It's funny because at the heart of all of your messages, Cody is this sort of deep optimism and belief that one can just kind of bend the world.
And I say this because, you know, whenever we're talking about this hypothetical young person, everything is kind of just, yeah, just go ask this person to do this...
And as you're saying that, I was thinking, I resonate with that because I was that 18 year old kid that was just sending off the emails and asking people to help me and whatever else.
I don't think the vast majority of people have a deep internal belief that they can just mold the world.
That's so true. Do you know what I mean?
Just bend it in this direction.
They think it is how it is and you play a role within it.
Not that you can just go to a guy and knock on his door and alpha him this...
You're actually so right.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, it's true. It's a bias that I think you and me have, because we've been exposed to the fact that you can actually just bend the world around.
You just got to watch one person do it and then you go, oh, I'm a wizard, too.
We're all wizards. Is this your Bannister effect idea that I heard you talk about?
Oh, yeah. That's right.
So well, there's two things I want to talk about.
One is you've heard of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field.
Loosily? Yeah. So Steve Jobs was known for having this energy that basically made other people around him believe that they could change the world, that they were unstoppable.
and so he would talk people would talk afterwards after he died about how he'd come into their office and he'd be like We're gonna ship this problem product in 24 hours.
I know we were gonna do it in three weeks We're gonna do it in 24 hours He would get them all riled up and then they would ship it in 24 hours And after the 24 hours were done, they would kind of be like, you know coming out from a blackout Like what just happened?
How did he talk me into that?
That's his reality distortion feels which I think is fascinating because we all actually have that ability his was really strong a long, but for nerds, Star Wars nerds like I am out there, it's like the force.
It's if you actually believe that you are capable of something, it's weird what you can accomplish.
I think so. Amen. Yeah.
You know, I like to, you know, if you want to get a reality distortion field, reading the biographies of billionaire is really powerful.
I'd rather read 10 billionaires biographies than 200 self -help books because they've actually done it." And so I think it's, who's the guy that wrote Steve Jobs book?
Is it Abramoff? Walter Isakson.
Walter Isakson, yeah, incredible book to even listen to to see that reality distortion field.
Elon Musk is the same.
I mean, I spoke to Walter and he told me that Elon has this just obsessive ability to just assume that everything he's being told is basically not true.
I, if someone says something takes eight months or something he seems to just reject the idea on site and he immediately asks about the core components of the challenge so he'll immediately go right down to the roots of the problem and from there he'll figure out that in fact it can get done in eight
days and I just don't think people understand the advantage of saving that amount of time on any challenge you have in your life on figuring out a way to make it happen faster Because one of the great currencies of all of our lives is just the time that we have and some people are like, some people
will take 3 to 4 years to start a business that with your information and that your understanding and your bias would probably take you 90 days.
Now that a 3 year, 9 month saving on life.
Just because you have this sort of urgent bias, you have this bias towards believing that all these deadlines are actually just, I don't know, a bullshit.
Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite mentors told me a line that changed my life, which was it was Bill Perkins.
I asked him why he's so successful in so many aspects of his life, damn near a billionaire.
And he said, the only reason that I'm successful is I'm faster than everybody else.
By the time they have thought about an idea taken it to a meeting and started to move I have already made three mistakes and found a faster way.
And so his bias on speed is fascinating.
and if you ever hang out with the guy, it's wild, you know, I'll be like, can we schedule a meeting, he's like I'm calling you right now.
And so he just moves quicker.
So in our companies we implemented something called the 24 hour rule, which was this idea that if we want to win, we have to have a bias towards action.
We have to decrease our time between thinking about a thing and doing the thing.
And so most people say, well, I'll get back to you on that next week, right?
Get back to you on that next week.
Hate that line, that is where dreams and money goes to die.
Instead I say, can you get it to me tomorrow if all we do different than our competitors is they take a week to do things and we get it done in a day I don't have to be richer smarter or better I'm just faster and it drives my team crazy many times but I'm not smarter I'm really not I'm just very fast
at a few things and I ignore a shit ton of stuff that I don't think is going to move us forward you know what happens is people overthink things and in this day and age it happens more and more, they they think about the thing and they confuse thinking with work.
And more often than not, thinking is not working.
And this is where people yell at me on the Internet and go Well, if I just don't think about anything, and I moved really fast, I could move fast in the wrong direction.
Yeah, you could but just iterate move fast and iterate and that's what most people don't do.
And so I'll tell my team all the time, you're thinking about this way too much, make a decision in 30 seconds.
What's the decision?
I'll tell you if I like it, yes or no.
I like the decision, move forward.
And so ask yourself that in life.
It's like, Mel Robbins 12345, get out of bed.
Yeah. Mine is 30 seconds to decision.
Hmm. So if I've got 10s of 1000s of dollars or pounds.
Yeah. Do you think What would do you think?
What would you do with it?
I was playing this game yesterday.
There's three businesses I really like right now.
I really like senior care centers, senior care centers, okay, which is interesting, because you'd go Cody, I said 10s of not hundreds of thousands.
But senior care centers are interesting because there's all these government grants and allowances for the fact that we do not have enough of them in the U .S., and you can turn a house with the right licensing and zoning into a senior care center.
And so I won't get too technical on it but demographics show we have a huge aging population, we need more areas to take care of them, and you can start smaller by having an independent living house that has a rotating nurse.
You make three to five x the rent rent on that as you do a regular mid -term or long term rental.
So I like the demographics of that one.
Plus, it's not super capital intensive, because you could rent the house out from somebody else and then just layer this assisted living center on top of it.
I also really like, I like businesses today that are service based, but don't require a ton of upfront capital.
So for instance, window cleaning businesses.
I just bought one of these it's called pink's with this company called resi brands But I love it because I did it We have a YouTube video that's gonna come out and I was like am I full of shit?
Let's try this and see if I could actually do it So you need to make three hundred and eighty four dollars a day In order to have a business that does a hundred thousand dollars a year if you only work five days a week So I was like can we make three hundred and eighty four dollars?
Pre -selling window -craning services to somebody in order to Start this business and we tried it and we did it So I might start like a window cleaning business, a pressure washing business, a painting business.
You could also buy one of those.
Those are trade services businesses.
And then the third type of business that I always talk about are what I call gateway drug businesses or semi autonomous businesses like laundromats or car washes.
The problem with those are they're slightly more expensive.
I just want to take a pulse here and just sort of get perspective on what you're talking about for someone that has no understanding of business.
So, my name is Nigel and I am 37.
I've never ran a business before.
I don't know anything about businesses or investor or anything like that.
What are you, what is it you're telling me to do?
Nigel wants to make more money.
He wants to be an owner.
He wants to be a millionaire in 10 years time.
And Nigel's willing to work hard.
He's willing to work the hardest.
He just doesn't really know what to do because there's so many options and so many conflicting things.
He gets told all the time.
He's hearing all these words, resi brands.
He's hearing like window cleaning power.
Is that what she's doing with a power washer.
So if I was Nigel, here's the question I would be asking myself.
I would be saying one, do I want to keep my job that I have currently or do I want to not keep my job?
That's really important cause it's like, am I going to go work on something 24 seven or not.
I'm not making enough money to completely walk away from my job yet.
Okay. Perfect. So I have like there's savings.
Yeah. You want a little side hustle that you think could be your full -time hassles.
So in that case, what I would start doing is asking myself, we have something called your unfair advantage Venn diagram.
And what your unfair advantage of Venn diagram is, is your skillset.
So what does Nigel good at?
And that's as simple as like, maybe Nigel's in marketing, so he's actually pretty good at marketing.
Maybe Nigel drives you know, an Uber or a car service.
So he's really good at working super long hours.
He's just got the workhorse in him.
Then I add my network.
Who does Nigel know that could help him?
So that might be like Nigel's brother is actually a plumber.
He works inside of a plumbing business.
So if Nigel figured out how to buy a business, he could partner with his plumber brother in law or whatever and they could do it together.
And then finally, it's like, what gets you excited.
And by what gets you excited, I don't mean in industry.
I mean, Nigel loves sales.
Nigel loves it. He wants to sell people stuff, okay.
Okay. And the reason I talk about this Venn diagram like this is it's a little bit more complex than saying you should go buy a franchise.
You should go buy a window cleaning business or start those.
Because I think the biggest reason why people struggle with what to do next is they don't actually know themselves.
And so if I was Nigel I would say to you find what your Venn diagram is of the things that you think you're good at, your network is good at, that you could actually go either start or buy a business on Because the fastest path to wealth is having some type of ownership So I would start there Before
I knew what I know now about business if I'd heard you say when I was 18 years old just go buy a business I go, Cody, listen I've got $700 left for my call center job a month.
How can I buy a business that's making millions or hundreds of thousands?
I'm gonna have to wait till I'm rich Yeah Well, yeah, you can't buy it with your 700 extra bucks, but you could buy it with your sweat and your time.
So there's three ways to buy a business.
You can either use cash, you can use expertise, or you can use time, or what I call sweat equity.
So think about it right now.
I buy a bunch of businesses.
I have a ton of cash.
You know what I don't have a lot of?
Operators. I don't have a lot of people who can go actually run the business that I want them to run.
But if I had a young guy who was super hungry, and I could give him $100 ,000 to go operate the business that I was going to go run, I would probably do that and people do that every day in our community.
And so, for this young gun you're not going to go buy the business outright yourself with your own capital, you're going to say, I'm working 12 hours in a call center right now, I am relentless.
If you pair me with somebody that knows how to run a plumbing company and I just have to learn and do a bunch of the bullshit to start the company and grow the company or continue the company, would you partner with me?
I mean, they're not gonna be able to partner with a Steven or a Cody probably at first but they might be able to partner with, you know, somebody's dad that they know.
And so like for instance, we had a young guy in our group.
I'll change his name to Adam since I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it or not, but let's say.
So Adam was 19 years old.
Adam worked inside of a marketing company and he had never run a business before.
Didn't have a lot of cash.
Adam went to the senior partner of his marketing company that he worked for And said, like, we have this vendor over here that we do some stuff with.
They do all of our graphic design work, they're really good, the guy's, kind of, done with running this business.
Like, I don't think he wants to keep doing it.
I was talking to him about it the other day, what if we bought this business, and I ran it?
Like, all integrate it for us, all bring it into this company.
And I think we can buy it with just a percentage of future profits we bring in, which is called seller financing.
And the marketing head was like, If you think you can get that deal done, yeah, sure.
And the guy was like, okay, Adam says, well, if I do that, can I have part of the company for bringing it over?
And he said, well, yeah, Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't have to put in capital to the deal, I have to put in a very small amount of capital, you're gonna run it.
And we basically have like a risk free trade, because we just have to pay them a percentage of future revenue or future profit, sure.
And so now Adam owns a business that he's about to sell, because he basically partnered with his, his owner.
And so you can even think about that with your business today if you're if you're a young person working with Steven, and you're like, hey, Steven, we're in the studio right now, I saw him like a sign out front that says that they're actually they want to sell this studio space.
I thought we could rent out this whole thing.
And we could probably cash flow and make this a profit center instead of a loss center for us.
If I could negotiate a deal that was basically a seller financed real estate deal for us?
Would you want to do something like that?
I could help us run the rental of it.
Now, you might say no to that first deal, but you're probably going to look different at that employee.
A hundred percent. And also, I just want to explain what seller financing is, for someone that doesn't know.
Seller financing is how 60 % of all businesses get sold when they're small businesses, so it's very normal.
Seller financing just means this that the seller uses a percentage of future profits to let somebody else buy the business.
And instead of you having a loan or a mortgage for a house, they're basically saying, hey, my business right now makes $100 ,000 a year profit.
I want to sell it to you for $300 ,000.
You go, sounds good, I don't have $300 ,000.
And they go, okay. Well, why don't I sell it to you for $300 ,000 over five years, and you pay me each year from that $100 ,000 profit that we have?
Could we do a deal that way?
And you might be like, yeah, we could do that.
They've just got to believe that you're going to be able to grow the business.
Yeah. Or not royally fuck it up.
Yeah, a hundred percent, which is, you know, selling anything is a trust trade, right?
So these days we have to do less trust when we sell something because we have immediate trust in like a credit card or money.
This is almost going back to bartering days where it's like, I'm going to sell you this.
With the idea that you're going to give me that.
It's a harder trade, but it's totally doable.
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