In the book Main Street Millionaire, investor and financial media entrepreneur Codie Sanchez argues that the fastest path to financial independence isn’t climbing the corporate ladder or launching the next unicorn startup. Instead, it’s acquiring ordinary and unglamorous small businesses such as cleaning services, repair shops, and local contracting businesses that others have already founded.
In this overview of the book, we break down how Sanchez challenges traditional career advice, explains the power of asset ownership, and lays out a roadmap for finding, buying, and growing a Main Street business. Step by step, you’ll see how she reframes wealth-building as a process of acquisition, optimization, and long-term ownership rather than hustle and hope.
Table of Contents
Overview of Main Street Millionaire by Codie Sanchez
Codie Sanchez built her career in finance and private equity before transitioning to acquiring and operating small businesses. Through her “Contrarian Thinking” brand, she teaches others how to achieve financial independence by purchasing existing Main Street businesses rather than starting from scratch or climbing the traditional corporate ladder.
In her book Main Street Millionaire, Sanchez explains why working for an employer is unlikely to build your personal wealth. Then we’ll explore the wealth-building opportunities of buying small, local “Main Street” businesses—along with how to find the right one for you. Finally, we’ll walk through how to complete an acquisition and the steps you can take to optimize the business once you own it.
Part 1: Break Free From the Employment Trap
Sanchez writes that the first step toward building wealth is to change your mindset and break out of the employment trap. The employment trap is the idea that the “correct” career path is to go to college, get a degree that’ll prepare you for employment, work for a salary, and save what you can for retirement. But, she warns, the employment trap gives you minimal practical business training and forces you to stay in jobs you might hate. The end result is a society of people primed to become employees—not entrepreneurs.
Sanchez writes that there’s a way out of this trap. It comes from recognizing the difference between earning money through labor versus generating income through asset ownership.
The Wrong Path: Earning Money Through Labor
When you work for someone else, you sell your labor in exchange for a fixed amount of money per year (a salary). Sanchez warns that salary-based income—regardless of size—inherently limits your financial potential because it requires continuous personal effort. Even highly paid professionals remain financially constrained because their income stops when their work stops. As long as you’re working, it’s all OK. But if something happens that prevents you from working—like a health crisis or needing to care for an elderly parent—you could find yourself in real financial trouble.
The Right Path: Building Wealth Through Business Ownership
In contrast to relying on a salary, business ownership generates revenue without your constant personal involvement. Sanchez explains that the system of employees, processes, and customer relationships you build eventually runs by itself, producing the passive income that’s your primary pathway to financial independence. For example, a plumbing company continues dispatching technicians to customer calls, a laundromat keeps collecting quarters from machines, and a landscaping service keeps mowing lawns—all while you’re on vacation, attending your child’s recital, or even sleeping.
Part 2: Why You Should Purchase Main Street Businesses
Now that you understand why Sanchez sees entrepreneurship as the best path to wealth, we’ll explore why she believes that the best path to business ownership is through acquiring what she calls “Main Street” businesses. Main Street businesses are long-established, unremarkable, small-town businesses that provide fundamental services rather than flashy, cutting-edge innovations. For example, service companies, repair shops, cleaning operations, and similar small-scale ventures count as Main Street businesses.
Sanchez argues that acquiring Main Street businesses is better than starting from scratch because you’re purchasing proven success rather than betting on an unproven concept. You’re not gambling on whether the business model works—you can see decades of proof that it does.
Sanchez adds that Main Street businesses also come with four major advantages: a well-established customer base, successful operational systems, predictable cash flows, and a favorable buyer’s market. Let’s explore each in more detail.
Advantage #1: Well-Established Customer Base
According to Sanchez, local businesses tend to have well-established customer bases. She writes that this is a major advantage, since you don’t have to acquire customers and earn their trust from scratch. The founder has already done a lot of that work for you, and the customers are simply returning to a trusted place they’ve relied on for decades.
Advantage #2: Successful Operational Systems
Sanchez writes that when you buy a local business (instead of founding your own), you inherit successful operational systems. The business already has documented day-to-day procedures, workflows, and repeatable processes that allows it to function smoothly. This means that as a new owner, you can step in without having to figure out how everything should work from scratch.
Advantage #3: Predictable Cash Flows
Sanchez notes that local, well-established businesses possess another crucial advantage: predictable cash flows. A well-established local business generates predictable, stable cash flows because it has years of historical data showing consistent revenue patterns. When you buy a business like this, you’re not gambling on whether customers will materialize or if the business model works. You can confidently project your future income, plan your loan repayments, and know with reasonable certainty what your return on investment will be.
For example, say a neighborhood pizza place that’s been operating for 20 years makes approximately $1,500 every Friday and Saturday night, sees a predictable dip during summer when families vacation, and experiences a reliable surge during football season. The owner can show you profit-and-loss statements spanning multiple years that demonstrate the business consistently generates around $300,000 in annual profit, with minimal variation.
As the new owner, this predictability allows you to structure your acquisition loan with confidence—you know you can cover the monthly payments from the reliable Friday-Saturday revenue alone. You can also forecast that you’ll generate enough cash flow during the profitable fall months to weather the slower summer period. Finally, you can calculate that if you’re paying $1.2 million for the business, that steady $300,000 annual profit means you’ll recoup your investment in approximately four years, making this a sound financial decision rather than a risky gamble.
Advantage #4: Favorable Buyer’s Market
Sanchez says that as of 2024, the business acquisitions market favors buyers because, as millions of baby boomer business owners approach retirement, they’re seeking someone to take over their companies. Unlike previous generations where family businesses typically passed to children, the children of these founders aren’t as eager to take over the family business—leaving successful enterprises without obvious heirs. According to Sanchez, many of these owners face a looming crisis: They’ll have no choice but to close their profitable operations if they can’t find someone to pass them on to.
But their crisis is your opportunity, as it gives you an unprecedented chance to acquire established, profitable operations at attractive prices. Sanchez observes that departing owners often prioritize finding someone who will maintain their legacy and continue serving employees and customers over maximizing the sale price for their business. On top of that, you’re not likely to be competing with big fish like venture capitalists or private equity firms to acquire these small businesses. Both of these factors mean you can often negotiate favorable terms with the seller.
Part 3: Find Your Leads
Having explored the opportunities in acquiring mom-and-pop businesses, Sanchez turns to how you can find the right businesses to target. She notes that two effective tactics for sourcing leads are 1) identifying motivated sellers and 2) working your network.
Tactic #1: Identify Motivated Sellers
Sanchez notes that effective seller identification involves targeting owners in situations that indicate their motivation to sell. Sanchez notes that common reasons owners consider selling are life-changing events that make it difficult for them to carry on with the business. These can include things like a death in the family, physical illness, or financial distress. These circumstances create opportunities for you to propose a transaction that helps you acquire their business and provides them a needed cash infusion while unburdening them of a business that they may not be able to keep up anymore.
Tactic #2: Work Your Network
Sanchez points out that you should work your professional contacts to help identify business owners who might be open to a sale. She writes that the odds are pretty good that professional service providers have clients considering exits. Putting the word out to your own service providers—your lawyer, your accountant, your tax preparer, your contractor—that you’re interested in buying local businesses can greatly expand your reach and help you source potential acquisition targets.
Part 4: Make Your Acquisition
Once you’ve identified the right business to acquire, Sanchez writes that you need to turn your attention to making the deal happen. In this section, we’ll cover the steps you’ll need to take if you want to close.
Step 1: Build a Personal Relationship With the Owners
Once you’ve identified an acquisition target, Sanchez recommends you build a personal relationship with the current owner before you start negotiating the sale. This means approaching them and asking them if they’ve thought about retirement, what they plan to do with their company once they retire, and if they’d be open to the idea of selling it. She notes that this approach works because many business owners haven’t actively considered selling but would entertain attractive offers from suitable buyers.
Step 2: Perform Your Due Diligence
Once you’ve developed a personal rapport and found that the owner is open to a potential sale, Sanchez writes that you need to put in the work to investigate any potential issues or red flags with the business. This prevents costly mistakes down the line.
Sanchez writes that doing effective due diligence means combing through all of your target business’s documents—including financial statements, expense breakdowns, asset inventories, and lease agreements. More than anything, she cautions, you need to verify that the owner is being honest and upfront about the condition of the business you’re buying.
Step 3: Finance Your Deal
Sanchez writes that once you’ve performed your due diligence, you’re ready to put your financing together. Since you probably won’t have the funds to do an all-cash deal, your purchase will likely involve taking on some debt. In structuring your debt financing, there are two key points she urges you to keep in mind: 1) the difference between smart and bad debt and 2) the opportunity of seller financing.
Understanding Smart Debt vs. Bad Debt
Sanchez writes that the main barrier preventing most people from business ownership is their misunderstanding of money and debt—in particular, that smart debt serves as a lever that amplifies wealth creation rather than personal consumption. In other words, you can use borrowed money strategically to acquire an income-producing asset, like a small business, that creates immediate returns that service the debt while building equity for you as the owner.
To ensure that your acquisition is a smart debt, you need to consider your financing options carefully. Different options require different down payments, interest rates, and repayment terms that will affect both your ability to close the deal and your cash flow once you own the business. Understanding what financing is realistically available to you will help determine which businesses you can afford to pursue and how to structure your offers competitively.
Seller Financing: The Ultimate Strategy
Among all the different forms of financing, Sanchez recommends a method called seller financing. With seller financing, the seller becomes your lender: You pay the seller over time. You’ll typically sign a promissory note that specifies the payment terms—including the interest rate, payment schedule, and total amount owed. The advantage is that you finance the purchase through the business’s future earnings: You take ownership of the business, use its cash flow to make regular payments to the seller, and gradually pay down the debt while building equity. You don’t have to put up large amounts of your own cash or take on traditional bank debt.
For example, imagine you find a local plumbing business valued at $500,000 that generates $150,000 in annual profit. Instead of needing $500,000 in cash or a large bank loan, you negotiate a seller financing deal where you pay $50,000 up front (a 10% down payment), and the seller agrees to finance the remaining $450,000. You sign a promissory note agreeing to pay the seller $5,000 per month over ten years at 6% interest.
Once you take ownership, the business continues operating and generating $150,000 in annual profit (roughly $12,500 per month). You use $5,000 of that monthly cash flow to make your payments to the seller, keep some for operating expenses and your own salary, and retain the rest to reinvest in the business. Each month, you’re building equity as you pay down the debt, eventually owning the business outright—all without needing half a million dollars in savings or having to qualify for a massive bank loan.
Part 5: Grow and Optimize Your New Business
Once you’ve acquired your business, writes Sanchez, the real work begins: You have to take control and start turning a profit to earn a return on your investment. In this section, we’ll explore three moves Sanchez recommends making to grow and optimize that business and start building wealth. Specifically, we’ll look at transforming price and service offerings, building recurring revenue streams, and implementing systems for scale.
Move #1: Transform Your Pricing Strategy
Sanchez writes that to boost profits, you should implement tiered pricing structures and put the offering you most want customers to choose in the middle of that tiered system. This can make the business more profitable because customers typically avoid both the cheapest option (which seems inadequate) and the most expensive option (which feels excessive), naturally selecting the middle tier as the “just right” choice. So, by strategically positioning your preferred offering in this middle position, you guide customers toward higher-value purchases than they might not have chosen with simple flat pricing.
For example, let’s say you acquire a residential cleaning service. You discover the previous owner charged a flat $120 for a standard three-bedroom house cleaning. Following Sanchez’s advice, you restructure the pricing into three tiers: a Basic Clean at $95, a Premium Clean at $145, and a Deluxe Clean at $210. Over time, Sanchez suggests, you’ll notice that most customers choose the Premium option—paying $25 more than they would have under the old flat-rate system.
Move #2: Become a Comprehensive-Solution Enterprise
Another transformative step, writes Sanchez, is to shift your business from a single-service shop to a comprehensive-solution enterprise. Instead of just offering one-off services, you can identify complementary offerings that address related customer needs before, during, and after the main service. This approach increases revenue per customer by capturing more of their spending within your business rather than losing it to competitors who handle the adjacent services.
For example, suppose you’ve acquired a dog grooming business that offers baths, haircuts, and nail trims. You expand by adding retail products (premium shampoos and brushes) and monthly subscription packages that bundle grooming with teeth cleaning and ear care. You may even partner with a local veterinarian to offer flea and tick treatments during appointments. Customers who previously spent money on four standalone grooming visits per year will now purchase comprehensive care packages generating three times the annual revenue.
Move #3: Invest in Talent
Sanchez writes that you need to invest in the talent that will let the business run without your constant involvement. This becomes especially important if you build your portfolio and acquire more businesses—successful investors rarely operate every company in their portfolio personally, since there’s not enough time in the day. Instead, they delegate day-to-day operations to seasoned managers. Hiring the right team, led by capable managers, is the key to success. You don’t need to know everything about the business you buy, but you definitely need to have an eye for talent to find the people who do.
Sanchez’s recommendations for acquiring and managing top talent include creative recruitment strategies and competitive pay.
1) Creative Recruitment Strategies
Finding exceptional talent requires you to recruit through multiple channels. Sanchez recommends looking close to home at similar local businesses—your competitor’s successful manager already possesses the skills you need. Alternatively, you can work with talent recruiters who specialize in your industry and maintain extensive networks; they can offer immediate access to qualified candidates.
2) Offer Competitive Pay
When you actually begin making hires and setting salaries, Sanchez advises you to pay managers well. Doing this isn’t an act of generosity—it’s crucial to protecting your investment. She warns that if you cheap out on compensation, you’ll drive talented leaders away and create internal tension. Beyond just offering generous salaries, Sanchez recommends offering incentives like equity-sharing options and bonuses tied to specific goals. This aligns compensation with the business’s performance and helps ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals.
Move #4: Build Automated Customer Contact Systems
According to Sanchez, outperforming competitors in small but crucial ways separates thriving businesses from struggling ones. One often-overlooked advantage is response speed—the business that contacts potential customers first typically wins their business. To gain this edge in your new acquisition, implement automated customer contact-and-response systems that reply to inquiries within minutes rather than hours or days. Quick responses signal professionalism and reliability to customers, significantly improving your conversion rates compared to slower competitors who let their leads go cold.
