Codie A. Sanchez

Being married is so underrated.

Come home to your best friend.
Talk and laugh every day.
Cook and drink wine together.
Share burdens together.
Build a business and a future together❤️

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We’ve FAR from got it all figured out, but I wrote up some of our tricks for a strong partnership here: https://lnkd.in/eUS8-MER

I don’t want to be liked.
I want to be so good, I’m respected.

Repeat that to yourself when it gets hard and the hard requires toughness.

Don’t be easy and likable.

Be righteous in what you do and believe.

Don’t be less for other people.

Don’t let them bend you or break you.

Don’t be a doormat walked upon, be a pointed nail...

One that holds things together and one that others would never tread on.

What I wish I was told before I had success.

The “Hate Us ‘Cuz They Ain’t Us” Curve:

When you first start out, they tell you...

You’re lame.
You’re crazy.
That’ll never work.
Oh, she’s a one-hit wonder.
She probably has a rich dad.
Or slept her way there.

THEN, we hit the top of the curve. Your success is obvious. And things start to change... They say…

Oh yeah, I know her.
Hey, long time no talk!
Love to meet up and pick your brain.
How did you do that?

And the grand finale...
They ask you for a job.

If success is your goal, expect people to talk a lot of crap for a long time. Let them. Because one day, you’ll just get to point at the scoreboard.

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Need more of this owner mindset energy in your life? Get my weekly newsletter → https://lnkd.in/euh-mDd8

13 other unreasonably simple habits to change your life:

1. Waking up at 5:45am solves 99.9% of daily issues.

2. Grab your to-do list. Do the thing you want to do least, first.

3. Stop all 60 min meetings, make them 45 minutes. Tighter meetings, more time.

4. No social media, email, or text when you wake up. Write something, read something, or create something before you get sucked in.

5. Do the $1,000/hr Test. Group work in 3 buckets based on return: $10, $100, $1,000. Offload one low ROI task per day.

6. Change one meeting a week to a walking call. Watch how excited the other meeting member becomes.

7. Add a How vs Won't check-in. When you say, “that WON'T work.“ Instead ask, “How could that work?“

8. Be the dumbest one in your friend group, then move on when you’re not. As they say, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

9. Take a picture of your net worth. What gets measured gets managed. Check finances daily.

10. Always the stairs, never the elevator. Pick the hard option. See how much stronger you are than you think.

11. Never write to-dos in stone. You're 10x more productive if you reprioritize daily.

12. Meditate. 10 minutes a day. For a twofer - do it in the sauna. Sometimes hacking culture gets it right.

13. Get intimidated. Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Do something every day that scares you a little bit.

Life is the small things repeated daily.

Change one daily habit, and beautiful things start to happen...

So pick one.

♻️ Repost if you needed this.
💥 Follow Codie A. Sanchez for more.

My husband said five words to me that made my worldview flip on never missing a chance to see a loved one: “Measure in times, not years.”

We were debating whether to go home and see our family for Thanksgiving and my husband said...

If your parents are 65, it’s not 20 or 30 years you might have with them, it’s maybe 20 or 30 visits you get with them.

One in four Americans don’t live in the same hometown as their family. How would you change your decisions if you’d only get to see your loved ones for 20 or 30 more days?

You’d change everything to be with them, wouldn’t you? Same if it was six months. And yet when those days are separated by years we let them slide through our fingers.

Next time don’t count the years, remember the days... and treasure them.

We’ve completely forgotten why we're entrepreneurs.

When did we become a group of vitamin-D-deprived, Allbird-wearing, alternative-milk-drinking, extreme PowerPointers?

Many of us got soft.

We don’t climb mountains, we only take risks with other people’s money, we sit behind keyboards bragging about how ChatGPT did all the work.

What a terrible thing to strive for.

How can you make the most money by employing the fewest people and doing the least amount of work? How can you get mailbox money? Or a fast exit so you can tweet about it?

The secret:

Entrepreneurs don’t exist just for a bunch of zero’s and some big exit, but because we are crazy people willing things into very existence.

We are supposed to be the next generation of explorers, risk-takers, adrenaline junkies. Addicts to the masochistic mission of achievement and ownership.

The feeling of being so damn unemployable your only option is owner. The inability to sleep because of visions so big they pull you from bed in the dead of the night. Dreams so futuristic people laugh when you tell them.

Those are the entrepreneurs I admire.

My husband and I have a saying:

“Protect those who can’t, cast aside those who won’t, enable those who want.”

Here’s to all of you who want so badly your wants become realities.

Best part of your business? The people.

Worst part? The people.

Business horror story time:

I hired an exec, paid her $200k a year + $200k in bonus.

She secretly launches 2 side businesses, tries to take our clients to one, and was secretly launching a competing product all within the first 6 months.

Yikes.

We found out, let her go (obviously), but I had to chuckle because she bankrupted her last company... and then changed her name since she now claims it was a success.

Moral of the story...

If you're in business, expect it.

Protect your house because your biggest costs will always be wrong people trusted.

Just me... or have you also had business horror stories?

Be the type of person who reaches out to others... when you don't need something.

I love this quote:

“Don’t ever let 'can’t' get in the way. Unless you legally can’t or you can’t with the laws of physics, then 'can’t' isn’t the right word. It’s more just that it hasn’t been done yet.”

Start thinking to yourself:

I’m going for this, and if I’m wrong I’ll figure it out.

After all, no one ever changed the game by being reasonable.

Unreasonable is a compliment.

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(PS: You should follow Codie A. Sanchez if you’re okay with people thinking you’re a little bit of a psychopath 😉)

9 productivity hacks to remember (that work every time):

1. Protect Your Energy. Only spend time on people you love.

2. Weekly Rockets. Every Sunday, write down the ONE thing that will launch your business forward if you do it this week.

3. Delusion of Doing. Asking advice, planning, meeting, & researching have diminishing returns. The most underrated productivity hack? Urgency.

4. DO LESS. You can't add more hours to the day. You can only brute force so much work. If you want to keep growing, you have to take things off your plate.

5. Sticky Note Challenge. This one's a pain. But it's changed my life before. For 3 weeks, EVERY time you switch tasks, write it on a sticky note. At the end, separate them into revenue & non-revenue producing stacks. Evaluate and adjust.

6. Get Physical. I'm more productive on the days I sweat, period.

7. Save a Meeting. Async team hack: Have your reports Loom their updates.

8. Build a Team of Strugglers. Hire more people who have faced adversity. Those who believe in struggle win more often.

9. Efficacy > Efficiency. At the end of the day, it's not about how many hours you worked. Or even how much you got done. It's about how much closer your goals are because of your work today.

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PS: I post a lot about small business buying. If you can organize your time well and be truly productive, you can learn how to buy a cashflowing small business while working your 9-5.

Not sure where to start? Here's a free list of 130 biz's I like to buy (+ my recommended method) → https://lnkd.in/eGpHZtx3

9 uncomfortable truths:

Ever heard of Blippi?

He sold his brand in a $120M deal in 2020.

He also netted 14.5 BILLION views.

Oh - and he's a kids YouTube chracter.

I had NO idea how meticulously this brand was crafted.. Here’s how it all happened:

Stevin John, once a behind-the-scenes video whiz, saw his nephew engaged by subpar YouTube content.

He thought he could do better. Much better.

Enter Blippi, a brightly colored character going against the grain...

Blippi's debut: A humble farm tractor video.

The production? Mediocre.
The outcome? A viral sensation capturing children's imaginations worldwide.

Before Blippi, Stevin had produced 150+ commercials and worked with stars – Betty White, Hugh Hefner, Dick Van Dyke.

He was always off-screen, behind the camera.

But it was these skills from the sidelines that set the stage for Blippi's spotlight.

He leveraged his production experience to build a magnetic brand.

From the suspenders to the spelling of the name, everything had one aim: To appeal to kids. Millions of them.

Stevin had the marketing chops to make Blippi a household name.

And he wasn't just another YouTuber; he was a calculated creation:
• 800 names whittled down to one
• SEO strategies to skyrocket visibility
• Content crafted for clicks & youth engagement

This was algorithmic artistry. Blippi's charm is in the details.

The colors, the cap, the catchy name - all meticulously mapped out.

His catchy sign-off, “B-L-I-P-P-I,“ wasn't just cute – it was crafted to make it easier for toddlers to pronounce.

His genius: seeing the audience through their eyes.

Blippi became not just a YouTube giant but a leading brand through:
• Merchandising agreements
• Endorsement & sponsorship deals
• Commercial partnerships w/ Netflix, Hulu, & Amazon

An empire even BEFORE the acquisition..

Then, in 2020, Blippi was acquired by Moonbug Entertainment for $120 million.

Stevin had been investing in real estate to offset taxes on the windfall.

And during the sale, he moved to Vegas to save tons in state income tax.

Play after play - always 2 steps ahead.

So, for all the entrepreneurs out there:

1. Solve a problem.
2. Make the solution so catchy that you master your market.

And maybe, just maybe, you'll be the next unsung hero transforming a simple idea into an empire.

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If you found this story interesting, feel free to repost & and follow Codie A. Sanchez if you haven't already.

Can money buy you happiness?

Here's what the science says...

From my conversation with Harvard professor Arthur Brooks. Watch the full episode here → https://lnkd.in/eUwQPNYg

Making everyday businesses sexy is hard.

Doing it in short videos, as a 30+ yr old...

Is really hard.

When I first started our YouTube channel, I felt dumb filming myself. What private equity investor does that?

But I had this gut feeling that the new way to get deals, investors, and business was personal brands.

My partners disagreed so I left the firm and did it by myself.

About a year later, we're hitting 1M YouTube followers. Just a reminder that your peers will not get it... until they do.

*We're now OVER 1 million since I took this screenshot. Thanks to everyone on this journey! We do the work.

If you speak the language of money, oddly you usually make more of it:\n\n↓ ↓ ↓\n\nWhen the basics are spelled out in plain language... it's suddenly simple.\n\nNext week, I'm hosting an event to simplify the language of acquisitions... Check the link in my bio.

Brex is valued at over $12.3B today, but how did they get their first customers?

Their ex-Chief Revenue Officer, Sam Blond recently shared a hack on their best-ever outbound campaign...

The secret?

Cheap champagne.

When Brex came out of beta in 2018, all they had was a product (a corporate card for startups) and $0 revenue.

They decided to kick off a campaign:

• Scrape a database to find every seed through Series B startup in SF that recently raised (~300 startups)
• Buy 300 bottles of Veuve Clicquot
• Mail each bottle with a handwritten note
• ~4-5 days later, they sent a follow-up on whether they wanted a demo.

This had a 75% conversion rate

In total, they spent ~$19k ($15k for Champagne, 2k for handwritten notes, 2k for TaskRabbit deliveries)

The lesson: There's magic in building a personal connection.