Codie Sanchez: How One Woman Walked Away from Wall Street to Start a Revolution
Under The Hood
The Moment Everything Changed
Picture this: a young journalist in her early twenties, standing in the dusty streets of Juarez, Mexico—one of the world's most dangerous cities. She’s documenting stories that make your stomach turn: human trafficking, violence against women, and atrocities that most people can’t even imagine. The work is important. The stories win awards. She even earns the Robert F. Kennedy Award for print journalism.
But something is eating at her.
Every article she writes creates a brief moment of outrage. People read, people feel bad, people share. And then... nothing changes. The women she’s written about are still trapped. The victims are still powerless. The cycle continues.
One day, a mentor tells her something that will completely alter the trajectory of her life: “If you want to change people’s lives, telling their stories isn’t enough. You need to find the centers of power. And that means understanding money.”
Her name was Codie Sanchez, and she was about to do something radical.
The Education
It’s 2008. The world is collapsing. Lehman Brothers has just fallen, and the global financial system is in freefall. This is the exact moment Codie Sanchez decides to take her first job in finance at Vanguard.
Talk about jumping into the deep end.
While bankers are leaping from buildings and retirement accounts are evaporating, Sanchez is learning a harsh truth: financial illiteracy destroys lives just as surely as any other tragedy. Watching ordinary people lose everything because they didn’t understand how money worked only strengthened her resolve. She would master this system and then teach others to do the same.
Over the next several years, she did what few people ever accomplish. She climbed through Goldman Sachs. She worked at State Street. She built entire divisions at First Trust, eventually managing over a billion dollars in Latin American investments. She worked across every corner of finance—asset management, alternatives, private equity, hedge funds, and investment banking.
Her parents—a special education teacher and a blue-collar builder—had raised her to value both education and ownership. Now she was getting the education of a lifetime.
But here’s where the story gets interesting.
The Secret Life
While Codie was ascending the golden towers of Wall Street, wearing the right suits and attending the right meetings, she was living a double life.
She was buying laundromats.
And car washes. And roofing companies. And painting businesses. The kinds of businesses that made her Wall Street colleagues wrinkle their noses. The kinds of businesses that weren’t sexy or innovative or worthy of cocktail party conversation.
But they had something her high-flying finance career couldn’t give her: they were hers. They generated cash flow. They created freedom.
She started noticing something fascinating. All around her, private equity firms were quietly buying up these “boring” businesses and making fortunes. They’d purchase a local chain of dry cleaners or a pest control company, improve the operations, and watch the cash roll in. But they did it behind closed doors. They never talked about it publicly. They wanted to get rich quietly.
Sanchez had a different idea.
The Rebellion Begins
Then 2020 happened. The world shut down. Millions of people were trapped at home, suddenly questioning everything they thought they knew about career security and financial stability. Small businesses were closing. Corporate employees were getting laid off. The promise that a good job equals security was revealed as the lie it always was.
In the middle of this chaos, Codie Sanchez launched Contrarian Thinking.
At first, it was just her writing articles, making videos, and sharing what she’d learned on Wall Street and through her own business acquisitions. What started as occasional posts that maybe her mother would read began to catch fire.
She was saying things nobody else was saying:
“Stop chasing tech startups. Buy a plumbing company.”
“Forget venture capital. Seller financing is your friend.”
“The path to wealth isn’t through innovation. It’s through boring, reliable businesses that generate cash flow while you sleep.”
People thought she was crazy. Then they started listening. Then they started succeeding.
What Contrarian Thinking Actually Does
So what exactly is this company that Sanchez built? Contrarian Thinking isn’t just a media company or a newsletter—it’s a comprehensive ecosystem for aspiring business owners.
The Media Arm: At its core, Contrarian Thinking publishes two newsletters that reach over 1 million weekly readers. The main Contrarian Thinking newsletter challenges conventional wisdom about wealth-building, while The Main Street Minute provides practical insights specifically for business buying and ownership. These aren’t just motivational content—they’re packed with real strategies, case studies, and actionable advice.
The Education Platform: Contrarian Thinking offers courses and programs that teach the mechanics of buying businesses. The flagship program is the Main Street Accelerator, a comprehensive course with about 20 hours of video content covering everything from finding businesses to structuring deals to growing your acquisition. It’s like a graduate-level MBA focused entirely on business acquisitions—but actually useful.
The Community: Perhaps most valuable is the Contrarian Community, a private group of over 10,000 members who are actively buying and building businesses. This isn’t passive consumption—members get access to live calls multiple times per week, deal analysis sessions, expert guidance, tools and resources (like valuation calculators and due diligence checklists), and connections with other dealmakers. Members support each other through the challenging process of acquiring and growing businesses.
The Investment Vehicles: Beyond education, Sanchez operates Main Street Holding Company (her portfolio of boring businesses) and Contrarian Thinking Capital (a venture fund that invests in tech companies that serve small businesses). While everyone focuses on owning laundromats and car washes, she’s also betting on the software and services that make these businesses more efficient and profitable.
Live Events: Contrarian Thinking hosts conferences, workshops, and meetups where thousands gather to learn, network, and do deals. Her annual “Main Street Over Wall Street” conference attracts everyone from first-time buyers to billionaire investors.
The genius of Contrarian Thinking is that it’s not just selling information’s building an entire movement with the tools, community, and knowledge to actually execute on business acquisitions.
The Woman Teaching Millions
Fast forward to today. Codie Sanchez has 11 million followers across her platforms. Her company, Contrarian Thinking, employs 90 people. Over 14,000 people have taken her courses and programs to learn how to buy businesses. Her book, “Main Street Millionaire,” sold over 150,000 copies in its first four months and became a New York Times bestseller.
At her most recent conference in Austin, 1,000 people gathered—including billionaire investors who wanted to understand her approach. The woman who started by documenting suffering in Juarez had become one of the most influential voices in American entrepreneurship.
But who is she, really? And why does her message resonate so powerfully?
What You Can Learn From Her: The Sanchez Playbook
Sanchez’s philosophy flips everything you’ve been taught about wealth on its head. Here’s what she discovered—and what you can replicate:
Lesson 1: Buy Boring, Get Rich
Forget sexy tech startups. Sanchez points out that 60 percent of all millionaires own a business—but not the businesses you’re thinking of. They own the pest control company, the HVAC repair service, the car wash, and the landscaping company.
How you replicate it: Look around your neighborhood right now. See the businesses that have been there for years? The ones that seem too simple, too boring? Those are your targets. They generate reliable cash flow, provide services people always need, and are often owned by baby boomers ready to retire.
Lesson 2: You Don’t Need Rich Parents
When Sanchez teaches her framework, she demolishes the biggest myth: that you need hundreds of thousands in cash to buy a business.
How you replicate it: Learn the financing strategies private equity firms use:
Seller financing: The owner loans you the money, and you pay them back from profits
Earn-outs: Pay gradually using the business’s future earnings
SBA loans: Banks will lend for proven businesses, not risky startups
Strategic partnerships: Your skills reduce the cash you need upfront
Her students have bought businesses with as little as $5,000 down. If they can do it, so can you.
Lesson 3: Don’t Ask Permission, Take Action
Remember when her Goldman Sachs boss wouldn’t let her travel for a job interview? She paid her own way. That’s the pattern throughout her career; she never waited for approval.
How you replicate it: Stop waiting for the “right time” or for someone to give you permission. If you want to buy a business, start looking today. Reach out to owners. Make offers. The worst they can say is no.
Lesson 4: Bet on Recession-Proof Needs
Sanchez focuses on businesses you’ll need even in a recession. Your toilet still needs to work during a downturn. Your HVAC still needs to function. Buildings still need cleaning.
How you replicate it: Target essential services, not luxury goods. Think: plumbing, electrical, HVAC, cleaning, pest control, waste management. These businesses survive economic storms because they solve problems people can’t ignore.
Lesson 5: Bridge Your Skills
Sanchez didn’t abandon her journalism when she entered finance, and she didn’t leave finance behind when she became an entrepreneur. She combined them all.
How you replicate it: Your current skills aren’t wasted, they’re your advantage. Corporate project management experience? That helps you run operations. Sales background? That helps you grow the business. Tech skills? That helps you modernize systems. Your unique combination of skills is your edge.
The Barriers She Broke
Codie Sanchez’s success is even more remarkable when you consider who she is and where she came from. She’s a Latina woman who dominated one of the most male-dominated industries in existence.
She didn’t have connections or family wealth. She had a journalism degree and determination.
When she could have stayed comfortable on Wall Street, collecting impressive paychecks and prestigious titles, she walked away to buy laundromats. People thought she’d lost her mind. Now those same people are copying her playbook.
She’s actively trying to create one million financially free people. This level of transparency is almost unheard of in wealth-building circles.
The Bigger Mission
Ultimately, Sanchez’s story isn’t just about getting rich. It’s about changing who holds economic power in America.
She talks openly about wanting to increase the number of women, Latinos, and minorities in positions of financial influence.
When small businesses thrive under local ownership, entire communities benefit. Money stays local. Jobs are created. Economic power spreads rather than concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.
She’s building a movement of people who are opting out of the corporate hamster wheel and into ownership.
Codie Sanchez did it. And she’s betting that you can too.