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Own or Be Owned: Build a Business So Good It Doesn't Need You
Hardcover
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Publisher: Contrarian Thinking Press
Published: Sep 18 2026
Pages: 336
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.30 Width: 5.80 Depth: 8.30
Language: English
From the New York Times best-selling author of Main Street Millionaire
Following my Owner Score is the best business decision I've made in 15 years. -- Meg Kinnerk, business owner
You didn't start a business to work 80 hours a week and feel broke on paper.
But here you are. The we're not going to make it fear. The 3 a.m. panic. The quiet realization that working harder isn't fixing anything. It's keeping you stuck.
Codie Sanchez has been there. She's also been on the other side. She built a nine-figure holding company across laundromats, car washes, roofing companies, and service businesses that now print cash whether she shows up or not. Along the way, she learned the lesson most owners never get told: Heroics don't scale. Systems do.
In Own or Be Owned, Sanchez hands you the private equity playbook the pros use to turn ordinary businesses into ones you actually enjoy running. This is the same playbook her advisory group, the Contrarian Boardroom, has used to help 14,000 owners scale.
Here's what you'll learn:
- The Owner Score. A 10-minute diagnostic across 12 dimensions to find out if you own a business or it owns you. Plus the exact moves to fix every weak score.
- The 12 P's. The framework for diagnosing the most painful problem in your business and fixing it before it costs you another quarter.
- Pricing that prints. How underpaid owners become high-margin operators without losing customers (most owners are leaving 30-50 percent on the table).
- The hiring filter. How to attract A-players to a Main Street business and avoid the bad hires that cost you six figures and your sanity.
- The one-page dashboard. Run your entire company at a glance. This is the same scoreboard the best operators check every Monday morning.
Real owners. Real numbers:
I went from $60K to $100K a month.
--Owner, Security & Defense Contractor
We finished $727K ahead of last year.
--Owner, Travel Agency
12 P's is my unfair advantage.
--Owner, DJ & Entertainment Business
This book took me from new owner to multi-generational business.
--Owner, Raw Materials Supplier
This is the manual most CEOs never get. It's not for slackers, dreamers, or anyone looking for a shortcut. It's for the owner who's already in the arena, bleeding, and ready to stop trading hours for a business that should be paying them back.
There's a smarter way to build wealth, and take your time back.
Stop being owned. Start owning.
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