Latest / Financial Survival Network / The Mindset Shift: Breaking Through the Barriers to Success - Cody Alexander #6140

Transcript

The Mindset Shift: Breaking Through the Barriers to Success - Cody Alexander #6140 · Financial Survival Network

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You are listening to Carrie Leutz's Financial Survival Network, where
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Survival Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: dot com and get your free newsletter and gift. Financial
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Survival Network now more than ever.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: And welcome you are listening to and watching the Financial
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Letz. Hey got a
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: really incredible guest for you today. His story college dropout
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: home depot, overpaid employee at eight dollars an hour, now
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: has got on to run companies making millions and millions
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: of dollars a year. Never went back to college, didn't
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: see the value of it.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Cody. Welcome. Great to have you on the show, so
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: thank you. Hey.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Home Depot, very humble beginnings there. They're paying you eight
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: bucks an hour. Probably they were paying you too much
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: at that point, but quickly you've realized you were worth
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: a lot more than eight dollars an hour.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think Hope Depot was a great
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: place to start out at because it's like a bunch
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: of teams working together at a single location, right to
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: build a business and actually took that and you know,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: through the rest of my positions took that model. So
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: anywhere I went, I wanted to learn what every team did,
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: and you know that's what served me well. Plus eight
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: dollars an hour at the time, it you know, it
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: paid the bills and it did feel like a lot.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: That is, you know nowadays not so much.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: That's about you make that before you even wake up
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: in the morning, just brushing your teeth, you're making probably
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: well more than that at so unusual story, but actually
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: it's not that unusual. Many of you out there started
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: very humble beginnings and built it up and it built
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: incredible things. If you could go back to your to
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: your eight dollars an hour Cody at home depot, what
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: would you tell them?
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: I'd give him the same advice I get if anyone
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: I hire, which is be curious, be competitive, and don't
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: be an a hole. So I going to take you
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: a lot of polices in life. So be curious means
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: keep on learning, right, yep.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Competitive means not so much or compete against others, but
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: that you are ambitious and you have right and don't
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: be an a whole means get along with people, find
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: out what they want, how you can help them get
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: what they want, and at the same time help yourself
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: get what you want.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, especially on that last one. Is like everyone, no
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: matter how much of a higher performer you are, everyone
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: goes through a period of tough times, right where the
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: results aren't coming in. And if it requires you to
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: be a mean person to get results, as soon as
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: you stop get results, So now you're just a mean person. Right,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Very few people in my experience actually enjoy working with
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: a mean person. All right, So you know, be nice,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: but don't be weak, be straw one hundred percent. I mean,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: it's part of being competitive, right, is you got to
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: be ambitious. You got to want more from yourself and
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: from your team. Otherwise why are you there, right, You're
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: just showing up and going through the motions?
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, So, and you've encountered a lot of other people.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: How many people have taken your advice to heart and
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: really succeeded as a result, Cody.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Uh, you know who knows how many? Exactly? I know?
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Right now, I've got a team of about eighty people,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: So you know, of the eighty, I've got my a players,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: probably five to seven A players, and you always have
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: the people you need to show up. So I think
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: if I had to quantify my impact, I can think
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: of at least seven individuals who have gone on to
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: go from being a junior marketer starting out at fifty
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: a year to making more than six figures in some
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: form of the marketing leadership position.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: All right, So these skills are transferable, and maybe that'll
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: be your legacy. I mean, obviously family whatever. You want
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: to leave a legacy for your family, But you want
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: to try to leave things better than you got them.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Right, that is the end goal. I am a results
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: person and I do believe like reputation precedes you, and
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: that's the one I hope to leave behind, all right.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: So, hey, you know, when you're looking at it, there's
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: a lot of paths to success, right, but every path
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: begins with you.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: So yeah, and you the amount of success you have.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I assume you have an attitude no matter whether things
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: go right or wrong, it's all about you, what you've done,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: what you missed, what you could have done right, Taking responsibility,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: owning your failures. Your successes are real easy to own, Hey,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: anyone could do that, but to actually own a failure.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: That takes some fortitude, doesn't it one hundred percent?
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: I think that ultimately, you know, everything is on you
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: because no matter where you're working, what business you're starting, like,
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: what the world around you looks like, you really only
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: have control yourself. And when you leave that company or
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: that business doesn't work out, you can take that as
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: you know your identity. You can say, oh, well, I'm
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: the guy that worked it here or I'm the guy
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: that you know started or lost this business. But the
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: truth is a you know, we get an open book
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: and you can write whatever story in it next you
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: want to, and the main character, like you said, is you.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: So the more you focus on you and what's next,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: right the story you want to be written in that book,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: generally you get to the happy ending you want at
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: the end of it. It may not be the journey
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: you want, but you might hit the outcome. Yeah.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Well, the most important thing though, is taking action right,
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: getting your knowledge and learning what you need to learn
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: the skills that everything else, and then it's actually to
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: do something you can't just the lie in bed, visualizing
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: and hoping that the law of attraction is just going
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: to bring.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: It all to you. No, not at all, And that's
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: we talk about the company often of like being books
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: smart is twenty per percent of the equation, right, because
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: no matter how intelligent you are, if you don't do
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: anything with that knowledge, then it's only going to live
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: in one place and it won't have any impact. What
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: you really need is a game plan, right, What you
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: really need is to be able to take that YouTube
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: video you watched and apply it into your real life.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: And chances aren't a twenty minute video. Maybe you find
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: one thing, but you apply that one thing and it
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: has exponential impact on what happens next. So you know,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day, you learn more from
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: dookuhen than by reading. In my experience, doesn't mean you
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: can't solve yourself some harsh pains by learning and reading.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: But the only way to the only way to get
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: to where you want to go is to take the
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: first step in every step after that.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: And you know the old saying, if you don't know
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: where you're going, any road will take you there.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: That's the truth. That's the truth. And you know, more
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: often than not you end up in a place you
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: actually did and want to go in the.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: First Yes, yeah, because you no longer the master of
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: your own fate if you will. Hey, so tell us
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: about what you're doing now company everything involved?
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so right now, I'm a cheap marketing officer at
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: a company called Stocks to Trade, and we're a financial
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: education company, so spend a lot of our days. We
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: have a platform, right that has NASDAK level stock information
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: that we help people leverage. You know, most people get
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: stock with a either like E Trade or Bloomberg Terminal, right,
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: and the price difference between those two is pretty meaningful, right,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: I think Bloomberg Terminal is like twenty five pr. So
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: the everyday person actually doesn't have a lot of access
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: to resources or information that helps them make smart financial decisions.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: So we stream the same data to our platform and
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: it's you know, it gets some level two data that
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: gives them a lot of information. And that's the see
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: of it all. It's like giving every day people access
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: to you know, Wall Street great information that you would
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: have to pay a lot of money for. And then
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: me personally, I've got a podcast business Marketing from the Edge,
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: and that's where I take everything I've learned about marketing
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: and building businesses and I candense it down into information
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: for others. I've gotten pretty good at building businesses. It is.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: You know, when people ask me what's one thing I'm
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: good at that, that is the answer. Like, I know
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: how to build a business. I can go from you know,
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: six hundred thousand to three million, I can go from
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: I can go from zero to sixty million, and I
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: go I can go anywhere in between. All way been
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: a part of a company that did just shy at
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: half a billion dollars. So building businesses, I think that's
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: what I do best. And marketing from the edge is
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: the culmination of everything I've learned doing it pretty cool
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: and it's transferable to any company. Huh.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: When a new client comes to you, the how do
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: you figure out whether they've got a real viable business
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: or they shouldn't move on?
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: To me, the first thing is always the offer. If
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: they show up and they say, I don't know what
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: we should sell or you know, what I'm selling isn't working,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: you know, to me, that's the fundamentals of a brooken business.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: If you don't have clarity on what value you can
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: provide to the end user, it makes like why bother
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: selling it at all? You're not actually helping anyone so
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: to me, that's the difference between like building a business
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: versus reinventing a business, is it is your offer solid.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: So you know, interestingly, when you look at a business,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: so you could either start it or you could buy it.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: And in my.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Opinion, generally it's always easier to buy a business even
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: if it's not profitable. In fact it's marginally profitable or
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: break even, you could buy it for next to nothing
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: and then you just have to improve on the systems
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: that are already there.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: What's been your experience, Yeah, I in fact back in
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: I want to say, twenty twenty two, I don't know,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, I bought a business. It
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: was doing like seven grand a month or something, right,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: it was nothing, and it was directly in the financial
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: education space. So I bought it. Was it seven grand?
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Did an owner carry on it right? So out of
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: pocket pretty much nothing and scaled it all the way
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: up to I think we peaked at like fifty three
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: k a month and handed it back to the guy.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: And it was more of just like a mental mental exercise, right,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: being able to take something build it like from year zero,
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: buy a business, go through that motion, go through the
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: you know it is somewhat of a painful process buying
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: a business. That is like the one downside, right is
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: they have a certain evaluation. You have the different and
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: sometimes it's a little bit of a roadbound to get
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: to something that's equitable for both people. But I tend
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: to agree with you. Buying a business beares well than
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: building a business. Right. You don't have to learn all
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: the lessons the business has already has already done for you.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Especially if you have a skill set, you can go
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: in there, use your skill set and get a result.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so all right, So when you're starting a
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: new endeavor, what's the most important thing that you need
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: I think if you're starting a new career, I think
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: learn right, go and talk to everyone there. If you're
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: starting a new business, but whether it's building or starting
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: a business, the most important thing you can do is
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: talk to the customers. Right, even if you don't have
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: like whether you haven't sold anything to anyone yet, if
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: you have someone else in your space or you have
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: someone else in your you know that you can access
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: from the company you're looking to buy at the end
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: of the day, knowing what your customer is thinking and
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: what they're feeling and being able to implement that into
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: the next level of what you want to start. That's that,
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: to me, is going to serve you far better than
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: any sort of of demographic research or like you know, quizzing,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: quizzing whatever. If you've got a great team and you
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: know your customer, you can go a long ways.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: That's all about the team, all right, Hey, Cody, I
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: want to find a bit more about you.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: Want to connect with you on the web. How do
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: you go about doing that? Yeah, Marketing edgepodpod dot com.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: That's the best place, and I have any letter on there.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: It's free. You just got to apply. And like I said,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: it's where I share all the insights I've learned building
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: businesses from zero all the way as high as four
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: hundred and eighty million in a year. And you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: I'm just sharing that value now because like you said,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: it's it's about leaving something behind great. Just repeat that
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: the website again, Marketing edgepodpod dot com.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Marketing ed Marketing edgepod dot com. The link is in
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the show. That's this interview on Financial Survival Network dot Hey.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: When you go there, please sign up for your free newsletter.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Get a lot of really valuable info like you're getting here,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: and if you've got a question for Cody or myself, shoot.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: Me an email.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Klatcarrie LUTs dot com. Cody, been a pleasure, Thanks so much.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: than ever,