For years I flew to Santiago, Chile, every single week. 11 hours in an aluminum tube, rocking through night and cloud. I made that trip more than 100 times.

I liked Chile fine. What kept me going back was a belief that I had to be there, that deals would die without the magic trick of me shaking hands in the room.

One of those flights landed on my birthday. Delayed 4 hours. The terminal hummed with that fluorescent fatigue, everyone around me scrolling and sleeping and living, and I drank too much cheap airport wine and started crying. Not the big kind. The quiet kind, where your face is already wet before you notice it's happening.

A stewardess asked if I was okay. She was kind about it, which somehow made it worse. How do you explain to a stranger that you're weeping because of the life you built with your own hands?

Somewhere over the Andes, between night and landing, it finally hit me. I hadn't built a business. I'd built a pedestal I couldn't jump off of.

Here's the part that still stings. That company has run for the last 8 years without me, and my #2 handles it. Every flight I took, every birthday I missed, every time I told myself they need me there, the business was proving me wrong.

I just refused to listen.

Main Street Millionaire was about getting into the game. Own or Be Owned is about winning it.

And I didn't write it from a mountaintop with a cigar, slowly plugging away at a typewriter. No. I wrote this because I needed it. I was running 3 jobs inside a company I'd built to set me free, and it was destroying me. If that sounds uncomfortably familiar, good, because the book is intended to fix exactly that.

This particular trap has nothing to do with laziness. Unfortunately though, everything that got you where you are stops working the moment you arrive, and your instincts are the last part of you to find out.

Michael Jordan is the most obsessive winner in the history of American sports. The guy took it personally when a teammate missed a free throw in a preseason game, and wouldn't let it go when a security guard beat him in a game of chance.

One season he put up 37 points a game and still went home in the spring with nothing. Best player alive, scoring at will, but still losing every year. Then Phil Jackson talked him into the triangle offense. Trust the system, give up the ball, and let your teammates carry the load.

6 titles in 8 years.

And then he bought a basketball team. He overruled the front office, burned through 6 coaches, and trusted his gut over everyone else's experience, and he ended up with the worst record in the league. The same man who won 6 championships by giving up the ball went right back to playing every position himself the second the game changed from basketball to business.

That's what you're up against.

If Michael f*ing Jordan couldn't switch games on instinct, you're not going to either. Nobody does this by feel. You do it by getting someone to show you exactly which part of your business is bleeding, and fixing it one stitch at a time.

After interviewing over 15,000 owners, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and basically earning a degree in business psychology, I developed the Owner Score. After about 10 minutes, you get a full breakdown of what stage of ownership you're in, and what you should focus on to keep growing.

It looks a little like this:

Owner. The business runs independent of you. Leave for 90 days and come back to better numbers.

Operator. The revenue is real and you're the load-bearing wall. Stop showing up on Monday and it limps along for a few weeks, then folds.

Self-employed. There's no business yet. There's you, working. The LLC is a costume.

Then it names the 2 Profit Levers dragging you down hardest out of the 12, and those are the 2 you fix. Not all 12. Just two. Every 90 days you score again, because your weak spots move as you grow.

Most owners skip the diagnosis entirely and pull whichever lever they're already good at pulling. That's how you spend 4 years fixing your marketing when marketing was never the problem. I flew to Santiago 100 times pulling the wrong lever, and if I'd had this diagnostic I never would've broken down in an airport.

A quick callout:

My W-2 people aren't being left out. In fact, you might be in the best position of all...

Run the diagnostic as if your job is your business, and you'll start seeing the thing the way your boss sees it, usually before your boss does. People who can see the whole game get handed more of it. More ownership and better projects. You know, the kind that can lead to new titles and bigger salaries.

In an economy where AI eats the tasks and leaves the judgment up to you, understanding how a business actually makes money is what makes someone valuable. Whether you ever step into ownership or not.

September 18, live on YouTube, free. I'm walking through the entire system: the 12 Profit Levers, how to read your own score, and which 2 things to attack in your next 90 days.

Bring your number and it'll hit completely differently. Show up without one and you'll spend the hour guessing which part applies to you.

My business spent 8 years telling me the truth. I needed a number I couldn't argue with before I'd hear it.

Go get yours.

- Codie

P.S. If you only do 1 thing today, take the Owner Score before Friday.

10 minutes now turns the event from a lecture into a full day of ah-ha moments.

Show up ready to change your business (and your life) forever.

*T&C apply