sanchez
Like this, you need to do briefs.
- [59:18]
Tom Bilyeu
It Sounds hot.
- [59:19]
Cody Sanchez
Also, I. Dude, let me tell you, there's nothing sexier than a hot brief. And it's funny, because my team the other day, there's this one woman in our team. I'll shout her out. Matilde, who does incredible briefs. And why does that matter? Because it shows me how you think, and the way that you think tells me how you work, and how you work tells me what you prioritize. And so these briefs are incredible. And the best way to learn them is you can actually see examples of the President's daily brief. And who could have a more succinct, important daily brief than the President of the United States? And so a lot of my team will look at that, and they'll also look at briefs for some of the largest CEOs out there. And so if you have a team at all, get them in the habit of doing this. And that, I think, is an incredible skill to get good at.
- [60:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I love that the most. Yeah, We. We will definitely be doing that.
- [60:12]
Cody Sanchez
I'll send you some examples of what I have.
- [60:13]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, please. That would be incredible.
- [60:15]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [60:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. So when you're going about learning something, for me, anyway, it's really rudimentary. It's. I need to know the terms.
- [60:25]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [60:25]
Tom Bilyeu
So that's going to be the first thing. So. And in fact, I went on a. I went on a similar journey for a very different reason. So when Covid hit, I realized, ooh, the people. So going back to all my time in the inner cities, I was like, they're going to get obliterated. I didn't understand money printing yet, so I just thought they're. And so I was like, okay, I've got to find a really tactical, like, personal finance vein to get people in on the show so that I can help. But I didn't understand finance at all. I'm good at making money. I'm not good at investing money. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to start learning about this, bringing people on. All that starts with learning the lexicon, figuring out who the players are, and doing what I call reading in swarms. Now, reading could be YouTube.
- [61:06]
Cody Sanchez
Whatever.
- [61:06]
Tom Bilyeu
You're just taking a topic. You're trying to see it from as many different angles as humanly possible. Have you ever seen those, like, sculptures that are made out of trash, but you can only see what they are from, like, one specific angle? Okay. That's life.
- [61:19]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [61:20]
Tom Bilyeu
And so if you're looking at business from the wrong angle, it looks like this big, crazy mystery, and it looks like Klaus Schwab is, you know, the evil madman. He's going to take over.
- [61:28]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [61:28]
Tom Bilyeu
You start twisting it around and you realize, oh, it's just a bunch of people who think that they're smarter than they are. They really should learn to distrust themselves. But once it clicks into place and you realize that Steve Jobs was right and the world was created by people no smarter than you, then it's like, oh, I'm seeing how this really is. But to do that, you have to see it from a lot of different angles. So when I'm reading about a topic, I'm trying to get as many different perspectives on that thing as I can so that I can triangulate on what the truth really is. Then once I have that and I have a sense of what this is, I'll formulate my own hypothesis. Hypothesis will make predictions. Then I go test that prediction. Now, if that prediction is accurate, then I know that I'm actually understanding this. And this is whether you're talking about business or romance, boys and girls, your brain is a prediction engine.
- [62:12]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [62:12]
Tom Bilyeu
Once you realize that, it is very hard to discern what is objectively true. Very hard. Even. Even at the level of physics, we don't know. So objective truth. So you get into perspective and interpretation. Okay, cool. But all of these things make a prediction. So I think if I do this, I'm gonna get this outcome. Well, do it. If you got that outcome, then your understanding, your mental map of the world is pretty close. If you try it and you get something completely different, you need to understand your mental model is broken. So if you point to other people, oh, it's their fault. It's the economy's fault. No, no, no. You didn't understand something. That's why it broke. Because let's remind Saint Kobe that booze don't block dunk. It doesn't matter how much somebody's trying to trip you up, doesn't matter how bad the economy is. There is a solution to that puzzle. You just didn't find it. And so if you can own that, update your mental model and try again, just recognizing it as a prediction engine. So that's how I go in to learn any new thing. Does that sound roughly analogous to what you do?
- [63:14]
Cody Sanchez
I actually think I am much dumber on this.
- [63:17]
Tom Bilyeu
So the way I'm going to say it isn't dumb. Whatever you're about to say. Different, perhaps.
- [63:24]
Cody Sanchez
So I'm much less scientific. So when I want to start learning something, I just go where the game is played and you get in I just get in. And so what that would mean in the beginning was I didn't understand finance. I wasn't smart enough to do what you said, you know, read in swarms, go find a predictive. I was like, where are smart finance people? I guess this company called Vanguard that's located here. Could I get a job there? And I go, I bet if I get a job there, the job there's
- [63:51]
Tom Bilyeu
though, because they're going to be like, do you know finance? No.
- [63:54]
Cody Sanchez
The funny thing about humans are they love to hear themselves talk. And so one of the secrets to getting a job places is you just ask a lot of questions.
- [64:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Jedi mind trick. Nice.
- [64:04]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. And so at the time, I sat next to this lady, Tara, and I was like, so what do you do? She's like, securities. And I'm like, oh, this a lot of work. Because I thought she was talking about security at the. Like, you know, she had a gun, but she was actually talking about.
- [64:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Wait, you were applying for the job and at Vanguard and you didn't know?
- [64:19]
Cody Sanchez
I wasn't applying. I was sitting at a conference next to her, to be fair.
- [64:23]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay.
- [64:23]
Cody Sanchez
So I sat next to her at a conference. Yeah.
- [64:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Is that. Were you at the conference to learn about finance?
- [64:28]
Cody Sanchez
Yes. Okay, finance conference.
- [64:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Got it. Man, I hope people are drinking this in. To not know. To be at a. At a conference for finance and to not know what a security is, that is amazing. Your story gets better by the second.
- [64:39]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. And again, why was I at the conference about finance? Because I wanted to get into finance, but I. I didn't know anything about it, so I just said, well, let's go to a place where they're talking about finance. So I go to a conference. Then I sit next to this lady. I get curious about her. I ask her all about her. I ask all about Vanguard. I get really curious about her job. What does she care about? What does she do? What's their mission? And when I get all those questions, I write down the answers. And so I'm actually getting the cheat code to what a hiring manager cares about at Vanguard, because I'm asking her questions. And then she gets intrigued by the fact that unlike most humans, I'm not talking about at her, I'm asking her information. And I'm very tuned in. I'm, like, focused on her intently, and I follow up, which most people also don't do. I send an email afterwards. It was so amazing to talk to you. Here are three things I learned. Super interesting. Love to have coffee with you a second time. We have coffee again, I just ask a bunch more questions and then she asks me to apply for this very. It was a rotational development program. So tons of people, all these fancy degrees everywhere, and little Cody who didn't know what a security or a mutual fund was. But I think, you know, the difference was I was really curious. And that is an abnormal thing in a world of humans who pretend that they know what they mean.
- [65:51]
Tom Bilyeu
So crazy.
- [65:52]
Cody Sanchez
And then so if, if I was trying to do this again, I would do the same thing. When I wanted to get into content, what did I do? I just went and tried to talk to humans who knew something about content that I wanted to know. So if I wanted to understand media today, I would probably get really curious and I would learn on somebody else's dime. I think a job today is like a free mba. In fact, it's an MBA that they pay you for. And it's really underrated to have a job early on. The average employee at Vanguard, they say they spent a hundred thousand dollars on training per employee when I was making $30,000 a year. So I was given this free MBA at Vanguard, not to mention three licenses that I've carried for the rest of my life life that have to be registered at a company. I couldn't get them any other way. And so I think people should just go get a job working for somebody, learning from them and go where the game's played. And then the amazing part is they could start in a factory with you. And if they're really hard workers, they're super curious and they keep asking if they know thyself continuously. You're going to keep promoting a really smart, a very hard working, very curious iterating human and you'll promote them to different things that they want to that are within their skill sets. And so I probably to learn, I just, I like to steal other people's 10,000 hours. I want to go where the game's played. I want to sit with a bunch of winners and I want pressure because then I think you can learn. And it's, you know, Lisa and I were talking about this a little bit earlier, but there is scientific research that shows that being surrounded by top performers increases your performance by 15% and being around underperformers decreases your performance by 30%. And so if you're in a company with a bunch of underperformers, get in one where it is hard. And if you are hanging out with friends that all are underperformers, get in one where you're with some top performers because you know you're gonna earn 30% more money or you're gonna earn actually, what is it? You're earn 45% more money if you're around top performers than if you're around under performers years. And I think most people don't think about that. Like, people talk shit about Goldman. I'm like, that place is amazing. For a young, hungry person, it's awful at a certain point, but for a young, hungry person, it's like top performers that are going to make me earn more, that are going to put pressure on me. It's the only way diamonds are made. It's the same thing in work.