00:00:00Today I'm super excited because I get to talk to my friend and somebody who shares my values of
00:00:05bringing a better life to more people very deeply. This is Cody Sanchez, the founder and CEO of
00:00:10Contrarian Thinking, and she has a mission of creating one million business owners. How did you
00:00:16wind up doing this thing? I don't know if you've ever had like a moment in your life where you were
00:00:21doing something and then you look down the hallway and you see who the person is that you would be in
00:00:2810 years and you hate them. I believe very deeply that ownership is like the key to all freedom and
00:00:37so like in our belief it's not that ownership of a business it's ownership of your life your decisions
00:00:42the next moves you make and determining you're not the victim you know life doesn't happen to you it
00:00:47happens in general and you have the ability to assert your will too and so we believe really
00:00:53deeply that ownership is a key to happiness. Welcome to Office Hours, I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:01:04I'm delighted to have you with me as every week this is a show about the pursuit of happiness.
00:01:10This is a show about finding more love and happiness in your life and bringing it to the
00:01:13lives of other people. I'm a behavioral scientist dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them
00:01:18together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. Once in a while I get to meet
00:01:24and talk to some of the people I admire the most who share this vision of what a better life looks
00:01:30like and that's a perfect example today. Now before we start as always make sure that you're writing
00:01:35to me and telling me what you think of the show what you'd like to hear the kind of questions you'd
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00:01:54those comments as well. Like and subscribe make sure the algorithm gods love us and and do suggest
00:02:01this show to three or four million of your closest friends. Thanks again for watching the show and
00:02:07spending time with us. Today I'm super excited because I get to talk to my friend and somebody
00:02:13who shares my values of bringing a better life to more people very deeply this is Cody Sanchez
00:02:19the founder and CEO of Contrarian Thinking. You know Cody Sanchez he has a huge footprint on
00:02:24the on the interwebs all over social media it's really extraordinary. Contrarian Thinking is one
00:02:30of the fastest growing financial media businesses in the world and she has a mission of creating
00:02:35one million business owners that's an extraordinary mission why because the mission is not to make
00:02:40one billion dollars is to create one million business owners and we're going to find out
00:02:45where she is in that mission how it's going and why that's the mission among other things.
00:02:50She's also the founder of Contrarian Thinking Capital which is a venture capital firm that
00:02:56focuses on investing in technology for smaller businesses. So this is not the trying to create
00:03:02the next huge thing find the the sexiest goo-ga out there you know this is really about the the
00:03:09businesses that are the backbone of economies all over the world and making sure that the
00:03:13people who want to run those businesses have proper technology behind them that's what this
00:03:18venture capital business is all about and the philosophy behind that of course is interesting
00:03:24and I want to talk about that. Hey friends a lot of you know that I keep a very high protein diet
00:03:28that's important for me in my 60s because I want to maintain a good level of muscle protein synthesis
00:03:33and I don't always have time to eat as much protein as I want from whole foods that's the ideal but
00:03:38it's just not manageable all the time for that reason I'm always looking for supplements that
00:03:43can actually get me where I need to go with respect to my macronutrient profile. A bunch of my friends
00:03:47were telling me that David protein is a really good source the reason is because protein bars in
00:03:53general they're handy they're convenient but they can be very high in calories and they can actually
00:03:58be really high in carbohydrate especially the form of sugar David protein I heard was better and sure
00:04:03enough it's got a great profile has 40% more protein at 57% fewer calories than most of the
00:04:10protein bars you find out there 28 grams of protein 150 calories zero grams of sugar that's actually
00:04:17quite a feat to put that together and by the way they taste great I started buying David protein
00:04:22bars and now I'm pleased that they're sponsoring this show as well so whether you're on the go or
00:04:27hitting the gym if you're trying to meet your protein targets David protein is a good way for
00:04:31you to do it that's why I'm doing it and it's what I'm carrying when I'm on the road so head over to
00:04:36davidprotein.com slash arthur they've got a special offer for you if you buy four cartons they'll give
00:04:41you the fifth carton for free you're gonna love that and you can also find David protein in stores
00:04:46by looking for the store locator so enjoy welcome cody thanks for having me I'm so happy that you're
00:04:52with me today oh yeah I mean it's like I should I should have mentioned actually in the introduction
00:04:57here that you're also a best-selling author congratulations main street millionaire those
00:05:01of you who haven't read main street millionaire I love it everybody who reads it loves it it's
00:05:05practical it's interesting it's philosophical it's actually very touching too and that was your first
00:05:11big book right yeah thank you yeah it was my first my only book although I'm working on my second just
00:05:16you know self-flagellation you got to do that and what happens is you think for five or six years
00:05:20about your first book and it hits the list and then of course the first thing that your publisher says
00:05:25is what's the next book and so you get like six months to think about the second book and that's
00:05:28what leads when I was running AEI I was the president of this think tank and scholars would
00:05:34have what's called the second book curse because you only get about a tenth as much time to do your
00:05:39second book as your first book but if your first book is successful the second book is going to
00:05:43suffer so make sure they don't force you to that's got turn it into early what's your sec what's your
00:05:47next book about well it's kind of it's a continuation the good part is we've been studying two things for
00:05:52a long time 10 years building businesses I'm sorry buying businesses and then we've started studying
00:05:58entrepreneurs who build the businesses over the past five years and teaching them how to build
00:06:02the business what happens is you know now we've taught 14,000 people how to buy businesses so I
00:06:07always say congratulations and I'm sorry because now you have a business right and so I realized well
00:06:13we got to help them so the second that you buy a business now you're the owner now you're in charge
00:06:16now the buck stops with you what's going to happen next and our goal wasn't just that they buy any
00:06:21business it's that they buy enduring profitable and consistent businesses so those are businesses
00:06:26that last through the test of time which is usually businesses that that you've often talked about
00:06:31boring businesses that's right which are not boring at all well yeah I don't think so I don't think so
00:06:36so it's sort of tongue in cheek but this next book is really like I think and we'll see if I'm right
00:06:42but what we've been able to test thus far in our little laboratory that is where we consult and
00:06:47advise people on building businesses we're able to test and see why some businesses fail and it's
00:06:54really important because 90 of all businesses fail right and most businesses 90 within a 10-year
00:07:00period oh yeah and the only businesses that really don't fail at that degree are kind of fascinating
00:07:06actually they're franchises and at first I thought huh why because I don't want to like run a
00:07:12mcdonald's franchise but there's really three reasons one they have screening mechanisms for
00:07:17who can own them or not right so they immediately see up front like how serious are you do you
00:07:22actually want to do this but two is the most important which is they have operating systems
00:07:27so like a franchise gives you a non-mvp business a real business that has the lindy effect so
00:07:34historically has worked has a high likelihood of continuing to work and then systems that you don't
00:07:38get to just like pick and choose they say no no this is like how we make a cheeseburger and so your
00:07:43guess factor kind of goes away and then the third component is uh continual oversight and so you know
00:07:51having somebody to say we all know you've had an sop or a training manual or you have a program from
00:07:56your uh you know gym trainer on what to do it doesn't mean you're going to do it unless they're
00:08:02there with you right and so we're trying to figure out like can we actually meaningfully do those
00:08:07things without being part of a franchise system bingo you're going to basically outsource the
00:08:11franchise part or the the oversight the the ownership control the all of that and the
00:08:18screening yeah and most franchises the average franchise cost is 140 000 to 2.3 million dollars
00:08:24to start it's a lot of money and so they better succeed more often because you're paying a lot for
00:08:29that right and so my point is like what if we just wipe that and there's no cost involved it's a book
00:08:34we just tell you how to do it and then maybe we have training for you to do it on top of it so
00:08:38that's what the book is is actually how to be like a franchisee without being part of a franchise yeah
00:08:42without a boss cool yeah that's the idea what was the secret to the success do you think of well it
00:08:48first in a nutshell describe main street millionaire yeah for the audience and what was it why was that
00:08:53so successful do you think well um the book is simply this how do ordinary people buy normal
00:08:58businesses and have extraordinary results and we determine results as you continue to make money
00:09:04over time which actually is extraordinary and so it's a manual for how to take wall street's
00:09:10private equity program and apply it to main street to all of us and i think it was successful maybe
00:09:16for three reasons one is we got really lucky with an uptick of i think in this you know day and age
00:09:23in this country people are a little bit of they're tired of the system that they were told to follow
00:09:27that didn't actually lead to the things that they wanted right they went to school they spent all
00:09:30this money they were supposed to get a job wages have relatively stagnated and you know and and
00:09:36increasingly i think they wanted something more and so there was this desire for ownership because
00:09:41ownership's hard so people have to desire to do a hard thing and then the second reason i think it
00:09:46succeeded is it's very practical to your point i've always been a believer in like okay tell me the
00:09:50theory tell me why so i buy into your idea tell me why i should listen to you at all and then give me
00:09:57what okay fine what am i going to do about it we're just going to sit here saying you know be
00:10:01like you know the french smoking cigarettes you know on the river and talking about how nothing
00:10:06matters like no tell me how to fix my life and so it was the same thing with with this book like
00:10:10tell me how to actually buy a business don't just tell me why it's a great opportunity and so i did
00:10:16and it's very straightforward and then the third is it's riddled with um like frameworks and stories
00:10:23and case studies because i think you learn the best through story and you learn the best through
00:10:27frameworks like you can we call it name it and frame it so you know here's the 10-5-1 method
00:10:33you'd have to talk to these 10 business owners to get to one potential prospect and so you could just
00:10:37kind of remember these things right there's rules of thumb exactly yeah yeah for sure and they're
00:10:42empirically sound right yeah you've got the backing behind why this stuff actually works yeah so it's a
00:10:47big best seller and it really helped a lot of people and and and that's great and this really leads to
00:10:52the next question that i have is how did you wind up doing this thing i mean it's it's i mean you
00:10:58have a very elite background i mean you're a very elite not just educational background but you work
00:11:02for some of the biggest financial firms you work for goldman sachs i mean you're you're you know the
00:11:06this is not what you'd expect somebody in your line of work to do is to be a huge
00:11:11social media influencer to get people to do things that seem incredibly ordinary so they can lead
00:11:18better life walk me through college till now that led you to this apostolic mission yeah well you
00:11:26know i started as a journalist so i um actually covered human trafficking and drug smuggling along
00:11:32the u.s mexico border for many years uh and i did it when i was in college and then right at the end
00:11:37of college and it was fascinating because all of these you know young women that i was covering it
00:11:43was in cedad Juarez so it was called las dissipated us this like i'm sure you're familiar with it like
00:11:49they disappeared yeah have you been to to Juarez it's called la ciudad de muerte and and if you were
00:11:54to cross the rio brand the the river there and go over from el paso to Juarez you would see a bunch
00:12:01of wooden crosses uh covered in pink ribbons and every one of those ribbons represents a murdered
00:12:06woman in uh Juarez and it's been going on for decades and they can't really figure out who's
00:12:11murdering women and they're mutilated it's pretty egregious and i was a journalist covering this
00:12:16and i i watched all of this happen and i thought my last name sanchez i have long brown hair i'm a
00:12:23woman of this age group like what's the difference between me and them why do these women get murdered
00:12:28tens of thousands over the course of a few years and really nothing happens nothing changes you know
00:12:33we i would go to the morgue and i would be able to see firsthand um we we would determine how many
00:12:39women were killed because they were so badly mutilated that they weren't all in one piece
00:12:43and um and so it's just a big mystery it was it's a big and now it's less of a mystery it's a little
00:12:50bit of like you know there's a lot of um patriarchal tendencies in that area there's narco trafficking
00:12:56there's you know a pretty big uh human trafficking component and so so it's kind of like probably this
00:13:02smorgasbord for some reasons but what i realized is i was like the difference between me and them
00:13:08isn't just that i was american and they're mexican there's lots of rich mexicans and if somebody had
00:13:12killed one of them on the border uh they would have uh been in trouble but it was really that i
00:13:17had resources and they didn't i had money and they didn't and so at that point i was like huh maybe i
00:13:22don't want to be a journalist and just tell the stories about this maybe instead i want to figure
00:13:26out i think in a lot of ways money is power and so if you have money you can just assert your will on
00:13:33the world more and if you don't you can't and this is less true in like america maybe where it's more
00:13:40of a first world country but if you have no money in mexico you don't have a lot of options and so
00:13:46that's when i got into finance and i sort of climbed up through the financial um ecosystem
00:13:51really to like figure out because i knew nothing about money i like couldn't have explained to you
00:13:54a 401k i i am not great at math i don't like any of that but i climbed up with this idea of like
00:14:01huh let's understand this currency that we all seem to speak in this day and age did that at vanguard
00:14:05and then i did that at goldman and then i did at state street and then i kind of went back to latin
00:14:09america and built a big business in latin america at a company called first trust and while i was
00:14:14doing all this i don't know if you've ever had like a moment in your life where you were doing something
00:14:19and then you look down the hallway like metaphor you know metaphorically speaking and you see who
00:14:26the person is that you would be in 10 years and you hate them and you don't want anything to do
00:14:31with them and then you're like i see myself divorced multiple times with like an alcohol
00:14:36dependency worshiping at the altar of money and i don't want this life and so i had built my whole
00:14:42life for this one moment and then realized oh lord this is not actually what most people don't have
00:14:49that moment of lucidity because they'll see they think they know what the rewards of money and power
00:14:54and honor and admiration actually are and they won't recognize actually the fruit of that in
00:15:00people who are older than they are so they'll say they'll see somebody like my boss is miserable and
00:15:04he's workaholic and he drinks too much he never sees his kids and he hates his wife and his wife
00:15:09hates him and all that but but if i had his money it would be completely different oh that's true
00:15:15yeah i wonder what because mother nature says that you'll be happy if you get these worldly rewards
00:15:20mother nature doesn't leave you to think that you're going to pay the price again interesting
00:15:25what we all what we know and you and i've talked about this in the past in other venues
00:15:28these rewards are not bad but if these are your ultimate goals you're in trouble and you're you're
00:15:35going to be in trouble is what it comes down to so when you see people who say i just want to be rich
00:15:39and being rich is the point their life could be a mess that's what it comes down to and you saw it
00:15:44and most people don't no i saw it firsthand and you know when you first i think you should chase your
00:15:49first 100k see what it's like like it's not going to ruin your life to go figure out how to get money
00:15:53first and uh i think there's nothing wrong with that there are things that are true about life
00:15:59that is it is a little bit easier if you have money and like i have a decent amount of it now so i know
00:16:05that on high it's very easy for me to say i could give it all up but you know i don't really want to
00:16:11and so i think it's okay like go chase your money at least that's what it was for me i was like i'm
00:16:15going to go chase it but a certain point it's like goes to that moment you've got to keep asking
00:16:19yourself is it enough and am i going in the right direction and when i looked down that hallway and
00:16:23saw those guys in finance i was like oh this is not it and so i took a little pause and did my version
00:16:30of your little pilgrimage which i think was just like six months off kind of hanging by the beach
00:16:35unsure of what to do next yeah and started writing and that was it i started writing a sub stack
00:16:42and the newsletter the first one was about how i thought like the world was kind of losing the
00:16:47ability for us to question things i was like why is it we're not allowed to question things this was
00:16:52right during covid and so i was like we're losing our minds like we should question everything on
00:16:57all sides always that's what we do as journalists why wouldn't we keep doing that and um and so
00:17:02anyway i never was on the internet before i had no interest in being public i'm relatively uninterested
00:17:08in fame although it certainly can tempt me sometimes and uh but in that writing i realized
00:17:14like oh i this feels good i can help people and i can talk to them about things and i know some
00:17:20stuff about money and so you know when you find that thing that you kind of it's your unfair
00:17:24advantage i'm pretty good at diving into a subject figuring out some things about it explaining it to
00:17:28other people i was like wow if you can find the thing that you're really uniquely good at and then
00:17:33share it with the world then then that's a fun way to make money and so that's what i found and that
00:17:38first little newsletter led to this media company contrarian thinking that's what i called it back
00:17:43then but before then all i did was buy businesses build asset management companies and think that
00:17:50one day i wanted to build the next you know kkr or carlisle group the next big private equity fund
00:17:56and you actually found your own mission how do you how do you describe your mission statement today
00:18:01yeah well we have we have two mission statements today and the main one is that i want to create
00:18:07one million financially free humans and i think the best way to get financially free is ownership
00:18:11i also think it's the right way like you don't want to just win a lottery ticket you want to earn it
00:18:15that's the what part now we're getting to the y part and the second part of the mission is that
00:18:19i believe very deeply that ownership is like the key to all freedom and so like in in our belief
00:18:28it's not that ownership of a business it's ownership of your life your decisions you know
00:18:32the the next moves you make in determining you're not the victim you know life doesn't happen to you
00:18:38it happens in general and you have the ability to assert your will too and so we believe really
00:18:44deeply that ownership is a key to happiness and i don't mean ownership by saying control
00:18:49and anybody who's been an owner knows you are not in control as an owner you are the janitor and
00:18:55you're the ceo at all times and it's very perplexing but if you can own a piece of a house
00:19:01you don't burn it down right you build it and i think in this country if you see the statistics
00:19:06we've gone from 80 ownership of businesses in this country when we started to less than 10 or 6 today
00:19:13depending on how you track the metrics my thesis is that that is a key reason why so many of us
00:19:19also feel disenfranchised we don't we don't feel like we're really part of anything anymore and
00:19:24we're not responsible for anything anymore and there are very few people who own a lot of
00:19:30everything and the rest of us kind of rent and i don't mean that you have to own a business entirely
00:19:36and this is my last little rant i think you can own part of it because like you want to plant something
00:19:41and see it grow and and this like kind of comes up with your idea of capitalism and progress i think
00:19:47when you own a little something you want to see it grow you don't get mad that somebody else owns it
00:19:53and they don't pay you enough from it and so that's our thesis yeah good and and i'll get back to the
00:19:59thesis here in a second i want to make one distinction when you're talking about accumulating
00:20:03accumulating some money such that you can have some ownership such that you can actually live a life
00:20:08that can be happier there's a bunch of links in that chain to be sure and i want to dig into that but
00:20:11money isn't all money you emphasize earning it a lot super important super important morally super
00:20:19important with respect to the behavioral implications so dig into that a little bit because a lot of
00:20:24people they want to go to vegas right they they they play the lotto they hope to inherit all those
00:20:30things have something in common in my work it's really clear that if your your income is unearned
00:20:36it will actually be a problem for you that unearned money creates problems in people's lives oh i've
00:20:43seen it firsthand yeah so so talk about that a little bit more about the importance of earning
00:20:47it and how in in the context of what you're trying to do to set people up in businesses
00:20:51what we found so there was a young man actually who came to one of our advisory groups and wanted
00:20:56to grow his business and we turned him down and the reason why we turned him down is because he did an
00:21:02online stock trading business and this was like a day trading education business and i just said it's
00:21:08not morally aligned with what we do here and so i wish you well and no judgment but like that's not
00:21:12a type of business that i actually think is good for society or works speculation which has too much
00:21:16to do with gambling which is too much to do with like vegas exactly that's your point right that's
00:21:20exactly right and so and it was fine but i've stayed close with the young man he's actually
00:21:24a man of faith he's christian he's a lovely guy actually and but and very talented but he had got
00:21:31caught up into what a lot of young people i think here today which is give me the rolls royce the
00:21:35lambo the exterior thing make people think that i'm somebody special and then i will feel a certain
00:21:40special and um and through his career i watched him go from this to uh airbnb arbitrage to um now
00:21:48selling a sales program crypto mining basically and i watched it and through each phase and now
00:21:54he's kind of removed himself slightly from it but he would continue to say well i can't figure this
00:21:58out and it's not working and i would say well when you don't understand the the foundation on which
00:22:03you've laid your house you're going to be constantly confused when the sand shifts and you think that
00:22:07it's built on cinder blocks you cannot you could build a high rise on sand and it will fall
00:22:13eventually and so until you get right with the why of why you're doing things and with who you're
00:22:19serving as opposed to how you make money you probably will continue to have this problem and
00:22:24maybe not there are plenty of very very wealthy people that do things that are speculative and
00:22:29scam-like and whatever but he was such a perfect instance of i think what happens to the youth which
00:22:33is like if you play short-term games you're going to have short-term pain and if you play long-term
00:22:38games you're going to have long-term gain yeah so that's important because you know we can all come
00:22:43up with somebody who had a kind of a scammy business and turn it into a billion dollars but the truth of
00:22:48the matter is actually quite the contrary if you look at empirically people who make good money are
00:22:53people who do good things people who create serious businesses that create real value in the lives of
00:22:58other people not like i got a new way to do a little the arbitrage you know one hundredth of one
00:23:06penny across every trade or or or mining the crypto in a brand new way on the contrary they're doing
00:23:12something that people actually need they're thinking it's funny i have this friend for years and years
00:23:16still friend and he did this thing he leases mainframe computers and he made huge money leasing
00:23:23mainframe computers and and i thought i don't i wouldn't want to do that what why do you do that
00:23:28and and i got to know him a little bit better and i realized that he would lay awake at night thinking
00:23:32what does my client need what is my client need what's actually keeping my what's keeping up my
00:23:38client right now about his computing capacity and the whole point was he wanted to create value in
00:23:45the life of somebody else as opposed to trying to make money and that's behind your philosophy right
00:23:50that's the reason that you're helping people set up businesses that are just they're not sexy
00:23:54necessarily what they do is it and this gives people joy is to serve other people as you're
00:23:58exactly right i mean there's actually it's something kind of fascinating it's called the song hearse
00:24:02matrix and basically there's data to suggest that the sexier a career for instance the lower the
00:24:10amount of money that you make and the unsexier the career the more money you make on average and
00:24:15i think it was called compensating wage differentials by adam smith in the wolf of
00:24:19nations there you go yeah and so so scott galloway had an incredible quote that i'm going to steal
00:24:24which is he explained it as we called it the boring sexy matrix before i knew there was something that
00:24:29actually existed in the world already called this all ideas are obviously stolen in some way shape
00:24:33or form we had actually tracked it in our businesses so if you can imagine we analyze a couple thousand
00:24:38businesses a year and then determine should we invest in this should we not invest in this and
00:24:42then we review did we miss anything how much money would we have made etc and what we found over time
00:24:47is those companies that we uh passed on uh where the companies were really really sexy on average
00:24:54they didn't make a lot of money and the companies that actually paid us consistently over time were
00:24:58the more boring businesses and so it was literally our internal tool for tracking the data which now
00:25:03is backed by this thing called the song hearse matrix which had already existed previously and
00:25:06scott gave this incredible line he goes when you think about your profession and you think about
00:25:10what you want to do next and you chase after the shiny object i want you to think about
00:25:14the fact that most actors and actresses inside of the sag afra union in hollywood more than 67
00:25:21of them cannot actually afford to pay even the insurance premiums on the insurance to stay in
00:25:28the union yeah so what does that mean it means that actors and actresses a few of them make a lot of
00:25:32money most of them have to have two or three jobs in order to have the you know blessing of that
00:25:38potential profession but how many electricians are doing that as a side hustle because they love it
00:25:45no no that's their full-time job they make all their money from it same thing with people in
00:25:48finance yeah because those professions they actually pay quite well because it's not just for prestige
00:25:53yeah i know it's interesting so among musicians which is my old career all the way through my 20s
00:25:5890 percent of musicians are either unemployed or underemployed professional musicians who call
00:26:02themselves musicians and you're in los angeles for example and you have a waiter or a waitress
00:26:09it's probably an actor 100 that's what it's coming down to and it's pretty interesting because even
00:26:13the ones who are really successful and you and i both have friends who are you know really famous
00:26:17people in hollywood for example who do you think is happier that movie star or your electrician
00:26:23who do you think has a better family life who do you think actually has a better kind of balance
00:26:27between the activities in life and it's a question that almost answers itself doesn't it so the
00:26:33compensation that you're talking about is not just financial it's not just pecuniary it's actually
00:26:39financial and lifestyle and happiness and love and relationships and a lot of other stuff there's a lot
00:26:46to be said for doing a boring thing and boring in the eyes of the world by the way when you talk to
00:26:50an electrician not boring very you know they think it's fascinating oh yeah because because it sort of
00:26:55is when they describe it to you yeah you know and i mean we know many many i mean in the boardroom
00:27:00where where we train people how to to grow their businesses you know most of the businesses that
00:27:04are doing let's call it 10 million dollars or more in revenue are home services or professional
00:27:09services businesses they are not recreating a wheel they are not coming up with the next snapchat or
00:27:15you know the or you know palantir or andoril these businesses have already existed there's a ton of
00:27:20competition other people want to play the game and yet they are making tens of millions of dollars a
00:27:25year doing it and is it easy no like but the optimizing that you have to do on a plumbing
00:27:32company i mean think about it for a second how many plumbing companies can you name i mean i can't name
00:27:37one nationwide plumbing company right as opposed to uh if you go to that space and you start creating
00:27:44a real brand and you compete because i don't know you pick up the phone and you show up on time and
00:27:50you and your staff look clean and put together and you price appropriately and you market you can
00:27:56compete in this space and so one of the most incredible parts about entrepreneurship in this
00:27:59country right now i think is that the bar is actually so low for you to win it's so low there's
00:28:06more people than ever now competing in entrepreneurship you know basically 19x the number of businesses
00:28:12created this year than uh 2020 and yet most people do not follow through they do not continue to
00:28:19compete uh and the reason that most businesses fail is the founders give up and so they're right
00:28:24yeah that's the number one reason for the failure of small businesses is that people walk away from
00:28:29them technically the number one reason is they run out of cash uh-huh so number one reason is cash uh
00:28:35the number two reason is the founders give up the number three reason is typically product market fit
00:28:41um this is based on sba data so this is really important because this is basically what your
00:28:46business is doing is solving the problem those problems for them exactly is making sure that
00:28:50they're there there is a market fit that you're screening them to make sure that they have the
00:28:55requisite skills etc etc right that they actually it's similar to your work in some ways like do you
00:29:00actually want to do this thing is a really important question to ask the founder you know when we analyze
00:29:05all of these companies the most important thing is really never the idea the idea is kind of important
00:29:10the important thing is like what hard ridiculous things have you done in the past that lead me to
00:29:15believe you're going to continue doing this would you want to do this thing on your worst day the
00:29:19number one predictor of ceo demise and ceo is on average in fortune 500 companies they they have a
00:29:2525 fire rate within the first 24 months it's a dangerous job i mean this is like you're cannon
00:29:33fodder if you're a ceo for one of these companies the number one predictor of getting fired you know
00:29:37what it is not liking their job they everybody wants to be ceo nobody wants to do ceo you know
00:29:44the being and doing are very different when they come down to but it's exactly the same principle
00:29:48that that you know the number one and two emotions that a brand new ceo actually experiences in the
00:29:52first 24 months of the job loneliness and anger yeah i believe that for sure and you're a ceo yeah
00:29:58and and i've been a ceo too i was a ceo for this is how we met because you were involved with the
00:30:04american enterprise institute where i was president and the first two years there was it was hell on
00:30:08wheels man it was just like i was lonely because you know my friends were the people i used to work
00:30:13with and now i was signing their checks and nobody wants to hang out with the boss and anger because
00:30:18i didn't you know it's to your point you don't have any control you know i had 310 bosses you know i
00:30:24was at the bottom box on an enormous org chart all alone in that bottom box and so the whole point is
00:30:30you better love it you better love it you better find it intrinsically rewarding if you're doing
00:30:34it for the money you're not gonna last well you're not gonna and so the same thing is true for
00:30:38entrepreneurs and business small business owners as it is for ceos of big companies there's a true
00:30:43ism right very much so i mean even mark so you met uh my my president here um and i'm still the ceo
00:30:51of the company but he really runs a lot of the day-to-day ops and um we can tell how bad the day
00:30:57has been by how ruffled mark's hair gets that right yeah because it really yes he's gotta be like me or
00:31:03your husband it's like make sure you can't there's no there's no hair so i don't know how we'd be able
00:31:07to tell with you there's a general aura your vibe it's like yeah but you know it is an impossibly
00:31:13difficult job except that if you do it and you like it it's so worth it and then it'll be impossible
00:31:19to go back and i you know i think the other thing with entrepreneurship is that everybody should try
00:31:23it once in their lives i think i think you talk about living life as an adventure i have there's
00:31:30this quote by emma bombek that i love and she said uh when i stand before god at the end of my days
00:31:36i hope to be able to say i'm wrung dry i have not one drop left of what you gave me and i think about
00:31:43that every day and when i am at the end of the day actually feeling wrung dry like i have nothing left
00:31:48to give i remember that's the point yeah and so what would it be like if i could and i don't mean
00:31:54just even with work just with like my capacity what am i what am i capable of what's what's in here and
00:32:00having this like curiosity about putting that out into the world not because it really matters not
00:32:05because anybody's gonna remember me not because i need to win but just like see yeah well i mean
00:32:10and this actually speaks to you know the next big topic i really want to talk about here which is
00:32:14your philosophy because you've got a philosophy this is not just an operational business where you're
00:32:21you know checking boxes and and looking at systems and the contrary this is underlying this as a view
00:32:27of life that you have and it's so interesting to me because you know as a guy who studies happiness
00:32:31and teaches happiness classes you actually have happiness principles now now we've sort of
00:32:37established the fact that you know what's what's money all about earned money all about it gives
00:32:42you ownership what's ownership all about that's what leads you to be able to have a happier life
00:32:47that's very philosophical so in what you've written and said happiness requires three things these are
00:32:54necessarily the macronutrients of happiness but these are requirements and necessary potentially
00:33:00insufficient but necessary number one is progress number two is freedom and number three is ownership
00:33:07so i want to talk about these things because these each one of these things has a whole library of
00:33:11neuroscience and behavioral science behind it and so we can talk about this and all of this is super
00:33:16solid and really really great so let's first talk about progress because this is weird this is not
00:33:21what a lot of people understand they think happiness actually comes from a rival they think it comes from
00:33:26outcomes not not processes and what we know i teach at a business school one of the things we teach our
00:33:33business school students is the biggest predictor of your success is not your outcomes it's your
00:33:37processes set your outcomes that you want and then forget them and and and focus on on processes okay
00:33:44now that suggests nothing about happiness your philosophy however says that that's not just the
00:33:50secret to success it's also the secret to happiness tell me more about why progress is so important
00:33:55yeah well i you know one line that stood out to me i think it was from a fellow by the name
00:33:58of brad jacobs who wrote a book called how to make a few billion dollars which i always thought was a
00:34:03funny little word to throw in there and but he said a line he said um one of my favorite mentors told
00:34:09me um every time you find a problem in business that's where the profit is and brad if you've ever
00:34:14met him he's like a very happy billionaire weird because most billionaires i've met they're they're
00:34:21tortured in a lot of ways well they're chasing right chasing because when they get their first
00:34:25billion the first thing they think is i didn't feel the way i thought i was going to feel so i
00:34:30guess i needed another billion yeah exactly well and that's how i think you feel with a million or
00:34:34a hundred thousand that's how you feel with anything when you have this fallacy of arrival
00:34:39which speaks to your point yeah and so i you know when i saw him i thought this is a he's just he
00:34:45loves the game and so this idea of progress probably comes from a mixture of when i find
00:34:51difficulty in anything we do in life i tend to find that really interesting yeah and you know i think
00:34:57my husband and i have a shared philosophy on this too which is he always says to me when i don't want
00:35:02to do something are you a good white shark or are you a great white shark and i find that very
00:35:06annoyed and simultaneously he's right because we have this idea of like who are you going to be in
00:35:13life once you declare who you want to be what would be the actions of the person that you want to be
00:35:20be and so if i want to be somebody who wins over time if i want to grow in my business or life that
00:35:26means that i probably have to like keep my word to myself i'd probably have to treat my body well i'd
00:35:30probably have to move forward in my life and all of those things are not about arriving they're about
00:35:34little decisions you do every day that make you feel better and so the idea of progress i think we have
00:35:39found at least in our lives that the more you are moving towards a goal that excites you the happier
00:35:44you are and he has this line he always tells me which is what do you need in life um somebody to
00:35:49love something to do and something to look forward to and that's kind of how we live our life so a lot
00:35:55of times when we're not in flow and we're not progressing we'll say well do you have somebody
00:36:01to love i guess we do you know do you have something to do yeah we do do you have something to look
00:36:05forward to and in that moment that's often the one that's missing it might be like oh no we feel like
00:36:10we're on an endless grind you know that's right there's just there's just hamster wheeling so i'd
00:36:14be like okay let's break that down what what would you like to look forward to in life and so that
00:36:20idea of progress um is interesting and probably a little scary sometimes to think what would it look
00:36:25like if you didn't progress and so you have to be careful about that well and we actually sort of
00:36:29know so there's a really interesting statistic in the in the in the literature on weight loss
00:36:34right and it depends on what study you're looking at somewhere between 80 and 95 percent of diets
00:36:39are unsuccessful now what they all diets have in common is they all work like you can do almost any
00:36:44diet and you'll lose weight if this is your goal is to lose weight the problem is that within one year
00:36:50usually it's how it's measured within one year you gain all of the weight back and more between 80 and
00:36:5595 and this is just this triumph of hope is that people keep doing this and it's a 40 billion dollar
00:37:01industry that fails all the time there's nothing else that exactly that works this way now here's
00:37:06the interesting thing about it diets are unbelievably rewarding because they're all
00:37:12about progress and you will absolutely delightedly not eat things that you like when the scale is
00:37:18going down the reason they fail is because you arrive and when you arrive your your reward for
00:37:25hitting your goal is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life
00:37:29congratulations you arrived now you can not make progress and not eat what you like in that that's
00:37:36wonderful this is one of the reasons that 30 percent of people on serious weight loss programs
00:37:40wind up with an eating disorder the reason is because they keep going because they want to stay
00:37:46happy they keep losing weight even though they shouldn't and they get unhealthier because losing
00:37:51weight per se feels like progress this is an example of the principle you in life we need to be doing
00:37:58healthy things that bring progress and we need to love playing more than we love winning that's what
00:38:04great athletes have in common by the way they love playing even more than they love winning and that's
00:38:08what you're talking about in business too right yeah a hundred percent you know and even i think
00:38:13whenever whenever we like lose the goal post and can't figure out where to go next the problem is
00:38:19usually multitasking and so like even today one of the new things i'm doing that it probably doesn't
00:38:24sound very very very clever at all but has actually been really impactful for me is just
00:38:29like when you eat do you do other things like do you check your phone or do you like read a book
00:38:35or anything i used to and and it's pretty normal and you see us in this like day and age you sit
00:38:39at your desk you have the food you're looking at your computer you're scrolling on instagram
00:38:43and you're eating and um i never really thought about that very much instead of doing that i just
00:38:48don't do anything and so i eat and i when i say you know you're like a like a young kid in love
00:38:55for the first time you're like and the food tastes better and i'm more you know and it's more enjoyable
00:38:59and so i think in business too you can get caught in all these multitasking when you're eating you
00:39:05can get caught in this multitasking and either way you lose the taste you lose the taste completely
00:39:09for what you're doing because you know you feel like you have forward momentum only and so we like
00:39:15to pair that idea of progress with like can you really be here right now that's mindfulness you're
00:39:19very buddhist that's a very buddhist idea of course and that's hard because you know we we time travel
00:39:24our enormous prefrontal cortex what is good at is allowing us to travel between three time zones
00:39:29the future of the past and the present the average person spends 20 to 50 percent of their cycles in
00:39:34the future planning out the future which is why homo sapiens rules the world because we practice
00:39:40future scenarios make mistakes come back to the present and not do that that's what we're really
00:39:45really good at as well as going to the past seeing what went wrong understanding it learning from it
00:39:49and not going back there again and not replicating that that's why this supercomputer in the front of
00:39:54our heads 30 of our brain by weight allows us to do that and you know your dog is a wafer thin
00:39:59prefrontal cortex and can't do that your dog is incredibly mindful which is why your dog is happier
00:40:03than you right but your dog is less successful than you that's okay so here's the interesting part
00:40:09about that however and here's the wrinkle in all that entrepreneurs tend to spend up to 80 percent
00:40:15of their time in the future which is one of the reasons that entrepreneurs they tend to be quite
00:40:19successful but they're often pretty unhappy how do you square the circle on mindfulness and future
00:40:25oriented thing which is also the most prospection which you actually need to be a successful
00:40:29entrepreneur how do you how do you how do you fix that yeah well maybe it is all self-serving in some
00:40:35way because if you think about your job as a ceo i do think your job is to look into the future and
00:40:40make sure that you make decisions in order to allow your company to continue to survive survival is
00:40:45really the game as the ceo because most things fail and if you aren't progressing you have immediate
00:40:50entropy right so you're either actually growing or you are dying and yet i've also found there's
00:40:57a point about being a ceo that not enough ceos talk about which i believe there's real energy
00:41:02transference in almost everything we do and so at the end of your and my interaction you will
00:41:06either leave depleted and a little tired and man kind of wishing i don't see cody again and like
00:41:11that was uh not that great um or you'll leave like that was enjoyable and i learned a few things and
00:41:17even if i'm tired huh i'm thinking i'm feeling right and as a ceo i think you have to be really
00:41:22careful only thinking that you have to do the tactic and not also thinking about the feeling
00:41:28so if you sit in our meetings which i think is one of the most important things you do as a ceo is your
00:41:32your weekly meeting with your team the reason why is because that is your one chance to sort
00:41:36of rally the troops and your job is not to just tell them what to do it is hopefully to inspire
00:41:42them why they should want to do this thing after all you are the bottom box exactly and it is this
00:41:48whole i love that you would know this if you want to teach your people to build a boat do not teach
00:41:54them about ropes and hammers but teach them about yearning for the vast and endless sea oh nice and
00:42:00i think i don't know who that is i like it a lot i'll have to find the attribution but i think about
00:42:04that a lot as a ceo i think part of our job is really to inspire others and how can you inspire
00:42:08others if you're thinking of the future stressed out worried about this always focus no it's because
00:42:12you have to take a pause and go you guys like this is what i know you want deeply this is where we are
00:42:18this is what we're going making jokes making them feel seen and i'm not touchy feely or super nice so
00:42:25i'm not saying like you have to be this like you know cheerleader yes at all instead you could just
00:42:30really be in the moment that's that's what uh daniel goldman calls authoritative leadership
00:42:35authoritative leadership is that everything gears to the broader mission and everybody has a role
00:42:39to play in it and the ceo's job is to help them understand what that role is in the mission
00:42:44and make them want to run through a wall for that mission that's right and that's not cheerleading
00:42:48that's that's that's a clear author not authoritarian authoritative leadership and those
00:42:54are the most beloved leaders whether they're you know pleasant all the time or not is what it comes
00:42:58down to because like do you see about our future you see your part in it are you ready to go that's
00:43:04right that's the weekly meeting right and that's progress it gets back to the progress principle
00:43:08right and i you know i was talking with a member of our team yesterday and um i found that there is
00:43:14a bit of a i don't know if it's generational i don't know if this is continuous but um i've seen
00:43:20a change in let's call it the last 10 years and a lot of people want to say this is my job you know
00:43:27that is their job i do this they do that and they want to sort of stay in their lanes and and maybe
00:43:33because we're overworked and overstimulated and are mentally masturbating about things as opposed
00:43:37to actually doing them we feel overwhelmed and so we don't want to do more at work i push back
00:43:42pretty hard on our team and in my opinion every time you have the ability to collect a skill it's
00:43:48a gift it's a really beautiful gift and work if done correctly shouldn't just be like monotonous
00:43:54continuous work that you do we should find ways to give that to ai and to other things instead we
00:43:58should be in the skill accumulation game and every time we give an outsourced party or somebody else
00:44:04the ability to learn a skill and not us and our team it's actually a tragedy because not that
00:44:09many people get to work at companies where you get to learn incredible things that will progress your
00:44:14career and your humanity forward you know if you come to a company like contrarian thinking and you
00:44:19learn how to communicate i don't care if you never work again a day in your life after this you will
00:44:23use that through your life and you will be better for it and so um i do think the other thing as a
00:44:29leader how i think about it is like you know we've got to inspire people not just for the vision but
00:44:35for wanting to do more and you talk about it as like happiness in some ways is suffering i think
00:44:41it's the same in business it's actually like no no take on that extra responsibility do a little bit
00:44:47more because if you do even if you don't get paid for it in this moment you are actually the one
00:44:52reaping all the rewards right right right um one last question about progress before we move on to
00:44:57freedom it's going to get heavier to make progress you need to have the right goals now there's a
00:45:02there's a uni speak spanish not everybody watching us speak spanish but there's this wonderful word
00:45:07in spanish there's a navigational term that you use in ordinary life there's rumbo rumbo which means in
00:45:13english the word is actually a rum line r-h-u-m line and it's like it's not a word that we
00:45:18ordinarily use but what it means is the straight line between where you start and where you're going
00:45:22to wind up and you have to have rumbo you have to have you have to have the goal in mind that's a
00:45:28very specific thing and the correct thing now not because the navigation is going to be perfect not
00:45:34because you're not going to get blown off course not because your trip is going to be in a straight
00:45:37line but you gotta have a straight line between where you start and where you're going to go
00:45:41is what it comes down to and so had to have a rum line in life is really important and that requires
00:45:47that you put the pin in the others in the other place in an appropriate way and that means having
00:45:52the right goals how do you select the right goals to have appropriate progress how do you know the
00:45:56right goals i think the way you get any get good at anything in life is practice continuously and i
00:46:01usually learn things like charlie monger always talks about uh invert always invert and so when
00:46:06you're looking for something instead of looking for what you want look for what you don't want and so
00:46:10typically i'm not actually smart enough to always figure out what i do want in life but i can usually
00:46:14get to the things i don't want and so my husband and i have a practice every single year and then
00:46:18a couple times throughout the year and the practice is writing down our goals i have like a journal
00:46:23going back 15 years and i write down all the things i want and then that year at the end of the year so
00:46:28we'll do it in a couple weeks all the things that i got that year those things that i achieved and
00:46:32it's quite comical to see what those were 15 years ago as opposed to now and i'm sure in 15 years from
00:46:37now i'll laugh at myself but i really like this belief of you practice figuring out what a good
00:46:43goal is and a bad goal and then you write down did you get it did you not and how did you feel about
00:46:48that and so you know my goals from back when i was first starting in finance were very embarrassing
00:46:53you know i at one point wrote down how many pairs of designer shoes i had i have it listed we could
00:46:59go back and see you know and i thought that was quite the goal that was a proxy goal by the way
00:47:04it wasn't about the shoes it was about what was that that's the star of bethlehem so the star
00:47:09the the three kings weren't going for the star the star was supposed to guide them to the stable
00:47:14to the manger where the baby jesus was lying and they just thought that the star would be above
00:47:18that the the designer shoes for you were going to be in the sky somewhere above what you thought you
00:47:24really wanted right i suppose unless you're a melda marcos and you really like super into shoes no no
00:47:28i definitely am not i'm really i like i wear you know whatever clothing but um it doesn't really
00:47:34matter to me that much in fact it was what it represented right it was what it represented and
00:47:38so it's interesting because i read main street millionaire and i would say that there's three
00:47:42kinds of goals in your philosophy let me see this let's see number one they should be intrinsic not
00:47:46extrinsic intrinsic goals means it's about love and relationships and the person you want to be
00:47:51make sure that those are the real goals the second is approach goals which is to say something good as
00:47:57opposed to avoiding something bad don't be fear and this is i see this a lot in your work and the last
00:48:02is non-positional which is why you talk about boring businesses positional goals are being sexy
00:48:07in the world's eyes non-positional goals are doing what you need know needs to be done notwithstanding
00:48:13the opinions of others so those are the three sets of goals in your business life and in your personal
00:48:16life is that fair very very yeah make progress appropriately to have the star of david or the star
00:48:22of the star in bethlehem appropriately positioned over what you truly do want that's a good set of
00:48:27characteristics right yes i mean we say um do the right thing even when it hurts maybe especially
00:48:34then yeah and so um that's one of that's an intrinsic goal right and and you know what i love
00:48:40about your work is you have this like mass amount of research and data in your head and this ability
00:48:45to recollect studies and and authors and who they are and i don't have that same brain my brain works
00:48:53more like if i want this outcome and i can sort of like validate huh what arthur says is true look at
00:48:58all of this research and data then i go okay if i was to explain it to a 10 year old and then have to
00:49:03take a practice from it to execute on it how would i do it and so the way i think about goals is just
00:49:08so stupid simple and that is is i just only want to know the how-to once i've figured out the why
00:49:14is worth it and the how-to is as simple as every year grab a journal write down all the things that
00:49:20you want then at the end of the year write down all the things you got then ask how did i feel about
00:49:25those things and what should i change and then do that every single year and every single year look
00:49:31back on private previous years and make your goals slightly better than the one before and even better
00:49:36than doing it once a year would be to do it once a month in the beginning once a quarter a little bit
00:49:40longer because you won't have the repetitions to even recognize if something is intrinsic or if
00:49:46somebody is something is approach until you can touch it and feel it and so that's why i love your
00:49:52work because it's like tell me the whole corpus of why and convince me that this is right and then
00:50:00we can figure out how to get there yeah and you know our viewers can decide which approach is
00:50:04actually better whether you know doing it in a very practical way that leads to success is better or
00:50:10starting every sentence with study show no i think i'd like yours both i think you need both and i
00:50:16think you need to question you know i i read a study which you would be able to tell me if true
00:50:22was true or not that um the simpler you speak the more people listen to you and the more intelligent
00:50:27that they think you are on average above a certain level above a certain level without grammatical
00:50:32errors etc etc so using and this is one of the things that i wind up telling teaching my students
00:50:36when you're in your 20s and you're intelligent you use way way way too many words you use and so one
00:50:43of the things i'll tell my students is when they're writing non-fiction for example which is what we do
00:50:47i mean they're talking about research take out literally all the adjectives take out all of the
00:50:53adjectives okay so what i just did was i said take out literally all the adjectives and then i rephrased
00:50:57it by taking out the word literally and it was better the second time if you take all the adjectives
00:51:02out of your writing people are going to understand you better and and and and admire the thought more
00:51:08and you don't learn that of course because you want to lard everything up yeah well and i think it's
00:51:14harder to take a complex subject and make it simple the first time and then it's actually one step
00:51:20harder it seems to me to take the complex that is simple but expand upon it in your own vernacular
00:51:25which you do and so say well let me sort of name this let me frame this let me put together ways
00:51:30that you can actually remember things over time but you really need both because these days you've got
00:51:36to be careful of people who speak so simply and do like rhythmic intonation and have one-liners that
00:51:42sound incredible except they're not backed up by anything but you don't want to you want to avoid
00:51:47that it would be good if there's an empirical backing to the idea i think so and not lead people
00:51:50in the right direction no okay progress got it now i want to get on to the next one because the next
00:51:54one gets philosophically it's uh it's it's pretty interesting the way that you think uh is freedom
00:52:01when you say freedom what do you mean when you say freedom is one of the ingredients of a happy life
00:52:07what does that mean so when i think about freedom the first thing that comes to mind and what we try
00:52:13to optimize for is i want you to actually feel like you're the captain of your ship like you are
00:52:20the architect of your life and you know in many ways i don't think you are completely right because
00:52:25you will die and there is a god in my opinion but we've like relented and given up so much of our
00:52:32freedom to other men and women to humans and so you know we get taught what to think not how to think
00:52:39often in school these days we um you know decide to go into careers and into marriages not based on
00:52:47the things that we truly want often but because of societal norms we choose jobs sort of flippantly
00:52:53maybe based on salary not often because of skill set you know back when i was learning what career
00:52:59i should follow i took a test that told me it should be financed but i hated math and wasn't
00:53:03sure why it was financed right and so this idea of freedom is really you and your ability to choose
00:53:10that choice i think is so crucial for us to believe that we have autonomy in our lives and i think
00:53:18people who believe that they have autonomy they don't turn into victims as often and they actually
00:53:22build things as opposed to burn things down and so our belief is freedom is not less work freedom is
00:53:31not doing nothing freedom is the ability for you to choose what to work on that is it and you know
00:53:38often i think freedom is the ability to choose what you want to work on with whom you want to work on
00:53:42where you want to work it's a lack of coercion but yeah here's the question it's funny because you
00:53:48know a lot of how people talk about freedom today is a sort of a it's a libertine thing and it's
00:53:53funny because i'm i feel free precisely because i do not feel like i have the choice to betray the
00:54:01loyalty of my marriage i feel that i am free because i am loyal to as a christian man and
00:54:09it's weird because you know gk chesterton has this famous famous metaphor of boys on the top of a
00:54:17mountain and sheer cliffs around you know this this is a soccer field and just cliffs at the edge of
00:54:23the soccer field and they say play soccer and they're too afraid because you know the ball is
00:54:27going to go over and they're going to fall off and so they're like lying down and then they build high
00:54:32fences and they start playing soccer joyfully and the whole point is that real freedom requires
00:54:38personal circumscription of that liberty yeah you know you need to live according to actual rules in
00:54:45your life but you have to choose to live according to abridgment of your own freedom to be truly free
00:54:50well i think my husband always says freedom needs constraints and you know i remember asking him
00:54:57he was a navy seal right and so um what's interesting is i like to break a lot of rules
00:55:03and and i don't mean but like i will cross across the street without a crosswalk almost every time
00:55:08and chris actually does not enjoy that he's like there is a crosswalk we need to go within the
00:55:12crosswalk and i remember it's chaos right you're right i remember one day think i just asked him
00:55:18i'm like you have you know with much love ended lives and uh done these really intense things
00:55:25that uh seem to be ultimate rule breaking and i have done none of those i have broken spreadsheets
00:55:30and yet you know i'm willing to break these rules and his response back to me was that the reason
00:55:35that we could do the things that we do was because of all the constraints that we had we couldn't
00:55:39break the rules we kept you know the rules very intact and inside of those rules we had a lot of
00:55:44freedom and so i suppose that's how i think about it like you get to choose what your doctrine is
00:55:49you get to choose what your rules are but you need to be the one to choose them and i think that is a
00:55:54joy in life today and voluntarily live according to your own values and principles exactly without
00:56:00being impeccable with no contradictions even in private attemptedly you know i certainly attempt
00:56:05to do that but that means being true to your word that means not lying to anybody for any reason not
00:56:10just your spouse but also your co-workers or yourself yeah and yourself yeah i mean my father
00:56:15has a great line he says tell the truth uh it's easy to remember and that is very true for me you
00:56:21know i don't have a great memory and so wherever i can i try to just tell the truth not to be mean i
00:56:27don't believe in this like random radical candor thing that was kind of big in silicon valley for
00:56:31a while i actually believe like you know you don't need to say the truth all the time you don't need
00:56:35to volunteer like you know i if you want to stay married yeah the dress looks great honey is so
00:56:41useful just stick with that but it's also you don't need to volunteer things that people don't want to
00:56:45hear constantly because that's that's actually usually using information as a weapon not as a gift
00:56:51ah you know and i also think about bowling like in bowling if i got to choose between bumper lanes or
00:56:56not and my sole goal was to hit the pins at the end of the lane i might choose bumper lanes sometimes
00:57:02and um and so i think about freedom that way like in my husband and my marriage we're the same you
00:57:08know very happily married and i would never break that covenant you know we also have a lot of rules
00:57:13between the two of us he's very big on not lying to be frank when i grew up like there's a lot of
00:57:18white lies like it was like you know oh yeah i got home at 10 last night but it was really 11
00:57:24you know i chris literally doesn't do that that's probably one of the reasons you married him
00:57:29is because he's more impeccable to his word than that which you saw growing up and that's what you
00:57:33wanted in your life that was a that's what great marriages have aspiration in them and they look for
00:57:40you look in your spouse for a characteristic that you want in yourself that's a virtue that
00:57:46you want in yourself that's one of the reasons that you know my wife grew up in a in a family
00:57:50in barcelona and there was a lot of infidelity and there was a lot of dishonesty and the main thing
00:57:56that she liked about me when we learned to speak each other's language which was a couple years in
00:58:00actually was that i never lied to her i just wasn't going to lie to her and that was crazy she'd never
00:58:07met a man that doesn't lie to her ever you know family friends none of it and that that in and of
00:58:14itself was what she actually wanted and never seen before and that's a kind of what you're saying too
00:58:18right very much so and you're a navy seal i'm not careful what you wish for you would say the same
00:58:24thing i mean we're we both jokingly say we're hard to love and so you know we come with a lot of
00:58:29things but i think you know if i don't like to give marriage advice because i haven't done it long
00:58:34enough but you know how long you've been married we've been married for six years but we've known
00:58:39each other since we were 11 we've been together for 10 and so um you've known each other since you were
00:58:4511 since we're 11 yeah growing up together we grew up together went to prom together um yeah he's very
00:58:50close with my father this was your high school boyfriend he was yeah huh it just took a long time
00:58:56to get together yeah exactly exactly we took a big hiatus he was a year younger than i was in college
00:59:02and so i went on still is no no no that's not how it works yes exactly the husband always catches up
00:59:09with i'm a i'm a year younger than i was a year younger than my wife when we married but now i'm
00:59:13like a decade older that's exactly how it works he always jokes because on the internet people are
00:59:19like god her husband's so much older and he thinks it's very funny because then he tells them that
00:59:23i'm the cougar but um nice women have a lot of makeup you know we can and men have a lot of
00:59:29boldness you guys wear it well but you know if i was to talk to young cody just myself going back
00:59:35to thinking about getting married and and what to look for it would be to look for all the things
00:59:42that nobody tells you to to almost completely disregard most advice on marriage which is like
00:59:49find a nice guy who cares about you you know that wants to have kids um you know that you know you
00:59:56guys get along and i'm not sure it's any of that because chris and i have a lot of friction but it's
01:00:03like beautiful friction and instead our rules at least in our marriage are you find somebody
01:00:08who wants the absolute best for you above almost anything else you find somebody who's your biggest
01:00:14cheerleader even when they probably shouldn't be you find somebody who tells you the truth
01:00:19often especially when it hurts and you find somebody who wants the same vision of life
01:00:25in some way out of it and finally who believes in the same moral and ethical compass and those
01:00:30five things for us have led to a very happy marriage and an ability to work together and do
01:00:35all these things together that lead to a bigger surface area which means more friction can happen
01:00:40because we're together you know at a high degree and yet quite happy and i also think it's really
01:00:46odd you and your wife work together in many ways now too but people will always say oh a power
01:00:51couple and i'm like i don't even know what that means actually or they'll say you work with your
01:00:56spouse god that must be hard and i think quite the opposite you know at the end of the day we have all
01:01:03of these things to discuss we we have this this big friendship this big continual conversation that we
01:01:08get to stay on between the two of us and i think it's a beautiful thing to ponder at least allowing
01:01:15you know your other spouse into your sphere of genius it's also very sexy yeah to see them and
01:01:20that's you know parenting is supposed to be like that too parenting winds up being the family as a
01:01:23firm where you've got you know and and one of the interesting things about it is when you see
01:01:28as parents you see yourself as a team and and really how it works is it's you against them you
01:01:35know totally it's team parents versus team kids and it should be and what they can't they they're
01:01:41not going to get between the management team they're not they're just not getting in there
01:01:44you know it's just not good and even if you think that your spouse might be right she's right yeah
01:01:50that's what my parents always said the kids are always wrong their kids are always wrong i mean
01:01:53that's just like that you have to have a philosophy of things like that you know it's funny people ask
01:01:57my parents now my father actually works for us and my mom likes to come to the events too so they'll
01:02:01be around a lot of people in our ecosystem i'll often ask them like how you know what did you do
01:02:06with cody or like how do i have a daughter who works or is successful or whatever and my parents
01:02:12will always say the same thing which is that they were always on the same team and so i'm sure they
01:02:16had their fights we really didn't see much of them now that we're older we see it but when we were
01:02:21younger no and uh and they always uh chose each other before they chose us and that seems like
01:02:28it's really hard and not that normal yeah no it isn't and but the the rules turn out to be quite
01:02:34simple the the for example um the rule for raising a good son for a father to raise a good son this is
01:02:42not entirely sex specific but it sort of is is the number your number one job if you want to raise a
01:02:47good son is to love his mother that's it why because the number one thing is going to help
01:02:52him grow up to be a successful person and a happy person is to be well married and the only way that
01:02:58he's going to be well that his leg up and getting well married is actually seeing you loving his mom
01:03:03because that's what registered everything that's what that's the the how the model works you got
01:03:08kind of one job man is to love his mom that's something i never thought about it that way yeah
01:03:14yeah super important it's actually super important it makes all the sense in the world yeah and not
01:03:18to mention like if you want to play this game of life or business at a very high degree there
01:03:22is nothing better than having somebody who has your back and so i don't think people realize you've said
01:03:27it before but you know the best partner that you'll ever the best partnership or the worst partnership
01:03:31that you'll ever do will be your marriage and if you i have been uh married before and not a great
01:03:38marriage on both of our parts and there is no greater misery uh than to be badly married and
01:03:42there is no greater joy that was your hiatus with chris yeah you're married to somebody else that's
01:03:46quite a hiatus that was a long time and i was only married for three years previously i got married
01:03:52pretty young the first time but for all other people's reasons and you know not fair to him
01:03:59not fair to me and you know now that i look back at it partnership is just so crucial to anything
01:04:04you want to do in life it's an old african proverb like if you want to go you know fast go alone if
01:04:09you want to go far go together and there's no way we could have built this business without each
01:04:14other yeah yeah yeah i got one more which is your last the last pillar of the cody sanchez
01:04:20the philosophy of happiness which is ownership and we started the conversation with ownership because
01:04:25ownership was a lot about how to it's not about control but it's about being in the driver's seat
01:04:31of your relationships and your business and who you are as an adult you have to have a sense of
01:04:36ownership that's interesting here's a historical artifact you probably know this but not everybody
01:04:41does we all know this language from the declaration of independence where good old tom jefferson he was
01:04:46almost certainly taking dictation from benjamin franklin when he wrote that line that we have
01:04:50this unalienable right endowed by our creator to life liberty in the pursuit of happiness right
01:04:55well it turns out that that language was cribbed from the virginia declaration of rights written
01:05:01by george mason and there was one word different it was the unalienable right to life liberty in
01:05:06the pursuit of property and the whole point was that that was the essence of what it meant to be
01:05:12a person who was really in control of his or her life was to actually have property property was
01:05:19this tangible thing you know what's really interesting about your philosophy is when you
01:05:23talk about ownership it's like property happiness take your pick it turns out that george mason and
01:05:30tom jefferson were kind of saying the same thing according to your philosophy right that's fascinating
01:05:34i had no idea yeah i mean i think listen i think it's hard to be alive it's hard to just just you
01:05:43know from the beginning to the end it's really nothing but trials and tribulations and joy along
01:05:48the way also and so i like to think about the things that we can control to try to make our life better
01:05:53in some way and if i look out at society writ large you know does it feel better or worse when other
01:05:59people tell you what to do all the time or when you get to determine a little bit of that and i think
01:06:04by and large it feels pretty good when you get to have some ability to say i'd rather do this than
01:06:09that it feels kind of good and not always sometimes it feels nice to say like thou
01:06:15shall not kill okay fine and so this idea of ownership is really yes i do think happiness
01:06:20stems from the belief that no man should tell another explicitly what to do in higher order
01:06:25than another and that the ultimate sovereign is is god but i don't think that i should bow to another
01:06:32human i don't think you should bow to another human i do not think my life is worth more than
01:06:36somebody else's i do not think i have better answers writ large than the collective does
01:06:41in many ways and so this idea of ownership really is deeply a belief in humanity and that like you
01:06:47are capable of more than you assume and of being the captain of your life if you will do the very
01:06:53hard thing which is take control of it and reap the either benefits or the risks from it and so that is
01:06:59this idea of ownership when i explain it normally i just say literally ownership like owning a house
01:07:05owning your own a business own something that drives but what you're really talking about is
01:07:10owning you that's right and but that's much more touchy feeling and so it's hard it's also i mean
01:07:15once again i mean i am renting me from god right and so only owning me i'm i'm the i'm the steward
01:07:22of me in its way but at least it's temporal earthly ownership in its way do you consider yourself to
01:07:28be a libertarian yeah i mean i try to never apply political to myself um because i've done it before
01:07:38and then i got to that thing where i was like oh these guys these guys we're all the same they'll
01:07:42always break your heart exactly well you know i loved you know what you said which is you know
01:07:48you have that whole book love your enemies which was an incredible book about something that seems
01:07:53so obvious and yet i needed to read 300 pages on it because it was very easy to get on a moral high
01:08:00ground about why these idiots couldn't understand xyz thing that i thought but you know i do believe
01:08:06that like if i had grown up as this other person did and had their life experiences i might be
01:08:12exactly who they are and so um so you know this is your view of life i mean you're sort of a patrick
01:08:18henry type i think so and in but in in austin texas and 2025 and female yeah exactly just small
01:08:26changes really but really it's this viewpoint of of you think of yourself as the as the captain of
01:08:33your ship that's when it comes out you're an emersonian is that fair takes one to no one yeah
01:08:38yeah yeah for all fall to emerson yeah yeah self-reliance you believe in self-reliance very
01:08:42much so yeah yeah i mean i love the morality of it you believe in the empowering nature of self-reliance
01:08:47right well and i think to your point the data seems to back that it makes for better lives the data
01:08:53seems to back that you know us believing in our unique ability to strive and build and thus
01:08:59capitalism leads to less poverty you know it seems to lead to the fact that if we make our own
01:09:05decisions and then we own those decisions we can be happier and so like i think also i'm i'm very
01:09:12willing to always be wrong and so if somebody proved me otherwise i would but yeah we just hired a young
01:09:17woman the other day and one of the main reasons i knew i was going to hire now they're going to know
01:09:20my secret i won't be able to hire this way anyway anymore but she had you know behind her the poem
01:09:27Invictus and and it's one of my favorites and so i do believe that like you know through the dark
01:09:36night being the captain of your soul is incredibly important yeah so is there last question on that
01:09:42is there danger in in desiring to own too much oh for sure i think like you know i don't ownership
01:09:48is great but there's yeah yeah i don't believe in competitors i think you are your biggest
01:09:52competition always and it's the dark parts of your soul that will usually pull you down one way or the
01:09:56other and it's you know it's it's fear in its greed and so i i believe what uh warren buffett says which
01:10:03we are always either leaning towards being fearful or being greedy and both can lead us massively
01:10:09astray and in markets he would talk about when to buy and when to sell but i think it's also
01:10:14when to make a decision and when to not if you operate from too much greed i see it all the time
01:10:19in the business space i mean it's quite rare to be in business and talk not about i hate them and i
01:10:26like them morals which does exist in business but just why don't we do some things for good and
01:10:32better in business that's actually not that normal it's pretty much especially on the internet these
01:10:38days let's just go build big things and make a lot of money and my goal is a billion dollars
01:10:44and i find that relatively uninteresting um can i sum up yeah because this has been a philosophical
01:10:51conversation more than a strictly practical one but with big practical overtones i mean anybody
01:10:56watching this is going to do a lot better in their economic lives but i hope that it makes them a lot
01:11:01happier because these two things are entirely linked which is your way of thinking and your way of being
01:11:06this first point is in this philosophy if i'm right is that money is great but it better be earned
01:11:15and you better have it such that you can have ownership over your own life that's the whole
01:11:19reason for it it's not for the Bugatti it's not for the fancy watches it's because the process of
01:11:26earning it and actually the autonomy it gives you that's the point of money right and now that second
01:11:34you're going to create value but not for yourself but for others the whole economic process of what
01:11:39you do with your job and your career and your business is to serve others success is to transcend
01:11:46yourself and to serve other people and the benefits that it brings to you personally will take care of
01:11:52themselves yes the more you give the more that you will receive a hundred percent third when you're
01:11:59pursuing your dreams you better love the playing more than you love the winning yes otherwise
01:12:05you're gonna do a lot of playing yeah you will quit it's too hard make sure that whatever you're doing
01:12:10you love the playing not just the winning and even more than the winning choose your work accordingly
01:12:16right so good number four is that freedom actually means choices freedom doesn't mean unconstrained
01:12:25behavior it doesn't mean the 60s man no it means choices as well as the willingness and ability to
01:12:32choose correctly and to set and live by your own rules that's freedom right number five is ownership
01:12:42and that's really to be the captain of your ship to be the captain of your soul and to see yourself
01:12:48as really the proper steward of your own life such that when you get to the end of it you can say
01:12:56i think i was a good and faithful servant that's what actual ownership of your life
01:13:00means right right good philosophy i like it i want to live by it me too yeah depends on the day you
01:13:07know we try our best i hear you thank you for this thank you for sharing this with me thank you for
01:13:12the work that you're doing for all the people who follow you for all the business owners that
01:13:15you're creating and all the people that you're touching every day you're making the world a
01:13:18better place cody thank you for having me this was such a blessing thank you god bless you