Own or Be Owned

From the New York Times bestselling author of Main Street Millionaire You didn't start a business to work 80 hours a week and feel broke on paper. But here you are. The "we're not going to make it" fear. The 3am panic. The quiet realisation that working harder isn't fixing anything. It's keeping you stuck. Codie Sanchez has been there. She's also been on the other side. She built a nine-figure holding company across laundromats, car washes, roofing companies, and service businesses that now print cash whether she shows up or not. Along the way, she learned the lesson most owners never get told: Heroics don't scale. Systems do. In Own or Be Owned, Sanchez hands you the private equity playbook the pros use to turn ordinary businesses into ones you actually enjoy running. The same playbook her advisory group, the Contrarian Boardroom, has used to help 14,000 owners scale. Here's what you'll learn: The Owner Score. A 10-minute diagnostic across 12 dimensions to find out if you own a business, or it owns you. Plus the exact moves to fix every weak score. The 12 P's. The framework for diagnosing the most painful problem in your business and fixing it before it costs you another quarter. Pricing that prints. How underpaid owners become high-margin operators without losing customers (most owners are leaving 30–50% on the table). The hiring filter. How to attract A-players to a Main Street business and avoid the bad hires that cost you six figures and your sanity. The one-page dashboard. Run your entire company at a glance. The same scoreboard the best operators check every Monday morning. This is the manual most CEOs never get. It's not for slackers, dreamers, or anyone looking for a shortcut. It's for the owner who's already in the arena, bleeding, and ready to stop trading hours for a business that should be paying them back. There's a smarter way to build wealth, and take your time back. Stop being owned. Start owning. © Codie Sanchez 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026