Main Street Millionaire by Codie Sanchez
Main Street Millionaire by Cody Sanchez is one of the better business books I’ve read in the past few years.
The stereotype of a business book is that it’s a blog post with 200 pages of fluff surrounding it. Main Street Millionaire breaks that mold. It’s a concise, dense, valuable book that keeps you from having to read hundreds of scattered blog posts and spending too much time watching YouTube videos trying to piece together information.
I really appreciated how much useful information Sanchez packed into this book.
What I Liked
Buying and operating a physical business in the real world is incredibly daunting and scary—even for entrepreneurs. Even for people who have done gig work or run a digital business, owning a dry cleaner or part of a plumbing business or a flower shop seems way less accessible.
I have no clue how most of these businesses actually operate or make money. When I look around the internet, I see all these digital businesses that are incredibly easy to start, but then they disappear and don’t work. Meanwhile, there are plenty of physical businesses in the real world that seem more real, more stable, more tangible.
The idea of owning them as an asset is something that private equity firms understand, but everyday folks don’t. I love how this book explains not only why to own these businesses, but also what to look for and how to look for it.
Sanchez walks through how you can put a value on a business and how to obtain financing. She’s a huge fan of owner financing, which was a concept I didn’t really know existed in this context.
The ideal scenario she describes: someone in their 60s who has a business that’s very hard to value as an asset. Many of these owners are just closing their doors. But a win-win situation would be owner financing—where the seller gets a predictable, stable flow of income into their retirement without having to negotiate a giant sale.
This provides opportunities for people who might not want a bank loan or don’t have the capital that a private equity fund would have. You can fund the business out of operating revenues. These financing ideas were new to me, and Cody Sanchez does an excellent job laying out the how.
Obviously, there are a million details, but this is one of those books where I felt empowered. Even though I’m not buying a business in the real world right now, I have a much better sense of how to think about it, how to value it, and how to even approach it.
I love that the book exists. It’s highly readable, very well edited, and definitely best-in-class for this specific scenario. You don’t need an MBA to understand or apply what she’s teaching.
What I Did Not Like
The book is necessarily broad since it’s trying to cover everything from identifying opportunities to financing to operations. I would have loved more deep-dive case studies on specific business types. She touches on laundromats, car washes, and other businesses, but I wanted more detail on the messy, specific challenges of each.
Also, while owner financing is presented as the ideal, the book could have spent more time on what happens when that doesn’t work out or what the alternatives look like in practice.
Main Street Millionaire by Cody Sanchez is a concise, dense guide to buying and operating physical businesses. Unlike typical business books padded with fluff, Sanchez efficiently covers valuation, financing (especially owner financing), and acquisition strategies. The book demystifies seemingly inaccessible businesses like dry cleaners and plumbing companies, making ownership feel achievable without an MBA. Even if you're not ready to buy, it provides a clear framework for thinking about physical businesses as assets.
- Concise and information-dense without the typical business book fluff
- Excellent explanation of owner financing and creative deal structures
- Makes physical business ownership accessible and less intimidating
- Necessarily broad; could use more deep-dive case studies on specific business types
- Limited discussion of alternatives when owner financing doesn't work out
- Touches on many businesses but doesn't dig deep into messy, specific operational challenges
