#41: Codie Sanchez—The Messaging Playbook Behind Building a Thought Leader Brand

Summary

Podcast Summary: The StoryBrand Podcast

Episode #41: Codie Sanchez—The Messaging Playbook Behind Building a Thought Leader Brand
Date: October 13, 2025
Guests: Codie Sanchez
Hosts: Donald Miller, Kyle Reed
Producer: Bobby Richards

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the messaging strategies of Codie Sanchez, a prolific business owner and thought leader known for her clear, practical communication style and her success both in the world of "Main Street" (previously "boring") businesses and online personal branding. Donald Miller and Kyle Reed explore how Codie built her thought leader brand, the operating systems she teaches other entrepreneurs, and the practical steps to crafting both internal and external messaging that truly resonates. The episode is packed with frameworks, memorable anecdotes, and tactical advice for business owners and marketers aiming to grow both revenue and meaningful followership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Essential Duality: Revenue and Followers

Timestamp: 00:00, 05:02, 06:13, 07:37

• Codie emphasizes the importance of having "two oars" in your business: a quantitative metric (like revenue) and a qualitative one (such as trust or follower growth).
  • “If all I focus on is revenue in my business, then I'm just going to churn out my customers. ...You need both a left and right or—revenue and followers.” (Codie Sanchez, 00:00)
• Only focusing on money leads to short-termism and customer churn; only focusing on popularity can leave you with no cash flow. The healthiest brands balance metrics that drive profit with those that measure value or trust.

2. Leadership Messaging and Internal Communication

Timestamp: 03:47, 04:28, 06:28

• Codie shares how effective leaders must communicate with intention, not repetition:
  • “If you don't have a system and a process, then you're going to be chief repetition officer and not chief executive officer.” (Codie Sanchez, 04:28)
• She rejects the popular idea of a single “North Star” in favor of a dual-metric approach that provides both direction and a “collar” for expectations, preventing whiplash for teams (“left, right, left, right”).

3. Profile: The Power of “Main Street” (Formerly “Boring”) Businesses

Timestamp: 08:46 – 11:02

• Codie owns and invests in a diverse portfolio: roofing, landscaping, cleaning companies, SaaS, finance, and media.
• She consciously rebranded "boring" businesses as "Main Street" businesses, highlighting their stability and profitability.
  • “We've thought it's really sexy to be on TikTok and YouTubing all day, when in actuality, some of the most profitable businesses out there are not what you would think of as online sexy businesses.” (Codie Sanchez, 08:51)

4. Why Build a Personal Brand? The Leverage Equation

Timestamp: 11:55 – 13:42

• Codie identified “attention” as the fourth major form of leverage (alongside capital, code, labor).
• She found an opportunity in an industry (finance/private equity) that undervalued public presence and personal brand.
  • “If you never want to be poor again, you need to understand leverage. … And so I saw that fourth form of leverage and was like, nobody's really playing this space. There's an arbitrage opportunity here.” (Codie Sanchez, 11:55)

5. Lessons from Journalism: Lead with Curiosity and Story

Timestamp: 14:16, 15:54

• Codie credits her journalism background with instilling curiosity and a relentless focus on the “people side” of stories and pitches.
  • “Curiosity is the most important thing you can have as an investor. ...Information is way more important than sounding smart. He wants to be rich, not look rich.” (Codie Sanchez, 14:16)
• Business messaging should name the customer and their problem first—a practice applicable everywhere, including social posts and sales.

6. The Four P’s of Messaging:

Timestamp: 16:05 – 17:02

• At Goldman Sachs, Codie was taught to organize every pitch around: People, Product, Problem, and Profit.
• She expands on how entrepreneurs can define their “avatar” (ideal customer)—starting often with themselves, using a 17-step process to refine psychographics and pain points.
• Early-stage advice: Target customers with more resources; "Sell things to rich people because they pay more and they ask fewer questions." (Codie Sanchez, 18:53)

7. Repetition vs. Rebranding

Timestamp: 19:49 – 20:14, 21:20

• Most brands don’t need a full rebrand—they need more consistent repetition of their talking points and core pillars.
  • “People can't read your mind. … Are we repeating enough the value that we provide, or are we a golden retriever chasing a squirrel?” (Codie Sanchez, 20:17)

8. Translating Systems into Products and Community

Timestamp: 21:20 – 24:14

• Codie’s Contrarian Operating System, first used for her own holdings, became the backbone of courses and events—a way to qualify prospects for investment and community.
  • "We started out teaching in our portfolio, and then ... why wouldn't we just teach more people to do this?" (Codie Sanchez, 21:46)

9. Balancing Broad and Niche Content

Timestamp: 26:18 – 29:34

• She grapples with the spectrum between viral, broad content and deep, niche expertise for high-ticket customers.
• The solution: deliberately producing both “attention content” (wide, draws new eyes) and “conversion content” (tactical and expert, for those most likely to pay).
• The George Lucas/Star Wars analogy: Use mainstream content to build the world and audience, but always be intentional about what ecosystem you want to own.

10. Memorable Lessons from Mentors

Timestamp: 30:08 – 33:04

• Codie’s pivotal advice: “We're going left. If you want to go right, you got to get your own boat.” (Codie Sanchez’s former CEO, 31:14)
  • Led her to prioritize control, equity, and finding her own “unfair advantage.”

11. Finding (and Leveraging) Your Unfair Advantage

Timestamp: 33:26 – 34:47

• Codie looks for “zone of genius” intersections—found via deep, honest self-inquiry, team feedback, and divergent skills.
• Codie uses a three-part Venn diagram to help entrepreneurs find their “bullseye.”

12. Practical Advice for Business Owners

Timestamp: 36:20 – 38:20

• If starting over with $100K: Focus that investment on understanding your customers, data, and plugging leaks—NOT just driving more leads.
• Codie is obsessed with metrics: LTV, CAC, and meaningful dashboards. Urges owners to manage “data not feelings.”

13. Messaging and Feedback: Mastering the Content Game

Timestamp: 38:37 – 41:36

• Social media gives instant, clean data on messaging; Codie is spreadsheet-driven in tracking what resonates.
• Example: Her viral (and controversial) “adults don’t pick people up from the airport” post showed how framing and emotional triggers drive engagement—even if the reaction is negative.
  • “The best creators are actually all strategists. They're very data backed.” (Codie Sanchez, 39:35)

14. Favorite Platforms & Content Creation

Timestamp: 41:54 – 42:21

• Codie prefers YouTube for long-form, high-impact education and meaningful connection with her audience. Sees X (Twitter) more as a spark than as a channel for real change.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dual-Oar Framework: "If all I focus on is revenue ... I'm just going to churn out my customers. ...You need both a left and right or—revenue and followers."
  — Codie Sanchez, 00:00

• Chief Repetition Officer: “If you don't have a system and a process, then you're going to be chief repetition officer and not chief executive officer.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 04:28

• Leverage: “If you never want to be poor again, you need to understand leverage. ... I saw that fourth form of leverage and was like, nobody's really playing this space.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 11:55

• Curiosity > Impressing: “He wants to be rich, not look rich. I think journalism taught me that curiosity is the ultimate.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 14:16

• Customer Avatar: “I want to choose the person I serve ... I think when you're first starting out in business, you should try to sell things to rich people because they pay more and they ask fewer questions.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 18:53

• Repetition over Rebranding: “People can't read your mind. ... Are we repeating enough the value that we provide, or are we a golden retriever chasing a squirrel?”
  — Codie Sanchez, 20:17

• Classic Advice: "We're going left. If you want to go right, you got to get your own boat."
  — Codie Sanchez, quoting her former CEO, 31:14

• Unfair Advantage: “Every single entrepreneur that I've ever met has something that is in their zone of genius. And if they can focus on that, plus continue to uplevel their business model, they'll win.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 34:05

• Data Not Feelings: “Half of the game is just, how do we get your employees to talk about data not feelings. Data not feelings.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 38:20

• Content Testing: “Go right now on the Internet and create videos and social media posts ... you get an instant feedback loop.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 38:51

• Attention and Conversion: “If you are trying to grow your business, you really do need attention and conversion content.”
  — Codie Sanchez, 27:39

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Introduction and Framework (Codie’s Revenue/Followers Duality) — 00:00, 05:02
• How Messaging Shapes Internal Team Communication — 04:28
• “Main Street” Business Philosophy — 08:46 – 11:02
• Leverage through Personal Brand & Attention — 11:55 – 13:42
• Journalism's Influence on Messaging — 14:16
• The Avatar Process & Four Ps — 16:05 – 17:02, 18:53
• Rebranding, Repetition, and Outward Messaging — 19:49, 20:17, 21:20
• Community & Productization of Systems — 21:20 – 24:14
• Content Strategy: Broad vs. Niche, Star Wars Analogy — 26:18 – 29:34
• Mentor Advice & “Get Your Own Boat” — 31:14 – 33:04
• Finding Your Unfair Advantage — 33:26 – 34:47
• Practical Use of $100,000: Data and Customers First — 36:20 – 38:20
• Content Testing & Social Media as R&D — 38:37 – 41:36
• Favorite Content Platform (YouTube) — 41:54

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Closing Resources

• Connect with Codie: @CodieSanchez on all socials, contrarianthinking.co
• StoryBrand Tools: storybrand.com

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This episode is a masterclass in bridging business fundamentals, leadership, personal branding, and the nuances of content strategy—all delivered with Codie Sanchez’s data-driven, practical, and slightly contrarian approach.

Transcript

[Cody Sanchez]

If all I focus on is revenue in my business, then I'm just going to churn out my customers. I believe you need both a left and right or revenue and followers. You need to have money because that's the lifeblood of your business. Simultaneously, if all you do is obsess on money, then you're going to be discounting, pushing, churning a lot of people from turning them off. So if I'm growing my follower base, that must be because I'm driving value and not trying to pitch, pitch, pitch them too much.

[Bobby Richards]

Hey, it's podcast producer Bobby Richards and I've got a quick question for you. When it comes to your marketing, is it actually cutting through all the noise or is it just adding to it? I ask this because if it's not clearly telling your customers how you can solve their problem, they will not buy from you. But don't worry, because this is exactly why we created StoryBrand your business. It's a brand new hands on live marketing workshop taught by Donald Miller himself, happening January 28th and 29th here in Nashville, Tennessee. At the event, Don will personally teach you the proven Story Brand framework that's helped thousands of businesses clarify their message, plus his brand new messaging campaign framework that's designed to help you compete in today's AI driven market. And you won't just learn the frameworks, you'll learn how to implement them into your business right away. You'll craft a controlling idea that drives every piece of your marketing, create survival sound bites your customers actually remember, and build a complete messaging campaign that works. And throughout it all, you won't be doing it alone. You'll be part of a small group of business owners just like you and receive live code from storybrand certified guides who are in the room with you. But tickets are limited, so Register [e-mail] you don't have to stay stuck trying to figure out how to make your marketing and messaging work for your business. Join us at the StoryBrand your business live event with Donald Miller and walk away with a clear message and a plan you can immediately implement to grow your business. We can't wait to see you there. So go register right [e-mail] foreign. You're listening to the StoryBrand podcast based on Donald Miller's best selling book Building a Story Brand. The Story Brand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea. Your customer is the hero and you are their guide. Each week on the podcast you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and grows your business. Now let's dive in with your hosts, Donald Miller and Kyle Reed.

[Kyle Reed]

We're joined in studio by Cody Sanchez, who has built a powerful and effective personal brand from the ground up. We're going to unpack the messaging she's used to become one of the best known thought leaders in the business. Cody, thank you so much for joining us today.

[Cody Sanchez]

I'm thrilled to be here.

[Kyle Reed]

Someone who I can't escape the Instagram.

[Donald Miller]

First off, the Instagram algorithm, would you say top five? Would you say Cody is top five? Stopping your scroll 100. Like you just see her.

[Kyle Reed]

Well, it's, it's cool to be.

[Donald Miller]

And you know she's going to say.

[Kyle Reed]

As soon as I know something's there, I know it's super practical, super business oriented. And then I was telling Cody before we started recording, it's also something I connect with my wife on because she's a big fan and so she shares videos or different things like that. So it's cool. But I love that I can't escape it because it's always a good reminder and it's so practical. So I'm excited to dive into kind of some of the messaging you've been using to grow that brand.

[Donald Miller]

There are really, really intelligent business folks in the world who can't seem to master the sound bite. And I would actually say you are not that person. And in today's day and age, your ability to give succinct summary of wisdom in a specific category, solving a specific problem in a short period of time is world class.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, thank you.

[Donald Miller]

Would you agree with that or you would say I need to work on that?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, you know, I think the better leader you become, the better communicator you become.

[Donald Miller]

Because by necessity.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, because otherwise you got a business. Because if you can't communicate well to your team, what you need to accomplish, you're just never going to scale.

[Donald Miller]

Well, let's stop there because there's so much here to explore. I want to get into your past in journalism because I think that's probably informed some of how you do this. But when I said messaging, you went straight to internal messaging. You went straight to your team and leadership. What sort of messages do you see? Small business owners. Business owners needing to communicate to their teams. What would be the categories? You got to have vision, you got to have whatever. What would those, what would those messages be?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, we have an operating system that we teach business owners. So whether they're in my portfolio, you know, or part of our community. And I think if you don't have a system and a process, then you're going to be chief repetition officer and not chief executive officer. And I personally, there's nothing I hate more than having to repeat myself again and again because I've not communicated something well. And so I think there's a couple of things that you need to do. One, we believe you have to have a vision. That's pretty standard. 1, 3, 5 and 10 year. I really think 1 and 3 year are the most important.

[Donald Miller]

1 and 3, you're not going out 10, 20.

[Cody Sanchez]

Honestly, it's just such a hope and a prayer. I think you can have your 10 year vision plan could be one line in a year. In 10 years I want to be the biggest our mission at contrarian thinking in 10 years I want to be the biggest business creator and the most trusted because those two things are what I call left and right oars. So if I'm the biggest business creator, well, then I'm probably going to have a lot of clickbait stuff that I do because that gets views. Right. If I am the most trusted, I'm PBS and probably don't have mo much viewership. So in order for a business to work well and a communication strategy to work well, I believe you need both a left and right or, and one is typically like a quantitative or so total number of followers trusted. As a qualitative or AKA trusted. How do you measure that? Same as like revenue and followers. I like tracking those two ors in our business because if you're a business owner, you need to have money because that's the lifeblood of your business. Simultaneously, if all you do is obsess on money, well then you're gonna be discounting, pushing, probably churning a lot of people from turning them off. And so I like to have another OR or caller on it which would be like followers.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

So if I'm growing my follower base, that must be because I'm driving value and not trying to pitch, pitch, pitch them too much.

[Donald Miller]

Gotcha. Okay, well talk to me about casting a vision for your internal team. What are the components of that? What do you need to do? Is it visual? Is it num. Casting a vision?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, I don't believe in one North Star. A lot of businesses think that you should have one North Star that your business is towards. So I believe.

[Donald Miller]

Really now? Why not? Because I've heard that, I can't remember who, but that's a popular idea.

[Cody Sanchez]

Very popular. Because I Think one North Star doesn't give you. It doesn't give you a caller. So if all I focus on is revenue in my business, then I'm just going to turn out my customers at some point. There's no qualitative metric. And I think about it like when you tell your team you need to set expectations as a leader. So I think a lot of times, if you're a business owner, you felt this before, but you're talking to your team and one day you're like, hey, we need to go. Right, right. I need more revenue. I need revenue, revenue. And then the next day you're like, whoops, no leads. Right. So you're like, not revenue. Leads, leads, leads, leads. And so your, your employees can kind of feel like, ah, left, right, left, right. Like this guy doesn't know where he's going. Right. But if you explain to them, well, what would happen if I only had the left oar in a boat? Well, you'd go in a circle. Right. So business is naturally always going to feel like left, right, left, right.

[Donald Miller]

But hopefully you're left summarized, like, where are we getting customers? And then what are we selling them? Those are the left and right orders. Those two questions.

[Cody Sanchez]

I think there always should be a metric that's based on revenue and cash flow. So I almost always like a business to have that. And then the second one, I think you need something qualitative that makes sure that your concern for your client is first. So in my case, that's. Followers could also be churning. So we have a ton of revenue, but we don't keep it. Well, that'd be a bad metric. Or you might say MPS score. You know, we have a ton of revenue and people love us. Okay, that's great. And so each business. And we get really tactical when we talk about this. Like, if I have a construction business, it might be revenue on one hand, but the other one might be site completion on time and on budget. Right?

[Donald Miller]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

And so if you can get really granular in your business and communicate to your team, there are only two things that we really track at a super high level. And if you guys are making the moves to those two things we track, I'll kind of leave you alone then. Your best employees, that's what they want. They want guidance, and then they want you to align them in the right seat and they kind of want you to get out of their way.

[Donald Miller]

Right, right. What businesses do you own? Because I want to. I want to pick one that's interesting and take a deep dive into Your messaging.

[Cody Sanchez]

What's all the businesses you own?

[Donald Miller]

Well, share with us some of the interesting ones.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, we also.

[Donald Miller]

You call them boring businesses.

[Cody Sanchez]

I do. I've tried to change it now to Main street businesses. It's my rebrand.

[Donald Miller]

There you.

[Cody Sanchez]

In the beginning it was. Because I do think they get a bad rap. I think that we've thought it's really sexy to be on TikTok and YouTubing all day, when in actuality, some of the most profitable businesses out there are not what you would think of as online sexy businesses. And, oh, by the way, you guys have felt it too. I think a huge lie was sold to us that we'd be happier if we were just in front of screens in our, like, little keyboard on our remote zoom calls all day. That seems like freedom. It's not. I think it's out building something.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

And so my Main street businesses that I own are like. We own a roofing and exteriors company. That company is called Action Exteriors. Pink's a window cleaning company. We own Montes, a handyman company. We own, obviously a couple finance companies. We own media companies. We own a landscaping company. So it kind of spans the gamut.

[Donald Miller]

Who runs these for you? Do you have a central office and is it a hub and spoke kind of thing, or do you actually have a CEO or a president of each one of these companies?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, every company has a CEO and or president. Even my media company and my finance company, that's Mark Husvet that runs those. Stephen is the CEO of resibrands. Inside of each of those companies that I talked about, there's usually a CEO or a president for those companies. We run it like a private equity firm, except I want to keep them forever. Ideally, in my perfect world, we want to use our own money, not third party capital. And we want to make incredible, enduring, consistently profitable businesses that we love to run. And that's how we teach people to run businesses, too. I'm not so much a fan of not running profitable businesses, and I don't like businesses that are super volatile. And so I want like a nice little beautiful business that continues to cash flow. And in the words sort of 1.

[Donald Miller]

To 5 million or in that range or sometimes more.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, a lot of, I mean, some of our companies are, you know, 60, $80 million a year. But I think the real question on revenue is like, what do you want? You know, if you have a $60 to $80 million a year business, you're working a lot, pretty much no matter what. If you have like a one to $10 million business that can be a nice lifestyle business for you. And so I think that is a personal decision that not enough people focus on.

[Donald Miller]

I've had that conversation with many people even before we'll do messaging campaigns for them. It's like, do you really want this? Because this means hiring, this means you're busy a lot. This means work, life balance is going to get out of. Out of whack and those sorts of things. What do you actually want?

[Kyle Reed]

Curious too of that. When did you start pivoting in. I know I've heard you talk about during COVID you started to talk more about this publicly. But as you're going after these mainstream businesses, when did you start pivoting into sharing that messaging online? And what was the kind of the antithesis or the start for you of like, this is, I'm going to go about this and I want people to know. And what was your kind of mission with that?

[Donald Miller]

And really, honestly, like, why build a personal brand if you have these companies that don't really need you to do that and you don't really talk about them very much? You've become a thought leader so quickly. And why did you decide to do that?

[Cody Sanchez]

I think the future has a new type of leverage. And I saw it early on with COVID I knew how to master a few forms of leverage. And if you never want to be poor again, you need to understand leverage. I think it is the ultimate unlock for people who want to make money consistently over time. And so I understood capital. I was in finance for a long time and know how to get other people's money, right. So that was normalized in finance. I understood code in that we owned SaaS companies and software companies. So I understood how do we build companies using 21st century technology. And then I also understood labor, how do I hire people and get an employee pool, which is another type of leverage. But the one that was interesting to me is one that did not exist in private equity, still really doesn't and doesn't exist so much in finance, which is attention. And so I saw that fourth form of leverage and was like, nobody's really playing this space. There's an arbitrage opportunity here. And I think the way the industry has gone, they were too scared of the brand, actually. They were too scared to get online and to try to appeal to the masses because they would lose their boardroom sophistication. And they thought that that would not play well. And I know this because I had partners who were like, you can either be public or you can be a partner. And I was like, well, I'm out then, because you guys don't see where we're going. And so it was a scary move at the time. Now I think it looks a little bit prescient, but back then I wasn't so sure. It was like, you know, why would you. If you've been at Goldman Sachs, if you own all these businesses, if you've built all this stuff, why would you get online and do TikToks? And I was like, you see attention as something like cheap or clickbaity, and I see attention as just another type of zero. It's just the same thing as capital, except it's arguably precious.

[Kyle Reed]

There's so much leverage.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah, there's just so much free advertising, free publicity, free messaging, that sort of stuff.

[Cody Sanchez]

And it's limited.

[Donald Miller]

Are you good at this because of your background in journalism? How did that contribute? You've won awards. You did sort of investigative journalism about border issues. How did that inform. Because when I think about being a messaging guy, it's informed by writing screenplays and books. There's no question, without attending Robert McKee seminars or studying Blake Snyder, all this stuff, that none of this exists. And is that true for you, too? Or have you not even connected those things?

[Cody Sanchez]

No. I think curiosity is the most important thing you can have as an investor. Investors that lose are people that think they know everything and are afraid to ask questions. If you were to have dinner with Warren Buffett, you would sit down with him, and by the end, which many of my friends have, you would say, I actually didn't ask him anything. He just peppered me with questions. And what do I know? I'm so small compared to him. And why? Because he knows that information is way more important than sounding smart. He wants to be rich, not look rich. I think journalism taught me that curiosity is like the ultimate. That's the best valued trait you can have in journalism, is to be a curious person, follow a line of questioning, try to connect disparate dots, and then recommunicate the things that you've just learned to somebody who was not available for the entire research process. That's the same thing as investing, actually. And then if you think about it, it's the same thing about building a business or a brand. You're basically saying, I'm curious. There's this problem exists now, what am I going to do to actually solve that problem? Let's pull in a bunch of data inputs, let's put it all together. And then let's communicate to our clients or to our team and explain very simply what we're doing. And so I do attribute a lot of my success to that.

[Donald Miller]

I'm curious, when you start a story, you're going to start with a hook. As an investigative journalist, you're going to start with some sort of personal story about somebody who lost their kid on the border and blah, blah, blah. And it's got to be a page turner in some ways. What are the lessons for communicating your offer for everybody listening right now? Maybe they have a car wash, maybe they have a bakery, whatever it is. How do they get on Instagram this afternoon and create a video that makes people want to walk in their door and spend money?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Well, if you want people to spend money with you, I think you always have to know the people first as opposed to the product or the problem.

[Donald Miller]

Okay. It's the people first.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. At Goldman, we were always taught if you want to sell investment products, you talk about people, that's the team. You talk about product, that's the investment vehicle that you're going to have. You talk about problems, so what exists in the world? And then you talk about profit. So what are the four P's? And I don't think that's that dissimilar to what we do. If you're selling something as an owner, you say, okay, I know that there is this avatar of person who is looking, you know, in this avatar of person. Here's all the stuff I know about them because I am them. That's usually where we start. We're usually our own first avatar. And then I think about, well, what problem do I want to solve? Forget what the offer is, just like, what's wrong in this person's world that I could solve?

[Donald Miller]

So it's okay, let's break this down because this is really, really good. What all do you want to know about the person? Do you want to know how much money they make? Do you want to know, do you go straight to problem? Like, what are their struggles? What are their. In this area of life?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Well, I think there's two things. Here's how we take you through an avatar, typically. One, I like you to start with either yourself or an individual that you actually know. So I want to say, like, Donald Miller is my avatar. I want Donald Miller to buy something from me. And I want to know every single problem that you have, and I want to start with the problems that you have actually before. I want to know psychographics or demographics or what they tell you in particular, I just want to know, like, what's going on in your life? What don't you like? What are you not happy about? What do you want more of? I actually really like understanding psychology of problems. Then I kind of want to dive into, like, where are you? So I like to think about who the best people are at marketing to my avatars. Well, they're typically people that they give their free attention to. So that would be like, where do they go from media sources? I like to see what podcasts they listen to. I like to see who they follow online because those are people that they're like choosing to go and follow constantly. And then with the avatar, we take them through a 17 step process to basically figure out what your perfect avatar is and if you're serving the right person or not. A lot of times in small business they're not. They're actually serving the easiest customer to get. They're not serving the highest dollar value customer to keep, which is sometimes more expensive. And so, and then the next thing that I like to think about with our avatars is like, I want to choose the people I serve. And so, you know your biggest. A lot of people, I think, choose the problem. I want to choose the person. And so I know that I can sell more things at a lower price probably, but I bet I can make more money and have more fun if I sell things to people who have more money who are not going to have to give me their last dollar when I'm starting out as an entrepreneur. Like, I have an avatar bias too. I think when you're first starting out in business, you should try to sell things to rich people because they pay more and they ask less questions.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah, they're less drama.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Because it's not their last dollar. It's like, it's the. It's almost like the FTC last dollar rule is a good way to think about your first dollar that you get as an entrepreneur.

[Donald Miller]

You're rebranding, you're doing some branding messaging work right now with your company. That's kind of the case for every successful company. They get into this place, they're like, okay, we've had this massive success. We hired a bunch of people, we brought in a bunch of companies, we created a bunch of products. Who are we again? And I find that that's something that happens to people who are successful. They hit this point. Take us through the process of your rebranding. I always like the idea of if you want to grow a business, own a problem Own the mental real estate in somebody's mind. And the way you own mental real estate is we're the people you call if you have a leaky roof. We're the people you call if you find a mouse in your kitchen. We're the first person that you think of. Is that how you start or you go about it a little bit differently?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. Well, you know, in our business, for whatever reason, I've been pretty clear on what our mission has been since the beginning. And so it's. You know, I think our biggest problem was really that we didn't need a rebrand. We needed more repetition. And I think this is awesome.

[Donald Miller]

You needed to take your talking points and say them louder and more often. We just had that conference room meeting the other day. We literally just had it.

[Kyle Reed]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

And it's like, do we.

[Kyle Reed]

Yeah.

[Donald Miller]

People can't read your mind.

[Cody Sanchez]

No.

[Donald Miller]

You're not saying it.

[Cody Sanchez]

And they don't really care about you. You know, you're a period, a comma in their day. That is an entire page of a book, if not more. And so I often remind myself of that. And then I'm like, are we repeating enough the value that we provide, or are we a golden retriever chasing a squirrel? And so, you know, the repetition rule is one of the things we talk about consistently. Like, in your business, what pillars are you known for? So, for instance, I want us to be known for two pillars. We help people buy businesses. If you want to buy a business, you're crazy to not come talk to us about it. I think we're the best in the space.

[Donald Miller]

You help them analyze it. You help them analyze the evaluation. You help them find it.

[Cody Sanchez]

We help you close it. Everything.

[Kyle Reed]

Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

I want to be the best in the world at that. And then we realized, and this, like, kind of came as a byproduct. We had helped, you know, 5,000 people buy businesses. And so then we're like, congratulations, you own a business. And also. I'm sorry. Right.

[Donald Miller]

And so now you want to help them run it.

[Cody Sanchez]

Exactly. And so now we have to help you build that business. And so now I want to speed.

[Donald Miller]

And that's through the Cody Sanchez operating system. What is that called?

[Cody Sanchez]

It's called Contrarian operating system.

[Donald Miller]

Contrarian. Well, I got to get to the contrarian operator.

[Cody Sanchez]

We internally call it SOS So I'm thinking about that, because the scaling operating system, and I think most businesses have SOS too, frequently. So I've been playing around with it, but that's what we want to be known for. So I wasn't repeating it enough.

[Donald Miller]

And you teach that through workshops, on demand courses, coaching products, things like that?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, first we taught it to our portfolio companies. So we own a bunch of businesses and invest in a bunch of.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, I wasn't familiar with this coaching environment. I was in finance for a long time. And the way you teach is you help your portfolio companies. And if your portfolio companies make more money that you own, then you make more money, right? So most private equity companies, they coach their companies that they own. So that's what we've done for a long, long time. And then I thought that we should open it up. And I was like, why wouldn't we just teach more people to do this? And then if they like our system, they'll come to us, they'll let me invest in their business, maybe they'll sell the business to me and I'll have more insight already into are they going to function well in my ecosystem because they already run in my operating system.

[Donald Miller]

Do you have a fund? Are you taking money from people that you're investing in or are you trying to do this with mostly your money.

[Cody Sanchez]

Mostly our own money? We have a venture fund. We already finished fund one. And I did it small because I wasn't sure it was going to work. And so what we realized is like, in your business, there's business models and everything, every single business, right? And typically, I think most your job as an entrepreneur is to up level the business model that you're running on. Especially as you have attention, you want to make sure, you know, if all you ever do is you are an executive assistant and you have that talent level, very hard to make millions doing that, right? And so you've got to scale the business model game. And so in the beginning we owned Laundromats. That was where I started. And then I started adding a bunch of systems on top of Laundromats to make laundromats do millions, like wash and fold, delivery, et cetera. Then I was like, that still can't get that big. So then I bought a SaaS company, that software that runs the Laundromat. And then we invested in a bigger SaaS company that's called Sense. And then I was like, huh, so that company's worth a couple hundred million dollars now. And so it's like, well, if we can invest in the tech that powers our small businesses, then one, I'm not the only owner. I create. You know, there's a bunch of owners created and simultaneously we just make more money and so that is a business model game we play with most of the people. So we started out teaching in our portfolio, and then I was like, okay, now we're gonna teach it through events and through. I believe in communities, not just courses. I think a course is, like, a good way to get curious about something. I think most courses have, like, terrible completion rates, and you don't actually finish very much. So I'm a big believer that we go to university for a reason because they kind of over.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah, you're sitting in the class, and.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, you have accountability.

[Donald Miller]

Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

And so we have a community that does that. And then people that are great in the community, we want to try to invest in them if they want us.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah.

[Kyle Reed]

How are you taking. You know, I'm curious with your kind of. We talked a little bit about your rebrand. How are you taking those two messages out publicly? So how does that influence.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah, how do you have you making. How do you word it? Do you have sound bites that you've memorized and you repeat?

[Cody Sanchez]

No, I should be better at that, actually. I don't think that is a bad thing.

[Donald Miller]

Well, the fact that you can even name the two things that you do is pretty impressive for compare.

[Cody Sanchez]

That's good. You know what I found that we did, which I think is a natural progression. So first, I started off being really tactical and niche, Right. I would write about the laundromats that we bought, how we bought them, how I grew them, and that's where we started. Then we started getting bigger, and so I started talking about broader things all of a sudden, I'm talking about marriage all of a sudden. And so then we start talking about these things that aren't really directly related to our offer. And so we got too many pillars of content, talking about too many different things. And then simultaneously, I think we got away from some of the real deep tactics. And I go back and forth on this, but the rebrand is really focused on the fact that, one, I have a belief that we should help more entrepreneurs get created in this world. I just think, you know, since the 1800s, we've basically. We went from 80% ownership in the US down to 6%. You know, you know how bad we're losing. Canada has 7.6% ownership. So, you know, love the Canadians, but, like, we should be beating them in entrepreneurship. So I have, like, a little vendetta against the fact that so few people actually run profitable businesses over time. Very rare. So we started creating content that was really broad, that was allowing people to learn how to do entrepreneurship. Now, those people are not really my target audience for the products that I sell, AKA I want to invest in your business or I want you to come coach with us. I don't really. I have books. Those books are accessible to everybody. But like, I either give you free hyper value or more expensive, targeted for people who are real builders. And so the biggest rebrand for us is making sure that we have enough sophisticated content to show how sophisticated we are. And that was a real change because I thought, well, we'll just go really big.

[Kyle Reed]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

And that doesn't always actually, actually work.

[Kyle Reed]

That was my next question is because I think the challenge is, you know, is you're trying to create very niche content. And sometimes the growth, the reach of that is not as big. Right. And then you go, you pivot all the way over. And I know you've made videos with your husband or talking about other things and those have a little more reach, but it pulls you off your messaging. And that was my. You literally went to that. How does someone, whether it be a business owner or people like in our community who help business owners, what's the balance there? How do you grow?

[Donald Miller]

How do you decide whether or not to sacrifice? You know, we have a wonderful woman who comes and about once a week, once every two weeks, puts the phone in my face and asks me questions, and then it ends up on Instagram. I run a business. We certify coaches. I help people clarify their message personally as a consultant. And people want to hear me talk about narcissistic relationships, but they just love it.

[Cody Sanchez]

But it went viral, dog.

[Donald Miller]

It went viral every time you open your mouth, like, you gotta dump that boy. They love that. So how do you decide and whether to get off these core messages which may not be building your brand and what's the algorithm there?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, well, my focus at our company is I think if you are trying to grow your business, you really do need attention and conversion content. And so you could talk about it as.

[Donald Miller]

I love that. Attention content and then conversion content. Great. Okay.

[Cody Sanchez]

And so if, you know, you have to have eyeballs. And so at some point, I do believe that you want to keep opening up the top of the funnel and allowing new people to come in and explore your ecosystem. So that's broad attention content, but you need to be able to serve those who are actually going to pay you by having conversion content that's more tactical, more specific, niche, expert level content. And, you know, and what I think is interesting is like, I was just reading George Lucas's biography And what is interesting about that is he started off as this really niche sort of cinematic. You know, he did all these movies that had no actors and no speaking. And he really originally was more like a Scorsese than a Star wars aficionado and essentially was pressured to say, like, can I make somebody feel something? Like have real emotion in my video and can I flush out characters? I'm not sure I can do that. So anyway, he pressured himself to do that, ends up doing it and creating Star wars. And it's a longer story than that. But once he created Star wars, he got all this criticism like, this is such a low brow film. You've dumbed down movie production. Why couldn't you make something like New York, New York or Taxi from Scorsese? And even his wife at the time was like, this is so. It's so mainstream. And yet that has created a multi billion dollar ecosystem. And so I do think that you really do benefit by going, why? As long as you are true to what is the ecosystem you're building. Which he went really wide mainstream because he said, I want to change the trajectory in the US of science fiction and fantasy. And also, by the way, he was actually obsessed with world building and toys. And so the entire Star wars business is really about selling merch, AKA toys from the beginning.

[Donald Miller]

Did he have that in mind?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, he did because he negotiated the rights to that in the first film.

[Donald Miller]

He knew it was coming.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. And that was not normal. That was like a rounding error. It was one of the few things that they were willing to give away. And I think this is often something I talk about in buying a business is everybody focuses on price. Pros focus on terms. And so you will win every time if you are more detailed and in depth on terms than price. And that's what he did. He said, fine, you're gonna give me this much, I'll take this percentage of the film. But he focused on the terms.

[Donald Miller]

Walk me through the messaging that you heard as you've come up. You know, somebody said this to you and that changed everything. Are there three or four ideas that somebody has communicated to you that you look back on? And they're just pillar ideas on which you've built your career and your success.

[Cody Sanchez]

The best advice I ever got from one of my mentors was actually the advice I chose not to take, which was I was kind of a senior executive, a partner at a finance firm, Goldman Sachs. No, this was. It's called First Trust. I'm still friends with the CEO and so I don't think he'll mind me saying this, but they're one of the fastest growing private asset management companies out there. And I think he's a genius. Talk about brand. I mean, he hates when you talk about him publicly. If you went and Googled him like you couldn't find him. I think he scrubs himself off the Internet. But he's a billionaire multiple times over. But his internal messaging is so incredible. I've never seen anything like it. There is, like, a homogeneity to his team and to how they even communicate that. His employees regurgitate his words back to him without them even really thinking about it.

[Donald Miller]

It.

[Cody Sanchez]

But I remember we were walking along the beach, and he wanted me to run our Latin American asset management business one way. And I'd gotten it to a billion dollars in assets under management from nothing. And I thought he was really wrong. And so I said, the future of investments and of finance, fundraising will be online, and you're missing it. And I said, much appreciation. You're the billionaire. Your bank account's much bigger, but I think you're just generationally off, and I think you're wrong on this, and this is how we should do it going forward. And he was very kind, but he kind of looked at me eventually and he said, we're going left. If you want to go right, you got to get your own boat. And I said, okay, let me think about it. And then I gave up, you know, a very, very lucrative career that, you know, tens and tens of millions of dollars. But it was the best advice I ever got because he said that to me. He was clear enough to not let me know.

[Donald Miller]

And I can see it from his perspective, too, because he's probably wrong. And yet he's right, because institutional knowledge, instincts that are baked in the number of people in the room who are used to doing it this way. In other words, we're going to win less if we go this way. We could win more if we go this way, but we don't know how to do it. Therefore, we're going to go. Yeah, that makes complete sense to me.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. And he was.

[Donald Miller]

And is that the lesson that you learned?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, what I learned is that you have to play your own game. Game. And if you want to make a lot of chips, you need to have equity and control. And so my learning lesson was, you know, I'm. I'm never going to work for somebody again that doesn't allow me to have, you know, ability to make the changes that I think we should make in a Business. And I didn't do a great deal with that one. I should have negotiated so I could distribute differently the business in Latin America. And I didn't do that in the beginning.

[Kyle Reed]

Yeah, it sounds like that leverage thing you were talking about earlier. It comes back to that leverage side for you and kind of set you off a trajectory.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, well. And the only thing I would add is, like, it's also finding your unfair advantage. Like, that's one of the biggest things we talk to entrepreneurs about is there's no golden rule to business, really, except don't run out of money. Like, that's the number one rule. But anything besides that is really, you need to find your unfair advantage paired with what the market needs.

[Donald Miller]

Unpack that. Unpack.

[Cody Sanchez]

My unfair advantage was I understood the Internet. I'm good at communication. I'm curious. I have a pretty high risk tolerance. And so I saw finance. I was an industry insider, but I also had this curiosity, communication component of it for journalism. I'm like, if we overlay these two, I think I'm going to win. And Jim's unfair advantage was deep institutional knowledge and an incredible culture building inside of the ecosystem of finance. And so we didn't have overlap. But every single entrepreneur that I've ever met has something that is in their zone of genius. And if they can focus on that, plus continue to uplevel their business model, they'll win.

[Donald Miller]

How do you help them find that? What are the questions that you're asking to find their zone of genius?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, we do something called a perfect fit business. So the first thing, and I kind of think about it, like three circles that are a Venn diagram, and in the middle is sort of your target. Bullseye. And so if you were to come to me and say, what's your unfair advantage? You know, what should you be doing in your business today? I would start with, I need to understand what do you do when nobody's watching? What do you do even though nobody pays you? Where is like your obsession lay. And you usually have to unpack this quite a bit. So we use ChatGPT to have a bunch of questions that they ask themselves because, you know, the first answer will be like, football or it'll be really shallow. Right, right.

[Kyle Reed]

That's YouTube.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. We have to go deeper. Like, where do you ask the most questions on your weekly meetings? What do your executives know you're going to talk to them? To them about? What do clients say is their favorite thing about what you do? What do your friends come to you to ask for Advice on. Right. And so we kind of go down this series of questions until finally it gets to H, obviously. Carter and Brandon, who run Pinks, my window cleaning companies. They're incredible at brand. The branding's amazing. It's like this sexy, kind of like throwback, 50s vibe. They've got these uniforms. They hire people that all kind of, like, look the same for it. They're so good. But they weren't great at operations, which is why we paired them with Steven and Resibrands, opswise. And Steven is super cool, but he's really operationally proficient. That's what he's best at. And so it requires two things. You have to be really honest with yourself, and you have to be willing to give up something. Because a lot of times leaders have a hard time saying, I'm not good at this core thing. They want to hold onto it all.

[Kyle Reed]

We have a lot of business leaders or entrepreneurs listening to this. I'd be remiss not to ask you this question, especially just being the business expert. You are kind of a little practical side. If you kind of were starting over, but, you know, you kind of know where you're at now and you were handed some money, let's say, let's just round number 100k, what would you do? Or maybe it's the business leader who's doing something they want to level up. What kind of advice? They had a little bit of money saved. What advice, practically, would you give a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know, maybe a solopreneur? What would you tell them to do?

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, if you already have a business, the number one thing you want to do with your hundred thousand dollars is understand your. Your customers better. I think most businesses die because they don't actually know the business that they run. And so the first thing that I like to make sure they know is like, there's lots of numbers that you should know in your business, such as ltv. I can't tell you how many times you go in to talk to a business owner, and they don't know the lifetime value of a client. They also don't know the cost of acquisition of a client. If you know how much it costs you to acquire a client, you know what the average order value is, so how much that client gives you each time they purchase from you. And you know the LTV of a client, you can reverse engineer buying clients for the rest of your life if you have the right metrics. And so I always think that business owners obsess on lead flow. One of my Businesses is in this state right now. I'm like, you guys are obsessing on lead flow, but you have a leaky bucket. And that is what most entrepreneurs have. If we had a group of 50 entrepreneurs around us right now, I can almost guarantee you their number one issue would be leads. Like if you got, if we were like, we could give you one thing, what is it? Magic wand, One thing. They'd say leads. And I would say 9 out of 10 of you guys are wrong. You don't need more leads. You need better product, you need a better hire, you need better data, you need better processes. But most of the time, I think you should spend your money knowing your business and knowing your users. And I believe in scorecard and scoreboard based management, which is like, if you were to see my scoreboard for my business on my phone in 30 seconds, I can tell you what my two ors are. What are the two things I care about in my business? What number we're at for the year, what percent we're through the year? So 52% through the year, what percent we are pacing to goal for the year and whether we're red, yellow or green, green. And then I can double click down and say what's not happening? To have those two ores be hit. And I think every business owner should be able to in their business really quickly see what's happening. And it's really hard to get your employees on board with this. So half of the game is just, how do we get your employees to talk about data not feelings, Data not feelings.

[Kyle Reed]

I'm curious for you, when was the time kind of as you were starting to put yourself out there that you realize, oh, this is working? Like, was there a, a thread of messaging that you hit or was there a video you made? Or you go, oh my goodness, this is, this is right. And can you point to that or has it been a compounding?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, well, I'm very, you know, if you don't know if your brand's working, I think going right now on the Internet and creating videos and social media posts is the best thing that you can do to figure out if your brand works or not.

[Donald Miller]

Test your messaging.

[Cody Sanchez]

Just test. You get an instant feedback loop. I mean, for people who are data obsessed like I am, it's the coolest thing ever. Because nowhere else, even if you do a thousand customer interviews, the data is not as clean as it is with, hey, did this video get views? Do the views convert to doing whatever I want them to do? And so I think the first time that I, it really clicked for me is when I realized that attention and videos online are the same exact thing as investing. Like I had this moment where if you saw my back end of my business, it's just spreadsheet sheets. And it's because I'm obsessed with what data are people interested in or not. And so I remember in the very.

[Donald Miller]

Beginning, like actual messages that you're charting, are they interested in this or are they not?

[Cody Sanchez]

100%. Yeah.

[Donald Miller]

And a lot of these apps will do that for you. Now you don't even have to do it.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, I think the best creators are actually all strategists. They're very data backed. I mean, I'm hiring a new creative director for my channel and I have one that I've been talking to. And the way that I can tell if somebody is a good creative or not is they'll give me one of two things. They'll either give me, I believe this because of this data that exists, or I believe this because of this case study that exists. The non players talk in generalities, broadly and say a lot of words. The real players don't say that many words. And they show you something. Here's the spreadsheet. Or they show you. I noticed these other things that are related because I do think there's a lot of rhythms to things that go viral. And so I had one. This is a little silly, but you guys can find on the Internet and then ridicule me mercilessly. But a friend of mine did a tweet that was like, you know, like adults don't ask friends to help them move. Save a friendship, hire a mover. And she put it out on Twitter. Viral.

[Donald Miller]

Hate this. Sharing. Sharing, yeah, like so viral.

[Cody Sanchez]

And I was, and I, I really don't pay attention to opinions on things like that. I'm sort of agnostic. But I looked at it and I said, I think it's the way that she framed this. And so I took it and said something that I believe that's slightly inappropriate, which is like, I hate picking people up from the airport and I don't want people to pick me up from the airport. This is not a popular message. So anyway, I said, adults don't have people pick them up from the airport. They get an Uber, save a friendship, buy an Uber. Same exact. Oh my gosh, crazy online. And so what I realized from that.

[Donald Miller]

Is they loved that message.

[Cody Sanchez]

No, they hated it.

[Donald Miller]

Oh, they hated it. Gotcha.

[Cody Sanchez]

They hate us equally, you know, equal opportunity hate. But the point was it's just the frame. I could have put anything in that exact sentence.

[Donald Miller]

Adults don't do this.

[Cody Sanchez]

Adults don't do this.

[Donald Miller]

And anybody who'd ever picked somebody up from the airport is feeling offended.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. And then do this action. Save a friendship. So anybody who has been on either side of that equation has some visceral reaction to it. Bam. That's why I rallied and you didn't.

[Donald Miller]

Mind that it was negative. I remember Willie Nelson once said, weigh your press, don't read it. Just make sure they're talking about you.

[Kyle Reed]

Create content kind of in that you figured that little format out there through that. That's super fascinating. What's your favorite platform to create on right now? What, what, what do you love? What's your favorite one, if you have one?

[Cody Sanchez]

I mean, I. I love YouTube lately because it's a chance to talk really long form to the people that you care about. And I actually think long form usually leads to change. I spend a lot of time on X, but I don't actually think that X leads to growth or change or intelligence at all. And. But I think YouTube does. And I've seen people watch an education platform.

[Donald Miller]

It really is for me.

[Cody Sanchez]

And then they make change.

[Donald Miller]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

You know, and I get to know them. And so that's my favorite. And, man, if you don't think that platform is data oriented, you're not paying attention. I mean, every little thing from the color of the sky matters to if your mouth is open or your mouth is closed and the thumbnail, you know, to the ab testing of the thumbnails. It's a fascinating Canadian data center.

[Donald Miller]

Cody, it's been terrific having you on. Where can people find out? We were mostly small business owners listening to this podcast. Where can they find out ways that you can help them?

[Cody Sanchez]

Cody Sanchez on all the socials and contrarianthinking co if they want us to invest in their business or help them grow.

[Donald Miller]

Sounds great honor to have you here.

[Cody Sanchez]

Thank you so much.

[Bobby Richards]

Thanks for listening to the Storybrand podcast. No matter where you are in your marketing and messaging journey, get the tools, the training and the support support you need to start clarifying that [e-mail] and don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and then leave a comment letting us know what resonated with you and what we can unpack to help your business grow in a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.

[Cody Sanchez]

Sa.