Transcription
Stop thinking you need to leave your 9 to 5 to get rich. I didn't build wealth by leaving my 9 to 5. I built wealth by leveraging it with a proven system that works. It's a repeatable path that turns your paycheck into ownership and ownership into freedom.
In this video, I'm going to show you how you can build wealth with a common salary and a real life. You need to start thinking differently about your job. You should see your current income as the biggest lever you have. So with that in mind, you have to negotiate every salary, every bonus, every move, even jump jobs if there's no additional way for you to earn.
So even when you are scared, especially when you are scared, in fact, I'm telling you, you can start with what you're making and use it to start building something that could grow without clocking in. And the unlock moment for all of you, if you don't negotiate, you subsidize everyone else who does. But that's not going to be you. You didn't come to play.
So this is you. You work your tail off, keep track of your wins, and every year at your review, you lobby hard for a 5% raise. At year three, you've maxed out. The company won't give you any more, so you jump to a new company and get a 10K pay bump, and you keep getting raises and keep requesting more. So, smart negotiations and one job jump gave you the equivalent of a down payment or the ability to wipe out credit card debt.
Okay, now here's a huge lesson. Most people only negotiate one thing: salary. That's a mistake. But how do you negotiate to get what you want? You have to know how valuable you are in order to get more money from the company. You also have to know how much the company makes because of you. If you walk in asking for more money with no proof, nah, you're it's not going to work out for you.
Here's a framework of six high-lever levers you can negotiate that go way beyond salary.
So, step one, I want you to walk in with receipts. Before you say a number, show your numbers. Revenue you drove, costs you reduced, time you saved, fires you put out. If you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist. And if it's already in your job description, that doesn't mean that you deserve more. Unfortunately, that's just what you're paid for.
Step two, anchor high. Ask for feedback. You don't ask, you anchor. Based on my output and market data, I'm targeting X. Can I present ways I think I could get there? Then let them meet you there. They might say that's totally ridiculous. You go, sorry. Okay. Uh, how do we meet in the middle?
Step three, never negotiate just your base pay. I want you to anchor high. Everyone else stacks on top of this. Then we've got bonus structure. Revenue or profit based. Milestone bonuses. So if I launch this, deliver this, win this, I get paid. Tiered performances. So 90% payout if I do X, 130% if I 3X that equity or phantom equity if you are the most successful or useful person to the team, then you can ask for real upside, especially if you drive consistent results for years.
Step four, make it easy to say yes. Good negotiators reduce friction. Say, if we hit these metrics by this date that are above and beyond what we already wanted to, can we have a comp adjust automatically? Can we have a meeting about it? No emotion. This is a discussion, not a negotiation.
Step five, negotiate timing, not just amount. This is written milestone triggers. Pre-agreed raises or bonuses. Delayed money with certainty beats hoped-for money.
Number six, don't threaten ever. Create optionality. Never say, "I'll leave." You could say, "Here's the value I create. I'd love to figure out how to get the next unlock in the next 6 to 12 months. Is that reasonable?" The strongest position is you're calm. You have options. You don't need to force anything. And then ask for what you're missing. You can literally make more money by saying, "What skills or things have I not hit yet that are in the way of my next raise?" That is like, "Ah, that's some master Jedi manipulation."
"Let me see your identification. What are some skills or things have I not hit yet that are in the way of my next round?"
Remember, your salary negotiation isn't a confrontation. It's alignment. If a company won't pay you more when you produce more, it's not a negotiation problem. That's a business model problem. So, know your value. Prove your value. Then the math just talks.
This gets us to the next step. Manage your money. This is where we build your foundation. Emergency fund, insurance, getting rid of big expensive debt like credit cards. Because the trap is if your income rises but your lifestyle rises just as fast, you're losing the game. You're not winning it.
So, we've got to live below our means for a minute. And the key here isn't willpower, it's automation. If you see the money, you'll spend it.
"America's smallest millionaires about to become a big-time spender."
So, I want you to set systems that move it before you touch it. This is auto-transfer to savings, auto-transfer to your brokerage, retirement, right when your paycheck hits. This is what I did in the beginning when I had a paycheck. So, back when I was working for other people, I would immediately select and almost every company allows you to do this at my height, I did 25% of every dollar I made immediately went into my savings. That meant that I didn't even realize that I had anything to spend. And that's how you keep the ownership loop running, even when life gets busy.
There's a lot of ways people do this. I like the classic 50/30/20 rule. Almost everybody in finance knows this rule. Normal people don't. Here's how it goes. 50% of your paycheck goes to needs, 30% to wants, 20% to savings, investing, etc. An example, take home $10,000 a month. That means $5,000 go to needs, rent, car, living. $3,000 to wants, going out, movies, dinners, etc. $2,000 to savings, investing. So, if you use a basic baseline like this, then you're early in the game.
The second thing that I was taught in finance is having an FU fund. And if money buys you only one thing, I think it should be freedom. Cuz rich isn't a number. It's the time you control. It's the power to say, "F you." When you hate your job, you're not learning anything, and you can mean it to your boss.
I think the old way we were taught is you grind 40 years, retire later. My plan was buy freedom in three. I wanted to do it in 36 months. So, here's how. The goal is simple. You save 3 years' worth of your annual living expenses. Why 3 years? Cuz even in the worst-case scenario, it takes about that long to pivot careers entirely, to take a little bit of time to recuperate, to start a cash-flowing business, or buy one.
So, let's do the math here. Super easy. $3,000 a month to live on, let's say. So, whatever your monthly uh number is, you multiply that by 36 months. So, your target savings is $108K in this instance. If it's $10K, you multiply $10K by 36 months, you get $360K. You get it? If you work hard for 5 years, save aggressively and create your FU fund, then you can do what you love. And this is really one of the most important parts because when you build the fund by your time, and when something isn't for you, you walk.
And I know every single one of us has had a moment where we wanted to walk. And this isn't saying that every moment in your job is going to be amazing. It's not. I'm sure many of my team is here gets annoyed at me and has had a moment where they want to quit. It is going to suck when you work. But there are some places where you work and you're like, I don't make enough money. Everybody's mean to me. I'm not learning anything new. If I have to be here one second longer, I'm going to die.
"I'm tired of this, GRANDPA."
"THAT'S TOO DAMN BAD."
It's not always that you have to quit. Maybe you just need a nap or you need a day or need a vacation. But for a lot of people, they stay in jobs for decades that they hate. And I don't want that to be you.
The other thing I want you to do that's a no-brainer is move your savings from a 0.2% account to a 4% high-yield one. And this is because lazy money is dead money. Inflation is not at 0.2%. So if you leave it there, you're actually losing money every single day. And so if you do all this, you'll find that while everybody else might be accumulating stuff, they might have cooler new outfits, cooler new rings, you're tapping into something way more valuable, options. And those other things give you options money can't buy, which is confidence to go do what you are supposed to in the world. Maybe to go build a business or buy a business that will truly change your life.
When I bought my first business, a laundromat of all things, I didn't have some master plan. I was in private equity watching Wall Street play monopoly with billions. But I wanted to bet on Main Street. Saw a laundromat ad for sale and thought, why not? It was messy. Machines broke. It smelled weird. But the cash flow was real, and one step changed everything. The same thing happened when I tried to get my first site online. Hosting, domains, emails, it was a mess. That friction kills more ideas than fear ever will. That's why I tell people if you're starting anything today, make it easy on yourself. Use something like Hostinger. You get your domain, website, email, and even AI tools all in one place. No tool chaos or tech headaches. You can literally go from idea to live site in minutes. And it's actually priced for people who are just starting, not just people who already made it. So, if this is the year you finally start, not plan, go to hostinggrow.com/cod10 and use code cody10 to get the New Year's deal. Don't overthink it, just ship it.
A lot of what we talk about with people who are in jobs but want to buy one is called an ownership tithe. And basically that means I'd like you to put 10% in savings that are pretty static, stock market, debt, mutual funds, etc. But what about 10% into savings that you use to buy a cash-flowing business?
Let me give you an example from our boardroom community. His name's Jesus. So he worked at a corporate job, steady salary, stable path, but he wanted to be an entrepreneur. So he had that voice in the back of his head that said, "You're meant for more." And it kind of kept getting louder and louder. So, we joined our community, listened to 6 months of live calls, learned about deal flow, listened to feedback, and in just those 6 months, Jesus made the leap. He structured a $4.5 million deal to acquire a $7 million manufacturing company that manufactures clothes, and he got it with seller financing and earnout, and a bunch of downside protections. Now, he has a team of 88 employees. This strategy is what we call the profit payback. And you can break even in months, not years, if you do the work. Because you know, maybe you're like Jesus. He didn't escape the system. He ran the ownership loop all the way through. So wealth doesn't have to be built from a giant salary. And that's how the 9-to-5ers are becoming millionaire entrepreneurs by using their paycheck system. And Jesus's story actually isn't all that unique. I've taught more than 14,000 people in our communities the exact same thing on their road to becoming multi-millionaires and business owners. This isn't a one-off. And inside the Contran Academy, we show aspiring business owners exactly how to make their first acquisition. Most people think starting a business from scratch is the only way. The truth, buying cash-flowing businesses, maybe even more interesting. By the way, if you want to learn everything I just talked about in 72 hours, virtual from anywhere in the world, go to www.msm.live or click the link below. I'll teach you everything you need to know about doing deals.
Let's look at this Desra. She didn't try to like out-discipline herself or skip lattes. No, no, no. She built systems. So, she bought First Light Home Care and she bought it for $850,000 using an SBA loan. The business generates $2.1 million in revenue with $300,000 in profit and is on track to make $2.9 million this year. And while she did it, she kept the former owner as a care manager. She runs the business remotely from Atlanta. I actually don't recommend that part. She's a stud. That's hard to do. And that's it. And she bought it while she was an employee. That's the ownership loop. So the minute her financial system took over, her brain realized you could continue to build even while you earn. And the academy teaches you how to find these deals, evaluate them, structure them.
Let's get really particular. How would we even find one of these right now? Let's look at what's available on BizBuySell. So here's one. $25K to get in as a price. You can only put down 20%. That's $5K out of pocket. You can use seller financing or an SBA loan to fund the remaining $20K over 3 years at 10% interest. So that's $7,750ish payment. The year 1 cash flow to you is $16,248 bucksish. So if you have that amount of profit on only $5,000 invested, it's like a 300% ROI in the first year. And that's the kind of deal people hunt for. Or because this is a lower cost of entry, you can pay cash for this deal and basically break even in year one. You're going to have to do the work. It is not easy, but it is totally doable. Like check out this one. It's your own skincare brand. This one's in Florida, and I like Florida. Great place to do business. Uh, no personal income tax, which is nice. And a pretty low state corporate tax. I think it's 5 and a half%. We'll calculate payback using cash flow since that's your true take-home if you operate it yourself. If you put 10% down and finance the rest with an SBA loan in year one of cash flow, it's $1.1 million less your annual SBA loan payment of $186,000 bucks. So, you're making about $913,000 bucks. That's a 700% return on the cash you invested. And these are just two examples. We need to dig in. We need to make sure these numbers are real. But I think the point is we've got to break the frame. Jesus bought a company with a full team. Desira bought a home care business that provides profit. And this part is so important. We didn't do anything new. We didn't reinvent the wheel. We didn't chase the shiny trend. Something boring, profitable, stable. Nothing required special talent. Nothing required quitting your job blindly, taking wild risks, or sacrificing your sanity. You don't even have to do a personal guarantee. You could skip the SBA loan, raise third-party equity or debt, and have the assets of the business behind. This is the same system I've taught thousands. And by the way, I stole it from private equity before that, where they've done this for decades. It works the same for anyone who applies it if you're willing to do the work. It can work for you. You don't need to quit your job to get rich. And it's not too late for you. You just need to use your salary differently. That's the ownership loop. And it works if you work it. So, if you're waiting for permission, this is