Doug: Hey, what’s going on. Welcome to the Doug show. My name’s Doug Cunnington. And in this episode, we’re going to talk to my friend Cody Berman. And we recorded this live at a hotel room that I was in a couple of years ago.
And this is one of those rebroadcast episodes from my other podcast called Mile High FI. And it was at FinCon in Orlando in 2023. It’s all the blur now, and it’s fun to record in person. It’s just a little bit different. In fact, for Mile Hi Fi, I really try to record, uh, in person in the studio or on location.
In this case, I had my little studio set up in my hotel room. So me. And Cody, are sitting there and my friend Carl, who used to co host with me over on mile high five. And basically there’s a good overlap here because We do talk personal finance and financial independence over on my high FI.
However Cody is an entrepreneur and we talk about the 19 streams of income that he has and I mean I think maybe he sliced and diced them pretty, pretty thin there. So 19 is a lot. I think maybe there’s some that you can group together, but still it’s a lot of sources of income. And the thing is, Cody’s so young that it’s insane, like how well he.
Made decisions and leveraged his investments. So he goes through many different areas. He’s been on the show several times before, and we typically talk about his Etsy printable shop and he’s still doing that, but anyway. We get into why he left his like real job right after college after about seven months, he saved up money.
He’s always been a hustler, how he discovered the fire movement and essentially like, you know, not retired early, but he’s basically an entrepreneur. So he left the corporate world and basically was like, I want to build businesses on my own. He has his own podcast called the fi show, financial independent show.
And. We talk about his perfect day as well. So this is a fun interview. Cody’s awesome. He has put out content in many different places. We’ll also link up to his printables business. In just a few weeks ago, we interviewed someone that we, me, I interviewed someone that is now working with Cody because she had a specific way that she was successful.
On Etsy and her name’s Emily. Again, that was just a few episodes ago, back on February 3rd, Doug show number five 50, and we go through all the details. So we’ll link up to that as well. If you have any questions or thoughts, you want to reach out feedback at Doug dot show. That’s how you can get in touch with me.
Maybe you have questions or. Show ideas or something like that. So feel free to reach out without further ado, we’ll send it to the mile high five podcast with Cody and myself and Carl Jensen. And we have a fun time. Cody is a cool dude and feel free to reach out to him on social media or other links that we put out there.
All right. I think that’s it for now and we’ll catch on the next episode.
This is the Mile High FI podcast with Carl Jensen and Doug Cunnington. We have authentic conversations about the journey to FI, health, happiness, and some very odd tangents. We interview FI experts, site hustlers, people on their way to FI, and those who have reached the other side. Join us every week, and if you want the show notes and links and all that other stuff, head over to milehighfi.com.
Carl: Hello, world. Welcome to the Mile High Five podcast. I’m Carl Jensen with my co host. I’m Doug Cunnington. And we have a very special guest today. Tell us who you are and what you do.
Cody: Cody Berman, I am a jack of all trades, kind of a serial entrepreneur, always dabbling in different side hustles recently over the past couple of years have fallen in love with online courses, real estate, and we can talk about actually recorded a video pretty recently of 19 different income streams currently.
Carl: Oh my God. And are you even 18 yet? Can you drink? Can you legally drink?
Cody: I can drink. I can drink. I got my coffee right here. So maybe not alcohol, but 26, Carl, 26.
Carl: Cool. And I hear you have a funny story about a recent conference in Las Vegas. Tell us what happened.
Cody: Yeah. So I went to this conference and it’s like 108 degrees out.
It’s Vegas. And so I’m wearing shorts as any new Englander would like. I’m not used to that temperature. And we ended up going out to like this bar club, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, I get up. They’re like, you can’t get in with shorts on. I’m like, so I’m scouring around. It’s probably like midnight or 1 a. at this point and I’m like, okay, I got to get pants somewhere. Like, I’ll literally just wear sweatpants. I’ll go buy them at wherever, Walmart. And so the closest thing I could find was a Walgreens, walking to Walgreens. Like, hey, do you guys have long pants? She’s like, no, honey, we don’t have long pants.
This is Vegas. I’m like, okay. So I end up getting the longest shorts that they sell. Like these are like real baggy, like gangster shorts. And they, but they still weren’t long enough to kind of count as pants. So I end up, I’m still wearing my regular shorts. I sag these pants down to about upper knee level.
So now the second pair of shorts is touching my ankles. Tuck them into my shoes. Walk up to the line. I’m so, I’m way closer than I was before, before I get kicked out. And the guy’s like What the hell are you wearing? He’s like, you can’t get in with that. I’m like, dude, this is the, this is the new Yeezys.
This is the new style. Like the double shorts. Everyone’s doing it. And I had a couple of friends backing me up and he’s like, get the hell out of here. And I ended up going back to the hotel. So.
Carl: Oh my God. How did you walk? Were you like a penguin or what? I was
Cody: penguin ing hard. I tied them pretty tight. I was kind of like keeping my knees tight together.
Doug: He’s like, get the hell out. That’s pretty funny. Yeah. And so you still have these giant shorts or what’d you
Cody: giant Las Vegas shorts and I brought them home. My fiancé’s like, what the hell are these? They say Las Vegas down the side of them. Classy.
Doug: Yeah. That, that is rough to I mean, it’s so hot. I couldn’t imagine.
108
Cody: in long pants and a long shirt. Like, come on. Yeah.
Doug: It must’ve been a nice place.
Cody: It was, I mean, every place they’re just, they think they’re hoity toity. You can’t get in unless you have the long pants on and the collared shirt. It’s like, come on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay,
Carl: I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place like that in my life I’m kind of trashy though.
Doug: Yeah, I don’t think so either and I think if they said hey you need to get pants You’re like, that’s not the place for me
Carl: In an out burger still up on the
Doug: Alrightyeah, let’s get into it. So I see the first question is your And here is where did you go to university? And, uh,
Cody: yeah, how’d it go? So I went to UMass Amherst.
Go UMass. And it’s kind of like a party school, but I made the most of it. And a lot of people have asked me now as an entrepreneur. I can talk about this later. I quit my job seven months in. And so people are like, was college worth it? Totally fair question. I went to school for finance and economics. And the answer for me is yes, but not for the reasons you might think.
So people are like, oh, you’re in personal finance now. You must have used a ton of what you learned with your finance and economics degree. I probably used like 2 percent of what I learned. Yeah. What I did learn in college was how to network, like how to talk to people, how to write professional emails, like the right things to say to get in front of the right people.
And I learned how to learn. So I became a really good learner in college because in high school, people kind of just like You know, study for 20 minutes before the exam and do well. I was just kind of gifted in that way, I guess, in high school. But in college, like, I couldn’t do that. I actually had to start learning the material.
So I learned how to learn quickly. I learned how to read more quickly. I learned how to, like, distill and process, you know, just a bunch of things and kind of get them into my head. And that’s helped me tremendously now as an entrepreneur. Like, being able to just, like, catch a bunch of things, figure out a bunch of things on the fly, and then distill that down into, like, an action plan.
So Not be there not might might not be the reasons you’d think like this is college was worth it But it was worth it for me and you know learning quickly and networking
Carl: You said a phrase there that gave me some PTSD from my time in corporate America and that was action plan Sounds like some shit from that.
What’s what was that the office or office space? That’s it That’s what I’m thinking of sounds like some shit from that. Did you work in corporate America
Cody: for seven months seven months? I was in commercial real estate lending and then I was grinding out entrepreneurship on the side Finally, he made the jump when my side hustle income started to cover my expenses, which were 1, 200 a month at that point, living super frugal.
And since then I’ve just been, you know, going full entrepreneur.
Doug: And so seven months, pretty short time. Did you learn anything? Did you get anything out of it or was it just kind of like a confirmation that you didn’t want to do it?
Cody: So here’s another funny story. When I quit my job, I was telling my boss and I even told him what I was doing.
I’m like, Hey, I’m going. We’re entrepreneurship. And he’s like, you were a waste of time and resources. He said that to me and I’m like, damn. But what the day job allowed me to do was build up this like kind of security nest egg. So I was able to save like 50 K in seven months. I got a pretty good signing bonus.
I think it was like 10 or 15 grand. And then I was making like four to five grand a month. I had overtime too. And I was pocketing most of that. I was saving like 90 percent of my income. So by the, by the time I quit, I’d like 50 grand saved up. And I was spending like between a thousand and 1, 200 a month.
And I was like, okay, now I have like You know, 35 to 50 months of entrepreneurial freedom because of so what the day job gave me was flexibility. Although I didn’t, didn’t take away too many like hard skills from it. Sure. Maybe networking and maybe collaborating a little bit, but not too much. I mean, yeah,
Doug: you already,
Cody: I was already doing that.
But yeah, having the, having the 50 K on the side, To give me entrepreneurial freedom was kind of huge
Doug: and then I think we’ll get it I may be jumping ahead, but you saved a you know, ton of money That is kind of rare, especially like you got a signing bonus You didn’t go buy a new car blow money or whatever.
Maybe you did but yeah, why? Why are you like that?
Cody: My parents were really good about teaching me to So I, I kind of stumbled into this whole financial independence thing by myself, like the investing side of things, retiring early, but they were like, you should always save money. Like whatever you come in, whatever comes in, whatever you earn, you should always put some aside for like future expenses.
And it’s kind of just like Like that. And so it, it always stuck with me. I’m like, okay, I’m going to try to save as much of my paycheck as I possibly can. Sure. Like growing up, they forced me to force me sounds like, you know, they were so tough. They encouraged me to pay for my own things. If I wanted a video game, I’d have to save up the 50 bucks from working odd jobs inside hustling.
So I feel like just going through my teen years and into college and you know, then eventually into early adulthood, like having my first real job, I just had that savings mentality. So. Yeah, it as the as the checks got bigger the savings rate stayed the same
Carl: so yeah I’ve got kind of a follow up to that your parents taught you to save were they entrepreneurs.
Where did that bug come from?
Cody: So both my parents worked traditional jobs. My mom is kind of I wouldn’t say an entrepreneur, but she does odd jobs She was a massage therapist by trade, but you’d always just like pick up random stuff. My dad worked in marketing So I guess I maybe got some of my marketing brain from him, but both of them were kind of just standard corporate America jobs.
Carl: Okay. So where, where did you get the idea to start your first business or hustle?
Cody: Tim Ferris for our work week. I read it when I was 19, sophomore in college, and he talked about separating your time from your money. So basically leveraging your time into like scalable things, things that once you kind of put the effort in, once you build that business, once you build that course, once you create that ebook or that book.
Then you can like kind of sell it in perpetuity. And I think he called the muses in the four hour work week and I became obsessed. And so shortly after that, I started my first company, which was a disc golf manufacturing company. And that company just gave me so many different learning lessons. It’s honestly something I don’t spend any time on today.
And it’s kind of just like still pittering away in the background. It doesn’t really make me much money. But the lessons that I learned from starting that business, I’m going to give a shout out to my boy T Ferris. We’re like, just so life
Doug: changing. Very cool. And then when you read the four hour workweek, were you, were you super excited?
You’re like, I have to tell a bunch of people about it.
Cody: Oh, yeah, I was telling all my friends They don’t want to hear any of this. Like no 19 year old wants to like map out their life They’re just partying in college and I was partying too. Like I don’t want to get I don’t want people to Think I’m some superhuman who’s just like always business always grinding.
Like I was still partying like Way more than I probably should have in college. Yeah. But I was spending my spare time instead of watching Netflix. I was like trying to build these businesses. That’s very cool.
Carl: So, so now I’m kind of curious. I really want to get inside your head. Why do you think that book, like what spoke to you?
Was it the potential to make money, the freedom, like. You, you read that book and it sunk in and you said, I’m going to go for this. cAn you expound on why or your thought process?
Cody: Yeah, I think growing up, I thought rich was just the only rich people I had in my life where my cousin was like a lawyer. I had some other people who were like doctors in my family.
And that was like rich people to me and the, both those professions, nothing wrong with them, but they’re both trading your time for money. Like my cousin is a lawyer, worked his ass off, hundred hour weeks, like he’s making a shit ton of money, but it was all of my role models were trading their time for money.
I think what really drew me to Tim Ferriss when he was talking about was like all this time leveraged money, like kind of the passive income, the business building, the, uh, the notion that I could spend my time building this thing up. And then kind of just like, let it sit, let it ride, and then it would make me money in perpetuity.
It was almost like a quicker way to financial independence.
Doug: Okay, cool. Yeah, totally. And, you know, you mentioned it a couple times, but just having the time freedom.
Cody: Yeah.
Doug: Which, uh, he really highlights. And did you read the book Vagabonding 2 by Rolf Potts?
Cody: I have not, no.
Doug: Okay, and I think Rolf was on Tim Ferriss podcast a couple times in the first Say 50 episodes.
Check those out. I think Tim Ferriss said that he carried around vagabonding like in his travels when he was coming up with the idea of the four hour work week or something like that. But good book. Same idea.
Carl: Yeah. I think Tim Ferriss said that’s the most influential thing he has ever read. I hope I’m doing it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He did like a huge double podcast with that guy. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug: Yep. Very cool. All right, so let’s get into, um, some of the passive income sources, business and investing. We have kind of a bullet point list. How do you want to hit this, Carl?
Carl: Yeah, let’s start with passive income and digital products.
What do you do around that space, Cody?
Cody: So I first got introduced, actually, I have a business partner, Julie, in Gold City Ventures, which is like the brand I have here. She introduced me to selling digital products and printables on Etsy. And basically what that is, it’s like Calendars, planners, invitations, templates.
Like if you guys were looking for like a social media template or a podcast media kit, for example, you could go on Etsy and go buy one from someone who’s created that product, listed it there. And then like thousands of people can buy from them. So it’s passive income like this, these digital products.
Shipping them, you know, holding inventory, you just kind of create it, list it, and then you sell it. So I started to see some early success selling on Etsy and then eventually Shopify and then eventually some other platforms. And then I ended up, you know, creating a course on it and you know, all of these things, like I said, it’s like, it’s the one to many model.
You create the thing once and then a bunch of people can purchase it from you. And it’s just been transformative. I’ve spent a lot of my time now, whereas back in like 2019, when I quit my corporate job, I was spending my time doing freelance stuff. I was freelance writing. I was podcast editing, video editing, copywriting.
Now I spend like all my time building things that can pay me even if I don’t work on them actively. So that’s kind of where digital products, like I just became enamored with them and I’m like, this is sick. Like I’m making all this money. Like I’m just, I’m just spending a couple hours creating this thing, whether it’s an ebook or a printable or digital download or a course.
And then I’m making daily sales or weekly sales from it. It’s passive income.
Carl: Yeah, like how cool is it that we have the internet where billions of people can access your thing versus 50 years ago if you wanted to be an entrepreneur, you’d have to open up a store or whatever. And your, your total addressable market is the people in your town or whatever.
But now we can reach the world with anything.
Cody: I was just talking to someone about that yesterday. I’m like, even 10 years ago, I don’t think what I’m doing now would be even remotely possible. I can literally go and work from anywhere in the world, make the same amount of money, work the same amount of hours, like I’m completely time independent, I can work whatever hours I want.
Like I, even in 2012, I don’t think that was possible. Yeah. It’s like the systems, the scalability we have now is insane. It’s like honestly the best time in history to make money in my opinion.
Carl: Yeah.
Doug: And just with the, you know, the online course platforms, like they matured a ton in the last five years. But yeah, even whatever, seven years ago, you’d have to maybe.
Piece together a couple of things and it would not be that great. So much easier. Yeah. Awesome. And then anything else on the digital product front? So there, there’s a few income streams there, but anything else on your mind with it?
Cody: Um, I just encourage people to like, check it out. I honestly think so. I’m, I also invest in real estate and we’re going to talk about real estate today, but real estate, that first step is a big step.
And for a lot of people who haven’t experienced passive income, I honestly think digital products is probably one of the easiest ways to like dip your toes in the water and legitimately like make money while you sleep. Yeah. Just putting a product up on Etsy on website or whatever, or even just creating an ebook on something, a five page ebook and something that you’re knowledgeable about that people ask you about often.
Yeah. It’s a lot easier than like. People make it out to be and it’s a lot easier than something like real estate in this example.
Doug: Sure. Yeah. Very like low, low cost to, to entry where real estate. Yeah,
Cody: exactly. Or real estate, like you could find a down payment or it’s just a lot more legwork and there’s a lot more risk involved.
Doug: For sure. All right, let’s get into real estate then. Let’s do it. So how many doors do you have and what kind of rentals are they?
Cody: So long term, short term, currently we have 11 long term rental doors and two short term rental like Airbnbs. And just recently starting into short term rentals and it has been crazy, dude.
Like I didn’t realize we’re in central Massachusetts. You never hear someone saying, Oh yeah, you know what? I’m going to go on a vacation to central Massachusetts. You would just wouldn’t think of it as like a hub where people are booking Airbnbs this past month. We have a place that’s not even on a lake.
It’s across the street from a lake. We just did five grand in net profit after mortgage, after all expenses, after everything cleaners. Five grand in central Massachusetts. It’s nuts and like the return on a long term rental would probably be like maybe seven eight hundred dollars in cash flow So that is something I’m gonna start exploring a lot more in the in the coming years like just looking into the future I do like the stability of long term rentals and obviously it’s like less of a management headache and stuff like that But man short term rentals are crazy.
Yeah,
Doug: what I was just about to ask, you know, there’s no free ride So yeah, what are the downsides to the the short term?
Cody: Um, it’s just I mean there’s more Turn and burn like people are just in and out. Luckily, I have a partner in this kind of short term rental business and she owns a cleaning company, which is huge.
Perfect. Huge. So she already has 18 cleaners on her roster, so it’s like this is just, you know, another client to her. Basically, it’s like it’s nothing. Where if it was me by myself, I’d have to go find cleaners on some website, maybe like turnover B and B and B, then I’d have to manage them, make sure the place is clean.
But like. She kind of just handles that for us, which is wicked cool. That’s cool.
Carl: Yeah. So, so I’m kind of curious to follow up. Who is, have you ever asked the tenants or the, not tenants, but the short term renters, why are they coming? Who are the people who rent this in the middle of Massachusetts?
Cody: Yeah. So we have a guest book and we actually get a lot of people to fill it out.
Like it’s just a cute little guest book that’s like sitting on the main living room table. People from Boston that just like want kind of a out of city retreat. People who are couples that just want something different for the weekend. Like. We strategically bought a hot tub. It’s only 4, 000 but it honestly adds like 100 per night booking value.
People are just sorting by like hot tub. They’re like, oh, this place has a hot tub, let’s book it. We do. Yeah, we like hot tubs. So do we. When we travel, we’re always looking like, does this place have a
Doug: hot tub?
Cody: If it does, we’re willing to pay a premium. And that’s worked out in our favor
Doug: And it was only, did you say 4, 000?
For the hot tub?
Cody: Yeah. It was four grand for the hot tub. We got it from like, Costco. That one was from Costco, yeah. Okay. Wayfair sells them too.
Doug: Wow, did you have to re I’m going deep, I’m checking for my wife here. Yeah, yeah. So did you have to get it rewired for, or get it wired for 220 out to the hot tub or whatever?
Cody: We did have to get like a little panel outside. It’s called the emergency shut off for the hot tub, yeah. Yeah. All right.
Doug: Yeah. We’ll talk later.
Carl: Yeah. That’s yeah, that’s pretty cool, man. That’s a lot of money. That’s a big differential. You said seven or eight hundred versus like five thousand. Holy crap.
Cody: And it might be seasonal, like simply just closed on the place that I’m talking about right now that did five grand last month because we just kind of outfitted it and launched it in May. But I mean, even if a couple of months out of the year, like we’re making five grand in profit, it’s well worth doing the short term rental.
Yeah. It pays for a lot of hot subs. Exactly. Unlimited hot tubs. Yeah.
Carl: You could also, you could always pivot and do a maybe a medium term run to like a monthly thing in the, in the cooler months or whatever, where it might be. Traveling nurses. Yeah, absolutely. We’re, we’re doing that with the property now actually, but yeah, that’s awesome.
Do you have any real estate horror stories? Is anything bad ever happened to you in real estate?
Cody: So I think our first year in real estate, so we started investing in 2020 and I just had so many people on my podcast that had retired early with real estate. And I’m like. Why the hell don’t I have any properties?
So we just started like buying properties really quickly and I think we got a little too trigger happy cash flow trigger Happy, we’re like this place cash flows. It’s sick. Like we’re gonna make so much money with it and it was just in kind of shittier areas with shittier quality tenants and They were just annoying and they called a little maintenance issues and stuff like that And so we ended up actually selling off two of the properties five units luckily, we had like a crazy bull market and so we actually made money selling them, but You know, I, in retrospect, we shouldn’t have bought them in the first place.
It was just a mistake. Like it was a lot of wasted man hours, like going through like the inspections and just like setting all the processes and systems up. And like, like I said, I think I was just super trigger happy. I’m like, Oh, I’m a real estate investor now. This is going so well. This is awesome. And we were making money.
It was just like the quality of the people in there weren’t worth the headache. And now kind of the rule of thumb that me and my fiancee use is if we wouldn’t want to live in the property, we don’t want that property as a rental. We want the quality of people that are like us, like people who are well to do folks that care about, like, the curb appeal, that care about the inside of the house, that aren’t going to, like, destroy the place, never clean.
So that’s definitely a mistake that we made earlier on and now it’s something that we, we use that as a benchmark moving forward.
Carl: Yeah, that’s not too bad of a mistake. You know, like some person 50 cats or something like that. Nothing like that. We have a
Cody: pretty rigorous screening process, which is something that I learned from just like the, People I talked to, they’re like, make sure they have a good credit score.
Make sure you do background check. Make sure this, make sure that check their pay stubs. And we did all that and it’s knocked on wood, but it’s worked out. Yeah,
Doug: very good. And I was going to ask something else about the, the rentals and everything. And but I can’t remember. So what could I
Cody: ask if I know I mentioned, but we self manage.
Okay. The reason for that is we have set up such good teams that like, not even kidding, probably spend four to five hours a month. So like, if we get a call and someone’s like, Oh, like, aren’t you? Why do you want to be a landlord? Do you really want to go out and fix the toilet in the night? It’s like, well, I’m not going to fix the toilet.
First of all, like, I probably don’t know how to fix the toilet. Yeah. And I’m kind of far, like, these are, these rentals are like most of the ones are in Connecticut. I’m in Massachusetts. They’re like an hour away. I’m not going there in the night. So we just have like, A plumber on call, electrician on call, handyman on call HVAC people on call.
Like we’ve kind of built out the systems so that if we do have an issue, I just like send a text or a quick call and it’s taken care of. So I feel like for those who are like scared, one, they don’t want to hire a property manager because they’re like, I don’t want to give away that extra cash flow. You can totally self manage if you don’t have like a crazy huge portfolio, if you have the right systems and right team in place.
And you know, obviously it takes a bit to build out like at the beginning we were scrambling. We like had to find electrician, find a reliable plumber, find all these people. But now it’s just like a text. They go take care of it. They send me an invoice and that’s it. It’s 10 minutes of my time. Got it.
Carl: Yeah. So I see a theme here. This is kind of similar to the digital products in that you set everything up once and then. It’s kind of hands off. It just goes off and does its own thing. You’ve got the, with the digital products, there’s not much you have to do at all with this. You’ve got the, the system.
So set it and forget it.
Cody: Yeah. I think that’s going to be a theme of today’s episode. Like I have just become obsessed with systems and processes and then eventually outsourcing and kind of scaling myself out. And then, you know, taking the margin off of whatever I could pay other people to handle those systems or processes.
It’s been really lucrative and it saves me a lot of time.
Doug: Awesome. And you said, if I caught it right, you started in 2020, so you’re only like two and a half years into real estate investing. That’s awesome. Yeah. You definitely hit the ground running. You’re an action taker, it sounds like. I am an action taker.
What what goals do you have overall? Like real estate, do you want to acquire a bunch more or are you at a good
Cody: spot right now? I mean, I’m always, I just take opportunities in stride. Like, like I said before, 19 different income streams at this time. And so if a new opportunity presents itself, like actually, I didn’t even talk about this yet.
And Carl is Carl’s my lender on this flip that I’m doing. It’s really interesting situation. No one wanted to touch this flip. The neighbor’s a bitch. She’s super annoying. And it’s like the leach field is like potentially going into her property line or whatever. And so I just met with her. I’m like, Hey, like, we’re going to, well, you know, we’ll have it surveyed.
We’ll have them put the camera in the leach field, find out where the property line ends. Like if it is on your property, like, well, we’ll just find a price and I’ll pay you off for an easement. She’s like, Oh, okay. That works. Why didn’t anyone else do this? We got the place for 200 grand and it’s going to need like probably 60 K of work.
The comps in that area are between 400 and 500k. Just because we got creative. We actually met with this neighbor lady who is a bitch. It sucked. Like whatever she’s, uh, but we, we got it worked out and now it’s going to be, you know, once it’s all said and done a super lucrative deal because we got a little bit creative.
So I feel like. To answer your question, it’s a very roundabout way of answering your question. I don’t have any end goals, like, I’m not like, I want 500 doors, or like, I want, you know, 50 Airbnbs. I’m just like, if I see a good deal come up where I can make money, I’m gonna take it. I’m gonna figure out a way to make it happen.
And that’s in real estate or anything else. Like, if someone comes to me with some new opportunity, some new thing, And I vet it and see it as a viable source of passive income or business. I can build them. I’m like, hell yeah, I’m all in. I’ll give it a whirl.
Doug: Cool. That’s awesome. And yeah, other investments that you have in general.
Carl: Yeah. Do you have anything conventional, like an index fund? Yeah. Yeah.
Cody: So in terms of investments, so I do real estate and I mentioned like long term short term, short term, short term flip. I do have index funds, so I keep a decent bit. I think like probably 40 percent of my net worth is just. In the stock market in the form of index funds, also been doing some syndications over the past year.
So just kind of pooling my funds for bigger and better like apartment complexes, have some money in a self storage facility. Actually did my first like angel investing this past year as well into a financial app called Topia, our good friend. is a co founder in that. I’m cool. I’m like an angel investor.
Have some money in crypto, a pretty conservative amount, like probably 5 percent of my net worth just in Bitcoin, Ethereum, some individual stocks, nothing really don’t really dabble too much. Honestly, like I said, like 90 percent of my. Net worth in the stock market is in the form of index funds. And I used to be like a day trader.
I went to school for finance economics. So everyone’s like day trading, like, you know, spending so much time reading 10 K reports and earnings reports. And just not for me, like the alpha that you can get from doing that. Sometimes you can get lucky, but it’s like, maybe you can eat out a percent or two, but at what cost, it’s like, do you really want to be reading earnings reports all day and like thinking you could, you could go smart wall street?
No, it’s easier to just. Set it and forget it in an index fund,
Doug: right on
Cody: my opinion.
Doug: So you have these 19 income streams. You got into real estate. You have the disc golf company. You’re all over the place, man. So do you ever feel like number one, is it a little overwhelming because you have a lot of plates spinning?
And do you think if you focused on one of the areas you would have gone or you could go farther if you just focus on whatever digital products and you just hammer on that? So two, two part question. You could hit it however you want.
Cody: Okay. So the first one, I definitely feel overwhelmed sometimes. And it’s just like, it’ll be a random day.
It’ll be like, I’ll get a call that like screws things up, whether it’s like in purchasing a property or maybe there’s some issue with a property at the same time, like some technical things going wrong with the online course at the same time, like, you know, Etsy is giving me some warning cause they think like it’s a copy product, you know, Name a hundred different things that could go wrong.
If like seven things are wrong or wrong in one day, I’m, I’m a human, I get overwhelmed. I’m like shit, but then I, you know, action plan, I create like a little checklist. I’m like, all right, I’m just going to tackle these one thing at a time. Like this is something that I can handle. Like. It’s not going to be the end of the world.
So, you know, it’s not like my house is burning down and all my family is dying. Like this is, these are all manageable things. Like this is a big time first world problems. So I try to just like level with myself in my head. I’m like, okay, Cody, like just take a breath. We can, we can figure this out. On the second front of like, if I just hammered one thing, I think in terms of money, yes, if I just focus on one thing, like digital products, for example, I could probably make more money overall, but I think from a personal satisfaction, I would get real bored real quick.
Yeah. I just like, like trying different things, and I think. The fact that a lot of these things going back to the Tim Ferriss and like the building one thing and then just kind of setting it And now it’s making me money building another thing setting it now. It’s making me money That’s what most of my income streams are at this point.
They’re not like it’s not like I’m doing like I said before I’m not doing freelance writing podcast editing video editing copywriting email marketing and I’m not like doing all that stuff With my with my hours and those aren’t my income streams. It’s like I sell digital products on Etsy, then I sell like templates on Shopify, then I do like long term rentals, short term rentals, flips, but a lot of these things are already businesses that I’ve kind of scaled and outsourced and created processes for.
So it doesn’t, it doesn’t take too much of my time to manage the things I’ve already created. Most of my time, honestly, I know we’re probably going to, I looked at the questions ahead of time, talk about like what my day is like. Most of the time I’m spending time on new projects. So like I, I usually try to set and forget all the things I have going on.
And then I just like set my sights on a new goal and spend all of my time just building that thing out until that becomes a scaled out outsource business.
Doug: Totally. That
Cody: makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And you’re
Doug: excited and you’re pumped. You wake up, you’re like, I want to learn this new thing or.
Cody: Whatever. And if you have that energy about something, like it makes sense to go all in.
All: Like,
Doug: yeah,
Cody: you get burnt out. Well, I get burnt out anyway. Like working on the same thing over and over. If I were to do the same thing, that’s why I quit corporate America. It was like the same thing every freaking day. And I didn’t even know why I was doing it. And so like, if I get passionate about something, I’m like, I just want to like hammer this for a month.
Cause I’m like jazzed up. Maybe I heard a podcast about it, or maybe like I was talking to a friend at FinCon and they’re like, dude, you got to try this out. And so I just like. Give it my all for a month. If it works out, it works out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Yeah.
Doug: That’s awesome.
Carl: All right. Cool. Uh, uh, on our outline here, you want to talk about keeping fixed expenses low.
What do you mean by that?
Cody: So I admittedly have spent way more this past year than I’ve spent in past, in prior years, but all of those expenses could go away tomorrow. And so what I mean by fixed expenses low is like the big ones, the housing, the transportation, the food. The ones that you kind of have to pay every month.
Like, you’re not gonna go homeless. If you need a car, you can’t really just get rid of your car. You need to eat. But a lot of people will just like screw themselves until they’ll get a super expensive house, or they’ll rent a super expensive apartment, or they’ll get like a thousand dollar a month car payment.
And all of a sudden, your base expenses are three grand a month. Like, going back to when I quit my corporate job, if my base expenses, if I was just like Yo, I got the signing bonus, like I’m making a bunch of money. I’m going to get this nice apartment in Boston. It’s 2, 500 a month. I want to get the sick car.
That’s a thousand dollars a month car payment. And then I’m going to start like eating out a bunch and getting expensive groceries. All of a sudden I’m looking at like four grand a month minimum. And that’s without like going on vacations or going to concerts and like all the variable expenses. If my base was four grand a month, I could have never went full entrepreneur.
I just wouldn’t have had the optionality. So I think a lot of people screw themselves. In terms of the options they have by keeping their fixed expenses so high, like the housing, the transportation, the food. So if you can get those low, do, you know, house hack, get it, have a paid off car, be intentional about like your groceries and going out to eat and stuff.
And then if you have a year or months that you’re doing really well, whether it’s an entrepreneurship or you’re hitting bonuses in your job, Then you can spend that on the variable stuff. You can go on vacations, you can go to concerts, you can go out to eat more often. But if, again, if your base expenses are already really high, then you just don’t have flexibility.
If you have a shitty month in terms of earnings, there’s nowhere to turn. And like, then you could all of a sudden find yourself living paycheck to paycheck. And I think that’s why, honestly, a lot of Americans. Or just people in general get stuck.
Doug: And then just to confirm, so you’ve spent a lot more this year is what you, so it was on the variable kind of stuff, vacation, food, you’re treating yourself.
Cody: Yeah. Like in 2022, we’ve already taken 14 flights. We’ve been traveling like literally probably 75 calendar days out of the year. And we’re recording this in September.
Doug: Yeah.
Cody: So, yeah, probably close to three months, two and a half months outta the year we’ve been traveling. We’ve been eating out and going out a bunch more, gonna a ton of concerts, gonna a bunch of events just because, yeah, it’s been a really lucrative year for me.
But like if, you know, all of my businesses failed tomorrow, our basic expenses are like 1400 bucks a month. Yeah. So if I had to like, oh wow. You know, just cut everything and go back to living as living like I did straight outta college. Like when I quit, when I quit my job, I could. Which gives me a lot of flexibility and just makes me sleep at night.
Yeah.
Doug: Well, and on that note, do you value income or saving more?
Cody: That’s a tough question. I’m probably going to say income because it’s infinitely scalable. Yeah. Because you can only frugal yourself to zero. You can income yourself to whatever the hell you’re willing to grind to. So like if I were to just keep my corporate job and like save as much as I could, I would be light years behind where I am now.
I became the entrepreneur that I am today. And that’s why I’m an, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a day job. And people are like, can you get rich from a day job? And I’m like, well, you got to define rich because the richest people in the world don’t have day jobs. They’re entrepreneurs, they’re business owners.
Cause like, let’s say you work at Tesla, for example, and Tesla doubles its revenue and you’re just like a regular employee. There’s no way they’re giving you a hundred percent raise, like no chance they’re giving you a hundred percent raise. But if you’re a business owner and you double your revenue, You probably just doubled your income for the year.
And so that’s the difference between being an entrepreneur and someone who works in a day job. It’s like your income is infinitely scalable and it’s a direct result of how well your business is doing. Yeah. There’s no
Doug: cheating
Cody: in
Doug: that.
Cody: Yeah.
Doug: Very, very interesting. Cool.
Carl: Yeah. Is there anything we missed that you want to talk to before we move on to our next topic or on business investing?
Cody: Um. Maybe just going back to the processes thing, because I’ve been saying that a bunch, but I haven’t really given people like a tactical thing for those who are like business building entrepreneurs. I think just like start to write down or even create videos of like how you do stuff. Let’s use like a podcast.
For example, if you want to out at some point, like outsource the podcast, like just take a video of you editing like this is how I want to edit it. This is exactly what I need to do. So to have like a really detailed guide on how you want your show notes, have a really detailed guide on this is how you pitch to sponsors.
And then if you already create what I call, they’re called SOP standard operating procedures. If you just spend the time creating those now and again, it’s not like you’re, you don’t have to learn anything. It’s just showing people exact or showing people your future hires exactly how you do things. And then it’s so much easier to hire out.
And that was a mistake I made early on. It’s just like, I’m like, I can, you know, I’m the only one who knows how to do this my way. I’m not going to outsource this. And then as I started to like, think about it, I’m like, okay, well, if I can outsource these seven hours that I spend every week, like editing.
Now I can get seven hours of my time back and all, all it’s going to take is me creating one video or like one detailed process guideline, handing it off to somebody else, maybe, you know, tweaking and refining their work a little bit. But once they get it down, now you have like a podcast editor forever.
Right. Um, so I think a lot of people like that, that’s the tactical way I would tell people to do it is like, just literally document your systems of processes, how you do shit right now. And now you have a template that you can just give someone that you’re hiring in the future.
Doug: Yeah.
I love that.
That’s huge. That’s huge. Yeah. And I, I come from a project management background, so I did a lot of onboarding and operations kind of stuff. So yeah, that was kind of the stuff that I did for the day job. But yeah, as a entrepreneur, one thing that I ended up doing was just, you know, you have to understand the process yourself.
Yeah. So if you try to outsource too early, then you may run into some issues. Yeah. . So I’ve figured out how to. do it the best way myself then document it. And the one thing I’ll add is I usually write out a job aid versus a video since sometimes a button will move or something will change. So screenshots were a little bit easier, but I would tell anyone I hired to leave comments, anything that was confusing.
So it was like a living iterative. Constantly improving document. So as I hired more people, it got better and better. Fewer questions came in and then like anyone could come in and follow that job. Yeah. So huge.
Cody: Yeah. And it sounds like so corporate y and it sucks. I was like, I don’t want to create like an SOP.
Like I’m an entrepreneur. Yeah. But I mean, it’s seriously, if you do want to at some point scale yourself out of your businesses, you kind of do need stuff like that.
Doug: Yeah. At least you don’t have a mission statement, do you? Or do you have one? I don’t have a mission statement, no. Okay. We should come up with one.
We need one for my hi fi.
Carl: I’ve got one. It’s tattooed, but it’s in a place I couldn’t show without us getting kicked off YouTube.
Cody: I also have a tattoo in a place that I can’t show without getting kicked off YouTube. Mine says It’s Chum Bucket.
Carl: We’ll put that on the OnlyFans site.
Doug: I don’t know if that’s real or not, but we’re recording in my hotel room, so I think we may be able to find out. All right. That was an awkward transition into FIRE. Perfect. All right. So when, where did you learn about
Cody: financial independence and FIRE? Actually my mom, I think, was the one who sent me a Mr.
Money Mustache article. This is shortly after. The Tim Ferriss phase when I was 19. I think it was also when I was 19 when I discovered Mr. Ronnie Mustache. He was kind of my, I guess, liaison into the whole firing movement. Then I started listening to podcasts, reading books, and kind of just became obsessed with the idea of early retirement and financial independence.
I honestly thought it was absolute bullshit when I first stumbled upon it. People don’t retire at 30. I didn’t know anyone in my life. Like I said, my rich role models were like the doctor and the lawyers in my family. They weren’t retired. They were making a lot of money, but there was no retirement in their future.
And then I actually went to an event in early 2018 called Camp FI, Camp Financial Independence. And I met these people in real life. And it’s like a dude who’s like 31. He’s like, yeah, I’m just traveling. I’m like, Oh, so these people are real. This is a real thing. And then I just became obsessed with the notion of having work become optional.
I don’t think I’ll ever actually retire. I just have too much drive at this point. But work is completely optional. Like I could just take a couple of weeks off and not do anything and I’d be fine, which is crazy. And if I didn’t stumble into this movement. I see a lot of people who are in the make a shit ton of money space.
They’re also in the spend a shit ton of money space and they don’t really understand the personal finance side of the equations. They’re just like really good at like selling your products or a service or whatever. But I think me being someone who discovered Tim Ferriss, so I’m like on the make money front and kind of getting into the fire movement.
It kind of gave me like a Kimbo, like two weapons at once where Now I can be like a responsible entrepreneur who can make a bunch of money, but also like understand the fixed expenses thing. Like I’m not going out and buying a 2 million mansion in a Bugatti just cause I’m making good money.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah.
Um, really identify with what you said. And I had a friend who was making like great money, but then they just, they bought a big house, a couple of big cars and then it went away and they just, and they’re stuck with it. They were stuck. Yeah. So they had to downsize greatly and they were, yeah, they were in a bad spot for a couple of years, but yeah, they just didn’t, they, they were like, we’re rich and they just kept spending was nuts.
Yeah. They need fire.
Carl: Yeah. Cody. I just want to expound on that. I think that’s such a great point because if you have either of those. Skills separately, they’re powerful. If you’re super frugal, no money, or if you’re a great entrepreneur, very powerful, you can go far. But those are complimentary. So if you’ve got both those down, you can just dominate, which is what you’re doing clearly.
Cody: Yeah. I mean, that’s what I just kind of looked at people in the space like, okay, who is like retiring in crazy amount of time. And it was people like Grant Sabatier, who I talked about earlier, who I went on the book tour with. Like this dude is like frugal and he’s making like over a million dollars a year.
Yeah. Like that is, that’s the recipe to retire. Like. Super fast. And like you said, you can do it both ways. Like you can be, you could make a ton of money and save like, you know, 10 percent or 20 percent of that ton of money and then eventually retire. Or you could make okay money and save like a decent amount of that money.
And those two people would probably end up with like the same amount of money in 20 years. But if you can combine the two, it’s like, holy shit, like I can retire really fast and make a ton of money.
Doug: Yeah. And we didn’t mention it, but I think people know you have a podcast called the FI show. And if I remember right, you either shared your net worth or income.
Can you, as much as you’re comfortable. Yeah.
Cody: So I, I mean, I do share all my numbers just to like inspire people and it’s, it’s weird. Honestly, I feel like weird saying stuff like that. So I’ll just tell you like how the numbers have progressed over the last couple of years was it’s literally nuts. So 2019 when I quit and started like doing a bunch of different entrepreneurial stuff, I made about a hundred K.
2020 I started just getting more involved with digital products, started investing in real estate, made about 200 K. Last year made 400 k. This year I’m on pace to hit a million. Wow.
Carl: So you’re doubling 100, 200, 400 to a million.
Cody: That’s awesome. It’s literally nuts. Like I can’t, even, if I were to talk to myself like four years ago when I quit and told him where I was at today, like it’s, it’s nuts.
But it kind of went back to like the Tesla example. ’cause my businesses I’ve grown and I’m not an employee. Like I’m not getting the, here’s a 10% raise buddy. Like great job. Like I’m able to kind of keep all of those gains. So, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s been nuts
Doug: congrats. Yeah. And you are 26 is 26.
Cody: Yeah. Oh, sorry.
And net worth. It’s been up and down because the stock market’s been crazy, but just about 2 million now. Wow.
Doug: That’s, that’s crazy.
Carl: Yeah. And the other thing we have going for us, if we’re an entrepreneur, you’ve got access to things like a solo 401k, which allow you to take Do things not exotic, but put much more money away quickly in a tax sheltered account like I didn’t know that I Yeah, I was saving much at all my 401k and then I became a solo entrepreneur and like I can put like fifty three thousand Yeah,
Cody: whatever the limit was like,
Carl: holy crap and
Cody: do creative stuff with it Like I know you’re lending out of your solo 401k you buy properties in a solo 401k You can invest in businesses in a solo Yeah, there’s a lot of options.
Carl: Yeah. It’s so good. Like, yeah, all that money, all that nice interest you’re sending me, boof. Yeah. I don’t have to pay any income tax. Yeah. Exactly. I will have to at some point. When I take it out. Yeah. So would you consider yourself to be financially independent now or?
Cody: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, via the nest egg method and via the, like, kind of just cash flow method as well, like money coming in from real estate and digital products and all that stuff.
Doug: Cool. Yeah. I was going to say, I don’t even need a spreadsheet to tell you that. Yeah, I think you hit FI.
Carl: And for context, I’ve got about almost 5 now, 5 million, but I was negative net worth at the age of 26. So imagine what Cody’s going to be when he’s my age.
Doug: Yeah. I didn’t know shit about shit. And when I was 26, I was buying a whole life plan at that point.
Cody: I got lucky that I was introduced early. Yeah. Yeah. Like 19. I mean, yeah. It’s seven, seven years is kind of a long time, but it’s just like I got introduced so early on. Yeah. It gave me such a leg up on people who. Yeah, and it’s not like people can’t catch up later on. It’s just like now I have so much more time for the money to compound like you said.
Doug: Yeah, and so much freedom. Yeah. Yeah, and don’t sell yourself short I mean, yeah, it was great that you learned but you’re busting your ass and working hard. Yeah. Yeah, so it doesn’t yeah It’s not escaped us. I don’t know if that’s the right phrase. But yeah, you’re doing good.
Cody: Yeah, I want to inspire people That’s why I like you asked like well How much you comfortable sharing but like and it feels weird and I get like weird looks from friends and family and they make snarky comments sometimes but I think On the whole, it’s a net positive.
People like see my income growth. I’m like, listen, like you were friends with me four years ago in 2018 when I was like, just became an entrepreneur. I was making like 1, 500 a month when I quit my corporate job and now I’m making like way more per month. But like you knew me the whole time. It’s not like I’m doing like some fancy thing.
Like I document my whole journey. I’ve had a podcast the entire time during my financial independence journey. So hopefully I’m just a. Inspiring the youth out there right on. And what does the fire community get right and wrong? I think the fire community doesn’t focus enough on the income front and the entrepreneurship thing and like The people who are really good at making a bunch of money.
They focus a ton on the savings, which is totally cool I think that’s honestly It’s easier to Start to expand the gap between your income and your expenses. If you start with the saving front, it’s hard. I know people are time crunched. People have other stuff going on. It gets hard to be like, yeah, it goes, you know, go get a side hustle and start making the extra thousand per month.
Like that’s a tough sell, but if you’re like, Hey, be a little bit more intentional about where you’re spending, it’s, it’s easier to cut that stuff out. Once you’re like kind of in this world and conscious of. How do you how your money is working? But yeah, I don’t I don’t think the fire community has enough emphasis on the on the income front because it seriously is from entrepreneurship Entrepreneurial standpoint.
Anyway, your income is pretty much unlimited
Carl: Yeah,
Cody: that’s awesome.
Carl: Cool. Anything else about fire? You’d like to mention Cody?
Cody: I think a lot of people also hate on the retire early part. And yeah, because people just hate that word retire. It’s like, you know, I’ve, people have been like headlines, like business insiders, like 25 year old retired.
It’s like, well, they’re not retired. I could retire if I wanted to, but I’m not. And I think most people in the space who get to that point, get there because they worked their ass off. They’re not someone who just like. Hits the off switch once they hit that goal, that financial goal. So a lot of people are like, yeah, like fuck the financial dependence, like fire movement.
Like you guys aren’t actually retired. It’s like, well, we have the option to, if we want, like we have enough passive income. It’s just like most people that get to that point are wired to not shut off ever and just like keep pursuing different things and keep trying different stuff. So. That’s just probably not right for your audience because everyone listening.
This is like hell. Yeah fire. But yeah for the mainstreamers like The re part of fire catches a lot of hate.
Doug: Yeah Yeah, and I think I mean it’s just focusing on the wrong part Like I think once people get a little deeper like and they’re into it. They sort of understand but yeah, it’s an easy contrarian position to take where you’re like, ah Yeah.
It’s kind of bullshit or whatever, but
Carl: I heard a jail Collins asked about this. Someone asked him about the whole work thing a couple of years ago and he was like work is close to the heart of the human soul or something like that. And I think that’s absolutely true. Whatever you define as work, we have to have purpose and work gives us that.
We definitely redefine work, and we define it how we want to define it. We don’t let other people define it, which is the key, I mean, that’s everything, I think.
Cody: I think a key shift for me was kind of adopting a growth mindset. And how I define a growth mindset is You’re enjoying the process like I am not someone who just like gets to the goal and like cheers I I don’t seem like oh shit like I hit the goal All right, whatever on to the next thing.
Like I said before I’m like on to the next business I just enjoy the hunt the guy have kind of become obsessed with just getting better whether that’s in fitness and business and relationships Just in anything or like just knowledge. I have started to just like become obsessed with getting better and I think that’s honestly the you know, the monetary stuff like all these benefits are just like side benefits of So if you can like retrain your mind to have a growth mindset and fall in love with the journey rather than just like waiting till you get to some goal.
Like I think a lot of people actually get financial independence wrong in that way. But like once I hit my fine number, then it’s like, no, build your life that you want before you hit your fine number or while you’re. Going toward that fine number because if you’re just like expecting life to be awesome, once you hit your fine number, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening.
Yeah. Yeah.
Carl: That is so true. I know. First day, I’m like, Oh, life is going to be great. When I hit this number. Then you hit it. It’s like, it’s like the dog who caught the car. Like, okay, what’s next? I need to rewind and do this over again. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.
Doug: Well, and you mentioned fitness in there. So we do want to ask about your exercise routine.
Cody: Yeah. So every morning, the first thing I do typically, well, actually, that’s not true. The first thing I do, I have a bunch of overseas VAs and honestly, the first thing I do is like check in with what they did while I was sleeping, which goes back to the outsourcing thing. It’s all, they’re literally doing stuff while I’m sleeping.
Then we go to the gym, every single morning, usually six days a week, me and my fiancée Lauren get to the gym. We’re usually there for like an hour, hour and a half. We, I kind of do like, working different body parts each day. So it’s not like we just do the same routine, you know, we’ll do like chest tries, back buys, legs, shoulders.
All that stuff. And then honestly, usually most days we get in a second workout later on. So fitness is health as well, in my opinion, like I would never want to trade places with like Warren Buffett, for example, or even someone who’s just like out of shape in there. They’re older. Just because I think.
There’s no point of having a lot of money if you don’t have your health. You’re not going to be able to enjoy it. A lot of people are trying to accumulate wealth for experiences, spend more time with family, go on vacations, whatever. It’s like, if you’re not taking care of your body, that stuff’s either going to be way less enjoyable, or you’re not going to be able to do it at all.
So I think that’s huge. So yeah, we usually work out two times a day, and then usually in the middle of the day we do something like, not like a workout, but something active. On a walk or we’ll kayak or we’ll play tennis or whatever. So we usually have like three like active things during the day. Cool. This could change if we’re on vacation and stuff.
And we usually are more active actually on vacation, just like exploring, walking around, but. Yeah, man, I don’t know. That’s a very long winded answer, but fitness is huge. Fitness is huge for both of us. We actually recently did this thing where we both independently wrote down like the 10 most important things to us without like looking and fitness was in the top three for both of us.
Yeah. Like that is just like above everything. Money was like close, closer to the bottom.
Doug: Yeah. Top
Cody: 10 list, but I don’t have to worry about it
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. Yeah. And Carl’s been running a lot lately. How’s the running going?
Carl: It’s going pretty good, except I stepped on a bunch of, uh, I stepped on a, so I created this thing to organize all my sockets.
I put a bunch of screws through a piece of wood and then the the sockets could just hang on that. And I had it on the floor and then I was walking around and I, I stepped on it, gave myself a bunch, bunch of puncture wounds. So I had to take a short rest from my running. But November 5th is the next Shoes and Brews 5k.
So I have my thing, two months, I’m going to be under 30 minutes. That’s my goal. You can do it, man.
Cody: Yeah, I saw you with that, uh, the pull up picture.
Carl: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think you got to be transparent if you can, you got to show shit if you’re going to tell. I hate when people say, Oh, I’m going to do this, this and this.
And then they don’t share any of the details or they say they did it, but okay, well, let’s see the proof. I want to see it.
Doug: And actually, I forgot our mutual friend, David Boyer, yeah, he’s into pull ups.
Cody: Yeah.
Doug: And he and I had a little pull up contest and he actually squeezed one more out than me. I did 18 and he went after and then he did 19, but recently I did 22, but he, he said that he texted you and you were like, oh yeah.
So how many pull ups? Yeah.
All: Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. How many pull ups did you, or can you do? What’s your max that you did? Um,
Cody: for that video, I did 28. I think the massive ever got was 32, but he’s like, yo, I just got 22 pull ups. I’m like, all right, David. I’m like. Check this out. I sent him. I literally just mounted my phone took a video.
I did 28. I’m like, keep working Yeah, well,
Doug: yeah, yeah, it’s fun at my elbows get a little sore get a little tendinitis I’m a couple years older than you that’s my excuse. Anyway, two or three years older Actually, i’m 57 Yeah, no, i’m like i’m not I just i’m moisturized. Yeah, so that’s all All right. So anything else on exercise?
Can you think of uh, no, I think that’s it All right, so what does your perfect day look like?
Cody: It’s pretty close to what we have now quite honestly like I actually you know, some people are like, oh, it’s probably gonna involve No work. I actually like working for like Three to four maybe five hours a day because I get into projects and I’m like excited about working on them it’s kind of the Awesome part about financial independence is like I can actually just work on the things that excite me and then drop things that don’t excite me so Yeah, probably go to the gym in the morning work.
Actually. Yeah, I’ll say work for a couple hours I kind of usually get my book on my best work done in the morning like after the gym like my mind stimulated I’m like ready to go Probably yeah, then make lunch around like noon you do intermittent fasting actually on the health front. So I don’t never eat breakfast Then probably do something active for a couple hours, maybe hop back on if I’m feeling inspired later on, like that.
That’s why I said three to five, maybe two hours later on, like after we do whatever active thing, like whether it’s like hiking or kayaking or whatever. And then, yeah, I usually at night. We’re either hanging out with friends or building businesses. Sometimes if we’re lucky, I got, we try to intentionally not watch too much TV.
So I guess the night thing kind of depends on what night of the week we’re talking about, Doug, in terms of my ideal day. Like you could, an ideal Tuesday is probably a little bit different than an ideal Friday for sure. But yeah, I mean, honestly, it’s, it’s pretty close to what we have now. Like definitely can’t complain.
I’m, you know, that’s, it sounds a little, uh, you know, first worldy, like nothing’s wrong, but it’s pretty close. We’ve been really intentional over the past couple of months, like we sit down every month and kind of just like map out, I’ll literally ask Lauren, my fiance, I’m like, okay, like if we, you could improve our days, what would we do differently?
And then she’s like, just recently, she’s like, I wish we went on longer walks. So we’ve been going on longer walks. And so, like, I think being really intentional about what your ideal day looks like and then trying to just build that into your lifestyle, like, it might not be completely possible now if you slowly work at it and work at it, like, you’re gonna get closer and closer to that dream day.
Doug: Very cool. And I have one more question. Prepped you on so you might not go anywhere nothing crazy, but aside from mile hi fi podcast What other podcasts do you listen to any favorites? Are you a big podcast listener?
Cody: Yeah, so I actually don’t listen to too many Financial independence personal finance podcasts.
I feel like I’ve kind of just exhausted things that I can learn Although I do like listening to like cool stories and hearing how other people have done it I listen to a lot of like Kind of growth mindset he type stuff. So I listen to Tim Ferriss his podcast. I’m still a huge fan of him I listen to Sam Harris.
Okay is making sense podcast. It’s just like a kind of big ideas It’s like philosophy that type of shit. I do listen to online marketing made easy with Amy Amy Porterfield Okay And she talks about a lot of online courses and that’s where like I get a lot of ideas because we’ve been doing a bunch With courses over the past year.
All: Yeah
Cody: Our mutual friend Nick Loper of South Hustle Nation. I actually like listening to, tuning in sometimes to listen to how people are just making a bunch of money in weird ways. What else do I got on my roster? Do you listen to like Huberbin Lab? I have. It’s not like a regular for me. Okay. Why I didn’t mention it.
Sure. Honestly, yeah, I think that’s pretty much my regular roster of like non personal finance. And like, if there is an episode, especially if I have like, if I see friends on a podcast or someone like interesting, I just subscribe to a bunch and then I’ll just kind of like pick and choose which ones I, which ones I’m going to listen to.
Yeah. Cool.
Doug: That sounds awesome for the podcast. Carl, can you think of any other questions?
Carl: I think we’re good. We covered a lot of territory.
Cody: What I will say, I should just jog my memory because I recorded a video on this recently. I think it’s a lot easier for people to absorb information than they make it out to be.
Like, people will always use the time excuse for everything. I don’t have time to bling. I don’t have time to do this, do that. And like, especially with podcasts, it’s something that’s so easy to bake into your day. Like, you can listen to a podcast while you’re cooking. While you’re You can even blast it on a speaker while you’re in the shower.
Like, whatever the hell you have to do to get this information. And honestly, you’ve probably heard the Jim Rohn quote. Like, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I consider my podcast people like people I spend time with. I’m listening to them every single week and like just getting these kind of big ideas that I wouldn’t get like just a normal conversation with people I’m hanging around with at home.
Not to fault them in any way, shape or form, but we just don’t have those types of conversations. So I think kind of intentionally building multitasking into your day and just using podcasts and example is a great way to just like level up and people use it for exercise too. They’re like, I don’t have time to exercise.
It’s like. Do some squats while you’re brushing your teeth like yeah, there’s some push ups after you take a shit like yeah It’s building a routine like you have you have a minute to spare you just tell yourself you don’t have a minute to spare like all you need is like 10 minutes a day of You know somewhat rigorous working out to be like moderately healthy Yeah, you can figure out a time to just do jumping jacks or pull ups or push ups or whatever You can find those pockets.
You just choose not to
Carl: yeah, you could do bodyweight squats Well, you’re taking your shit at that. You’re loosening your stuff up. It’s probably healthy for your splash. Yeah, that would be a problem.
Doug: Carl, don’t use this bathroom. Your own room. It’s, it’s too late dog.
Cody: Oh yeah.
Doug: That’s an odd way to finish, but I mean, you said it.
Cody: I guess I did say it. Yeah. You know, you get what I’m saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People, people make excuses. People say I’m too busy. I don’t have time. And the truth is you do have time. You just, You aren’t prioritizing the things you say you’re going to do.
Doug: Yeah. I want to jump on that too. So yeah,
Cody: it’s
Doug: prioritizing, but the thing is like you will have, you can’t do everything.
You have to give something up somewhere. And if someone was like, Hey, I want to do 19 streams of income, just like Cody, you can do it. You probably can’t do all 19 at once. You have to. Build on top of it. Yeah, like layer after layer. And but yes, people, I feel like sometimes they’re like, oh yeah, I want to try to do everything and you will have to give something up.
Like there’s always like a resource constraint.
Cody: And people do find the time when it’s something that’s high enough priority for them. So like if someone’s house burned down or they have a dying family member. You’re going to find the time to figure that shit out or spend time with that dying family member like you’re going to find the time to like, you know, sit next to that family member in the hospital for whatever number of hours you need to.
But, and you know, obviously this is a really grim example, but like, that’s usually what it takes for people to uproot their routine or like start to change something about their daily habits. It’s some catastrophic event, but if you can like start intentionally. Just building these things out, like, you know, a couple of minutes each day doing something positive, whether that’s building a business or working out or language learning, like it’s just, and it starts to compound and compound and compound.
A huge fan of Atomic Habits by James Clear, actually, with that style, like just habit stacking. Awesome. Yeah.
Carl: I have one final question for you, Cody. For people watching on YouTube, that shirt either looks like it could be something really expensive or something you got for like 50 cents on the, uh, on the.
Rack the thrift store. It’s a nice looking shirt. You look great in it, but I just don’t know what 15 bucks What to think about? Okay, Marshall’s.
Cody: Okay, so kind of awesome shirts, you know, you should get Marshall’s a sponsor this episode
Doug: There’s one right by my house that go in there all the time. I haven’t I
Cody: usually just wear my high five shirts Yeah,
Doug: but yeah, it looks like a good shirt.
Yeah,
Cody: I like the little floral pattern. It’s cool. It’s like I’m fun, but somewhat formal in my collar. Yeah, it’s business
Carl: and fun all in one. Kind of like the mullet hairstyle. Is that what they used to say about that? It’s the mullet of shirts. Yeah,
Cody: business up front, party in the back.
Doug: This has been awesome.
Cody, where can people find you?
Cody: Well, if you love listening to podcasts, you can check out my podcast at the fi show. And I’ve been really active on Instagram. So you can follow me at Cody D Berman and then all things digital products go to gold city ventures dot com.
Doug: Awesome. We’ll link up to all that stuff.
And yeah, your Instagram stuff recently has been pretty spot on. Very good.
Cody: Thank you.
Doug: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Cody: Yeah, no, thanks for having me. This was an absolute blast and want to do it again. Thanks,
Carl: man. Thank you.
Doug: Thanks for listening to the show. That was the mile high five podcast and I’m Doug Cunnington, the balder host and Carl Jensen is the cool sexy one.
If you dig the show, please do three things for us. Number one, tell a friend, a family member, an enemy about the show. We really don’t care who you tell. Maybe for them a specific show that you know that they will like. It’s the single most helpful thing that you can do to spread the word. It’s like giving us a virtual high five and actually we don’t give high fives in person so the virtual kind is pretty good and more importantly your friend or family member or even your enemy will appreciate the fact that you were thinking of them.
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Quick disclaimer, this show is not financial or legal advice. I’d actually be surprised if it sounded like it. It’s really just for entertainment, and that’s at least what we’re hoping for. But seriously, get advice from professionals. Carl and I are just two guys with microphones that sit in my basement and talk.
So we’ll catch y’all next week.
Oh, that is a good idea.
All right, so this is the sound check. So Cody did you go to the party last night?
Cody: I did a lot of fun.
Doug: How’d it go? Yeah, it was loud to me. Did you find it
Cody: super loud? I got to reconnect with a lot of old friends. Yeah, some new friends money line shout out. Yeah No, this is just a sound check. So they’re not actually getting a shout out.
But yeah,
Doug: that’s okay Yeah, and then yeah, did you or what was your favorite part of the the opening party?
Cody: I was impressed by the grilled cheese wagon I was just expecting, you know, a couple of Kraft singles on some shitty bread. Yeah. They had like buffalo chicken grilled cheese, barbecue chicken grilled cheese, all these different grilled cheeses.
Yeah. It
Doug: was good. Yeah. I got the I think it was like dates and goat cheese or something. Did you get that too?
Cody: I actually got the buffalo chicken. Okay. Big buffalo chicken guy.
Carl: How about you? I think I got the bacon one, but that was. Great as well. And that macaroni and cheese was good too. They came out with those little holes.
Yeah. And the fire. Very good. Yeah. The hot one with the jalapenos. Then they had the barbecue one. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. It was a good party. And I was so scared. I was going to completely lose my voice, but I, I can talk. It sounds like I smoke cigars and drink whiskey all night, but it still works. Yeah. Awesome.
Cool. Listen.