Codie Sanchez is the daughter of a small business owner and a special education teacher of thirty years — a public-school kid from the border who put herself in rooms full of Blue Blood Ivy Leaguers and outworked every one of them. As founder and CEO of Contrarian Thinking, an investment and advisory company with more than 13 million followers and a global audience of 130 million viewers, she built the kind of Wall Street career her parents dreamed of for her. But somewhere along the way, success stopped feeling like enough.
“I think I was probably what every Hispanic mother and father wants for their kid,” Sanchez says. “I got the job, wore the suits, and I was a professional who was able to make more than they did. That’s what we all aspire to. The problem was it felt empty. The shine wore off very quickly. I didn’t want my tombstone to read, ‘She was excellent at finding discounts to exploit in the marketplace.’”
The Power of a Small Business
Fast-forward to today, Sanchez and her husband, a former Navy SEAL, are working to create wealth and ownership among more small business owners. They decided to only invest in pieces of the small businesses they invest in to help small business owners scale their own creations.
“We have a belief that small businesses that are owned by the business owners who created them, who work inside of them, are better for society than the big ones,” Sanchez says.
But that’s just a small piece of a greater whole. Sanchez created Contrarian Thinking to help people buy and build profitable businesses that they love to run. Through one of Contrarian Thinking’s flagship programs, the Growth Boardroom, she has taught 14,000 owners how to scale their small businesses
The owner of Main Street Holding Company, a portfolio of professional and home service businesses, also owns Contrarian Thinking Capital. The venture capital firm proudly invests in the “dull, dirty, dumb, and dangerous.” In most cases, that is businesses that traditional venture capital overlooks, businesses that every community needs and that improve the places in which they operate. Consider the humble laundromat, Sanchez’s first small business purchase.
“Hispanics probably understand this better than most, but the laundromat is a critical place for many people in urban centers,” the CEO says. “They’re really important not only because many people don’t have these machines in their home, but they’re also a place that has some kind of accommodations for kids. It needs to be safe. It needs to be well-lit. The machines have to work, because losing quarters isn’t an option for people who don’t have a lot of extra money.”
In short, it’s a place that provides a real service to a community. It’s a business that people need every day. It may be gritty. It may be dirty. But it was the perfect building block to the hundreds of businesses Sanchez has invested in.
OWN or Be Owned
Sanchez, the author of New York Times bestseller Main Street Millionaire, has authored a new book centered on small business owners and employees who think like owners. Own or Be Owned was written for owners who feel as if their own business has them by the throat. Sanchez confronts issues like owner dependency, owner burnout, and the inability to properly scale or cash in on the kind of economic freedom that led to starting a business in the first place.
“What I’ve found is that small businesses often do the basics wrong,” Sanchez explains. “They don’t pick up their phone quickly enough. Speed to lead is the number one reason why a small business will outperform another. The things that are going to unlock your next six, seven, or eight figures are things that people don’t pay enough attention to because they’re chasing the next shiny object.
I think AI is a great example of that. People will tell me about this elaborate artificial intelligence model they want to integrate, and I’m wondering why they don’t have a chatbot to speak with you directly on your website. These are the small things that make such a huge difference.”
In Codie Sanchez’s forthcoming book, Own or Be Owned, she highlights what she calls the 12 P’s process for diagnosing and solving problems in a business: pricing, persona, problem, product, profit, pitch, people, present (how you sell), process, predicament, path, and protect.
Sanchez says if you can’t articulate the problem or the path you’re on, your business stands no chance. She wants to provide a system for first-generation business owners who may feel overwhelmed.
“I just want to help business owners feel like they own their businesses, not that they’re owned by them,” Sanchez explains. “I want to help people build a profitable, consistent, enjoyable business.”
The book is particularly important given the environment in which it exists, one where every CEO wants to be a visionary.
“I’m not Steve Jobs,” the CEO says. “I’m not a visionary product CEO with an end product that’s going to change the entire world forever. I am a workhorse. I will keep going until I find the problem and I solve it, and I’ll iterate on it long enough to get very good at it.”
Everything to Lose
Sanchez’s unlikely path begins on the border of El Paso and Juárez, where the future CEO began her career as a journalist. Before she was old enough to rent a car, she was covering human trafficking, kidnapping, murder, and mutilation in what was labeled “Ciudad de la Muerte” (City of Death), once considered the most dangerous city in the world (Juárez).
The journalist saw countless female victims her own age, who looked a lot like her, and even shared her last name. She wanted to understand why her life was so different from theirs.
“I saw that ownership and wealth could be used to combat that kind of life,” Sanchez says. “The more money you have, the more you can architect the world around you, and the best way to do that is to own a business.”
And while the entrepreneur has built so much, she still thinks back to those who gave her a shot. While attending a Latinos in Finance and Leadership conference, Sanchez wound up sitting next to a recruiter from Vanguard who would ultimately provide her with her gateway into finance.
“I was a public-school kid,” Sanchez says. “I knew what it felt like to choose to use the debit card that I knew would charge me the least amount for an overdraft. But I got a chance at Vanguard to go head-to-head with the Cornell and Stanford kids. I didn’t treat it like I had nothing to lose. I felt like I had everything to lose.”
And now, she wants to create as many Codie Sanchezes as she possibly can. The CEO has made enough to simply disappear at this point, but she wants to create opportunities for the kinds of business owners who, like her, endeavor to make their world a better place.
