Apr 30, 2024 · 1h 21m · bigdeal
“You Need to MOVE OUT of your Hometown to get Rich” (feat. Rob Abasolo and Nathan Barry)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Codie Sanchez explores whether relocating from one's hometown is an essential prerequisite for extraordinary financial success and personal development. Through economic data and in-depth discussions with entrepreneurs Rob Abasolo and Nathan Barry, the episode examines the compounding advantages of moving away, the power of intentional networking, and the viable pathways for building wealth locally.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Codie holds 49.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Codie as informed peer 6.0 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 1.9 Codie pushing back 2.7
speaking balance: gold is Codie, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 45:30 Nathan reframes wealth contrast for children
Nathan directly challenges the premise of elite schooling comparisons, arguing that true perspective comes from contrasting with 50th percentile global poverty rather than top-tier domestic institutions.
Hardest push from Codie ▶ 13:30 Codie rejects the Culdesac car-free development conceptCodie forcefully pushes back against Rachel's positive framing of the car-free Tempe neighborhood, mocking VC-engineered apartment complexes built in extreme heat.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:05:40 Nathan details Mark Sisson's $200M Primal Kitchen exitNathan educates on moving from ordinary income creator cash flow to massive capital-gains enterprise value by breaking down the mechanics of the Primal Kitchen sale to Kraft.
Codie holds their own ▶ 1:08:07 Codie breaks down private equity fee structures vs educationCodie demonstrates sharp institutional finance expertise by explaining how 2-and-20 fund management fees and hurdle rates generate passive billions compared to creator education models.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Codie as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Codie pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Research on Economic Connectedness and Geographic Upward Mobility | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Codie drives the episode thesis by citing multiple academic and economic datasets, including Chetty's economic connectedness study and Paul Graham's essays on environment shaping ambition. | |
| In-Person Networking vs. Staying Home: The Scott Galloway Debate | 6 | 2 | 2 | 4 | Rachel brings up Scott Galloway's advice about never staying home and remote networking nuances, while Codie pushes back against staying home early in one's career using her Goldman Sachs Chicago days as proof. | |
| Deal of the Week: Culdesac Tempe and Car-Free Urbanism | 6 | 2 | 3 | 6 | Codie immediately rejects the glowing premise of Culdesac Tempe, panning VC-managed neighborhoods in Arizona heat as overpriced, car-free retirement complexes. | |
| Steal My Rich Friends: The Rarity of Hometown Success | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Codie frames the rarity of staying local and succeeding, and Rob explains how leaving Houston allowed him to question inherited dogmas and reshape his identity. | |
| Finding Your Crazy Tribe and Overcoming Haters with Rob Abasolo | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Rob details finding fellow ambitious outsiders after being mocked for his side hustles, while Codie validates the dynamic with her own transition from corporate finance to newsletters. | |
| Balancing Family, Relocation, and High Ambition with Rob Abasolo | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Rob candidly admits moving back to Houston for family slowed his business trajectory compared to staying in LA or Austin, prompting Codie to outline the window of optionality between ages 18 and 35. | |
| Nathan Barry on Building ConvertKit from Boise, Idaho | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Nathan Barry shares how he built ConvertKit from Boise by leaning into the early remote wave, offering an exception to Codie's hometown relocation rule. | |
| Raising Grounded Kids and Escaping the Excessive Networking Trap | 5 | 6 | 3 | 2 | Nathan reframes Codie's question about elite networking, asserting that teaching kids perspective requires showing them median global wealth in developing nations rather than prestige schools. | |
| Nathan Barry's City Fly-in Playbook and Intentional Networking | 4 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Nathan educates Codie on his structured city fly-in framework, detailing how he stacks 1-on-1s, curated dinners, masterminds, and live podcasts in 48 hours before retreating to Boise. | |
| The Ladders of Wealth Creation and Scaling to Seven Figures | 6 | 7 | 2 | 2 | Nathan teaches his Ladders of Wealth Creation framework and the double-edged nature of leverage, while Codie probes on realistic margins and the skillsets needed for seven-figure revenue. | |
| Unlocking Creator Enterprise Value: The Primal Kitchen Model | 8 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Nathan illustrates creator enterprise value via Mark Sisson's $200M sale of Primal Kitchen, and Codie demonstrates deep PE knowledge contrasting course sales with 2-and-20 fund economics. | |
| CEO Story Time: Codie Sanchez's Arizona Regret and Chosen Friends | 7 | 1 | 2 | 5 | Codie reflects on not leaving Arizona sooner and actively dismantles an Atlantic happiness statistic by arguing that intentionally chosen adult communities vastly outperform proximity-by-chance friends. | |
| Navigating the Cottagecore Movement and Maximizing Early Optionality | 7 | 1 | 1 | 3 | Codie warns listeners against leaning into romanticized rural cottagecore trends before building adequate network nodes, career leverage, and financial optionality. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Sanchez: Top 1% US earners make around $823,000 annually
“Top one percent earners, which is somewhere around 823,000 dollars a year.”
Sanchez: Childhood economic connectedness in mixed cities boosts income by 33%
“What was really interesting is the kid who was in Minneapolis, which is an economically connected city, which means people from high incomes, people from low incomes hang out together. They have interactions together. That kid had a 33% higher income by the ti…”
Sanchez: VCs repackage retirement homes as 'reimagined living' to raise millions
“I feel like this is what Venture has done since, you know, the last bull run of 2009 in Venture is they've been like, the thing is, We're reimagining the way that we live and what they're doing in actuality is retirement home, but for young people, but it's th…”
Sanchez: She would not invest personal capital in car-free neighborhood developments
“I wouldn't bet against those guys. They're much smarter than I am at those firms, but probably wouldn't be something I'd put my own money in.”
Sanchez: Unless you have generational wealth, success requires leaving your hometown
“We literally couldn't find humans who didn't come from either generational wealth, and thus could stay locally and build on it, or weren't in, like, India, who started something in a small town and grew like crazy, and that's probably just due to massive demog…”
Abasolo: Staying in your hometown traps you in unchallenged childhood beliefs
“The problem with staying in your hometown is that you stay around the set of beliefs that you grew up in. So the things that your parents told you to believe in, the things that your friends peer pressured you into believing, things that you thought you believ…”
Sanchez: Relocating between ages 18 and 35 unlocks long-term financial success
“It seems like there's like a life hack from like age 18 to let's call it 35 ish. If somewhere in there you can move around and get like the fluidity and open the aperture to what's available in life. Then you have this long runway. And if you don't do that, it…”
Abasolo: Wealthy founders are generous mentors, while beginners hoard information competitively
“I think there's also like a very giving component to that community as well that I think is like super important to find. Whereas I feel like people at the beginning of the grind, they're so competitive. Like no one wants to share.”
Barry: ConvertKit generates $40M ARR and sends 2.5B monthly emails
“We have forty million a year in revenue growing pretty fast, about 25, 30% a year. Let's see, 500,000. Free users, 50,000 paying customers. We send two and a half billion emails on behalf of creators every single month. And a team of 80 people spread all aroun…”
Barry: Exposing kids to global wealth disparities teaches genuine gratitude
“It's not that by staying at a Motel Six or, you know, a Holiday Inn versus the Four Seasons, that's what's going to make them grateful for what they have in the world. It's really, like, get out and show them, like, take them to Thailand, take them to, you kno…”
Barry: Moving to your niche's geographic hub significantly accelerates startup success
“So I would definitely recommend right in this world, right? Of someone starting as a creator or building a startup. Absolutely. Go move to wherever the hub of that, of your niche is. It could be for three months or it could be, you know, three or five years an…”
Barry: Execute heads-down so high-value people seek out your meetings instead
“What I love is this idea of like being heads down hermit execute mode and then resurfacing and having a body of work so that people want to connect with me, right? Cause I've built a company to this level. People will want to take my meetings. And then I'm off…”
Sanchez: Networking hubs benefit VCs but distract founders from focused building
“And that works great if you're a venture capitalist, and you're just, like, looking for the next connect to invest in, but it doesn't work very well if you want to build something meaningful, and it requires a lot of your mental focus.”
Barry: Leverage is not inherently good; it neutrally magnifies existing outcomes
“One thing I want to point out is leverage is not good or bad. Everyone talks about it like it's good. It's not. It is a neutral force. It just magnifies whatever else is happening.”
Sanchez: Her email list is the one digital asset she'd never surrender
“Our email list is like the one thing I would never give up. I would give up a lot of social channels, but I would never give up our email list.”
Barry: Mark Sisson built and sold Primal Kitchen for $200M using email
“And so he ends up starting Primal Kitchen. He builds it, uses the email list to kickstart it and launch all of that. And then in two years, he sells it to Kraft Foods for two hundred million dollars”
Sanchez: Standard 5% to 20% fund returns do not genuinely change lives
“I don't think people learn that much or get that much value from having another fund to invest in that has like a five to maybe if they kill it, 20% annual return. Like that will change nobody's life. Even people who have millions and millions of dollars. It d…”
Sanchez: Young professionals should build network nodes before moving to rural areas
“You want to have, I sort of think about it like when you go out and you move rural, you have to think about the number of human interactions you have every single day, and then think about those number of human interactions as network points, sort of like node…”