Acquisition Foundations by Codie Sanchez

Introduction

Acquisition Foundations is an end-to-end program by Codie Sanchez, founder of Contrarian Thinking and a former institutional investor, built to teach aspiring entrepreneurs how to buy profitable, existing small businesses instead of launching risky startups from scratch. Rather than chasing tech unicorns, the methodology centers on acquiring cash-flowing “boring businesses” such as car washes, laundromats, and home-service companies. The promised transformation is moving you from zero deal flow to confidently sourcing, evaluating, and closing your first acquisition using creative financing. The program is organized across 10 units that map the full deal lifecycle, with 205 video lessons and 121 downloadable PDFs totaling 37h 16m 31s of training.

Here's Everything You'll Receive

📊 Course Stats: 205 video lessons | 121 downloadable PDFs | 37h 16m 31s of content | 20.14 GB total | 10 modules

✅ The Contrarian Acquisition Framework: The complete deal lifecycle taught across all 10 units — moving from foundational mindset and deal clarity into origination, outreach, evaluation, offers and negotiation, due diligence, financing, and the final close.

✅ 21 Financing Strategies (Unit 8): A dedicated unit detailing 21 specific ways to fund a purchase, with extensive coverage of SBA loans and Seller Financing, so you can pick up income streams without draining your savings.

✅ Deal-Sourcing Systems: The Contrarian CRM, the Deal Navigator, the Rolodex-to-ROI method, and the Quiet Seller Method for surfacing both on-market and off-market opportunities.

✅ Worksheets, Scripts & Calculators: Cold Outreach Scripts, the Buyer Profile PDF, Deal Clarity Worksheets, the Zone of Genius Worksheet, SDE calculation tools, the CT NDA Template, the Deal Decision Tree, and more.

✅ 121 Downloadable PDF Resources: Reference sheets, checklists, templates, and supporting documentation that accompany the video lessons throughout every unit.

Note: This includes all recorded video training, worksheets, scripts, calculators, and downloadable PDF resources from the program. Any live coaching, private community membership, or direct, ongoing access to Codie Sanchez is available exclusively through the official program.

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What You Will Master in Acquisition Foundations

✅ Define your precise acquisition criteria — your zone of genius, target business size, and income goals — to lock in a clear “Deal Box” before you ever look at a listing.

✅ Calculate a business's true Seller's Discretionary Earnings (SDE) and read market comparable multiples so you can confirm you are buying a legitimate income stream, not a story.

✅ Find both on-market and off-market deals using the Rolodex-to-ROI and Quiet Seller methods rather than competing with everyone else on saturated broker platforms like BizBuySell.

✅ Run the 8-Step C2C Framework to approach owners by cold email and cold call without coming across as an aggressive corporate raider.

✅ Position yourself as a credible, qualified buyer and use the FROG method to build genuine rapport with sellers.

✅ Structure creative offers and negotiate terms with sweat equity, seller financing, and hybrid debt-equity models so a deal never hinges on your personal cash alone.

✅ Work through the Due Diligence phase step by step — assembling a competent Deal Team and spotting red, orange, and green flags before money changes hands.

✅ Draft Letters of Intent (LOI) and Asset Purchase Agreements and navigate the three key areas of negotiation toward a win-win close.

✅ Identify the 10 Contrarian Business Value Markers and set a personal confidence threshold that tells you when an opportunity is worth an offer.

Who Is This Course For?

– The Burned-Out Corporate Executive — You earn a strong salary but have no real control over your schedule. You want to replace your W-2 income by acquiring an established company, and you need a safe, step-by-step framework plus a way to track deal flow without it taking over your evenings.

– The Aspiring Searcher — You've read about acquisition entrepreneurship but stall out on the technicalities: SDE math, LOIs, SBA loans. This program hands you the exact documentation, calculators, and sourcing techniques to actually put your first offer on the table.

– The Current Business Owner Seeking Expansion — Your organic growth has flattened. You want to acquire competitors or complementary businesses in your industry to scale revenue and market share through strategic buyouts instead of grinding out incremental gains.

– The “Sweat Equity” Operator — You have strong operational or marketing skills but limited capital. Unit 8 gives you the specific strategies for negotiating sweat-equity and seller-financed deals where your expertise, not your bank balance, is your leverage.

A Lesson-by-Lesson Breakdown of the Curriculum

Unit 1: Foundation

Establishes the mindset and baseline knowledge required to acquire a business, mapping the full lifecycle of a deal and what it realistically takes to run a company once you own it.

– Lesson 1.1: Intro
– Lesson 1.2: What to Expect with this Experience
– Lesson 1.3: Why Acquisition Entrepreneurship
– Lesson 1.4: What Is Contrarian Thinking
– Lesson 1.5: The Contrarian Acquisition Mindset
– Lesson 1.6: Lifecycle of a Deal Journey
– Lesson 1.7: What Does It Take to Run a Business
– Lesson 1.8: BONUS VIDEO – Don't Continue Until You Watch This
– Lesson 1.9: From Working 9-to-5 to Owning a 7-Figure Business in 12 Months
– 📕 Included resources: Acquisition Journey Reference Sheet, Acquisition Self Reflection Worksheet, MSA Action Steps Checklist

Unit 2: Deal Clarity

Defines your personal acquisition criteria using the Contrarian Deal Clarity Framework, helping you narrow target industries, business size, and income goals into a concrete Deal Box.

– Lesson 2.1: Intro
– Lesson 2.2: What Do You Want from This Deal
– Lesson 2.3: Acquisition Targets for Current Business Owners
– Lesson 2.4: Business Size
– Lesson 2.5: Profit Buying an Income Stream
– Lesson 2.6: Which Industries to Target
– Lesson 2.7: Industries Database Selector
– Lesson 2.8: Your Deal Box
– Lesson 2.9: Lloyd Intro By Codie
– Lesson 2.10: How Brandon Bought a $650K Income Stream for $60K
– 📕 Included resources: Deal Clarity Worksheets, Zone of Genius Worksheet

Unit 3: Origination

Hands-on techniques for finding deals that fit your criteria — both on-market and off-market — and the tracking systems that keep your pipeline organized.

– Lesson 3.1: Intro
– Lesson 3.2: Deal Sourcing How to Find Businesses to Buy
– Lesson 3.3: Searching for On-Market Deals
– Lesson 3.4: Searching On Biz Buy Sell
– Lesson 3.5: Buy-Side Broker Relationships for On-Market Deals
– Lesson 3.6: Off-Market Deals
– Lesson 3.7: Rolodex to ROI
– Lesson 3.8: Venmo Challenge
– Lesson 3.9: Personal PNL Review
– Lesson 3.10: The 9 to 5er Strategy
– Lesson 3.11: Social Media
– Lesson 3.12: Library Database
– Lesson 3.13: Industry-specific sources
– Lesson 3.14: Networking (I hate this word)
– Lesson 3.15: Creating the right habits for deal sourcing
– Lesson 3.16: Weekly Goals Goal Tracking Notion database walkthrough
– Lesson 3.17: Keeping track of your Deal Flow
– Lesson 3.18: The Contrarian CRM Demo
– Lesson 3.19: Vertical IQ Training
– Lesson 3.20: Introducing the New Deal Navigator

Unit 4: Outreach

How to present yourself as a qualified buyer, run cold outreach, engage owners directly, and use the FROG method to turn first contact into real relationships.

– Lesson 4.1: Intro
– Lesson 4.2: Selling Yourself – Positioning Yourself as a Qualified Buyer
– Lesson 4.3: Seller Engagement Process Overview
– Lesson 4.4: Cold Email
– Lesson 4.5: How to Edit and Create Your Buyer Profile PDF
– Lesson 4.6: Cold Calling Outreach
– Lesson 4.7: The 8 Step C2C Framework
– Lesson 4.8: The Discovery Call
– Lesson 4.9: FROG Method for Connecting with Potential Sellers
– Lesson 4.10: On-Market Outreach
– Lesson 4.11: Buyer Profile PDF Canva Walk-through
– Lesson 4.12: Quiet Seller Method
– 📕 Included resources: Cold Outreach Scripts, List Of Questions For A Seller

Unit 5: Evaluation

The objective financial markers used to judge a prospective deal — signing NDAs, determining realistic valuations, and deciding whether a business clears your confidence threshold.

– Lesson 5.1: Intro
– Lesson 5.2: First Principles Seller Outreach
– Lesson 5.3: The Preliminary Evaluation
– Lesson 5.4: Determining Valuation
– Lesson 5.5: Market Comparables Multiple
– Lesson 5.6: SDE Calculation
– Lesson 5.7: The 10 Contrarian Business Value Markers
– Lesson 5.8: Your Confidence Threshold
– Lesson 5.9: BONUS Specific Tips for Email Outreach
– 📕 Included resources: CT NDA Template, Deal Decision Tree

Unit 6: Offer + Negotiation

The anatomy of making a formal offer — structuring creative deals, drafting the Letter of Intent (LOI) and Asset Purchase Agreements, handling at-risk money, and working through the three key areas of negotiation.

Unit 7: Due Diligence

A rigorous inspection process for a business before you close — assembling a competent Deal Team, evaluating the key information, and catching hidden liabilities through red, orange, and green flags so you don't inherit a dying business.

Unit 8: Financing

Confronts the capital question directly with 21 financing strategies, anchored by extensive coverage of SBA loans and Seller Financing and rounded out with sweat equity and hybrid debt-equity structures, so an acquisition never depends on personal cash alone.

Note: The program runs across 10 units with 205 video lessons in total. The full lesson list for the later units is provided inside the members' area.

About Your Instructor: Codie Sanchez

Codie Sanchez is a former institutional investor turned entrepreneur, investor, and writer who walked away from Wall Street for “Main Street.” She is the founder of Contrarian Thinking and an Active Board Member at Entourage Effect Capital. Before finance, she started out as an investigative journalist covering human trafficking and border conflict across Latin America. Today she invests in and teaches the acquisition of cash-flowing “boring businesses” — the laundromats, car washes, and home-service companies most investors overlook.

Key Credentials & Accomplishments:

✅ Built First Trust's $1 billion+ AUM Latin America Investments business from the ground up

✅ Held leadership and investing roles across Goldman Sachs, State Street (SSGA), and Vanguard over roughly 15 years on Wall Street

✅ Founder of Contrarian Thinking, a finance and media company with a large following across her platforms and a weekly newsletter

✅ Active Board Member at Entourage Effect Capital

✅ Author of Main Street Millionaire: How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary Businesses, an instant New York Times bestseller

✅ Won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for print journalism and received a Howard G. Buffett Foundation grant for her reporting on border conflict

✅ Owner of Main Street Holding Company and Contrarian Thinking Capital, with a portfolio of cash-flowing small businesses

What Problems Does Acquisition Foundations Solve?

“I want to own a business, but most startups fail.” — The entire curriculum redirects you toward buying established, already-profitable companies, letting you skip the high-risk build-from-scratch phase and start with cash flow already in place.

“I don't have enough personal capital to buy a company.” — Unit 8 is devoted to 21 financing strategies, with extensive coverage of SBA loans and Seller Financing, so you can acquire income streams without liquidating your savings.

“I don't know how to find owners who are actually willing to sell.” — Units 3 and 4 lay out exact off-market sourcing methods — the Quiet Seller Method and the Rolodex-to-ROI framework — so you stop fighting the crowd on broker platforms like BizBuySell.

“I'm afraid of buying a dying business or inheriting hidden liabilities.” — Unit 7 walks you through a rigorous Due Diligence process, and Unit 5 teaches you to calculate true SDE and read the 10 Contrarian Business Value Markers before you commit to an offer.

“I don't know how to legally protect myself during the purchase.” — Unit 6 covers the anatomy of the Letter of Intent (LOI) and Asset Purchase Agreements, including how to structure at-risk money and account for unknown liabilities.

What Makes Acquisition Foundations Different

– Buy, don't build — Instead of coaching you to launch a startup, the whole framework is built around acquiring companies that already generate cash flow, removing the riskiest phase of entrepreneurship.

– Creative financing over personal cash — With 21 financing strategies built around SBA loans, seller financing, sweat equity, and hybrid structures, the program is designed for buyers without a large lump sum on hand.

– A full deal lifecycle, not theory — From the Deal Box and SDE calculations to the C2C outreach framework, due diligence, and the LOI, every unit maps to a concrete step of closing a real acquisition, backed by 121 downloadable templates and worksheets.

Frequently Asked Questions About Acquisition Foundations

What is Acquisition Foundations about?

Acquisition Foundations is a program by Codie Sanchez that teaches you to buy profitable, existing small businesses instead of building a startup from zero. It walks you through the full deal lifecycle — clarity, sourcing, outreach, evaluation, offers, due diligence, and financing — so you can source, evaluate, and close your first acquisition.

Who created Acquisition Foundations?

It was created by Codie Sanchez, founder of Contrarian Thinking and a former institutional investor who built First Trust's $1 billion+ Latin America Investments business and is the New York Times bestselling author of Main Street Millionaire.

What is included in Acquisition Foundations?

The program includes 205 video lessons and 121 downloadable PDFs, totaling 37h 16m 31s of content and 20.14 GB across 10 modules. It also ships with templates, scripts, calculators, and tools such as the Buyer Profile PDF, Cold Outreach Scripts, the CT NDA Template, and the Deal Decision Tree.

Who is Acquisition Foundations best suited for?

It is aimed at burned-out corporate executives who want to replace W-2 income, aspiring searchers stuck on the technicalities of SDE and SBA loans, current business owners looking to acquire competitors, and skilled operators with limited capital who plan to use sweat equity or seller financing.

What will I learn in Acquisition Foundations?

You learn how to define your Deal Box, source on-market and off-market deals, calculate SDE and valuations, run the 8-Step C2C outreach framework, structure creative offers, conduct due diligence, draft Letters of Intent, and finance the purchase using SBA loans, seller financing, and other strategies.

Do I need a lot of capital to use this course?

No. Unit 8 is dedicated to 21 financing strategies — SBA loans, seller financing, sweat equity, and hybrid debt-equity structures — specifically so you can acquire income streams without relying solely on your own cash.

What format is Acquisition Foundations delivered in?

It is delivered as downloadable video lessons supported by PDF resources, worksheets, scripts, and calculators — 205 video lessons and 121 PDFs, totaling 37h 16m 31s and 20.14 GB across 10 modules.

What is Codie Sanchez known for?

Codie Sanchez is known for founding Contrarian Thinking, authoring the New York Times bestseller Main Street Millionaire, building a billion-dollar Latin America investment business at First Trust, and popularizing the idea of acquiring cash-flowing “boring businesses.” The original program was offered at $997.