"A Once In A Lifetime Opportunity To Build Wealth IS COMING!" | Grant Cardone & Lewis Howes

Grant Cardone 0:00 If you just took the money that you earned and keep reinvesting it in assets that pay you, not assets that you wish one day will pay you. If you keep, uh, investing in that asset class, one day-

Lewis Howes 0:11 Do you think that you would have been able to get there faster?

Grant Cardone 0:16 Yeah, 1000%.

Lewis Howes 0:17 Or do, or do you feel like money only comes to you when you're ready for it?

Grant Cardone 0:20 No. No, I-

Lewis Howes 0:20 That when you're ready to make it-

Grant Cardone 0:22 No

Lewis Howes 0:22 ... and when you're ready to take on the risk or the responsibility.

Grant Cardone 0:25 S- Sabrina will never make the mistakes I made.

Lewis Howes 0:27 Okay.

Grant Cardone 0:27 Okay? Because she won't, she won't get in the wrong car. I got in the wrong vehicle.

Lewis Howes 0:31 Mm.

Grant Cardone 0:32 I didn't know. The vehicle I got in when I was 28 years old, huh, I could actually make 100 grand a year doing this. My daugh- my d- my daughters will never get in that vehicle.

Lewis Howes 0:41 What will they do?

Grant Cardone 0:42 They'll be like, "I'm not getting in a $100,000 ride."

Lewis Howes 0:44 [laughs] Right.

Grant Cardone 0:46 If they can't bring me... It, it... They're, they're gonna be like, "Hey, if this is doesn't have a billion dollar possibility..." That, that they're gonna pick the... This is the wealthy. They, they put their kids, the ki- their kids see things differently.

Lewis Howes 0:58 Mm. Mm.

Grant Cardone 0:58 If they're not ruined.

Lewis Howes 0:59 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:00 You know, if they're not completely ruined and scathed by having whatever they want, then they'll, they'll see, they'll see tr- they'll see opportunities different.

Lewis Howes 1:09 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:09 You know? And, and but when, when you see the possibility, then you're like, "I'm not gonna get in that car or that car or that car. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get in a spaceship."

Lewis Howes 1:17 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:18 So if I was 28 again today, I mean, I would know what, what industries to pick.

Lewis Howes 1:23 Top three industries to pick?

Grant Cardone 1:25 Uh, well, got-

Lewis Howes 1:26 In your mind

Grant Cardone 1:26 ... got, hedge funds have to be one of them.

Lewis Howes 1:28 Really?

Grant Cardone 1:28 Y- y- y- uh, advertising and marketing's gotta be a space to be in.

Lewis Howes 1:31 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:32 Um, and probably, you know, something to do with healthcare. If I can scale healthcare. If I can scale, scale the organic, uh, um, alternative medicines. Um, you know, so tho- those are three massive spaces. Maybe, maybe financial too. May-

Lewis Howes 1:50 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:50 ... the, the financial world. You know, in the next 30 years we're probably gonna have a, a disruption of the dollar.

Lewis Howes 1:57 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:57 You know? And, and-

Lewis Howes 1:58 Right

Grant Cardone 1:59 ... the way money's... May- maybe we're a cryptocurrency, you know, environment-

Lewis Howes 2:04 Right

Grant Cardone 2:04 ... in the future.

Lewis Howes 2:05 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:06 So any of that, any of that's gonna happen, you know? Um, but, but there, the re- the reason I would go there is like, like Jeff Bezos. When I, when I saw the first interview with Jeff when he was saying he was studying algorithms.

Lewis Howes 2:18 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:18 I think he was, he was at one of the big firms selling stocks.

Lewis Howes 2:22 Before Amazon.

Grant Cardone 2:23 Yeah, before Amazon.

Lewis Howes 2:24 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:24 And then he saw some, he saw something came across his desk where there was a spike in internet activity, eyeballs going to the internet. That's when he said, "I'm gonna go do Amazon."

Lewis Howes 2:34 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:35 And he followed traffic. See, I didn't ever follow traffic. He followed scale. He followed scaling possibilities. And then what did he do? He followed the s- traffic, the possibility, then he invested in the possibility, and then he went into debt on the possibility, and then he was willing to not get paid any money. But what did I do? I need money today. I gotta have money this week. I ha- need to have a little more money next week, and if I get a little more money after that, I'm gonna save it all. And then I'm gonna go do that again, and I'm gonna feed the bank, and I'm gonna keep feeding the bank. I don't, I don't even know how much money the b- bank's made off of me for 25 years.

Lewis Howes 3:10 Really?

Grant Cardone 3:10 We don't know anybody that works harder than Grant Cardone. And as soon as he gets a, a, a bag, he brings it to us. What do they do? "Hey, y'all wanna borrow this money?" Now repeat that 300 million times.

Lewis Howes 3:22 Wow.

Grant Cardone 3:23 And that's the American people.

Lewis Howes 3:24 What about, uh, a family that's thinking, "You know, I really feel comfortable having six months to a year of savings 'cause I got kids, I got, you know, the rent, I got the, all the bills."

Grant Cardone 3:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 3:34 What do you, what do you say to someone who's like, "You know what? I, I see where you're coming from, but maybe I don't feel that comfortable yet"?

Grant Cardone 3:39 Well, th- th- then keep the, you know, mon- money if you think money's gonna save you. Y- you know, you're just... Again, they're stacking, they're stacking information on top of, uh, bad information. Okay?

Lewis Howes 3:51 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 3:51 Y- y- you know, the money that you have saved in the last six months has probably dropped 11%.

Lewis Howes 3:56 Mm.

Grant Cardone 3:57 So the money that you have, you got 100 grand, I gotta have six months of savings, I need, you know, 4,000, my bills are four or 5,000 bucks a month, I gotta have 30 grand in the bank. Gotta have 30. But they really have 180. So first of all, I guarantee they have more than six months-

Lewis Howes 4:11 Mm

Grant Cardone 4:11 ... and they don't even know it, 'cause they're living out of terror.

Lewis Howes 4:14 Right.

Grant Cardone 4:14 It's not logic.

Lewis Howes 4:15 Right.

Grant Cardone 4:16 You say it's logic. I need six months, but you got three times more than you need.

Lewis Howes 4:21 Sure. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 4:22 Number one. Number two, you've never had an emergency that cost you 30 grand in your lifetime. Very few people ever have that emergency. Everybody hears about it, "Oh yeah, my guy got into a bad... This happened, blah, blah, blah," whatever.

Lewis Howes 4:33 Car accident or this, oh, yeah.

Grant Cardone 4:33 But if you had assets, if you'd had been investing in assets, you can always go g- use those assets for collateral-

Lewis Howes 4:39 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 4:39 ... to, to solve-

Lewis Howes 4:39 You can get a loan out

Grant Cardone 4:40 ... your cancer surgery.

Lewis Howes 4:41 You can get a loan out from the bank if you got it, yeah.

Grant Cardone 4:42 One hun- 100%. Or if you just took the money that you earned and keep reinvesting it in assets that pay you, not assets that you wish one day will pay you, but assets that pay you every month, if you keep, uh, investing in that asset class, one day your cashflow will be your emergency account.

Lewis Howes 5:00 Mm.

Grant Cardone 5:01 My, my emergency account last month paid me a million six.

Lewis Howes 5:04 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 5:06 My cashflow.

Lewis Howes 5:06 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 5:07 My free cashflow.

Lewis Howes 5:08 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 5:09 That's no work involved. That is not one second of one day. Okay? That was... And that happens every single month at my place. But that's, that's been because I made a bunch of investments for the last, you know, 25 years.

Lewis Howes 5:24 Right.

Grant Cardone 5:25 End of every year, I dump all my cash out every year.

Lewis Howes 5:29 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 5:29 I'm like, "You need to get as close to zero as you can." And replace it with assets that, that in January, if I dump out in December, January I want a payment from that. It doesn't have to be a big payment, just needs to be a drip off that asset.

Lewis Howes 5:44 Something, yeah.

Grant Cardone 5:44 So I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna buy a cup 'cause the cup won't pay me. So in December I had a bunch of money, boom, I'm like, "Make a deal." You saw, you were in it yes- couple days ago.

Lewis Howes 5:53 Yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 5:55 Take that-

Lewis Howes 5:55 You bought that house

Grant Cardone 5:56 ... take that cash-

Lewis Howes 5:56 Yeah

Grant Cardone 5:57 ... that garbage that you have, already had a surplus of money. So if I can't buy two of these, I'm not gonna buy one of them If I can't write off some portion of it, I'm not gonna buy it. Mm. If I can't do it out of passive income, I'm not gonna touch it. Interesting. So those are my, those are my criteria for making investments, right? And it needs the cash flow. So I took a bunch of this cash that was sitting here just deteriorating, not providing me with safety- Mm ... and took it and put it into this asset. And people are like, "Are you stu- you're ridiculous you paid that much money for that thing." Okay. We'll see, you know? So I, I buy this thing. This thing will provide rental income. I think this year I'll make 3 million bucks on this deal- Wow ... in cash flow. And how much do you have to put down? Or do you buy the whole thing in cash? Well, I, I, I paid cash for this house. Gotcha. So, so but the reason I did it is not because this is a great deal, but, but this is a terrible deal. Keeping the cash. Keeping the cash is garbage. This, this Malibu house is probably one of the worst investments I ever made. [laughs] Right. Okay? But, but I had a bunch of surplus cash. Mm. I'd already bought, in December we bought, uh, almost 2,000 apartments. Mm-hmm. If I coulda got another apartment deal, I'd have bought another apartment deal with the 40 million, but I couldn't. You couldn't find one. I couldn't find another deal. Okay? I still had this money left over, end of the year. It's just a thing that I do. End of the year, dump out. Literally, like flush the toilet on your savings. So every day I look at my savings accounts, okay? It's not 'cause I'm worried about any more money anymore. I, I know for sure the money's going down in value. Everybody knows that this year. Your money is depreciating. Mm-hmm. Right? It's dropping down in value. What you were told that is 100 grand is not 100 grand. The bank's not even telling you the truth. It's 100 less 11,000. It's 11% right now? Could be 34% less. Some people think- Wow ... it's going down 34%. That's crazy. But you're gonna still see 100 because this is invisible taxing, right? Wow. It's inflation. So I know that. I know it's not 100. So when you guys look at your checking account, "I got 180,000," you're lying to yourself. Mm. And you, 'cause you, 'cause you're not, you're not doing all the math on money. This is why Mike Saylor went and took all that money he had and invested in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, yeah. 'Cause he's done the research. So I would listen to him, and I'm not saying you guys should go buy Bitcoin, but I'm not buying Bitcoin at that l- at those levels. Mm-hmm. Okay? I'm buying assets that can provide me more, with more cash, with more income. Maybe I should be buying B- Bitcoin. I don't know. But anyway, so I dumped this out. I dumped this for, now I've been, I've been shopping this piece of real estate for 19 months. I've been working this deal for 19 months. Wow. So I'm not being like, "Okay, I just gotta go buy something." I'm not gonna do that. You have this now. But I'm trying to get rid of this cash to go into an asset that has the potential to go up in value over time. I dump out in January, okay? I do three webinars. That's why everybody wants to know, "Man, what's the rush to make more money?" 'Cause I'm broke, man. [laughs] And I got a new house. Right. You got, you got bills to pay now. You got expenses. So January 1st comes, I've done three webinars already to start filling this up again. Mm-hmm. Right? Now if I, if I walked into January

Grant Cardone 8:59 1st with 40 million bucks sitting in a bank account, dude, I- You're not hungry ... what's the rush, bro? You're not hungry. Yeah. Let's plan. Let's, there's some planning this year. Mm. But what I do is I dump out. So every year for the last 15 years, every January I end up with more assets. I go broke over here and I go up over here. What are the top assets that will make money for you beyond real estate, do you think? Uh, let's see. Beyond, I mean, I mean, that's my deal. That, you know, you could buy mutual funds and you could buy, you know, go, go feed Vanguard and go feed the Blackstones and- [laughs] ... you know, they own everything, dude. Right. You go make a bet on Disney. Uh-huh. You know, um- So you could buy stocks, you could buy funds, you could always do different things. Yeah. You could buy gold and silver. Gold is dead. Gold is, gold is a terrible investment, has been for 10 years. Mm-hmm. Anybody says it's a good investment, just look at the chart for 10 years. It's, it's down this year. We got ma- major inflation. It's supposedly the great inflation hedge. We have major worry about inflation and gold went down. Yeah. So you can go buy crypto, but you're gambling. Right. Yeah. What would be, what would be your case for crypto? Let's say- Well, it- Let's say you had a billion dollars in Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you had to make your case why this is an amazing investment. Yeah. Obviously that's not your thing. Well, yeah, no, but I'm st- like, like I'm studying this whole thing. You're seeing my whole... Yeah, yeah. I, I'm very interested in the space, right? So I, I have, uh, what do I have? I have probably $6 million in Bitcoin. In Bitcoin by itself? Yeah. Somebody gave me some. Right. I remember this was like- Yeah ... four years ago. Wasn't it three years ago? I still have, I still have about 500 bucks. I remember you said you got paid, you got paid in Bitcoin. Yeah, exactly. And you said, "I'll take your money in Bitcoin and whatever crypto, anything." Yeah, yeah. I'll take, I'll take whatever. And how much did you get when you originally got Bitcoin? 100 pieces. 100 pieces at 500 bucks each? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's worth- That's worth, uh, 40, uh, you know, whatever it is today. I don't know how much it's worth. Well, what, so it is like 50 grand or something? Yeah. 50 grand you got. No, no. It's $5 million today. Five mil- But what did you get when you got it? How much was it when you got it? It was, it was $50 a hundred pieces. Wow. It was $500 and there was 100 pieces, so whatever, 50 grand. 50 grand. Yeah. So you got 50 grand for some product you had or something or some, some event or whatever. Yeah, yeah, whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah. It was a speaking gig actually. Speaking gig. Yeah. And now it's worth... And then, and then when it hit 30,000 again, I bought some more. Okay. Uh, because I'm starting to like, "Okay, this thing could happen." Mm. Okay? 28 million pieces. You know, they're never gonna make more. It is not, to me it is not a inflation hedge. What is it? It's, it's a, it's just a place to store. It's an asset store. It's a, it's a, it's a... It's not a currency. I don't think it's a currency. 'Cause currency comes from the word current. It means it moves and, and I don't see this moving. I see this as a, a storage. Mm-hmm. You know, I see this as something that could one day maybe replace gold as a, as a standard. We're certainly gonna move closer to digital universe in money than we are- Absolutely ... gold stand- We're never going back to the gold standard. Well, if you have a lot of it you gotta be m- promoting it. I've never, I'm 63 years old, I've never, never had any gold in my entire life. Mm-hmm. I've never had a gold block, gold coin. Unless you have maybe a, a chain or something, a ring or something. [laughs] I got a chain. I got a little chain. I lost that. [laughs] You know? I don't understand it. I think there's more people d- playing the Bitcoin game today than there are people playing the gold game. Right. But anyway, um- So the case for Bitcoin is it's limited. You know-

Lewis Howes 12:16 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 12:16 ... it's, it's, the, you know, hopefully they're not gonna make any more. It, that, that's what they say. It is a ledger. I like that there's millions of computers backed up saying, "Hey, this is, this is what it is." You know? And I, I don't completely understand it.

Lewis Howes 12:29 Right.

Grant Cardone 12:29 And, but-

Lewis Howes 12:29 But it's not paying you a dividend.

Grant Cardone 12:31 But that's what I don't like.

Lewis Howes 12:32 No cash flow.

Grant Cardone 12:33 Okay? Now I'm in a position, I don't need more cash flow. You can't... I, I don't know how to spend a million six a month.

Lewis Howes 12:38 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 12:40 Plus, uh, plus, plus I had the discipline to go make more money.

Lewis Howes 12:43 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 12:43 It's not like I quit working. So-

Lewis Howes 12:45 Do you have a goal of how much cash flow you want?

Grant Cardone 12:48 No, I, I have a goal, I have a goal... Well, the, the business, not the real estate.

Lewis Howes 12:53 Yes.

Grant Cardone 12:54 The business last year made... I mean, it made 8 million a month.

Lewis Howes 13:00 Wow.

Grant Cardone 13:01 Okay? So-

Lewis Howes 13:02 This is on your-

Grant Cardone 13:02 The real estate-

Lewis Howes 13:03 ... the educational side of things-

Grant Cardone 13:04 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:04 ... the events, the books

Grant Cardone 13:05 Eight, eight, probably eight and a half, okay?

Lewis Howes 13:07 Consulting, coaching, events, books-

Grant Cardone 13:09 Everything

Lewis Howes 13:09 ... every- everything in there.

Grant Cardone 13:10 Gross income, 110 million bucks last year.

Lewis Howes 13:12 That's amazing.

Grant Cardone 13:13 Yeah, no, for... [laughs] Dude, I remember when I couldn't make 100 grand in a year.

Lewis Howes 13:17 Wow. How does that feel?

Grant Cardone 13:19 So w- unbelievable, dude.

Lewis Howes 13:20 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 13:21 I mean, today, I woke up today, Jared hits me today. He's like, "$643,000 today."

Lewis Howes 13:27 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 13:27 It's insane. Insane, dude.

Lewis Howes 13:30 When was the last time you made 100 grand in one year? That you're in the 100 to 100 to 200,000.

Grant Cardone 13:36 I, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. You know? But I remember when I, I remember when that was my goal, Lewis. My goal was to make 100 grand in a year, and I wanted $10,000 in passive income.

Lewis Howes 13:46 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 13:46 I said, "Dude, if I can make 100 grand a year and $10,000 as passive income, I'm set."

Lewis Howes 13:50 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 13:53 You know? So, so, like, this, this all is a, a bit of a dream to me. Like, it's not like... You know, I never thought I would do this. I never even thought about these kind of numbers.

Lewis Howes 14:04 1.6 million a m- a m- year?

Grant Cardone 14:06 In the passive income.

Lewis Howes 14:07 A month?

Grant Cardone 14:08 A month.

Lewis Howes 14:08 A month.

Grant Cardone 14:09 That's passive.

Lewis Howes 14:10 That, that's just money-

Grant Cardone 14:11 That's-

Lewis Howes 14:11 ... that's not you working.

Grant Cardone 14:12 No, no. No, that's not a new real estate deal. That's not, that's not investors, okay? My... So back to the goal. What's the goal?

Lewis Howes 14:18 Yes.

Grant Cardone 14:18 My goal, we wanna... We paid out $3 million a month last year to investors. That's the thing I'm most proud of.

Lewis Howes 14:23 That's pretty cool.

Grant Cardone 14:24 The thing, that and what we do with kids is, like, the two, two things that I just trip on. I want to send out at least $30 million a month. We sent out 36 million last month, or last year. I wanna-

Lewis Howes 14:35 You wanna do that every month

Grant Cardone 14:36 ... I wanna do that every month.

Lewis Howes 14:37 Wow.

Grant Cardone 14:38 And when I get to 30 million, I'm gonna go to 300 million a month.

Lewis Howes 14:41 Wow.

Grant Cardone 14:42 I'm gonna send out 300 million a month. I want, I want, uh, 10 million investors.

Lewis Howes 14:47 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 14:48 And I want 10 million investors. I wanna send more money out than I've ever made personally.

Lewis Howes 14:54 A month.

Grant Cardone 14:55 So I'm gonna flip this whole thing.

Lewis Howes 14:57 Wow.

Grant Cardone 14:57 I'm gonna go from the kid that was worried about... The kid that, you know, grew up in a good household, became a drug addict, then he became a salesman. Everybody knows I'm this guy, always, "Hit the link! Hit the link!" You know? You guys are always freaking trashing on me because, you know, I'm, he's always selling something. I'm gonna flip that whole thing to where I'm always sending people money.

Lewis Howes 15:19 What are three things that you believe rich people do differently than poor people?

Grant Cardone 15:24 Uh, rich people do not value money the way poor people do. They, they, they, they invest money, they don't spend it. You know, the best, the best spending is still worse than the best inv- the, the, the worst investment. Like, you could make a bad investment that would still be better than a smart spend.

Lewis Howes 15:42 Really? So what, what's a, what's a smart spend? What's a smart spend versus a bad spend?

Grant Cardone 15:46 I mean, I don't really know anything that's a smart spend, but [laughs] you know-

Lewis Howes 15:49 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 15:49 ... you spend money, when you spend money, you, you don't get an investment back.

Lewis Howes 15:53 Mm.

Grant Cardone 15:53 And when you invest money, at least you got a possibility. I mean, at the very, at the very least, you get a tax write-off. So if I spend money on a belt, um, I can't write it off. I can only wear it. And if I invest money in a Grant Cardone belt and wear it on stage, and it flops as a product and nobody ever buys it, it's a, at least a write-off. It was at least a promotion. So a bad investment is still better than a smart spend. So, uh-

Lewis Howes 16:21 Mm

Grant Cardone 16:21 ... wealthy people don't spend money, they invest money. Uh, number two, they also know that money, it, it... Money is not required. I, I think a lot of us, if we grew up poor, we believe it takes money to make money. Our parents told us that. Uh, maybe a grandparent or the neighbor or somebody said that to us, because that was their, how they justified not having their breakthrough and getting trapped. They're like, "Oh, my, the reason I didn't get out." And we, we know every- we know every- everybody's got an excuse in their lifetime. Everybody uses them at some point in their lifetime to trap themselves. Uh, th- this idea that it takes money to make money is not true. It's a myth. It's, it's, it's the number one reason why I did the show, the, the Discovery show-

Lewis Howes 17:05 Mm

Grant Cardone 17:05 ... to debunk that on TV, that I didn't need any money at all. Uh, they o- they offered me 100 bucks. I'm like, "Just keep it, dude." Like, "No, no, we gotta give it to you. It's part of the show." And I'm like, "I don't need the 100." They're like, "No, but you gotta take the 100. It's part of the show." So, uh, the third thing I would say about wealthy people is they're... I mean, different people have different ways they invest, but they tend to be more focused on the long-term appreciation of an asset rather than give me money this second. And, and I think the g- They're, they're, they're not stuck in this get rich quick thing.

Lewis Howes 17:40 It's a delayed gratification.

Grant Cardone 17:42 Yeah, they're more like, "Yeah, I'd rather have wealth tomorrow than rich today."

Lewis Howes 17:46 Mm.

Grant Cardone 17:47 And, and they do have a distinction between the rich and the wealthy. The, the, you know, the super wealthy are looking to create wealth beyond their own means and needs. Like, they're not thinking about their kids, their boat, their plane. I know people think that, but that's not actually true. They're actually thinking about how do I create wealth for a, a lot of people? Amazon's got a million employees.

Lewis Howes 18:09 Yeah

Grant Cardone 18:09 ... now, now most of them only earn minimum wage, but there's some people at the upper level of Amazon that are making fortunes.

Lewis Howes 18:15 Yeah, and I, I, and I'm curious. You, you wanted to debunk this myth of that it takes money to make money, which is something I heard a lot growing up. And a lot of people think, "Well, unless I... I can't make it, 'cause I can't invest it until I have it." So what were the lessons you learned, uh, you know, starting from essentially zero, having no money, no contacts, no, uh, relationships, no op-, uh, opportunities in a town that you went to for this show? What did you realize were the keys to actually making money even if you didn't have any?

Grant Cardone 18:45 Well, as you see the show, you see that I actually never make any money, right? So, uh, the two girls, they, they actually try... They, they follow three of us, and the two girls went out and got a job in the first week. And I, and I'm, and I'm not saying that's right or wrong, or my way is more better or worse, but, but they are strategies, okay? They're, they're different strategies. I was not there to get a job or to earn money.

Lewis Howes 19:10 Mm.

Grant Cardone 19:10 I was there looking for one thing, opportunity. I never spent time looking for money, ever, the entire, uh, 90 days, okay? I'm not looking for money. I was actually looking for contracts through the contacts. I wasn't looking for money, because I knew the evaluation of the company in the last, uh, segment. An evaluator will come in and determine what my company's worth, my new company, right, that I created. And at that point, I just need to validate to him, "Dude, my company's worth this based on that." The entire 90 days, I never touched the first hundred they gave me, and this was to prove to people, dude, you do not need money. Like, it's just, it's not true you need money. You do need contacts.

Lewis Howes 19:53 You need people. You need relationships.

Grant Cardone 19:54 You need people. You need people. You need the right people, though, the right people that are already in play, okay? Just 'cause a guy's got money... I remember a, a, a billionaire friend of mine, uh, you know, he could buy a jet. And I said, "Hey, Bob, should I buy a jet?" He said, "You should. I shouldn't." Meaning Grant should, because... And he's way wealthier than I am. He could've bought 40 of them. He's like, "I don't have a place to go in mine. You have a... You could use yours every day."

Lewis Howes 20:21 Mm.

Grant Cardone 20:21 So you, you gotta find somebody that's in play, somebody that not just has money, but somebody that wants to do more with their money. So you'll notice in the first, uh, 10 days, I don't spend a hun- any money. I don't spend money on shelter, not on food, and not on water. Nothing. Then what I do is I end up accumulating assets, and it's unfortunate that the viewer doesn't see this.

Lewis Howes 20:43 Mm.

Grant Cardone 20:43 Within five days, I have two vehicles. One was given to me by Discovery, and the other one was a $40,000 Jeep that I basically used, uh, from Brian, this guy I met, and told him, "I'm gonna sell your Jeep. I'm gonna drive it around town and put 10 miles a day on it, and I'm gonna sell it." Well, that's a $43,000 asset. Uh, my truck was worth four grand. I still had my $100. I lived in a $46,000 RV that I was trying to sell. So-

Lewis Howes 21:14 Yeah

Grant Cardone 21:14 ... uh, and the... What, what's the other thing I did? And I picked up $10,000 to do... and a 15% partnership in the equity of the upside of this guy's company. So literally in 10 days-

Lewis Howes 21:27 Wow

Grant Cardone 21:27 ... I was accumulating contacts that could get me equity. And the, and the important part of that story is, man, go get you some equity. You know, Jay-Z talks about this. "You're get-" You, you know, "So many of you young brothers are getting an advance, while I'm picking up the equity."

Lewis Howes 21:43 Ooh. Yeah, they're trying to get the, the get rich quick, let me give you the money now-

Grant Cardone 21:46 Give it to me now

Lewis Howes 21:48 ... where the publisher's g- getting the long-term residual income for decades-

Grant Cardone 21:52 Yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 21:52 ... off of your, off of your work

Grant Cardone 21:53 ... Ke- Kevin Hart. Look at what Kevin Hart did with this, with this show, right? He owns that show. He owns the ticket sales. He was willing to promote it, not just be a comedian. Where Richard Pryor showed up and got his check, told his jokes. Uh, Kevin Hart says, "Yeah, I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna tell my jokes, but I'm gonna own, I'm gonna own the entire platform, the equity."

Lewis Howes 22:14 So how do you get someone to give you $10,000 when you have nothing to give them in return? Or what is it that you're selling them, uh, a, a greater promise in return?

Grant Cardone 22:22 So what I did was I pitched this guy. I said, "Look." He's a business owner. He wants traffic in his company. Every, every business owner wants traffic. Every entrepreneur wants traffic to their website. And I said, "Look, I'm gonna drive traffic to your store." He owned a mattress store. Big margins. And I said, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure you have the biggest weekend that you've ever been here." And, uh, I said, "If you give me $6,000, I'll take the six grand to the store. In fact, you don't give me the money. Just call it in and approve it." I didn't wanna touch his money. I never asked anybody for any money. And I said, "I'm gonna go run a promotion for you. I'm gonna put together the banners, the logos. I'm gonna stand out in the street. I'm gonna drive the traffic to your place. What do you want, Grant? Uh, Lewis. What do you want, Lewis?" [laughs] Uh, I did that more than once, by the way. "What do you want, Lewis?"

Lewis Howes 23:15 [laughs] You did?

Grant Cardone 23:15 'Cause my name was Lewis, right?

Lewis Howes 23:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 23:18 And I said, "Dude, I don't want anything." He tried to give me money to do this. "I don't want your money. I just want the opportunity. I wanna prove myself." 'Cause what I really wanted from him was I wanted him to front the bill at the print shop-

Lewis Howes 23:31 Mm

Grant Cardone 23:31 ... so that he could put me in play. Well, I went and ran the whole promotion that weekend. I said, "If you, if you send them... If you just authorize the spend, I'll conduct the promo. I'll run it and do it." We did $91,000 worth of mattress sales.

Lewis Howes 23:49 No way.

Grant Cardone 23:49 We did 15,000 that weekend, and then another 65,000 over the, the next three weeks. And he's like, "Dude, you're a star." Now, now he's like, "Hey, what do you want for what you did for me this weekend? That was the best weekend we've ever had." And I'm like, "I don't want anything except to be your partner."

Lewis Howes 24:08 So, so you wanted equity?

Grant Cardone 24:09 I wanna be your partner, dude.

Lewis Howes 24:11 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 24:11 And I said, "I want 15% of the upside of your company." I said, "What's fair?" He's like, "15%. Everything above what I'm doing now, I'll give you 15%." He, he's the one that made the offer. I said, "That's awesome."

Lewis Howes 24:21 Wow.

Grant Cardone 24:22 And then that's when I said, "Hey, can you give me an advance of 10,000 on the 15%?" People think that I asked for 10 grand. I actually didn't get 10,000. I got an advance on a partnership, which is even better.

Lewis Howes 24:34 Wow. That's fascinating. So you never really a- you never asked for money. You said, "Give me equity with everything."

Grant Cardone 24:39 Give me equity, and then once I got the equity agreement on the upside, uh, most people are will- willing to give you this.

Lewis Howes 24:45 'Cause it's more than they've already ma- they, they're already making a certain amount. They never crossed past that probably in years. So they're like, "Okay, if you can help me 10X it, I'll give you a 15%."

Grant Cardone 24:54 I don't want a piece of what you're already doing. That's not fair. That's an unfair deal. I mean, you know, people are like, "I need to ask for more." Yeah, but you don't wanna ask and be, look stupid.

Lewis Howes 25:03 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 25:03 Like, you can't ask somebody to give you something of a company they already have. Also, it's interesting 'cause they d- again, they didn't show this and, and I look forward to kinda breaking this thing down. We're gonna actually, I'm gonna create a whole platform where I go in and break the show up and show people what they didn't see. When I left Vegas to fly to Pueblo, d- uh, the production company said, "Hey, what's your first move?" First move, I'm going to the bank to drop off the hundred. Second thing, I'm going to the gym to meet people. Third thing is I'm gonna find a business that's for s- for sale, and I'm gonna see if the guy that owns the company can give me a place to sleep. Those three things happened exactly the way I predicted before I got to Pueblo, before I even knew I was going to Pueblo. I mean, it happened just [snaps fingers] every one of them. And then Discovery came to me at four days and said, "Bro, you gotta slow down." I said, "What do you mean?"

Lewis Howes 25:50 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 25:50 We don't have a TV show if you keep winning.

Lewis Howes 25:53 Right. [laughs] If you, if you make it happen in two weeks, what are we gonna do?

Grant Cardone 25:57 I'm like, "Okay, come out here and watch me throw up, okay? Come o-

Lewis Howes 26:00 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 26:00 ... come out here and watch. I'm sick." I was sick from altitude sickness. I'm like, "What, what, what, you guys gotta cover how hard this is for me. I'm terrified. I'm cold. My back hurts. I don't have a good place to sleep. I'm pissing in a bottle." And then they cut all that-

Lewis Howes 26:12 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 26:12 ... out of the show. So, so, um, the point of that story is quit going for some dead Benjamins-

Lewis Howes 26:19 Mm

Grant Cardone 26:19 ... and start getting you some equity, okay? $100 bills are dead. They're from the past. Equity is the future. And you're better off with a future, if you believe in yourself, than you are with a dead Benjamin.

Lewis Howes 26:34 What are th- some, some things people should be looking for in terms of the right people or the right, uh, products or companies to say, okay, and how to position and package themselves to make a partnership equity deal? What should they be looking for, and how can they position and package the way you did?

Grant Cardone 26:52 Yeah, so like in Pueblo, there's 112,000 people that live there. The average household income there is $24,000 a year. Household income. Like, it's, it's one of the most beat-up, economically beat-up cities in America. They, they were at 8% unemployment when the country was at 3%. When COVID hit, it went to 22%.

Lewis Howes 27:13 Wow.

Grant Cardone 27:13 Like, just ridiculous, right? So now, when I'm in a problem environment like that, you have to do the math. So I'm like, okay, there's 112- uh, 112,000 people there. I, I can't meet them all, and I don't wanna meet them all. I only have 90 days. So then I said, "Okay, who's got the money in this town?" The businesses have the money in the town. This is the unfair advantage I have in this show, is that I did not go there to start a new business.

Lewis Howes 27:39 Mm.

Grant Cardone 27:39 I went there to find a business that was already banking. A lot of people think I started-

Lewis Howes 27:44 Did you have that intention before?

Grant Cardone 27:45 Oh, 100%.

Lewis Howes 27:46 Y- y-

Grant Cardone 27:46 I said, "I-

Lewis Howes 27:47 Yeah

Grant Cardone 27:47 ... there's no way I'm gonna start a new business." There's 34 million businesses in America. America does not need a new business.

Lewis Howes 27:54 And it's so hard to launch and create momentum, especially if you don't... Even with your audience, it's hard to launch a new business.

Grant Cardone 28:00 Dude, it is so ridiculous. It is so stupid what people are doing today. I'm gonna start a new beauty salon. I'm gonna start a new masseuse place. I'm gonna start a new c- cosmetologist hou- I'm gonna start a new... You got a new idea. Nobody needs it.

Lewis Howes 28:13 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 28:14 Like, if, if you were an alien looking down at pl- uh, the United States of America and saying, "Okay, what is there too much of?" Restaurants, bars, and businesses. There's too many of them. And then, and then somebody, some kid pops up, Paul pops up and says, "I'm gonna start a new business." And, and the guy from outside the planet's looking down there saying, "Well, that's stupid. Why don't you just go... Two-thirds of all the businesses in America break even or lose money."

Lewis Howes 28:39 So what I'm hearing you say, Grant, is, uh, a lot of people have the dream of wanting to start and launch a business. But what I'm hearing you say is it's probably a lot smarter to go find a failing business or a business that's breaking even, jump in, add value, and see if you can 10X that.

Grant Cardone 28:54 Dude, that's, that's how you get on planes. That's how you, you know, you go to the hospital. You need emergency care. You don't build a hospital. You just go to the hospital. You want food, you go to Whole Foods. You want gas, you go to the gas station. It's no different in business. It's a called a going concern for a reason. Find a going concern that's got a brand. Go in. That's what I did. I just went in and added value. Once I added value, actually we end up splitting off another business out of that. So, so out of that relationship. Y- your first question was, "Hey, who are you looking for?" I'm looking for contacts that can actually become contracts. I'm looking for specific relationships. They have to have money. They have to have credibility. They have to have credit lines. That's the only people I was looking for in Pueblo. Out of 112,000 people, are there 50 of them?

Lewis Howes 29:47 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 29:47 I need to meet 50 people that have money, credit, and credibility.

Lewis Howes 29:51 How did you feel, uh, 'cause I saw in, you know, the first episode that you got rejected a few times. How did you feel from someone who is getting yeses a lot and building their business so fast to going to a place where people just say, "Nah, I don't believe in you," or, "Eh, you don't seem credible," or how did you take it in- security-wise in- internally?

Grant Cardone 30:12 Well, what, what you, again, you, pieces you don't hear is I was in this meeting and this guy starts flexing on me.

Lewis Howes 30:18 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 30:19 And he literally, like I th- had to sit there and, and, and listen to his, "Well, I did $30 mil- I raised $30 million and I bought all this, and I put this together, and I'm the king," and la, la, la. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, "Dude, I'd like to just dro- I'd like... You wanna see a flex right now?"

Lewis Howes 30:37 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 30:38 You know, the same day I had written a check for like $45 million and I'm s- I'm having to bite my tongue. Like, he doesn't know I could be his investor. By the way, there was a great lesson in that.

Lewis Howes 30:48 Mm.

Grant Cardone 30:48 Like, I was nobody. Shaved head, old truck, no name, no social media following, and this guy treated me just like that, like I'm a nobody.

Lewis Howes 30:59 And you never know who you're talking to or who they're, uh, friends with or who their family is that could support you potentially.

Grant Cardone 31:06 Totally. Like, the same day this guy's flexing on me about how he raised 30 million, and he's the king of Pueblo-

Lewis Howes 31:13 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 31:14 ... and blah, blah, blah, I mean, like what I had in my checking account that day as Grant Cardone, I, I just wanted to pop it out on him.

Lewis Howes 31:23 [laughs] Be like, "Look at my bank account."

Grant Cardone 31:24 Be like, "Shut up, dog." What... Tre- treat everybody like... You, you, you never know who you're dealing with. You, you-

Lewis Howes 31:30 Yeah

Grant Cardone 31:30 ... know? And, and just because they're, they're having a bad day, you, you... One, you don't know who you're dealing with, and you... And number two, more importantly, you don't know who they're gonna become.

Lewis Howes 31:39 Mm, yeah. They may not have money yet, but in, in 10 years they might have a brand or audience or something that could support you.

Grant Cardone 31:46 Every accredited investor was a non-accredited investor at one time. Every whale was a minnow.

Lewis Howes 31:51 I mean, you've been doing sales for, uh, what? Four decades now.

Grant Cardone 31:55 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 31:55 You've been, you've been selling from cars to real estate to, you know, everything in between. You know, 11 best-selling books. You've been, you've been a selling machine. How did it feel to go in, uh, without being able to use any of that and go back to kinda the ba- basics of like, "Okay, I'm a brand-new car salesman just trying to figure out how to do this thing"? How did you have the confidence or the courage to go in blind and try to build these relationships?

Grant Cardone 32:22 Because I had the commitment. You know, I was committed-

Lewis Howes 32:24 Mm

Grant Cardone 32:24 ... to the, I was committed to the, the outcome. I always say, man, commitment comes with, with time and money.

Lewis Howes 32:31 The thing that you do extremely well is you're a master enroller, Grant, and I, I believe that we're either r- enrolling people in our vision or we're un-enrolling them in our vision every moment, every day, with our content, our posts, our interactions. And we could be un-enrolling people in our brand from one conversation or one thing that we, we do to s- piss someone off. Where did you learn the skill of enrollment, of getting people to buy into you and your vision?

Grant Cardone 32:58 I think what, what I do is, and I talk about this in Sell or Be Sold, I've been a sales guy for a long time, and I, I just learned early on. And I was terrible at sales at 17 years old, 18, 19, part-time, part-time sales guy. I was, I was awful. When I finally realized that sales was the only job I could get at 25 years old, I'm just like, "Dude, I just gotta tell people the truth 'cause I can't do all these tricks."

Lewis Howes 33:19 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 33:21 The NLP-

Lewis Howes 33:23 Right

Grant Cardone 33:23 ... the... And, and look, if it works for you, good, whatever, but the mirroring, the matching, they ask a question, you ask a question, the hot potato. I've, I've heard all these strategies.

Lewis Howes 33:33 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 33:34 And I'm like, "Dude, I just can't do it. I'm just gonna be me. Hey, guys, I'm, I'm moving from LA. I'm out of work. I'm looking for opportunity. I'm trying to move my family here. My name's Lewis Curtis. Uh, 2008 beat me up. I gotta get my family out of LA. Real estate's impossible. I can't buy out there. It's out, priced out of the market. And I'm here in Pueblo because I think there's opportunity here, and that's all I'm looking for. No handouts, no help. I don't... I got an old truck with me. I got no money. I left my kids with..." You gotta have your story so people enroll, but you also have to be talking to the right audience.

Lewis Howes 34:11 Mm.

Grant Cardone 34:11 I only spent time with people that were able, capable, qualified. I spent no time... I was in a meeting once in Pueblo. I walked into the meeting, assessed the situation, and bounced.

Lewis Howes 34:24 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 34:25 I said, "Guys, I'm done. I'm outta here." Boom, and I walked out. And, and my partner at that time, it- you'll see it later in the later shows, he's like, "What, what just happened?" I'm like, "There's nothing here, bro."

Lewis Howes 34:33 There's no money here.

Grant Cardone 34:34 There's no, there's no opportunity here. And I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell him I'm, I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell-

Lewis Howes 34:39 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 34:40 ... I couldn't tell anybody, so I had these little secrets going on. So, you know, how do you enroll people is, like, you gotta get enrolled.

Lewis Howes 34:46 Mm.

Grant Cardone 34:47 You know? My, my int- my personal integrity and ethics is why I can sell so hard. And because I believe in my product, I believe in my investment vehicle, I believe in my company. I don't trick people, screw people. Like, 35 years I've been in business, there's not one person in 35 years that says I owe them money. There's people that try to get stuff from me using lawyers and [censored] , but there's nobody that can say I ever financially damaged them in any way, not a penny.

Lewis Howes 35:16 Right.

Grant Cardone 35:16 And so that m- that, that allows me to go back into the world and push. It allows me to sell tickets for big prices. You know, when I spent $7 million to, to rent Mandalay Bay, dude, I can sell anybody a $20,000 ticket. Like, I spent... You know, somebody complained about my ticket prices, I'm like, "Dude, like I spent 7 million on this event. You spent 20 grand."

Lewis Howes 35:36 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 35:37 "Who, who got the best deal?"

Lewis Howes 35:39 How did you learn to have courage in your, in yourself when you were, you know, doing drugs and, uh, you know, uh, I think you were an alcoholic, I think, in the past when you were a teenager. Maybe not a full-on alcoholic, but you were doing drugs and-

Grant Cardone 35:49 No, it was a, it was a drug problem. It wasn't an alcohol problem.

Lewis Howes 35:52 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 35:52 It was a drug problem.

Lewis Howes 35:52 Drugs and just a, you know, kind of a deadbeat for, uh-

Grant Cardone 35:56 Thank you

Lewis Howes 35:56 ... off and off many years. How did you learn to kinda build confidence, though, so that you could be inspired in yourself to push bigger, to ask for more? How did you do that?

Grant Cardone 36:08 Well, well, first I quit using drugs. I mean-

Lewis Howes 36:11 Yeah

Grant Cardone 36:11 ... the, the, the, the order... E- everybody wants to get better and have confidence, but the first thing you gotta do is you gotta quit doing whatever's destroying your- ... destroying your self-esteem, you know?

Lewis Howes 36:21 Mm.

Grant Cardone 36:22 Uh, I'd like to believe that I could look in the mirror and tell myself I'm great and, and then I'd feel it, but if you're destroying yourself the other 23 hours and 56 minutes, the self-talk ain't gonna matter. So I had to quit doing damage to myself. Um, I hated myself. Uh, the worst part of my drug addiction was how, not, it wasn't what, just what the drugs were doing to me and, and the hangovers and the lost time and... It was the personal, personal deprivation-

Lewis Howes 36:54 Mm

Grant Cardone 36:54 ... and degrade that I was doing to myself. And how many times I tried to quit. I would... Lewis, every morning for 10 years I tr- I said, "Today's the last day. I'm never gonna use again." 15 minutes later-

Lewis Howes 37:06 10 years.

Grant Cardone 37:07 10 year, uh, nine years and, and nine years and, like, six months.

Lewis Howes 37:10 So what was the deciding factor that actually made you quit?

Grant Cardone 37:13 Uh, I finally went... You know, I had to go some, some place. I had to change my environment. So I ha- I went to a treatment center in Minneapolis, um, during the wintertime, late, late February. I was 25 years old, and spent 28 days there in an environment where nobody had drugs. I didn't have access to drugs, and people were starting to talk about, "Okay, how, how, how'd you get here?"

Lewis Howes 37:38 Mm.

Grant Cardone 37:38 Uh, they ended up putting me on drugs in the treatment center, and I'm like, "I don't want the drugs, dude." And they're like, "Oh, no, you need it to detox, to get off." I'm like... This, this was 30 years ago. They, like, they've really ramped that program up now. It's the legal, legal drug dealer now is the treatment center.

Lewis Howes 37:54 Right.

Grant Cardone 37:55 But, but the environment gave me at least... I was able to look around and see the damage drugs were causing these other people, men and women of all ages, and then that really solidified, "Okay, I'm stopping." But I needed, I needed a day, one day not to use drugs, 'cause I had been using drugs every day for nine years. Nine and a half years.

Lewis Howes 38:13 Wow.

Grant Cardone 38:14 And so I needed the first day. Once I got the first day, I'm like, "Shit, I can put together two days." Then my head started clearing up a little bit. 28 days later, I go home to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and that's when the rebuilding really took place and, and I had to replace all that drug time, which was a bunch of hours every day. This is what made me the beast. Like, the s- the savage that I am today.

Lewis Howes 38:35 You had to put that time to good use.

Grant Cardone 38:37 Dude, I-

Lewis Howes 38:37 You had to be productive with it

Grant Cardone 38:37 ... I had so much free time.

Lewis Howes 38:39 [laughs] Right. Not being high, not doing drugs with-

Grant Cardone 38:43 Not looking for drugs

Lewis Howes 38:43 ... not being with the friends that are doing the drugs. Yeah

Grant Cardone 38:45 ... looking for drugs, finding drugs, losing drugs. Like, you lose them, can't find them.

Lewis Howes 38:49 Hiding the drugs. Yeah.

Grant Cardone 38:51 Find them, buy them. S- lying to people, hiding from people. Uh, you know, it was terrible. It was terrible. I did that for nine and a half years. It was awful. It's the, it's the worst part of my life. It's the darkest, worst part of my life. And so I had to crawl out, and, and then I replaced... Literally, when I was 25 years old, I started every day with a meeting and I ended every day with a meeting. I'd go to a d- a Narcotics Anonymous meeting or some kind of 12-step program for... I'll bet you I did that for 15 or 16 years.

Lewis Howes 39:23 So you were all-in committed. I'm going to a, a meeting in the morning and at night.

Grant Cardone 39:27 I'm either g- I'm going there to help myself and I'm gonna help somebody else every day.

Lewis Howes 39:31 Wow. 15 years.

Grant Cardone 39:32 Yeah. And then, and then, um, that was my form of helping people. I'm like, "I'm gonna help other people that have this problem." That really kept me from going back. And then in the mean... I- i- when I wasn't at a meeting, I was studying sales for the first five. When I got out of the treatment center, between 25 and 30 years old, all I did every day was study sales, do sales, or I was in a meeting.

Lewis Howes 39:54 [laughs] That's impressive. What's the thing-

Grant Cardone 39:57 I would drive 25 minutes to work and I would listen to sales tapes. I'd listen to this one set of sales tapes I had, and I would learn how to, how to, how... I would learn the game. Like, I would learn how to talk to people and communicate. And it was really communication skills. It wasn't so much sales. It was more logic, how to make sense of a purchase or an investment.

Lewis Howes 40:16 Mm.

Grant Cardone 40:17 And then at lunch, sometimes at lunch I'd go to a meeting.

Lewis Howes 40:19 What was the, uh, in those early tapes, is there anything you remember that you still use today that, that seems to work consistently on, on the s- the science or secret of selling that, that's very simple maybe for someone to do, but maybe they just don't have the courage or confidence, the reps, to do it?

Grant Cardone 40:35 What, what happened the first... When I really started learning the, from the, the, in, in the beginning, what, what you learn is you're learning from the master, you know? And, and so I'm, I'm duplicating and emulating. Then at some point you cross over and you become the master.

Lewis Howes 40:51 Mm.

Grant Cardone 40:52 And, and if, if you're a guy like me, I'm always looking to improve everything. I'm looking for another little tweak, another little twist. You and I did that with the podcast. I'm looking for that, that next thing all the time, how to make something just a little better, uh, a little faster. And so at some point I kept studying this guy until I, I was able. In the beginning, I didn't challenge anything. I used, I duplicated.

Lewis Howes 41:17 Mm.

Grant Cardone 41:17 I got results.

Lewis Howes 41:17 Let me, let me follow the script that I, that I learned. Let me use exactly what he's telling me to do, do it.

Grant Cardone 41:22 I, whatever, whatever I heard, I'm a, I'm a be like, "I'm gonna make that work. That's gonna be my stable datum." And once I could rein- once I could trust that, then I could build on top of it. I never yeah-butted anything. "Oh, I got a better way" in the beginning. Dude, until I got the results over and over, consistent results, then I started bu- then I started teaching it to other people, then I started learning angles. And then-

Lewis Howes 41:46 Mm

Grant Cardone 41:46 ... then, then I basically created my own style and my own... I actually almost threw away what I had learned and created this new thing called information assisted selling.

Lewis Howes 41:55 Information assisted selling.

Grant Cardone 41:57 Where I started leading with what people wanted rather than... This guy kinda hid. It was the old school hide it. Don't, you avoid the price, bring it up later. And that's where I really started accelerating everything, giving people the information up front, allowing you to understand how much this watch or ring was or car was. Before you even asked about it, I'd tell you it's 58,000.

Lewis Howes 42:20 Mm. Right away. So you wouldn't wait till the very end. You'd say, "Here's everything."

Grant Cardone 42:23 Yeah. So look, look, if you're, if you're shopping for a car ... or a watch or a ring or a t- a coaching program, whatever it is, you, you probably wanna know how much it is. I know I would. This, this particular product's 58,000. It would require about, you know, $2,500 down. Your payments would be about 550 a month. Um, let's be sure you're on the right product. You see, I've already, I g- I got the va- the value proposition, the money. I got you thinking about money right now.

Lewis Howes 42:50 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 42:50 I want you thinking about money so that when I show the product, you can start making sense of it. 'Cause I can't convince you that it's worth it.

Lewis Howes 42:58 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 42:58 You have to convince you.

Lewis Howes 43:00 To flip it. Yeah.

Grant Cardone 43:01 Okay? I can build value, but you, the buyer is the buyer. I can't be the buyer. I can only help the buyer make sense of it.

Lewis Howes 43:09 Is there a certain amount of steps in this selling system that you have?

Grant Cardone 43:13 Uh, i- uh, yeah, it's, like, like five... Like, like tell them what your intention are. My intention is to get you to, to be, to be of service to you, to do business with you.

Lewis Howes 43:23 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 43:23 Okay?

Lewis Howes 43:23 So right up front, if I'm, if I'm looking to buy real estate-

Grant Cardone 43:28 I'm doing a co-

Lewis Howes 43:28 ... you would say what?

Grant Cardone 43:28 Let's say I'm doing a po- I'm doing a web- a webinar a- and it's a coaching class, 'cause you and I are in that space.

Lewis Howes 43:33 Yep. Yep.

Grant Cardone 43:34 You, you've heard me many times. Open the event with, "Hey, my intention is to get all of you to be my customer tonight."

Lewis Howes 43:41 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 43:41 "We have a $1,900 program, or a $9,000 program. We're gonna offer it to you tonight for 997. It's sitting over there at the website right now if you wanna go click it, get it. But my intention is to make every one of you a customer tonight. The most you can spend with me is 997 tonight, okay? Or you spend nothing at all. And then what I'm gonna do is spend the next three days, or three hours, or 30 minutes talking about this program."

Lewis Howes 44:09 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 44:10 But I let everybody know right from the get-go. Now, Russell, Russell does it different, you know? He's gonna wait till the end.

Lewis Howes 44:16 So that's step one, is be clear with your intention about-

Grant Cardone 44:19 Intention

Lewis Howes 44:19 ... Yeah.

Grant Cardone 44:19 What's my intention? Okay. Second is, what do I have to offer? Three, I need to qualify the lead. Is the lead even qualified to do anything with me? Otherwise, I need to bounce.

Lewis Howes 44:28 Do they have the money? Yeah. Yeah.

Grant Cardone 44:30 I need to bounce.

Lewis Howes 44:30 Do you tell p- do you tell people, "Hey, just go ahead and get off this training right now if you're, if y- your intention is not to be a, a customer," or do you s- allow them to kind of-

Grant Cardone 44:40 No, you can, you can-

Lewis Howes 44:41 ... watch what you-

Grant Cardone 44:41 You can listen if you want to.

Lewis Howes 44:43 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 44:43 You can keep listening if you want to. It's, you know, you can watch for free if you choose to. But let, let's say I'm selling a guy a watch. I mean, I'm gonna tell him, "It's 58,000. We do have a payment plan. Payments could be as low as 300 bucks a month. Um, but let me ask you a question. Have you bought, ever bought a $58,000 watch? No? What kind of watch do you have?" "I got a Seiko." "Great. How much was it?" "$200." "Right."

Lewis Howes 45:07 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 45:07 Now he's telling me, hey, maybe move him in d- into some different inventory. I might be on the wrong product.

Lewis Howes 45:12 Mm-hmm. Okay, so that's step three, I think you said, too.

Grant Cardone 45:15 Yeah, and then, then, then, and then it's gonna be I'm gonna explain my product, be sure it fits his needs, okay? And then I'm gonna trial close him and say, "Hey, come on inside. Let's, let's make this work. Let me make you a customer. Let me get you a watch. Let me get you a car. Let me get you a coaching program. Let me get you started," and then I'm gonna close the deal.

Lewis Howes 45:33 Did you say trial close? Is that what you said?

Grant Cardone 45:35 Yeah. I'm, I'm gonna test it. I'm gonna try to move that, I'm gonna try to move the buyer, "Hey, go to the, go to the table," right?

Lewis Howes 45:41 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Grant Cardone 45:41 For those of you who are ready, go to the table.

Lewis Howes 45:43 Go to check- go to the checkout page.

Grant Cardone 45:44 Huh?

Lewis Howes 45:44 Yeah, go to the checkout page.

Grant Cardone 45:45 Or go to the landing page.

Lewis Howes 45:46 Go to the landing page.

Grant Cardone 45:46 Right. A- and then hopefully I'll close the deal. And then, and then I move into follow-up. So it's, it's, it's j-

Lewis Howes 45:52 Yeah

Grant Cardone 45:52 ... it's not really a sales process. It's really a customer experience.

Lewis Howes 45:56 And, and what have you learned about, you've done so many massive, uh, deals over the last three or four years in real estate. What have you learned about negotiations and, and the power of negotiating, uh, to get exactly what you want in these bigger, you know, mega, multi-million dollar deals that you're doing?

Grant Cardone 46:16 It's, uh, gets pretty intense, man. Like, big, mass-

Lewis Howes 46:19 The negotiation process?

Grant Cardone 46:20 Oh, yeah. B- massive egos. Like-

Lewis Howes 46:23 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 46:25 ... you got a lot of people involved. You got very intelligent people involved. Everybody's got money. You know, it's like the whale and the great, the great, the, the, the great white and the killer whale's there, and the humpback's there.

Lewis Howes 46:38 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 46:38 And dude, ev- it's a feeding frenzy. Like, like, you know, everybody's got bulk. Everybody's got muscle. Everybody's got power. Everybody's got money.

Lewis Howes 46:48 But why do you think people are afraid to just talk about money, to make decisions on investing money? Uh, they're scared to go earn more. Why are people afraid of money in general, do you think?

Grant Cardone 46:58 Well, I, yeah, I could tell you for me, like, I was always scared of money, you know? Uh, and, and I was terrified of it. So, so, like, if you look at, still today, like, I look at the bill of everything.

Lewis Howes 47:08 The bill-

Grant Cardone 47:09 It's a bill of everything. I- if something costs something, I wanna know how much it was.

Lewis Howes 47:12 Uh-huh.

Grant Cardone 47:13 And so, like, how much is it? Like, I'm gonna ask that question w- whether, whether it matters or not. I'm... It doesn't matter where I get in my life. I, I don't think I'm ever gonna be free of, "How much was that?"

Lewis Howes 47:25 How much was the dinner? How much was this?

Grant Cardone 47:26 How much was dinner? How much was the tip? How much was the coat? How much was the jacket? What did... You know, me, uh, me and Elena, like, Elena's like, "Hey, it's gonna be fine, man. Like, look what, look, look at l- what, look at what you've done. We cannot spend this." And I'm like, "How much was it?" I wanna know how much it was, because when I grew up, you had to know what things cost.

Lewis Howes 47:44 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 47:45 And so the point, your, your question about money is, it's a terrifying thing, because it's the one thing in life that, you know, the NFL's not gonna give me the ball.

Lewis Howes 47:55 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 47:56 And, and I'm never gonna get a chance to golf. I can't win in those environments. But with money, everybody gets money. It's the one place where everybody gets it, and now what do I do?

Lewis Howes 48:06 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 48:06 And I, I could lose it now. So it's a terrifying concept. Like, like, p- power. You know, very few of us ever, ever get any kind of influence or power, right? And once you get it, you're like, "Hey, what do I do with this?" You know, am I gonna do it, I'm gonna, am I gonna do the right things with it?

Lewis Howes 48:20 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 48:20 And so I think people withhold themselves because they don't, we're not educated about money. We don't know where it comes from. We have a lot of misinformation about it. Our parents terrified us You know, money doesn't grow on trees. Uh, save your money, it'll save you. All these, these, these things our parents told us because they were enamored-

Lewis Howes 48:38 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 48:39 ... uh, or, or encumbered with the same kind of liabilities around money.

Lewis Howes 48:44 Right.

Grant Cardone 48:44 I don't know how to get it. I don't know how to keep it. And the th- the third, the worst part that we're all at is I don't know how to invest it.

Lewis Howes 48:53 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 48:53 So what I'll do is I'll... Some people get good at getting it. Very few actually. Fewer people at keeping it, but probably more than getting it.

Lewis Howes 49:02 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 49:02 There's probably a big group in America that have learned how to keep money.

Lewis Howes 49:05 'Cause they're afraid to lose it, so they keep-

Grant Cardone 49:07 They don't wanna invest it. They don't wanna use it. They don't wanna... You know, um, you know, Kanye talks about this, how white people, how white people save all their money, and they just keep it. They just store it. Like I had a, an u- uncle, he buried everything he ever made.

Lewis Howes 49:19 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 49:19 In the backyard.

Lewis Howes 49:20 Wow.

Grant Cardone 49:21 The other uncle was, was, um, he was, he was a guy that bought... He, he, he worked hard. Very, very frugal. Italian descent.

Lewis Howes 49:29 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 49:30 And he would, uh, buy, buy real estate, but it was always buy low and sell high. He actually never sold anything, but that was the concept. Buy low. Buy the cheapest, lowest, get everything on a deal. If there's food stamps to be gotten, you go get those food stamps. If there's a, if there's a government deal, get it. If it's Section 8 and the government'll pay you, pay it. So both these guys, different kind of mentalities, were extremely frugal.

Lewis Howes 49:52 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 49:53 My other uncle was, uh, worked in a refinery. He basically saved all his money. Paid everything off, got out of debt. That was their lifestyle. My dad died when I was 10. So he paid all his debt off, had everything paid and, and so that's all I had, right? E- everybody around me was like, "Get money."

Lewis Howes 50:12 Keep it.

Grant Cardone 50:12 Keep it.

Lewis Howes 50:13 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 50:13 Don't use it, you know. But y- but you should invest. But nobody ever learns that third one.

Lewis Howes 50:19 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 50:20 And, and so I think we're just a bunch of people walking around terrified of this w- this apparent apparency of it's scarce-

Lewis Howes 50:30 Right

Grant Cardone 50:31 ... and it's not.

Lewis Howes 50:32 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 50:34 And, and, and, you know, it's not, there's nothing scarce about it.

Lewis Howes 50:36 Didn't they just print more in the last couple years?

Grant Cardone 50:38 Dude, we printed, we, we, we printed more... I think we printed more money since the last time I was with you than they printed in the last 100 years.

Lewis Howes 50:47 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 50:48 Since I saw you last.

Lewis Howes 50:49 That's nuts.

Grant Cardone 50:50 So everybody should've got a pay raise.

Lewis Howes 50:52 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 50:53 And I know, I know people are scared of the bubble right now. They're like, "Oh, my God, man, things are, things have to... Um, real estate's too much and stocks are too much." None, none of this stuff has gone up equal to the amount of money printed.

Lewis Howes 51:07 Mm.

Grant Cardone 51:07 So if the print is this high, you know, if, if the print is that high and inflation, whi- that we're hearing about all the time, is this high, you'd have to assume it would ha- have at least this far to go.

Lewis Howes 51:20 Mm.

Grant Cardone 51:21 But, but that's only because people don't understand, when you print this much money you need to multiply times nine. Because money, when money's printed, when you take your money to the bank, when I take the money that you're gonna give me for this great interview today-

Lewis Howes 51:34 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 51:36 And I take it to the bank, I put it... As soon as it goes into the bank, the bank gets notified and the bank now has the ability to, to loan that money out nine times.

Lewis Howes 51:44 Nine times?

Grant Cardone 51:45 Nine times. So they don't keep money, okay? So if you put a million dollars with the bank today-

Lewis Howes 51:50 Wow

Grant Cardone 51:50 ... they're, they're gonna go make $9 million worth of loans tomorrow. That's what-

Lewis Howes 51:53 How do they, how do they make that? How do they do it nine times?

Grant Cardone 51:55 Well, that's what they're allowed to do by, by, by their regulations.

Lewis Howes 51:57 They can take a million dollars that you give them-

Grant Cardone 51:59 That's why they want deposits so much

Lewis Howes 52:01 ... and then they can go give $9 million in loans on that one million.

Grant Cardone 52:04 That's right.

Lewis Howes 52:05 Within a year, two years-

Grant Cardone 52:06 Tomorrow. Within one-

Lewis Howes 52:07 ... it's microseconds. In one day they can loan out 9 million if they wanted to.

Grant Cardone 52:10 When you, when you... This is what people don't understand. They... And this is what our parents didn't understand, okay?

Lewis Howes 52:14 Right.

Grant Cardone 52:14 So Bob goes out, Bob or Betty goes out and they work, and they make, they do really well and they make 200 grand a year. Maybe they're online doing online sales.

Lewis Howes 52:22 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 52:23 Hustle, hustle, hustle, sell, it's trading their most valuable thing. This is what I did for 25 years, from 25 to 51 years old. Spent my most valuable asset, time-

Lewis Howes 52:34 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 52:34 ... to get money. Terrified, terrified every second of every day. That's, that's really what's driven me the whole time, was terror. Like, when you don't know, you're gonna be scared.

Lewis Howes 52:44 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 52:45 So I'm going out to get money. I won't, I won't spend any of it because I'm terrified I... If I can't, I don't know how to get more. I'm worried I can't keep getting more. So then I'd get the money and then I'd rush off and spend my most valuable asset, time, again, to bring it to the bank.

Lewis Howes 53:01 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 53:02 And then they-

Lewis Howes 53:03 And then they go multiply it.

Grant Cardone 53:04 Dude, they're telling me to save it and they don't.

Lewis Howes 53:07 Mm.

Grant Cardone 53:08 And so when I quit listening to every, everybody that's got an opinion about money online, or my neighbors, or my uncles-

Lewis Howes 53:16 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 53:16 ... and I started saying, "What are they doing?" When I quit-

Lewis Howes 53:19 The banks

Grant Cardone 53:20 ... when I quit studying the influencers and started studying the banks, Goldman, JP Morgan, KKR, there's, it's a endless list of these guys.

Lewis Howes 53:30 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 53:31 You start studying those guys. Elon, study Elon. Elon doesn't keep any cash. He thinks the whole thing's a joke.

Lewis Howes 53:37 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 53:38 Which he's probably right.

Lewis Howes 53:39 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 53:40 So, so what does he do? He reinvests everything. He's not paying debt off. He's accumulating debt.

Lewis Howes 53:46 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 53:47 But Apple has debt, Google has debt, Facebook has debt, and they have cash reserves that, that are the biggest cash reserves on planet Earth. They could pay cash for everything.

Lewis Howes 53:57 Why do they get-

Grant Cardone 53:57 But they don't

Lewis Howes 53:58 ... why do they get debt when they have all the cash?

Grant Cardone 54:00 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 54:01 Why do they do that?

Grant Cardone 54:02 Because, because if I take, if I take... Man, you got a little white board right here.

Lewis Howes 54:06 Yeah. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 54:06 Man, God dang. Okay, so if I take, uh, the, uh... Apple just did this, okay? I got 90, I wanna make a $90 billion purchase.

Lewis Howes 54:13 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 54:13 I wanna make a nine... And, and they're like, "Yeah, we got the cash for that. In fact, we have cash plus another 50%."

Lewis Howes 54:20 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 54:20 "We got plenty of cash to do this." Okay, and then one of their people says, "Okay, bro, you do that, that is not a tax-deductible event. What we should do is we should go keep this." And go borrow 90 billion-

Lewis Howes 54:34 Really?

Grant Cardone 54:35 ... at, like, .005%.

Lewis Howes 54:39 Uh-huh.

Grant Cardone 54:40 Like, they're gonna pay a half, 1% for this debt. Maybe they pay 1%. Who cares?

Lewis Howes 54:45 Right.

Grant Cardone 54:46 They're like, "I don't care. It's a, it's a tax deduction anyway."

Lewis Howes 54:48 Interesting.

Grant Cardone 54:49 So now they have the best of both worlds. They have their cash, and they have debt. Now, back in when I was growing up, this debt would cost 10, 12, 15, 18%.

Lewis Howes 54:58 But it's so cheap now.

Grant Cardone 54:59 This debt... 'Cause we print money. We, we... Money is not scarce like our parents told us. Like, when I was growing up, I bet you I heard, I heard at least from my mother from the age of 10 to 15, if I didn't hear this 500 or 1,000 times, I never heard it once. "We don't own the electric company. Turn those lights out, boy."

Lewis Howes 55:20 Mm.

Grant Cardone 55:21 I still have that going on today. My dad, w- I, my mom told me my dad would... Because he worked so hard, dude. He, like, he was so, like, "Oh, I finally got it. I finally made it. Now I gotta protect it." He got stuck in the second piece, keeping it. You know, it's an emotional keep.

Lewis Howes 55:38 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 55:39 And so it's a, it's not a rational thing, 'cause you're hoarding now, you know? Still today, man, it's, it's tough for me to buy blue jeans if they're not on sale.

Lewis Howes 55:47 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 55:48 And I'm like, "This is stupid, man."

Lewis Howes 55:49 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 55:50 Like, why? I'm just gonna wait.

Lewis Howes 55:51 Right.

Grant Cardone 55:52 You know? So, so you know what I'm saying?

Lewis Howes 55:54 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 55:54 But it's really stupid that I even worry about it.

Lewis Howes 55:56 Right.

Grant Cardone 55:57 And I'm not saying on the come up I think you should worry about it.

Lewis Howes 56:00 Right.

Grant Cardone 56:00 But there needs to be where you can turn that switch off.

Lewis Howes 56:02 Mm-hmm. If you could give, um... You said there's a lot of misinformation and people just aren't educated on, on money in general when they're growing up-

Grant Cardone 56:10 Yeah

Lewis Howes 56:10 ... or there's just a lot of information out there.

Grant Cardone 56:12 Mis- mis-

Lewis Howes 56:12 That-

Grant Cardone 56:12 I think they're-

Lewis Howes 56:13 Misinformation

Grant Cardone 56:13 ... miseducated is more-

Lewis Howes 56:14 Miseducated

Grant Cardone 56:15 ... it's not financial illiteracy. It's a financial... It's almost like we've been hypnotized-

Lewis Howes 56:20 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 56:20 ... with the wrong set of rules.

Lewis Howes 56:23 So if you could only share three pieces of information to your kids or the, the younger generation, or anyone stuck on hoarding and keeping money, what would you say would be those three things that you would share-

Grant Cardone 56:38 Yeah

Lewis Howes 56:38 ... to change the philosophy and mindset around the fear of money?

Grant Cardone 56:42 Well, I think number one is there's a bigger problem with hoarding in this country than there is with spenders. But what we see is, what we hear is all the spenders.

Lewis Howes 56:53 Who are getting into debt, right?

Grant Cardone 56:55 Yeah. "Oh, my God, you know, he did this and he's overspending." But really, really you have more of a hoarding issue than you have a spender issue.

Lewis Howes 57:02 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 57:02 It's number one. I think people err more on saving and not knowing how to use money than they do on buying Richards and, and, and Lambos-

Lewis Howes 57:12 Right

Grant Cardone 57:12 ... even though you see all that around LA.

Lewis Howes 57:14 Right.

Grant Cardone 57:14 And I know that's... I know these people are... I walk into Vegas and I sit down at a table in Vegas, and I know the three guys playing, they're, they're playing 10 times more than I am. The, like, they're playing $2,000 a hand, I'm playing $25. I'm like, I know they... I know I'm in a better position to, to play what they're playing for-

Lewis Howes 57:31 Mm

Grant Cardone 57:31 ... but I can't do it.

Lewis Howes 57:32 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 57:32 So, uh, what the advice I would give people is, like, I would just assume that everything you know about money is incorrect.

Lewis Howes 57:41 Everything.

Grant Cardone 57:41 Every, every single thing you know about money.

Lewis Howes 57:43 Just assume it so you can get back to where?

Grant Cardone 57:45 So, so, so that you can actually have a whi- you can have a clean, a clean board to, to, to operate from.

Lewis Howes 57:52 Uh-huh.

Grant Cardone 57:52 Because if you go out right now and try to stack new information-

Lewis Howes 57:56 Mm

Grant Cardone 57:56 ... financial literacy on top of, you know, a, a toxic foundation-

Lewis Howes 58:00 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 58:00 ... i- i- and it's all gonna get all... That's why when I tell people, "Don't go buy a house," everybody freaks out. They're like, "That can't be right. That can't be right." Why? Because that's what you've been told to buy a house your whole life, 'cause the banks want you to buy a house. Now everybody that just heard that is gonna say, "I just saw you buy a house in Malibu."

Lewis Howes 58:16 Right.

Grant Cardone 58:17 "I can do anything I want now."

Lewis Howes 58:18 Right. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 58:19 Here comes the arrogance.

Lewis Howes 58:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 58:21 So, but, I mean, I'm in a position now, like, if I wanna buy that house in Malibu, I can. But on the come up, buying a house is not what you should do. You should... One, I would scrape off that you don't know anything. Two, I would, uh, I would invest everything you can in you.

Lewis Howes 58:35 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 58:36 It's tax deductible. You never lose it. Your, the, the, a person's personal appreciation will always be bigger than any other asset class.

Lewis Howes 58:44 Mm. I love that.

Grant Cardone 58:45 Okay?

Lewis Howes 58:46 Love that.

Grant Cardone 58:46 Bitcoin can't match it.

Lewis Howes 58:47 Personal-

Grant Cardone 58:47 Real estate can't match it.

Lewis Howes 58:48 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 58:48 My personal asset appreciation will always... It is infinite. You know, who knows, I could be the next male Oprah.

Lewis Howes 58:56 Right.

Grant Cardone 58:57 Or somebody watching could be the next Rock or whatever, right?

Lewis Howes 59:01 Wow.

Grant Cardone 59:01 Like, that, what, what, what is that appreciation value? It, it's straight up.

Lewis Howes 59:05 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 59:06 So the, the first thing people should invest money in-

Lewis Howes 59:08 Mm

Grant Cardone 59:08 ... even use debt on-

Lewis Howes 59:10 Mm

Grant Cardone 59:10 ... is their personal improvement.

Lewis Howes 59:12 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 59:12 If you told me you had to go borrow $1,000 to, to go to one of your classes to become great, and it had any potential at all-

Lewis Howes 59:21 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 59:21 ... like, even a 1% chance of make- putting you on the road to greatness, I'd be like d- dude, go, you go give Amex or Visa $1,000 right now.

Lewis Howes 59:29 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 59:30 I don't even care what the rate is.

Lewis Howes 59:32 Right.

Grant Cardone 59:32 'Cause the infinite return.

Lewis Howes 59:35 Mm.

Grant Cardone 59:35 Infinite beats 18%.

Lewis Howes 59:37 [laughs] Okay.

Grant Cardone 59:39 So number one, invest in yourself. Number two, I would invest in your business. Whatever your business is or your department or your division is. Like, the first 30 years of my career, I didn't have... I didn't own a company, but, but I did invest in my department, even though I worked for a company.

Lewis Howes 59:53 Mm.

Grant Cardone 59:53 I had a secretary. I didn't have the company pay for my secretary. I paid for that. I wanted her to work for me. It was my mom, by the way.

Lewis Howes 1:00:00 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:00:01 And so, um, invest in yourself, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:00:04 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:00:04 Like, invest in yourself, then invest in your business or your department, your skill set. If it's your company, then invest in your company, even down to zero. Like, I wouldn't keep, I wouldn't keep money around.

Lewis Howes 1:00:14 Okay.

Grant Cardone 1:00:15 I wouldn't save for a rainy day. I wouldn't have an emergency account. I did all of that.

Lewis Howes 1:00:19 Why not? Why not?

Grant Cardone 1:00:20 Because you don't need it. You, you don't... You need, you need... What you need is you need hustle. You need other people's money. You need to go knock on another door, make another contact. You don't need reserves of money. Uh, so what you need is cash flow.

Lewis Howes 1:00:35 Okay. So how do we get cash flow?

Grant Cardone 1:00:37 So you, by making investments.

Lewis Howes 1:00:38 Yes

Grant Cardone 1:00:38 That's the third. Y- and other things, other things that don't require my skillset.

Lewis Howes 1:00:43 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:00:43 So that would be the third piece of advice, is start investing in real assets that cash flow. Number two that, or B, that can appreciate. Three, that are provide tax shelters. Um, and if you look at those three criteria, Bitcoin doesn't cover it, stocks probably don't cover it, gambling doesn't [laughs] .

Lewis Howes 1:01:07 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:01:07 Um, that one, gold doesn't, silver doesn't, uh, Bit- uh, real estate. Real estate-

Lewis Howes 1:01:14 NFTs don't. Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:01:14 ... NFTs don't 'cause they don't cash flow. That's why when you invested in NFTs and you're like, "Okay, they're cool," you're crossing your fingers hoping-

Lewis Howes 1:01:21 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:01:21 ... but you don't see a check. With the real estate, I'm sending you a check every month. You're like, "Okay, I just got another check. I just got another check. I just got..." Like, you don't have to be in mystery.

Lewis Howes 1:01:29 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:01:30 But the most important thing is that people need to, like, you got, you gotta s- you gotta know that if you're in... You live in America and you're having a money problem, it is not 'cause you're stupid, and it's not 'cause you're lazy.

Lewis Howes 1:01:42 What is it?

Grant Cardone 1:01:43 It's 'cause, it's 'cause you have the wrong information.

Lewis Howes 1:01:44 The wrong information.

Grant Cardone 1:01:45 If you're losing at the table, and there's peop- other people winning there, okay, you're j- you just have the wrong data. And I believe that Americans, particularly Americans, have the wrong data about money, that they're financially, they have been, they have, like, med- there's medical misinformation. There is financial-

Lewis Howes 1:02:04 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:02:04 ... misinformation in the marketplace-

Lewis Howes 1:02:06 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:02:06 ... that is perpetuated by the banks and the institutions because every time you operate under their hypnotism, you benefit them-

Lewis Howes 1:02:15 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:02:15 ... not your family.

Lewis Howes 1:02:16 So if someone's got between 1,000 and 10,000 and they're trying to multiply it to 100,000, what would be the steps they would take? How long do you think it would take them to go from 1,000 or 10,000 to multiply it? And would you say put that all in your own personal investment? Uh, would you put it, invest in the business that you're in? Would you invest it in other things that cash flow, appreciate, and provide tax shelters? What would you do?

Grant Cardone 1:02:41 If you got $1,000, I would, like, just keep, you know, keep investing in yourself until you got another 1,000.

Lewis Howes 1:02:46 Okay.

Grant Cardone 1:02:47 And, and then invest in yourself. You know, now, now you got 2,000 invested in you.

Lewis Howes 1:02:51 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:02:51 Go, go, go... Y- you should start making money faster.

Lewis Howes 1:02:55 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:02:56 At some point you should start, like, every time you make an investment in yourself, if I put fuel in my car, it's supposed to take me farther.

Lewis Howes 1:03:01 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:03:01 Right? So if I invest in myself, then... And look, you know, there's things I bought that I didn't get a return on right away, but I didn't quit investing in a course or a workshop or training or education-

Lewis Howes 1:03:13 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:03:13 ... because it didn't work.

Lewis Howes 1:03:15 Or your health or-

Grant Cardone 1:03:15 I spent 17 years going to school. None of it was any good for me.

Lewis Howes 1:03:18 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:03:19 But it did teach me-

Lewis Howes 1:03:20 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:03:21 It did teach me how to go to school.

Lewis Howes 1:03:23 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:03:24 You know?

Lewis Howes 1:03:24 How to study.

Grant Cardone 1:03:25 How to study, how to go there, how to fin- how to complete a course. Like, I, I completed college.

Lewis Howes 1:03:29 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:03:29 I'm not proud of that, by the way.

Lewis Howes 1:03:31 You're not proud you completed it? Why not?

Grant Cardone 1:03:32 No, no, because it was stu- it was ridiculous. I should've dropped out. Like, I, I knew it was a bad thing. I knew-

Lewis Howes 1:03:37 What, what'd you major in?

Grant Cardone 1:03:38 Uh, I majed in accounting. It's a good degree. It's not like just some, you know, business degree.

Lewis Howes 1:03:42 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:03:43 Uh-

Lewis Howes 1:03:43 But you should've dropped out of it. Why?

Grant Cardone 1:03:45 I should 100% 'cause I, I w- I mean, I would still, I would still b- I would... Well, I'd have a five-year jump on my career.

Lewis Howes 1:03:52 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:03:52 But the problem is I was on drugs. So, so, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:03:57 Phys- actual drugs, you mean?

Grant Cardone 1:03:58 If I wouldn't have been on drugs, I would've quit college 'cause I would've had enough confidence in myself.

Lewis Howes 1:04:02 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:04:03 When you're on drugs, you can't have confidence-

Lewis Howes 1:04:05 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:04:05 ... 'cause you know you're, you know you're drugged.

Lewis Howes 1:04:07 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:04:08 So everything is second-guessed because, like, my self-esteem was like, like, through, through the basement. And so I'm like, "I need to quit college," but everybody around me is, "Oh no, you gotta finish college. You gotta finish college." I'm like, "What do I know? I'm a drug addict."

Lewis Howes 1:04:19 Mm-hmm. "And if I drop out, I don't have a degree-

Grant Cardone 1:04:21 "And then I got-"

Lewis Howes 1:04:22 "... no one's gonna hire me." And yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:04:23 I didn't even worry about any of that-

Lewis Howes 1:04:24 No

Grant Cardone 1:04:24 ... 'cause, th- you know, I didn't worry about that. I just didn't have the confidence to follow my intuition. You can't when you're-

Lewis Howes 1:04:31 On drugs. Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:04:32 ... when you're not yourself. So what, what do you do with 1,000 bucks, right?

Lewis Howes 1:04:36 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:04:36 Um, you know, I, I think you just gotta keep investing in you until like, oh, oh, now I'm making $3,000.

Lewis Howes 1:04:43 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:04:43 Okay, boom. Reinvest all that again. But what we do is we start taking it off the table, right?

Lewis Howes 1:04:48 We save it. We don't invest it.

Grant Cardone 1:04:49 So I think people just need to get on that, that cycle of like, "Okay, I'm gonna keep repeating this activity. I'm gonna reinvest some money in myself, go to the workshop or whatever."

Lewis Howes 1:04:58 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:04:58 "Monday I gotta be hustling again." Until, "Okay, now I got $4,000. Okay, now I got 5,000." Now the income's starting to pick up. Income has to pick up. In- the income should be an indication that whatever you're learning is helping you.

Lewis Howes 1:05:10 That's interesting.

Grant Cardone 1:05:12 Until one day you're like, "Okay, I have more money here than I can actually-

Lewis Howes 1:05:15 Invest in myself

Grant Cardone 1:05:16 ... I can't... uh, like, there's nothing I can go to-

Lewis Howes 1:05:18 Right

Grant Cardone 1:05:18 ... to get rid of this money." You need to get rid of that money though.

Lewis Howes 1:05:21 All my free time is going to my workshops.

Grant Cardone 1:05:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:05:23 I don't have more free time to invest in me.

Grant Cardone 1:05:24 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:05:25 I'm developing skills. I'm working. I'm earning more.

Grant Cardone 1:05:28 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:05:28 Now what's the next step?

Grant Cardone 1:05:30 Yeah. A- and now, now, now it would be, "Okay, I gotta spend money on marketing."

Lewis Howes 1:05:34 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:05:34 I wouldn't go make a... I wouldn't go look for an investment right now.

Lewis Howes 1:05:36 Mm, mm.

Grant Cardone 1:05:37 I'm gonna spend money on marketing now. Now, now, now I'm gonna spend money on marketing to get me more leads.

Lewis Howes 1:05:42 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:05:43 And I would... You know, a big mistake I made in my career was not spending more money on marketing.

Lewis Howes 1:05:47 'Cause you turned, what, 50 when you really started investing in-

Grant Cardone 1:05:49 I was 50. I was 51 when we started playing the social media game, and, and I was probably 56, 55 or 56 when we started spending money on marketing.

Lewis Howes 1:05:59 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:05:59 Yeah. I, I-

Lewis Howes 1:06:00 51 when you started doing social media?

Grant Cardone 1:06:03 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:06:04 And then 50-

Grant Cardone 1:06:04 And I, and I should've been spending money, I should've been spending money when I was 25 years old. When I was selling cars, I should've spending money, been spending money on ads, but I was scared, man. So, so-

Lewis Howes 1:06:16 So what made you not scared 25 years later, 26 years later, at 51?

Grant Cardone 1:06:21 I started studying, hey, what do, what do all these successful people have in common? You know, whether it was the mattress dealer, the car dealer, the furniture dealer, or Elon Musk, they spend money, man. You know, they spend money. They spend a lot of money And they don't worry about money the way I was worried about it. They use money, you know? They used it. They didn't save it. They didn't hoard money.

Lewis Howes 1:06:45 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:06:46 And the greatest companies on this planet today, the ones that have just like... Th- some of these companies have lost money for 25 years. Look at Amazon.

Lewis Howes 1:06:54 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:06:54 Reinvest, 1.7 million employees. When I started, I, I remember I looked at Ernst & Young, I said... I had a buddy that worked at Ernst & Young. I said, "How many employees you got?" He's like, "240,000."

Lewis Howes 1:07:04 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:07:05 And I'm worried about 10 people?

Lewis Howes 1:07:07 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:07:07 What am I thinking?

Lewis Howes 1:07:08 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:07:09 So, so when I quit studying individuals and started studying people, everything shifted for me. When I quit trying to be the, you know, when I quit worrying about what Bob was doing or Pete or whoever, and started saying, "Hey, man, what is this big company doing?"

Lewis Howes 1:07:27 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:07:28 Because that also relieved me of being competitive with this guy, Pete, and started saying, "Okay, I'm gonna go do what Coca-Cola does." That's when I bought the plane.

Lewis Howes 1:07:36 Wow. Really?

Grant Cardone 1:07:37 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:07:38 How old were you when you bought the plane?

Grant Cardone 1:07:39 Uh, I was, uh, 50, maybe 55 the first one. I bought it 'cause, 'cause I studied what Coca-Cola was doing. They bought planes. I said, "Why are they buying planes?" Oh, then I learned how they write them off, and then I learned how they trade them every three years.

Lewis Howes 1:07:54 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 1:07:55 So notice every three years I'm trading a plane. I'm getting rid of it, replacing it with another one. But what are they using it for? They don't use it for pleasure. They're not using it for Instagram photos.

Lewis Howes 1:08:05 Right. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:08:05 They're using it to go and set up headquarters in other countries.

Lewis Howes 1:08:09 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:08:10 You know? So, so that's when I wrote Be- uh, If, If You're Not First You're Last, because when I started studying these companies I'm like, "Coca-Cola's everywhere. You can't go any place and not see Coca-Cola." And, and I was, I was like this big. I was always thinking about, "What can I keep?"

Lewis Howes 1:08:26 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:08:26 And they were thinking about, "How many shelves can we get on? How many eyeballs can we see?"

Lewis Howes 1:08:31 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:08:32 So that's when, that's when it all clicked for me. You know? And, and then that goes back to that thing about the financial misinformation, right? It's like, "Who am I studying?" And, and that's, that's when we started to, you know, open up the funds for, for... I was at, uh... went to New York City to go walk in Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan's offices. I wanted to walk in and see what it was like. These are hundred, multi-hundred billion dollar companies.

Lewis Howes 1:08:56 Crazy.

Grant Cardone 1:08:57 You know? And I walked in, I was like, "Oh, my God, man." I just... it just all hit me in a second. I'd been doing everything wrong.

Lewis Howes 1:09:06 What were they doing different?

Grant Cardone 1:09:08 They owned the building.

Lewis Howes 1:09:09 Mm. They weren't renting the building?

Grant Cardone 1:09:11 They owned the building. Well, they don't care if they rent.

Lewis Howes 1:09:12 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:09:13 They, they could rent it, but they owned it. The elevators were bigger than this studio.

Lewis Howes 1:09:16 Oh, right.

Grant Cardone 1:09:16 One elevator.

Lewis Howes 1:09:17 [laughs] That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 1:09:19 And 60 people got on that elevator-

Lewis Howes 1:09:21 Oh, my gosh

Grant Cardone 1:09:21 ... and went to the, went to the 120th floor. And then there was six, six of these elevators. People going up and down. Everybody told me, "Don't take people's money. Do not let investors ve- invest with you. Keep the whole deal for yourself." The second I walked into Goldman Sachs-

Lewis Howes 1:09:37 Because all they're doing is getting investor money

Grant Cardone 1:09:38 ... that's all they do. Okay? And the difference is, what I do is I, I could go to Goldman S- I was there. They would give me money.

Lewis Howes 1:09:47 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:09:47 And I'm like, "I'm not gonna get money from them."

Lewis Howes 1:09:50 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:09:50 "I'm gonna do what they do."

Lewis Howes 1:09:51 From individuals.

Grant Cardone 1:09:53 Exactly. From my friends, from people that follow me, from people that support me. Okay? Goldman Sachs will give money to anybody.

Lewis Howes 1:09:59 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:10:00 Okay. They don't know how to go to these people. They're not on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or TikTok. So I'm gonna create a fund where I can tell my audience, "Hey, Lewis, you can invest with me." I'm gonna kick Goldman out of the deal, or JP, or whoever the... There, there's a bunch of these, these guys, you know? It's not that they're doing a bad thing or, or, or anything. I'm not saying they're, they're, they're the devil. But they're close. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:10:25 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:10:25 Okay? Because that... Uh, they, they, they're, they're, they're not gonna call you up and say, "How you doing, man?"

Lewis Howes 1:10:29 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:10:30 You know? Without saying, "Hey, you got any money to invest?"

Lewis Howes 1:10:33 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:10:33 It's just not... You know, that's not what they do. Their, their, their job is to make money, period. So anyway, when I saw that I'm like, "Okay, these people are... These are the richest institutions on the planet. They fund everything that happens." Um, the company BlackRock. BlackRock's gonna be... BlackRock and Vanguard, these are multi... you know, probably gonna be worth $20 trillion each in the next handful of years. They'll own... They, they say they'll own 99% of all the assets on planet Earth, not just in America.

Lewis Howes 1:10:59 [laughs] How are they able to do that?

Grant Cardone 1:11:02 Because, because they scale, right?

Lewis Howes 1:11:04 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:11:04 Because they think, they think big, so they, they, you know, they're funding everything. Everything that happens on this planet from media to pharmaceutical is gonna be funded by those two companies.

Lewis Howes 1:11:12 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:11:13 So it just... When you're st- when you're studying your rich uncle or the neighbor down the street, the, the think is only so big. And then when I started studying these other companies I was like, "Okay, this is who..." If you wanna create that kind of legacy wealth-

Lewis Howes 1:11:30 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:11:30 ... and really help a lot of people. 'Cause they're, they are in a position to help or hurt a lot of people. That's the scale you gotta think at.

Lewis Howes 1:11:37 Yeah. But it took you really 25 years to get there, to start thinking that way. Is that right? 'Cause you weren't able to see yourself spending money for 25 years. You were just trying to earn-

Grant Cardone 1:11:48 Because-

Lewis Howes 1:11:48 ... more and more and more

Grant Cardone 1:11:49 ... yeah, because I was just trying to... Because I was... The grind, the grind, the grind was so... It was such a low-level grind.

Lewis Howes 1:11:56 What have you learned about the art of negotiation during, you know, these bigger deals for yourself? How to navigate those.

Grant Cardone 1:12:03 Y- g- you know, most of these deals are lost over face. They're not even lost over money, they're lost over somebody losing face. I'm doing a deal right now.

Lewis Howes 1:12:11 You mean ego or mean, like, uh... What do you mean?

Grant Cardone 1:12:13 I, I, I can't... If I give you any more I lose face.

Lewis Howes 1:12:17 Oh, okay. Got you.

Grant Cardone 1:12:19 So I'm negotiating a deal right now, and I said, "Look, if I give this guy exactly what he wants right now, he still will not do it." And they're like-

Lewis Howes 1:12:26 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:12:26 ... "Why is that?" "Because he's gonna lose face." So it's, it's, it's, people have to win. It's n- it's almost never about just the money, it's how do I win not just financially, but how do I win and feel good about this transaction? Because I've done transactions before where I, uh, supposedly won in the moment and everybody felt terrible.

Lewis Howes 1:12:48 So it's not a win unless everyone wins.

Grant Cardone 1:12:50 Du- dude, everybody needs to win. Everybody needs to win something. Like, everybody needs to feel, like, good about the transaction. I'd rather pay a little more and make sure you feel good than p- I pay a little less and you feel bad because I can't do another deal with you now.

Lewis Howes 1:13:07 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:13:09 And I'm trying to do more deals. And then everybody's got, everybody's got a motivation. Everyone has a motivation. Every buyer has a motivation. Every seller has a motivation. Most of the time it has nothing to do with the money. You, you have to find the motivation.

Lewis Howes 1:13:26 How do you do that quickly for yourself? Are you asking certain questions to figure out what that is? Are you just listening to their, you know... Without asking them, "What's your motivation?" How do you ask them?

Grant Cardone 1:13:34 I, I could, I could ask that. "Other than money, what, what, you know, why, w- w- what do you need? What's your motivation?" I could ask them straight up. Asking, asking those kind of direct questions are very powerful. "Hey, why would you pick me as a buyer? There's so many other people that could buy this asset." Like, that's one I used in the real estate game. These are hundred million dollar projects, some of which you're invested in.

Lewis Howes 1:13:59 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:13:59 So I'm like, "Hey, guys. Like, JP Morgan's trying to buy this. Blackstone's trying to buy this. Grant Cardone's trying to buy this, and two other groups that have more assets than I have. I, I'm the little guy on the list. Why me? Why would you pick me?" "Well, we probably won't." See, that's-

Lewis Howes 1:14:17 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:14:18 ... me qualifying.

Lewis Howes 1:14:19 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:14:20 You know, "We're probably gonna give it to, we're probably gonna give it to the guy that just sold, uh, the New York Mets." I just lost a deal to that guy. So there was no number. There was nothing I could have done, no number I could have done that would've gotten that deal.

Lewis Howes 1:14:33 So what does that do for you when you have that information? Does it just allow you to move on quicker-

Grant Cardone 1:14:36 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:36 ... to the next opportunity? Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:14:38 Okay. Well, I'll keep my, you know, I'll keep my, I, I, I stay... In real estate it's called staying by the board. I'm waiting for a rebound.

Lewis Howes 1:14:44 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:14:44 Maybe he blows.

Lewis Howes 1:14:45 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:14:45 Maybe the guy leaves and I'm there s- waiting for the, waiting for the rebound. I'm just wa- waiting for a ball to fall in my hands, right? And, and so, um, so I'll wait, I'll wait until he closes. Um, but, but it lets me know, hey, go add something else. That's that 10X mentality, okay?

Lewis Howes 1:15:04 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:15:04 Don't depend on this one thing. You know, if you're disappointed, if I'm disappointed, it's because I'm relying on too few of things.

Lewis Howes 1:15:13 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:15:13 If I resent my customer, it is because I have too few.

Lewis Howes 1:15:18 Too few customers.

Grant Cardone 1:15:20 Yeah. So everybody, the beauty salon, the restaurant, the bar, the bar owner, um, the consultant, we've all had the experience of resenting our customers.

Lewis Howes 1:15:31 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:15:31 Starting not to like them, and it's because we've become dependent upon them. We have too few.

Lewis Howes 1:15:39 If we're resenting our customer, what is that saying about us? That we're not building our brand, that we're not growing, that we're not selling enough?

Grant Cardone 1:15:45 Yeah. You, you didn't go, you didn't, you didn't build the top of your funnel out enough. Because this, this part of it's easy-

Lewis Howes 1:15:52 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:15:53 ... even though you hate them. They never pay you in mo- This is the kind of stuff that goes on. "They don't pay me enough. They always complain. They never use the product. No matter what I do for them, they [censored] and complain."

Lewis Howes 1:16:02 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:16:02 Okay? "They're never happy," blah, blah, blah, right?

Lewis Howes 1:16:05 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:16:06 Well, the truth is those are indications that you didn't build your, your customer base wide enough because you now resent them. Your resentment is an indication that you rely on them too much, and every time they complain to you-

Lewis Howes 1:16:21 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:16:21 ... it reminds you, " [censored] I'm too reliant on too little." And, and we've all done it. We all do it. I've done it. Uh, right now I'm doing it in my real estate. I told my guy Ryan the other day, I said, "We're depending on this one guy too much." And he's like, "How, why, why do you say that?" "'Cause I'm starting to resent him."

Lewis Howes 1:16:38 So what's the first thing we should th- do? What are the, what's the action steps after that when we resent our customers?

Grant Cardone 1:16:44 You, you gotta, you got, you gotta understand it's not about them, it's about you.

Lewis Howes 1:16:47 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:16:48 It has nothing to do with them. You need to go wide. You need to go get more customers. If you resent Facebook, if you p- If Facebook pisses you off-

Lewis Howes 1:16:55 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:16:56 ... it is because you are too reliant on Facebook.

Lewis Howes 1:16:59 Mm. You gotta get other platforms. You gotta build other leads in other places. There's a ton of social media sites. Don't rely on one.

Grant Cardone 1:17:07 Exactly. And so for me, resentment is always an indication of something about me.

Lewis Howes 1:17:12 What happens if you resent a family member? If, if you resent your kids? You're not gonna say, "Oh, I'm gonna go find new kids." [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:17:18 Yeah. No, but, but I don't know. I mean, I don't resent my kids, so you know.

Lewis Howes 1:17:22 Yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:17:23 I might, maybe I'm doing some stuff with my kids. I don't have that particular issue, but maybe, maybe I'm doing some stuff with my kids that somebody else should be doing.

Lewis Howes 1:17:32 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:17:32 Right? So maybe, you know... I remember when Elena, when we first had Sabrina, I said, "Elena, you cannot be with Sabrina every s- hour of every, of the day." And, and, and I'm like, "I don't want that. I, we need to get a nanny so that you're not resenting-

Lewis Howes 1:17:47 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:17:48 ... that your entire life..." And I know this is hard for women to hear, but no, no woman, no, no w- no man or woman should spend all their time with a kid. Like, how can that be entertaining? Like, I, I, I love my kids. I don't wanna be with them all the time.

Lewis Howes 1:18:07 Right. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:18:07 Ne- never have wanted to be with them all the time. I, I wanna be with them more now when they're growing up than I did when they were three months old. Like, n- like, "Oh, you're so cute. You're so cute," until you're not.

Lewis Howes 1:18:17 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:18:19 And so, and so, you know, if you're resenting your kids, maybe it's because you are not willing to spend money on a nanny.

Lewis Howes 1:18:27 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:18:28 Or-

Lewis Howes 1:18:29 Thinking of new strategies-

Grant Cardone 1:18:30 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:18:30 ... just like in your business. What's a new strategy to increase your customers, to increase-

Grant Cardone 1:18:34 Yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 1:18:34 ... the top of the funnel to bring people in? Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:18:36 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:18:36 You know, a lot of people will say this, even still today, I know you've talked about this a lot, that, uh, that money won't make you happy. Uh, do you think- Most people with money are happy. People that have above their means, that have an abundance of finances in their bank, that can buy any th- thing, go anywhere at any time, do you think most of them are happy? And how do you build wealth and stay happy at the same time?

Grant Cardone 1:19:01 Well, number one is I don't think, you know, m- money will not make you happy. Like, if you're not happy, you're not happy. So it'll make you jubilant and it'll make you giddy for a second. You know, if I dropped off $100 million, you know, at your feet right now, uh, it would definitely change your attitude for a bit. But sooner or later, you're coming back. You're, you're coming back to your, your, your happiness level. I've never tried to get money to make me happy, ever. I have never thought, "Oh, I'm gonna go get X money, this much money, and I'm gonna somehow be happier." I've never, ever... I don't even know where this concept came from, the, the connection between the two. You know, I go to the gym, I think I'm gonna build muscle. I go to the water fountain, I think I'm gonna quench a thirst. I go to a football game, I think I'm gonna be entertained. I get money, I never think about, "Okay, I'm gonna get 10 million bucks, and I'm gonna-"

Lewis Howes 1:19:54 And be happy

Grant Cardone 1:19:54 ... suddenly be happy.

Lewis Howes 1:19:56 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:19:57 No I never, I never even think about it like that. I'm gonna get 10 million, and then I'm gonna invest it, and I'm gonna pick up 30 million on the next swing, and I'm gonna take 30 million and convert that to 90 million, and I'm gonna take that and convert it into 270, and I'm gonna get to, you know, blah, blah, blah, right? And then what am I gonna do with it? But, dude, I, I'm never thinking about it, it's gonna make me happy. We j- we just gave, uh, in December, uh, $25 million to a irrevocable trust that will fund a, a charity for the next 25 years.

Lewis Howes 1:20:29 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:20:30 Another $8 million to charity in cash in, in December. Like, that didn't make me happy either, but it sure made them happy.

Lewis Howes 1:20:37 [laughs] For a moment, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:20:40 For a moment, and they're like, "Wow, man, that's awesome." You know, they all celebrate and everything. Made me feel good. I don't know that it made me happy.

Lewis Howes 1:20:47 What do you do to cultivate happiness, uh, on a daily basis for yourself beyond the money?

Grant Cardone 1:20:52 Yeah, so happiness for me comes from doing stuff.

Lewis Howes 1:20:55 Personally, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:20:55 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:20:56 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:20:56 It comes from accomplishing things. Like, I experience my happiness when, when I accomplish something I'm proud of. So when we do a conference and I walk away and I'm thrilled at the event we put on, the quality, the lights, you know, that feels good, you know? When, when my-

Lewis Howes 1:21:14 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:21:14 ... the people around me are happy, when I look around... When I'm proud of who I'm being and doing every day, you know, that makes me happy. Seeing my kids. My kids are... I'm so proud of my kids. They're such a, you know, a validation that I'm a good guy. When I can't see the good guy in me-

Lewis Howes 1:21:30 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:21:30 ... I can look at Sabrina and Scarlett and say, "Hey, dude, you gotta be a good guy to produce those," 'cause I got good kids.

Lewis Howes 1:21:36 Yeah, I saw the speech. Uh, I think she was, Sabrina was like 11 or 10 or 11, I can't remember.

Grant Cardone 1:21:41 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:21:41 When she did the speech on stage. I was like, "This girl's a better speaker than me now at 37 as a 10-year-old, 11-year-old." And the confidence and the poise, I was like, "That's a, that's a skill right there." You must've been very proud watching her on stage.

Grant Cardone 1:21:54 Oh my God, just, like, her dancing down the aisle. You know, that, that video, s- I'm so proud of that video. She wrote her own speech, practiced her own speech, uh, threw away her index cards in the middle of it.

Lewis Howes 1:22:08 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:22:08 Wrote her own jokes. Wrote her own jokes. Uh, you know, practiced and knew how to use the teleprompter. I mean, and the same thing for my eight-year-old. Like, they did that. And, and so I'm really proud of that. Elena's done a great job with them. They've done communication courses for ki- kids that really help them have that confidence and social presence. So that makes me so happy, brother. There's nothing that makes me happier than that. My, my friendship with you, the, how it's grown and developed, um, that makes me happy. But money, money, man. You know, being on my plane. Dude, sometimes being on my plane and nobody else is on it, just me, I get giddy. Like, like, like, those are moments where I'm like, "Dang, I love this plane so much."

Lewis Howes 1:22:50 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:22:51 Get... You know, finishing the Pueblo project-

Lewis Howes 1:22:54 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:22:54 ... made me really happy and proud. But, dude, I wasn't happy while I was doing it.

Lewis Howes 1:22:58 Right. [laughs] But finishing hard things makes you happy.

Grant Cardone 1:23:01 Totally. But it was-

Lewis Howes 1:23:03 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:23:03 ... that was the hardest, hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Probably the best and worst experience I've ever had in my lifetime was, a, a Undercover Billionaire.

Lewis Howes 1:23:12 How does it feel for you to know that there's money going out? 'Cause I think it comes out on, like, the 15th of every month, right?

Grant Cardone 1:23:16 15th every month, bro.

Lewis Howes 1:23:18 I get, I see my-

Grant Cardone 1:23:18 I get an email. You get an email?

Lewis Howes 1:23:19 I see my s- I see my statement.

Grant Cardone 1:23:20 When you see yours, I get mine.

Lewis Howes 1:23:21 Yeah. How does that feel knowing when you receive your 1.6 million [laughs] that you're also, however many thousand people that are invested in you-

Grant Cardone 1:23:29 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:23:30 ... are also getting a check that day?

Grant Cardone 1:23:31 That's-

Lewis Howes 1:23:31 How does that feel?

Grant Cardone 1:23:32 I, I call them, say, "Hey, how m- how much did we send out?"

Lewis Howes 1:23:34 Oh.

Grant Cardone 1:23:35 So most important number I have. Uh, t- most important number, every day I get how much cash do I have. Second most important number is what we've sold each day, and the third one is how much we sending out this month.

Lewis Howes 1:23:48 That's pretty cool.

Grant Cardone 1:23:49 Yeah. I, I, I look... How much I get I look at last.

Lewis Howes 1:23:52 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:23:52 'Cause if everybody else is winning, I know I'm winning.

Lewis Howes 1:23:54 You're getting paid, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:23:55 You know? But the thing that, and the thing that makes me happiest is, like, I know people can't lose with me.

Lewis Howes 1:24:01 Why is that?

Grant Cardone 1:24:02 Well, the, the real estate, it can't go away. You know, Bitcoin could go to 10,000 tomorrow. My real estate cannot go to 10,000. It just... The value of the real estate is the value of the real estate, and it's supported by income, right? So this, in the house, the Malibu house, the Malibu house could go down in value, but it's still gonna rent for 20 grand a night.

Lewis Howes 1:24:22 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:24:22 It doesn't matter, dude. [laughs] Like-

Lewis Howes 1:24:23 Right

Grant Cardone 1:24:24 ... you wanna, you wanna be in that house, in that location, on that beach. You wanna bring 12 other people to stay there, you're gonna pay 20 grand a night to be there. It doesn't matter whether the house is worth 40 million, or 38 million, or 32 million-

Lewis Howes 1:24:37 Right, right

Grant Cardone 1:24:37 ... or whatever. You're gonna pay for the house, you know? So as long as I got income, income allows you to... Income and time allow you to keep something.

Lewis Howes 1:24:46 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:24:48 It's paid for. I paid in cash, so there's no, there's no debt issue.

Lewis Howes 1:24:51 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:24:52 Uh, I have my other house in, in, in Miami. That's paid for.

Lewis Howes 1:24:55 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:24:55 You know? So I bought two houses last year.

Lewis Howes 1:24:57 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 1:24:57 Yeah, [laughs] it's insane.

Lewis Howes 1:24:58 It's crazy, man.

Grant Cardone 1:24:59 You know? So, and I'm the guy that says, "Don't buy a house."

Lewis Howes 1:25:02 Mm-hmm. People like-

Grant Cardone 1:25:03 He won't even take his own advice. Oh, I am taking my advice.

Lewis Howes 1:25:06 But at this level you can buy what you want, 'cause you got the cash flow to come in.

Grant Cardone 1:25:09 Yeah, it... Like, like I am taking all my advice. I'm not ignoring-

Lewis Howes 1:25:12 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:25:12 ... my own advice, you know? So, so I'm not violating any of my rules.

Lewis Howes 1:25:16 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:25:16 If you can't buy two of them, then don't even think about it.

Lewis Howes 1:25:19 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:25:20 Number two, if you can't pay for it in cash, don't think about it. Doesn't mean you gotta pay for it in cash.

Lewis Howes 1:25:25 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:25:25 It just means you need to be in that position. If you want a nice watch, be able to buy two of them. If the watch is 40 grand, you gotta be a- gotta have 80 grand.

Lewis Howes 1:25:32 Why is that?

Grant Cardone 1:25:33 It needs to be in cash, and it should be from passive income cash, not earned income.

Lewis Howes 1:25:37 Why is that mindset you need to be able to buy two of them?

Grant Cardone 1:25:39 If you can buy two of them, dude, you're probably cool. So then, then you don't ever... Like, like when do you spend... Somebody asked me the question once, "Hey, man. When's it all right to spend..." A rapper, "Hey, man. When's it all right to be stupid?" Bro, when you got stupid money you can be stupid.

Lewis Howes 1:25:51 Yeah. What is stupid money?

Grant Cardone 1:25:53 Well, stupid money ain't earned income.

Lewis Howes 1:25:55 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:25:55 Never.

Lewis Howes 1:25:56 Mm. Even if you made $10 million.

Grant Cardone 1:25:58 I don't care how much you make. If you make 10 and paid five to the IRS, and you got five left, you don't spend that. I'd never spend that money, ever. So, so th- th- this is-

Lewis Howes 1:26:08 Break it down

Grant Cardone 1:26:09 ... I never, ever, ever, ever-

Lewis Howes 1:26:10 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:26:11 ... ever, ever, ever spend earned income.

Lewis Howes 1:26:13 Really?

Grant Cardone 1:26:13 Never. So my earned income, okay, if I traded time for it, my earned-

Lewis Howes 1:26:19 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:26:19 ... I never spend a penny of it.

Lewis Howes 1:26:21 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:26:21 Okay? Okay, now what I do is I invest all of the earned, whatever's left over after the IRS, so the IRS is gonna bang me right here.

Lewis Howes 1:26:31 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:26:31 I invest all of that. 100% of this is invested. I save none of it. I invest this in a real asset that will pay me cash.

Lewis Howes 1:26:40 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:26:40 And it's gonna give me a drip, right? It's gonna give me a little drip of cash. So maybe this is a million dollar, so this pays me... Let's say it pays me 100 grand a year. I can spend this.

Lewis Howes 1:26:49 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:26:50 But I can't spend, I can't spend that now because it's not spendable.

Lewis Howes 1:26:53 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:26:53 This is illiquid.

Lewis Howes 1:26:54 The asset you can't spend, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:26:55 Can't spend it, can't touch it, can't have it stolen from you, taken from you, you know? But it's kinda hard to make it go away.

Lewis Howes 1:27:01 Sure.

Grant Cardone 1:27:01 Right? I do need to fund it, need to, to, to, you know, this is what the Bitcoin people, Mike Saylor's gonna say, "Yeah, but it, you got property taxes, you got maintenance." Uh, yeah, I know, bro. I also got income.

Lewis Howes 1:27:11 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:27:12 Okay? I don't have-

Lewis Howes 1:27:13 Cash flow

Grant Cardone 1:27:13 ... I don't have any... Yeah. I got cash flow, right? So I can keep it so I get a drip. Now, the drip is how I live. Like, if I wanna buy a $100,000 watch, good. Okay, I can buy 100 as long as I got 200 grand.

Lewis Howes 1:27:25 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:27:25 So and it's all right to do stupid stuff, but here when your money is having little babies.

Lewis Howes 1:27:30 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:27:31 Not when you're up there on your legs and busting your knees up doing your song, because one day, he's 29 right now. Nobody, like I know you think you're gonna last forever.

Lewis Howes 1:27:41 Look at a lot of these guys.

Grant Cardone 1:27:42 Nobody lasts forever.

Lewis Howes 1:27:43 Yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:27:44 So what, what I wanna do is I wanna position him. I said, "Look, in the next 10 years if you retire when you're 39 or 49, I want you to go from being, you know, tearing up your space, making big money in your space. And the moment you transition from rapper-

Lewis Howes 1:28:03 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:28:04 ... and become nobody, we're gonna click a switch and you're gonna be a real estate mogul."

Lewis Howes 1:28:09 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:28:10 Okay? So, so my goal for him is I said, "Look, what do you ma-" And I, and I picked the number. He's like, "Dude, you just, you just told me what I made last year," without knowing what I made. And I hit the number almost exactly.

Lewis Howes 1:28:19 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:28:20 Figured out how many days he did, figured out what he was getting paid, and I said-

Lewis Howes 1:28:23 Endorsement deals, everything else. So-

Grant Cardone 1:28:24 I said, "Look," I said, "When you're 49 years old, bro, you could be worth 200 million bucks right over here."

Lewis Howes 1:28:30 If you put this much in every year.

Grant Cardone 1:28:31 If you just take, if you just do what I tell you to do. You go work a gig, they pay you 130,000, you take 60 grand, park it.

Lewis Howes 1:28:38 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:28:39 Wednesday night do another deal. So he's like, "What am I live on?" "Bro, you're gonna live on deals. So nobody's gonna know what happened to you. They're gonna be like, 'Hey, man. He ain't, he ain't, The Savage ain't showing off anymore, man.'"

Lewis Howes 1:28:48 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:28:49 You know? So I said, "Yeah, but bro, you're gonna go from-

Lewis Howes 1:28:51 You'll show off in a bigger way later

Grant Cardone 1:28:52 ... bro, you're gonna show up as a real estate tycoon. You're gonna be... One day you're gonna show up, it's gonna be, it's gonna be 2042, and you're gonna have hundreds of millions of dollars of properties that are paying you every month."

Lewis Howes 1:29:04 Mm. You don't have to go work for that, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:29:05 So you're gonna step from this one... A-Rod talked about this to me at, uh, at the growth conference.

Lewis Howes 1:29:09 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:29:09 He's like, "I knew my earning capacity was gonna go to zero with the Yankees."

Lewis Howes 1:29:14 At some point.

Grant Cardone 1:29:14 At some point. Everybody's earning capacity is depreciating, right? So f- at the beginning it goes up, like yours is going, still going up, right? Yours is still going up. At some point it'll plat- it'll hit the top.

Lewis Howes 1:29:25 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:29:26 You'll lose interest, maybe not wanna do it-

Lewis Howes 1:29:27 Right

Grant Cardone 1:29:28 ... anymore, whatever, and then it's gonna start slowly going down until you're just not a thing anymore, and some younger Lewis Howes is gonna come up and replace you, or a bunch, or technology, or whatever. And your earning capacity's gonna go down. While it's going down, on the way up-

Lewis Howes 1:29:40 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:29:40 ... you should be planning for that going down and collecting assets over here.

Lewis Howes 1:29:44 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:29:46 So that's why at the end of each year, like if people could do this, at the end of each year start a new year with more assets and no cash. And do that every year. A year, two years, five years, 10 years, 12 years. Like, if I had advice for somebody I'd be like, "Man, don't just worry about this year. Start collecting a- little bit of assets this year, another one next year." You, you don't have to own it all.

Lewis Howes 1:30:08 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:30:08 Like the way you're doing it with me.

Lewis Howes 1:30:10 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:30:11 Find somebody that you trust, somebody that's invested, man, and just keep getting rid of cash.

Lewis Howes 1:30:16 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:30:17 Because, you know, every time I get rid of this money, see, every time I get rid of this, let's say it's, uh, let's say it's 100 grand. Every time I get rid of 100 grand, 100 grand buys me $400,000 worth of real estate, right?

Lewis Howes 1:30:32 'Cause you only have to put 20% down.

Grant Cardone 1:30:34 Yeah, because I'm using leverage, so I'm taking the 100-

Lewis Howes 1:30:36 Uh-huh

Grant Cardone 1:30:36 ... that's going down in value-

Lewis Howes 1:30:38 Uh-huh

Grant Cardone 1:30:38 ... maybe 15 or 20% a year.

Lewis Howes 1:30:42 You're putting it into 400,000 of real estate.

Grant Cardone 1:30:43 I'm going up-

Lewis Howes 1:30:44 And this is going up in value.

Grant Cardone 1:30:46 Well, this is good for me, because inflation, if you own real estate, you want inflation.

Lewis Howes 1:30:50 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:30:52 I want the materials to cost more. I want the cost of glass to go up. I want... I benefit from this. I want rent to go up.

Lewis Howes 1:30:58 Yes.

Grant Cardone 1:30:59 So like not everybody's-

Lewis Howes 1:31:00 You, you don't want inflation if you have cash.

Grant Cardone 1:31:02 If you have cash, you definitely don't want inflation.

Lewis Howes 1:31:04 Interesting.

Grant Cardone 1:31:05 Okay? Because it's going down in value, even though the bank might pay you more.

Lewis Howes 1:31:08 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:31:08 Now, what we got right now, what's going on right now is a really freaking weird deal because the banks aren't paying anymore, and it's going down in value. So the value, the dollar's going down, and they're not paying you anything at the bank. So you're just getting double whammo-ed with no chance.

Lewis Howes 1:31:21 Why is it important for people to be investing in real estate now? Like, if you could do it now, and should they do it on their own in terms of like, "Okay, I'm gonna buy, uh, my own apartment building or my own house and do kind of the Airbnb thing." What about that strategy?

Grant Cardone 1:31:34 It's good. It's good.

Lewis Howes 1:31:35 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:31:35 It's a good t- but, but you g- you g- you just went from having a job to a second job.

Lewis Howes 1:31:39 'Cause now you're managing the property.

Grant Cardone 1:31:41 You're managing it.

Lewis Howes 1:31:42 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:31:42 You're handling problems.

Lewis Howes 1:31:43 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:31:43 You're collecting rents. That's another job. Actually, that's probably not gonna be even included as passive income.

Lewis Howes 1:31:49 Interesting.

Grant Cardone 1:31:49 So there's a lot of people in multi-level marketing that say that they have passive income. I'm like, "That's not passive income. That's residual income-

Lewis Howes 1:31:56 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:31:56 ... not passive income."

Lewis Howes 1:31:57 What's the difference between passive and residual income?

Grant Cardone 1:31:59 Passive income is I make an investment and somebody sends me a check. Uh, residual income... A- and it could be residual. It could be repeating, recurring, right?

Lewis Howes 1:32:08 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:32:08 But if I, if I go collect the rent, th- paint the place, put in the tenant, that's not passive. That's active income. I had to rent it.

Lewis Howes 1:32:20 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:32:20 I had to collect it.

Lewis Howes 1:32:21 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:32:21 You're trading time for money.

Lewis Howes 1:32:22 You had to market it. You had to do all these things.

Grant Cardone 1:32:23 What you get from me is passive.

Lewis Howes 1:32:25 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:32:25 You, you, you know, you, you, you don't decide what color the paint on the building is.

Lewis Howes 1:32:30 No. You don't-

Grant Cardone 1:32:30 You don't, you haven't even been to the building.

Lewis Howes 1:32:32 No. Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:32:32 I can't believe it's the 15th again.

Lewis Howes 1:32:34 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:32:35 That's passive income, right? Dividend income is passive income.

Lewis Howes 1:32:38 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:32:38 You, you invest in Apple Computer, and they send you a check.

Lewis Howes 1:32:42 But if you have to work for it-

Grant Cardone 1:32:43 If y-

Lewis Howes 1:32:43 ... it's not passive.

Grant Cardone 1:32:44 No. So the CEO of Coca-Cola made 50 million bucks last year. A lot of money, right? Okay. That's earned income.

Lewis Howes 1:32:51 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:32:52 Government's gonna take half of it. Warren Buffett invested in Coca-Cola. He was paid 508 million-

Lewis Howes 1:32:59 Come on

Grant Cardone 1:32:59 ... last year. That's passive income.

Lewis Howes 1:33:02 As a dividend?

Grant Cardone 1:33:03 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:33:04 And he doesn't have to pay tax on it?

Grant Cardone 1:33:05 Now, now you know how many people on the internet wanna be the boss?

Lewis Howes 1:33:08 A lot.

Grant Cardone 1:33:08 Dude, the boss don't make any money. The investor does.

Lewis Howes 1:33:11 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:33:13 Don't be the boss. Don't be the CEO. This is... There's so much confusion in the marketplace. Be the investor.

Lewis Howes 1:33:19 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:33:20 Just invest. And what does Warren do? Warren is how I got in real estate. I started buying real estate because I studied Wa- I studied the old man.

Lewis Howes 1:33:29 What did he, what did he teach you?

Grant Cardone 1:33:29 The old man, when, when, when I would read... Well, the old man's only invested in stocks, right? I'm like, "I'm not gonna do stocks 'cause I don't like them." But what I wanted to learn from Warren Buffett, what, what was he doing? What was the consistent patterns of what he invested in? All companies that were, had been around a long time. He did not buy the cheapest company.

Lewis Howes 1:33:49 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:33:50 He never looked for what my uncle looked for. He didn't buy low and sell high.

Lewis Howes 1:33:54 What was he doing?

Grant Cardone 1:33:55 He bought fair value-

Lewis Howes 1:33:57 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:33:57 ... okay, at a fair price. He bought the best quality at a fair price. He didn't look for the lowest price. He wasn't looking for the, the, the day a stock went down to $1. He never do- he's never done that. He invest in companies that all cash flow, leaders in their space. Uh, Coca-Cola, See Can- Candies, um, Apple Computer. He didn't buy Apple Computer for years until he understood that Apple Computer was a cash flow company-

Lewis Howes 1:34:26 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:34:27 ... because of iTunes.

Lewis Howes 1:34:28 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:34:29 That it wasn't a computer company. It was a cash flow generating machine. When I read that, I'm like, "Dang, dude, the, everything he buys is really real estate." You see? So I'm like, "Okay, I, I can't get the-

Lewis Howes 1:34:40 Interesting

Grant Cardone 1:34:41 ... I cannot buy a big enough position. I'm not rich enough to get a big position at Coca-Cola.

Lewis Howes 1:34:46 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:34:46 I don't get on the inside. I'm a little guy, right? So I'm never gonna get access to Wall Street. Goldman Sachs ain't gonna call me and say, "Hey, we got this deal going, man."

Lewis Howes 1:34:54 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:34:54 "It's gonna be the next Coca-Cola," right? I'm never gonna get that call. So what can I buy that's like Warren? Oh, real estate, man. I can buy the 26 units in San Diego 'cause I know the neighborhood. I grew up there. And, and I spent some time there. So I know that, so I can buy that. I can go to the bank. I can get a good loan on that, and it cash flows. And, and that, and that's how I started buying real estate because Warren, he bought for the long term. He bought great locations-

Lewis Howes 1:35:21 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:35:21 ... great properties.

Lewis Howes 1:35:22 Fair price.

Grant Cardone 1:35:23 He, he's never managed anything. He's not a m-

Lewis Howes 1:35:26 He's not the CEO of the companies.

Grant Cardone 1:35:27 He's not a manager. He's not a CEO. He never gets rid of the, the, the employees that are there. And I was like, "Man, what are you doing, dude?" He's not the salesman, but he is a promoter.

Lewis Howes 1:35:39 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:35:40 So when I started watching w- his moves, he's on TV all the time, and he takes big positions.

Lewis Howes 1:35:46 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:35:47 Giant positions, not little ones. That-

Lewis Howes 1:35:51 Is it-

Grant Cardone 1:35:51 All that changed everything-

Lewis Howes 1:35:53 Wow

Grant Cardone 1:35:53 ... for me. I quit buying this and a little bit here and a little bit there. It's called diversification. I quit doing that when I watched Warren. Warren is not diversified. Uh, I think four investments gave him 70% of all his returns last year.

Lewis Howes 1:36:07 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:36:08 Yeah. And if he wasn't so rich, he'd probably own, only own three or four stocks. But he's got a... He, he, he's so, there's so much money now.

Lewis Howes 1:36:17 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:36:17 Elon's another guy, never diversified. PayPal was his only investment.

Lewis Howes 1:36:22 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:36:22 When he sold PayPal, he only has three investments today, and no homes, and no cash.

Lewis Howes 1:36:29 Really?

Grant Cardone 1:36:29 No cash.

Lewis Howes 1:36:31 Oh, he doesn't own, uh, real estate-

Grant Cardone 1:36:32 He-

Lewis Howes 1:36:32 ... or he, he doesn't own his home? He-

Grant Cardone 1:36:33 He doesn't own his homes. He's all in, man.

Lewis Howes 1:36:36 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:36:36 But that's not the advice our parents gave us-

Lewis Howes 1:36:38 Right

Grant Cardone 1:36:38 ... or our school teachers.

Lewis Howes 1:36:39 Right. Where is housing gonna be in the next eight to 10 years, do you think?

Grant Cardone 1:36:43 It's gonna be what... It, it's gonna have people in them [laughs] .

Lewis Howes 1:36:45 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:36:45 And it's gonna be more expensive, and I think people are gonna be more renters than they're gonna be owners. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:36:51 Why is that? 'Cause it can be too expensive to own?

Grant Cardone 1:36:53 Because it's gonna be too expensive. So wealthy people are buying all the housing stock in America.

Lewis Howes 1:36:57 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:36:57 The other thing that since the last time I was here, we've had investors 40% of all the homes in America now are owned by investors. The single family homes. And that's going up.

Lewis Howes 1:37:07 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:37:08 So in 2019, 44% of all the single family housing in America was owned by an investor, a guy like me-

Lewis Howes 1:37:16 Wow

Grant Cardone 1:37:16 ... that bought it to rent it out, not to live in it. That's, that's three years ago. COVID changed everything. So now, now you have more people buying real estate to Airbnb it. Great, great idea, but you're, you're working, okay? Two, you're dependent upon one door.

Lewis Howes 1:37:35 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:37:35 So I gotta collect the rent, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:37:37 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:37:37 So like you're, you're invested... How many funds are you investing with me?

Lewis Howes 1:37:41 Three or four.

Grant Cardone 1:37:42 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:37:42 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:37:42 So you, you, you, you have hundreds of units that pay you.

Lewis Howes 1:37:45 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:37:46 Not a few.

Lewis Howes 1:37:47 Right. I might be on five now, actually.

Grant Cardone 1:37:49 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:37:49 In the last year.

Grant Cardone 1:37:50 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:37:50 Calling me up the last month, saying, "Get rid of your money."

Grant Cardone 1:37:52 Get rid of it.

Lewis Howes 1:37:53 What is the, the mindset you would share with anyone who's 40, 50, or 60 and b- uh, above who hasn't accomplished what they want yet? What would you say to them based on what you've learned after 50?

Grant Cardone 1:38:07 You know, I used to tell myself I would never have anything to contribute to the world until I was 50. 'Cause I'm very immature. I've always been described as a rough diamond, like, like rough around the edges, abrasive, not much of a filter, you know? I, I, I am. I mean, I know... Everything that people say negative about me, for every one thing ev- the public has, I, I know, I know every one of them. There's nothing anybody ever says about me that surprises me. I'm like, "Yeah, I know that."

Lewis Howes 1:38:37 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:38:38 Like, you guys don't think I know that? I, I live with me every day. Like-

Lewis Howes 1:38:42 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:38:43 ... I did, actually did not think I would have anything to contribute worthwhile until I was 50 years old. And, uh, that was about the time the economic, uh, collapse was, the Great Recession. And I was so lost in that financially. I didn't understand I was actually being formed right there. I was being matured. I was being prepared for what- what- whatever's going on in my life right now. Uh, really, the, the, the creation of Grant Cardone has happened in the last 10 or 12 years, not, not before that. The Grant Cardone people know today is being, being developed right now. And I would just tell people that are older, like, dude, you're gonna have more energy later unless you don't. You're gonna have more genius later unless you refuse to. You're gonna have the ability to influence more unless you refuse to influence. And age has got nothing to do with the game. Like, nobody really knows my age. Like, uh, I was 50 years old when I was in Pueblo. I told everybody, "I'm 50 years old. My name's Lewis Curtis. I have two kids, beautiful two kids. I got a wife named Ava." Uh, had made-up names for the kids. I had to make up all that story. "And we live in LA, and I hate it." Um, because if I told people I was me in Miami, uh, i- if anybody went and searched it and started doing, you know, images-

Lewis Howes 1:40:10 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:40:10 ... like people do all that stuff today.

Lewis Howes 1:40:12 I know.

Grant Cardone 1:40:13 So, um, I would just tell people, "Man, you..." Look, I look at people that are 80 years old, I'm like, " Dude, I got 20 years left." You know how much damage I could do in 20 years? I know guys that are in great shape. Uh, Dolly Parton, I mean, she's still hammering. She never did nine to five. She made some money on a song called 9 to 5.

Lewis Howes 1:40:31 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:40:33 You know, but she's been doing five to nine for, for years. So I just think people can get better if they want to, or they can get worse. You're either gonna decay or you're gonna reboot yourself over and over again.

Lewis Howes 1:40:44 Mm. The 2008, 2009 was tough for you, just like it was for a lot of people. What was the lesson you learned then that prepared you for 2020, that you, when the recession hit, you said, "Okay, I know exactly what to do based on that pain in 2008"?

Grant Cardone 1:41:01 Yeah. Well, I was so disappointed with myself then. Like, I had not put my family in a position to, to flourish and prosper because of suppression. You know, the tide goes out, you don't have a boat, shame on you.

Lewis Howes 1:41:15 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:41:16 And I didn't have a boat. Dude, I, I mean, I had... I looked good. I looked good until it happened.

Lewis Howes 1:41:21 You had a suit. You had the car. Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:41:23 I thought I was good. I thought I was good, but I was too small. Small, small always gets hurt. And that, that was my big wake-up call in 2008. I didn't have enough assets. I didn't have enough money. I, my business was too small. My customer base was too small. Uh, I was too reliant on too few verticals. This was the creation of 10X. I d- I blame no one in 2008, '9, and '10. I was like, "Okay, I'm in . I got myself in . This is not about the mortgage crisis. It's not about the builders. It's not about the strippers that got 17 loans. This is about me." I was in this pile of . I was in this fear. I was... I let my family and myself down. Nothing was happening to me. And the most important thing is I was not in a position to take advantage of it. That's the thing that pissed me off.

Lewis Howes 1:42:18 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:42:18 And so I told Elena, I said, "The next time this happens, dude, we're gonna freaking rock." And then COVID had happened. And COVID, I was shooting a TV show, and my company would have the best year it's ever had.

Lewis Howes 1:42:30 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:42:30 I wasn't even here.

Lewis Howes 1:42:31 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:42:32 Uh, we, we, we bought more assets this year than we bought the year before. We raised more money this year than the year before. Um, you know, when, when, when Lehman collapsed in 2008, I had $50 million worth of debt. I told Elena, I said, "The next time this [censored] hits the fan, I'm gonna have a billion dollars worth of debt." No, I told, I, I said, "I'm gonna have a half a billion dollars worth of debt." We had, uh, $1.2 billion worth of debt when COVID hit.

Lewis Howes 1:42:56 And so people understand, what does that mean-

Grant Cardone 1:42:57 You want debt

Lewis Howes 1:42:58 ... having that much debt?

Grant Cardone 1:42:58 You want debt, man. You want debt. Who gets, who keeps getting bailed out? Only your mommy and daddy think that you should have all your debt paid off. The big boys want debt. They want lots of it. Government has debt. California's, California can never, ever pay all its debts. That why, that's why it keeps shutting down California, because they're trying to get money from the federal government to bail them out.

Lewis Howes 1:43:20 What, what's the difference between good debt and bad debt? 'Cause I think when people might hear this, they might say, "Okay, open a bunch of credit cards and spend it on whatever you want"-

Grant Cardone 1:43:27 Yeah, well that's-

Lewis Howes 1:43:27 ... as opposed to in-

Grant Cardone 1:43:28 We're back to that first question about spending versus, uh, investing, right? So consumer debt is terrible debt, suicide debt.

Lewis Howes 1:43:34 That's, that's credit card debt. That's-

Grant Cardone 1:43:36 Lamborghini, buying the Lamborghini on debt. Uh, look, if you're gonna buy a Lamborghini, at least save for 24 months. If you can't afford the 24 months, you can't afford the Lambo. Debt for clothes, Christmas gifts, I mean, it's stupid. It's stupid to borrow money for, for, for this Santa Claus for your kids. I know, I know people are gonna hate that message. That's why there's so many people dislike, you know, they, they just don't like the truth.

Lewis Howes 1:43:59 Well, it's stu- it's stupid to go in debt. If you wanna do it and, uh, and for, for fun or for whatever, then that's okay. But you may, you're not investing in a potential greater future.

Grant Cardone 1:44:09 No. Now, if I, if I borrow money for Santa Claus, that's one thing. If I borrow money for, to, to invest, to, to, to buy, to invest in, in a piece of real estate for my kids, you know, I mean, I know which one's gonna work.

Lewis Howes 1:44:23 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:44:23 If you just follow the tax write-offs, you'll know the right thing to do. I can't write off Santa. I can write off the real estate.

Lewis Howes 1:44:30 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:44:31 So, um, yeah, bad debt is anything that I have to then pay the interest rate on. Good debt is I made an investment and my consumer or my tenant is gonna pay my debt.

Lewis Howes 1:44:43 That's powerful. So you're trying to, you're trying to get more debt.

Grant Cardone 1:44:46 You probably have more debt with me than you even know. Like, like because of the investments you've made with me, you have debt. You have good debt.

Lewis Howes 1:44:54 Uh-huh.

Grant Cardone 1:44:55 You just don't really know it. Your accountant does, though, 'cause, 'cause we're sending him the K1 at the end of the year.

Lewis Howes 1:45:00 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:45:00 That's why when we send you a check, you don't pay income on that check.

Lewis Howes 1:45:03 That's nice.

Grant Cardone 1:45:04 Very nice.

Lewis Howes 1:45:05 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:45:05 So you, you look at your return, but you know, whatever I paid you last year, but that is non-taxable income to you.

Lewis Howes 1:45:13 Because of the debt that we have-

Grant Cardone 1:45:15 Because of the debt

Lewis Howes 1:45:16 ... uh, that we have in the...

Grant Cardone 1:45:16 Yeah, exactly.

Lewis Howes 1:45:17 On the asset.

Grant Cardone 1:45:18 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 1:45:18 So what's your goal for, for a year from now? How much debt do you wanna have?

Grant Cardone 1:45:23 Oh, yeah, uh, goddamn, I'd love to double that, dude. I gotta double that to get where I'm going. We, we have $2.3 trillion worth of, worth of, um, 2.3 billion, sorry, not trillion.

Lewis Howes 1:45:33 [laughs] Oh, hey, trillion, hey. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:45:35 Man. See, the 10X thing-

Lewis Howes 1:45:37 You're-

Grant Cardone 1:45:37 ... starts getting harder and harder, right?

Lewis Howes 1:45:39 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:45:39 So, um-

Lewis Howes 1:45:41 Yeah. 2.3 billion worth of assets?

Grant Cardone 1:45:43 Yeah, I mean, I'd like to hit six by the end of this year. I don't think, I don't think it's possible, but that'd be freaking awesome.

Lewis Howes 1:45:49 So if it was possible, what would need to happen?

Grant Cardone 1:45:52 I would need to buy a portfolio. I have to change the way I'm doing things. I c- I gotta quit buying one deal at a time and I gotta buy a portfolio, or I gotta go buy a company.

Lewis Howes 1:46:01 That seems pretty doable.

Grant Cardone 1:46:01 I gotta go buy somebody that's got, you know, 9,000 units. I have 9,000, so if I went and grabbed somebody's portfolio...

Lewis Howes 1:46:08 So you just need to find someone who's got 9,000 units, or you need to, what was the other option?

Grant Cardone 1:46:13 Buy, buy, buy portfolios.

Lewis Howes 1:46:15 That seems pretty possible.

Grant Cardone 1:46:16 So yeah, but c- see, that clarity right there, you helping me with that clarity shows me who I need to talk to.

Lewis Howes 1:46:23 Yeah. I mean, who are, do you know three people, do you know three people in your mind who's got 9,000 units or who has a bigger portfolio so you could buy?

Grant Cardone 1:46:29 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I, I got a list of 100 guys that have bigger portfolios than I do.

Lewis Howes 1:46:34 What would it take from you to get to 6 billion in the next 6 months, not 12 months? What would it take from you?

Grant Cardone 1:46:41 That, that, that, that... I just couldn't close the deals that fast. I mean, some things physically take more time.

Lewis Howes 1:46:46 [laughs] Okay.

Grant Cardone 1:46:49 I mean, you know, at least that's what I'm thinking right now. But look, if I got it done this year, that would be massive. It would be, like, you're talking about what I've done in 25 years being done in one year.

Lewis Howes 1:46:58 Hey, you did the same thing on YouTube last year. You know, thir- 13 years of content, you got more views in one year on YouTube.

Grant Cardone 1:47:04 Yeah. You're right.

Lewis Howes 1:47:05 It's all relative, man.

Grant Cardone 1:47:06 You're right. You're right, dude. I, that's why, look, I do these podcasts at the School of Greatness 'cause every time I do one, I end up better off. I don't know what you do to me while we do these, but every time I come out, I'm bigger.

Lewis Howes 1:47:18 Well, I hear you say it's not possible, it, to do it this year, to get to 6 billion from 2.4, but then I said, "Well, if it was possible," you said, "Well, I just need to find more portfolios or acquire someone who's got 9,000 units." And then-

Grant Cardone 1:47:30 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:47:30 ... that's done.

Grant Cardone 1:47:30 And then, and then you'll drop it in there. You'll drop in the good question, okay? And then I'll start, I'll start working on it, and then you guys, you guys think I can do it or not do it. Just fol- maybe a year from now we'll do another one.

Lewis Howes 1:47:42 We should do, we should do a, we should do a million dollar bet on it. Maybe if you had that, the pressure, the ti- all those things, maybe you would create... [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:47:52 I don't know, man. That's pretty hard. I mean, I'm just, I'm, I'm running up against my blocks.

Lewis Howes 1:47:57 You did this last time, though. Last two times you ran up against blocks, but then you blew past them.

Grant Cardone 1:48:03 Y- y- dude, you're planting the seed, bro. One thing about me-

Lewis Howes 1:48:06 I'm just trying to-

Grant Cardone 1:48:06 One thing nobody can say that I do- like, I use information, I use experiences. I leverage everything. Like, I c- I'm a con- I, I consume and I multiply. I don't just consume. And, and too many people just consume and never use. So, like-

Lewis Howes 1:48:24 What do you mean by that? They're just, they're consuming information, but they're never applying it. Is that what you're saying?

Grant Cardone 1:48:28 Yeah. You're, y- y- y- you, you're either a consumer, a producer, or an investor. And, and I d- I'm all three. I consume it, I produce on it, and then I invest in it. And I'm greedy too, by the way. I'm greedy about my own, my own self-improvement.

Lewis Howes 1:48:44 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:48:44 I'm greedy, and I am, I am, I am very, highly interested in my personal self-improvement because I know that's where it all starts. I have, I have to make me the most important thing in my life because other people can't get better if I don't.

Lewis Howes 1:48:58 What happens when 90% of the housing market is owned by investors and not by people that own it themselves to live in it?

Grant Cardone 1:49:06 People are gonna look for, um... I mean, it, you know, it's happening right now. It's just unfortunate. It's, it's-

Lewis Howes 1:49:11 Is the prices gonna go through the roof? Is it gonna be-

Grant Cardone 1:49:13 Well, I don't, I don't know that the single family, will it go through the roof? I mean, it, it's, you know... I mean, it's already going through the roof.

Lewis Howes 1:49:21 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:49:21 It's like, you know, it's crazy what's going on.

Lewis Howes 1:49:23 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:49:24 But if you go to Singapore, it's not crazy.

Lewis Howes 1:49:28 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:49:28 The rents... We went to Singapore in 2019. We came back, me and Elena said, "We need to buy everything in sight in America."

Lewis Howes 1:49:36 On America.

Grant Cardone 1:49:37 Yeah. We went to Sydney, Australia. I'm like, "Elena, we just need to buy..." We, we, 'cause w- everywhere we go, we shop real estate.

Lewis Howes 1:49:43 Why is that?

Grant Cardone 1:49:43 [laughs] 'Cause America's on sale.

Lewis Howes 1:49:45 Mm. 'Cause it's so expensive there.

Grant Cardone 1:49:47 So you guys think it's expensive here, okay? So, like, California right now, California is making Arizona go through the roof.

Lewis Howes 1:49:55 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:49:56 'Cause people are leaving the state of California.

Lewis Howes 1:49:57 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:49:57 They're migrating out because-

Lewis Howes 1:49:58 And-

Grant Cardone 1:49:58 ... of your tax policies

Lewis Howes 1:49:59 ... and Texas and, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:50:00 Yeah. Or they're going to Texas, or they're going to Montana, or they're-

Lewis Howes 1:50:04 Nashville or whatever

Grant Cardone 1:50:04 ... going to Utah, okay? California, uh, your, your Governor Newsom this year was nominated as the number one real estate agent for the state of Florida. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:50:14 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:50:15 'Cause that's what he's doing, because the tax policy drove me out of the state nine years ago.

Lewis Howes 1:50:19 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:50:20 We, we have 800 employees in Miami. Between Miami and the real estate, there's 800 employees. None of them live in California.

Lewis Howes 1:50:28 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:50:29 If they were to drop taxes here rather than raise them, I'd have 800 employees in LA. All my cars would be here. 800 employees and their cars.

Lewis Howes 1:50:37 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:50:37 800 employees would be eating in restaurants here. But what do we do? They, they, they, they raise the taxes. We go over there. We take all the tax savings, reinvest in the business. The business gets bigger and better. And I'm not gonna give, I'm not gonna give, uh, our governor, Governor DeSantis credit for it, because I got there before he was there.

Lewis Howes 1:50:54 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:50:55 So I'm just gonna give credit to the insanity of California.

Lewis Howes 1:50:58 Right. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:50:58 So what's happening now is Arizona prices are going up 'cause California people are going over there.

Lewis Howes 1:51:02 Texas prices, yeah, everything.

Grant Cardone 1:51:04 Yeah. So the guy in California sells his house for a million six, walks into Arizona and says, "This is a steal at 800." Last time it traded was 400. He thinks it's a steal 'cause it's half price to what he left. And that's what people do. They migrate, start moving around.

Lewis Howes 1:51:17 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:51:18 That migration's happening. New York City's migrating to Florida.

Lewis Howes 1:51:20 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:51:20 California's migrating east. So, but, but the problem is n- the, you know, with people leaving California, you would think prices would fall-

Lewis Howes 1:51:28 They're still going up

Grant Cardone 1:51:29 ... but they're not. They're not, because wealthy people are walking in saying, "I got all this cash. Cash is worth nothing. I'll buy a second home."

Lewis Howes 1:51:35 Crazy.

Grant Cardone 1:51:36 These, this is emotional. This is not logical, by the way, what's happening. It's not emotional. It's not, it, it's an emotional decision-

Lewis Howes 1:51:44 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:51:44 ... to say, "I'm gonna get rid of my cash, and I'm just gonna go buy another house."

Lewis Howes 1:51:48 I got a question about, uh, every time I've had you on, I think in the last three or four times I've asked you about your, your goals with your assets. I think one time you came on, I think you were at, like, 90 million or something. I remember it was, like, 290 million or 90 million in, in your real estate asset holdings that you had.

Grant Cardone 1:52:04 I think we were buying a deal. I was buying a deal in Houston for 90 million bucks.

Lewis Howes 1:52:08 Yeah. But you only, you didn't have more than 400 million, I think.

Grant Cardone 1:52:11 No, we had-

Lewis Howes 1:52:12 I can't remember. It was under that-

Grant Cardone 1:52:13 We had-

Lewis Howes 1:52:13 ... total

Grant Cardone 1:52:14 ... at the ti- at the time-

Lewis Howes 1:52:15 It's okay

Grant Cardone 1:52:15 ... you mean that one interview where you challenged me?

Lewis Howes 1:52:17 Yes.

Grant Cardone 1:52:17 Yeah. So at that time I think we had-

Lewis Howes 1:52:20 This is at two places I got you

Grant Cardone 1:52:21 ... maybe $400 million worth of assets.

Lewis Howes 1:52:23 Yeah. Right. And now today?

Grant Cardone 1:52:25 4 billion.

Lewis Howes 1:52:26 4 billion.

Grant Cardone 1:52:26 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:52:27 And I remember challenging you, being like-

Grant Cardone 1:52:28 You did, dude

Lewis Howes 1:52:29 ... being like, "Why not go to, like, 900 million, a billion?"

Grant Cardone 1:52:31 Why not 10. You said, "Why not 10X that?"

Lewis Howes 1:52:33 Yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:52:33 And I said, "I got a deal. I'm doing a deal. It's 90 million bucks. It's scary." I was scared. I'm always scared on all these deals.

Lewis Howes 1:52:39 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:52:40 And because you're doing it for the first time, you, you know, it's like the rollercoaster, right? You're like-

Lewis Howes 1:52:44 Oh

Grant Cardone 1:52:44 ... "Oh my God, this is gonna be..." You know, "Am I doing the right thing?"

Lewis Howes 1:52:47 So you're, so you're at 4 billion now.

Grant Cardone 1:52:48 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:52:49 What's the, what's the goal in the next-

Grant Cardone 1:52:51 The goal, the goal, well, we're gonna 10X that.

Lewis Howes 1:52:54 40 billion.

Grant Cardone 1:52:55 40 billion, yep.

Lewis Howes 1:52:56 By when?

Grant Cardone 1:52:57 I don't have a date on it, but I think I can do that. I think I could do that, um, [laughs] you know, I think I can do that in, you know, five years.

Lewis Howes 1:53:06 Five years.

Grant Cardone 1:53:07 Maybe, maybe, maybe longer. Maybe it takes seven years. Maybe it takes 10 years. It's a worthy goal either way.

Lewis Howes 1:53:12 Yeah, 40 billion.

Grant Cardone 1:53:13 'Cause a lot... If I do this the way I'm doing it now, a lot of people are gonna get help because of it.

Lewis Howes 1:53:17 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:53:18 So that, that would be, like, that would be a really fulfilling accomplishment in my life if I could-

Lewis Howes 1:53:23 Right

Grant Cardone 1:53:24 ... if I could have ordinary, everyday families like I grew up in, like my mom. Like, my mom would be proud of what I'm doing. She would s- she would be negative first. Nobody ever called her and said, "Hey, Concetta, put your money in this."

Lewis Howes 1:53:36 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:53:37 "In this, this investment's gonna take care of you. You're gonna get a check every month." My mom never d- she didn't get a break. And so today I think that there's gonna be families. The goal is that there's gonna be thousands, tens of thousands of families. They'll become reliant and know that, "Hey, Grant Cardone's gonna send me money this month."

Lewis Howes 1:53:55 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:53:57 And then I'm gonna flip this entire picture of who I-

Lewis Howes 1:53:59 Right

Grant Cardone 1:54:00 ... who I, who I, I'm gonna evolve again to not taking money from people, not selling things. Which I, which I have no problem with. Uh, everything I've sold I, I feel great about.

Lewis Howes 1:54:10 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:54:12 Except maybe that one car I sold to my uncle-

Lewis Howes 1:54:14 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:54:14 ... my, my cousin Tony. [laughs] Um, but, but, uh, 'cause that was a little excessive, that, that, that, that.

Lewis Howes 1:54:20 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:54:20 But, but, but, you know, that's gonna be a total evolution-

Lewis Howes 1:54:25 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:54:25 ... of me as a person.

Lewis Howes 1:54:27 Just paying people.

Grant Cardone 1:54:28 Dude, sending people money every month, I mean, l- like, it is the greatest freaking hack in the world.

Lewis Howes 1:54:34 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:54:35 Completely discovered by mistake.

Lewis Howes 1:54:37 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:54:38 The first time I took any money from anybody, we opened a deal up. That fund was $6 million.

Lewis Howes 1:54:43 Yep.

Grant Cardone 1:54:44 And Ryan Serhant and Elena talked me into doing. "Dude, but guys, we don't need it." I had the money. I already bought the deal.

Lewis Howes 1:54:50 What, what year was this?

Grant Cardone 1:54:51 Four, four years ago.

Lewis Howes 1:54:52 Really? 2018, 20-

Grant Cardone 1:54:54 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:54:55 'Cause you were doing stuff on your own before bringing people.

Grant Cardone 1:54:57 Yeah, I was, I was always buy-

Lewis Howes 1:54:58 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:54:58 ... I still buy it with my money today.

Lewis Howes 1:55:00 So 2018.

Grant Cardone 1:55:01 We closed the deal. It was a, a deal in St. Lucie.

Lewis Howes 1:55:04 Uh-huh.

Grant Cardone 1:55:05 And I bought it from a group called Waypoint. It took $6 million in down payments. I'd already signed on the loan. And Elena, and, "Do it on this deal, Grant. It's, it's a small deal. It won't, you know, let's just see what happens." I'm like, "It's stupid. We don't need to do this." I tell my fr- I tell people on Instagram, "Hey, guys, I just opened this deal. Blah, blah, blah." Wham, money starts coming in. I said, "That's crazy."

Lewis Howes 1:55:26 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:55:27 I mean, I know how to compare a response because of the webinars-

Lewis Howes 1:55:32 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:55:32 ... and the events, and the tickets, and the books, right? And people are like 10,000, or I think at that time it was 100 grand minimum. 100 grand every time. Bang, bang, bang. And then this one guy sends in 400 grand, and I'm like, "Who's he?" I said, "I don't, I don't know that person." And then, and then they pulled him up. "Oh, he owns a, a car dealership up in Michigan." I'm like, "I know that guy."

Lewis Howes 1:55:52 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:55:53 "I know that guy. I've been calling on that guy for 20 years." Called him up on the phone. I said, "Hey, man, why'd you do this?" He's like, "I've never bought anything from you. Nothing. Not a book, not a program, not a workshop." I said, "Why'd you do this?" He's like, " 'Cause I admire you as a businessman."

Lewis Howes 1:56:08 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:56:08 "Okay, but I've seen your whole career. I've watched you 17 years. I've watched what you built." Okay? Wired us 400 grand.

Lewis Howes 1:56:14 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 1:56:14 Okay? 60 days later, I sent him one check. It was in March. Sent him another check in April. On the, on, on, in May, he calls up and says, "All right, bro, I'm ready for all your stuff."

Lewis Howes 1:56:26 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:56:27 He bought everything we have. And I was like, "Oh my God, this is the great hack."

Lewis Howes 1:56:32 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:56:33 I'm gonna turn everybody into an investor.

Lewis Howes 1:56:35 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:56:36 Then they become customers.

Lewis Howes 1:56:37 Right.

Grant Cardone 1:56:37 'Cause they, they want me to do well.

Lewis Howes 1:56:39 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:56:40 Now, now we're partners, man. You know, we're partners. You want me to win.

Lewis Howes 1:56:45 Absolutely.

Grant Cardone 1:56:45 Okay? So, uh, you know, so, so it was like, "Oh my God, man, this..." Having investors isn't a bad thing if it's the right investors. Now, we've already had problem with a couple of investors. They turn into little wankers.

Lewis Howes 1:56:57 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:56:58 Uh, somebody got... People got in trouble in COVID. I'm like, "Good. Guys, do you need some help?" Sending their money back.

Lewis Howes 1:57:03 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:57:04 So if I c- if I'm in a position to do that, I wanna do this, 'cause this is a really long play for me.

Lewis Howes 1:57:08 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:57:09 And I mean long. I don't mean my lifetime. This is-

Lewis Howes 1:57:13 Generations

Grant Cardone 1:57:14 ... this is, this is your, this is Sabrina and Scarlett, beyond them.

Lewis Howes 1:57:18 Wow.

Grant Cardone 1:57:19 This could be the year 2200.

Lewis Howes 1:57:21 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:57:23 You know, this, this is a company that could last forever.

Lewis Howes 1:57:26 That's exciting.

Grant Cardone 1:57:26 Yeah. So, 'cause, 'cause, you know, that would, that would be... Th- there's a lot of moms out there-

Lewis Howes 1:57:33 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 1:57:33 ... like my mom was. A lot of... My sister, my sister, my two sisters that don't have income, you know, that-

Lewis Howes 1:57:41 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:57:41 ... Goldman Sachs is never gonna call them and say, "Hey, Diane, you wanna invest in this deal? It's gonna be good for you." We don't use middlemen. We don't use banks. So maybe I can convert some of the, some of your audience- [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:57:52 Exactly

Grant Cardone 1:57:52 ... that has ragged on you for having me here.

Lewis Howes 1:57:54 I know. Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:57:55 'Cause nobody is more polarizing.

Lewis Howes 1:57:57 [laughs] It's true.

Grant Cardone 1:57:58 And I have been, dude. Like, like-

Lewis Howes 1:57:59 Yeah

Grant Cardone 1:57:59 ... and that's the thing, like, you asked me what would I wanna get out of this show more than anything. You know, I know I deliver terribly. Like, I'm just... You know, I'm a grinder. I've been grinding. I've been trying to come up from nothing so long, and, and then it worked. My aggressiveness worked one day, and then I doubled down on being aggressive. Then one day I looked up, and the only thing I knew was how to be aggressive.

Lewis Howes 1:58:26 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 1:58:27 And so now I'm trying to unwind-

Lewis Howes 1:58:29 Mm

Grant Cardone 1:58:29 ... you know, attacking all the time. Like, like, I have attack, the attack gene-

Lewis Howes 1:58:36 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 1:58:36 ... fully developed in me.

Lewis Howes 1:58:38 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 1:58:38 And I'm not proud of that, right? Like, like, that's my go-to, my go-to... I remember a lady, uh, she, she wanted... She tried to put me on drugs when I was 20... I was 31 years old, 32 years old, dating this girl named Michelle, and she's like, "Look, man, your first response is just aggression." I'm like, "Yeah?" She's a psychologist, you know? I said, "Yeah." [laughs] And it doesn't work with her, you know? I'm like, "Okay." This is what got me out of this trap. So I'm 33, maybe 33 years old, so I'm eight years out of treatment, and I'm just starting to get my feet. Eight years. I'm starting to make a little money.

Lewis Howes 1:59:14 Mm.

Grant Cardone 1:59:15 I've got a little company now. I'm starting to do well for the first time. L- l- me and this girl had this thing, but we were two different people, and the, the, the psychologist is like, "Look, you know, I'm gonna recommend a drug." This is 12 minutes into the interview. "I'm gonna recommend..." I think it was a Prozac or some... "And then if that one doesn't work, then I'm gonna introduce you to a psychiatrist. He's gonna give you this one drug, and then if that doesn't work, we'll add one."

Lewis Howes 1:59:38 Man.

Grant Cardone 1:59:39 "And if that one doesn't work, we'll add one. And sometimes a little bit of an experiment."

Lewis Howes 1:59:43 That's crazy.

Grant Cardone 1:59:44 And I'm like, "Yeah, d- what, what are you trying to do?" She's like, "I'm trying to take some of your aggression. I want you to just add a second." And then she moves to the, the girl and says, "And now you." I said, "No, no, no. Give me this. Subscribe whatever you want to me, okay?" She's not going, going on anything, 'cause they wanted to get her up a little bit, make her more aggressive.

Lewis Howes 2:00:03 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:00:05 And, um, s- sure enough, they prescribed it to me. One interview. I was there less than 45 minutes.

Lewis Howes 2:00:10 Wow.

Grant Cardone 2:00:10 Okay? I ate one of them. I forget what it was. It was one of these w- whatever.

Lewis Howes 2:00:15 Something to relax you a little more.

Grant Cardone 2:00:17 Yeah, yeah, just... It was gonna add a second.

Lewis Howes 2:00:19 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:00:19 It was lithium.

Lewis Howes 2:00:20 Okay.

Grant Cardone 2:00:21 It was lithium, dude. I took it. I took half a tab, and I could feel metal moving through my system.

Lewis Howes 2:00:27 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:00:29 And so somebody would ask me something, and I'd [laughs] you know?

Lewis Howes 2:00:32 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:00:33 And then... But I couldn't. It was like, you know, you had to move through this little metal-

Lewis Howes 2:00:37 Wow

Grant Cardone 2:00:38 ... almost this little aluminum, like... And I threw the prescription away. Got rid of her. Went back to being aggressive. Now I'm 35 years old, bro. Like, I would continue to, to groove in aggressive for the next 16 years-

Lewis Howes 2:00:53 Wow

Grant Cardone 2:00:53 ... to make millions of dollars, to fight in an industry that was, like, brutal. Cold calling people. Can you imagine cold calling people every day?

Lewis Howes 2:01:04 I could, but I don't want to. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:01:06 Nobody wants to.

Lewis Howes 2:01:07 Oh, man, it's not fun.

Grant Cardone 2:01:08 Okay? And I built this shell, right?

Lewis Howes 2:01:09 Yeah, 'cause you get so many rejections, so many nos, so many people wasting your time.

Grant Cardone 2:01:12 Yeah, and, and, and I got to a point where I'm like, "Okay, the nos and the rejection don't even bother me anymore." Now, now you become like a machine, man.

Lewis Howes 2:01:19 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:01:19 I'm just like, like... And everything's competition. Everything. Everybody's a threat in my environment. Everybody. Every company, every customer, everything is... And that's what built me. Right? And that, and, and then I figured out how to use aggression to get o- over it, and then, then I'm 51 years old. I'm like, "Man, I gotta lear- I gotta figure out another way to do this thing."

Lewis Howes 2:01:40 'Cause is that, is that sustainable for the rest of your life?

Grant Cardone 2:01:42 No. No. So I started doing social media. Social media comes, I'm like, "Okay, don't do the aggressive thing here."

Lewis Howes 2:01:47 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:01:48 Have empathy.

Lewis Howes 2:01:49 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:01:49 When, when I met you, I'm like, "I need to, I need to study Lewis," right? But y- y- I don't know how to make that transition any more than somebody that knows empathy knows how to become aggressive.

Lewis Howes 2:01:58 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:01:58 You know?

Lewis Howes 2:01:59 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:02:00 And so I'm ju- I've just been trying to figure it out, man. And-

Lewis Howes 2:02:03 And what do, what do you think it'll take for you to, to step into who you really wanna be moving forward?

Grant Cardone 2:02:09 I just gotta, you know, just every day just, you know, practice a little more about, like... In deals, though, I need to be that in deals.

Lewis Howes 2:02:17 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:02:17 Sometimes I just need to walk away from the deal and let Ryan handle it.

Lewis Howes 2:02:20 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:02:22 So-

Lewis Howes 2:02:23 With some, some grace or some finesse

Grant Cardone 2:02:24 ... yeah, like we did, we did a deal. We bought two deals off-market in December. If I was on those deals, I would have completely scorched the entire market.

Lewis Howes 2:02:31 Blown it up, yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:02:31 I would've blown everything up.

Lewis Howes 2:02:32 What's the thing you think you'll be the most proud of if you can create by the end of the year, or become?

Grant Cardone 2:02:37 This year? The end of this year?

Lewis Howes 2:02:38 This year.

Grant Cardone 2:02:40 Um, this year. What could I create this year?

Lewis Howes 2:02:43 Or do or be that you'll ma- make you the most proud of?

Grant Cardone 2:02:47 Um, I don't know, man. Like, you know, the kids. I mean, I love my kids. I love my wife. I want, I ne- I need to, I need to be a better husband. At some point I can't, you know, doing these deals, like that, that's great. I gotta do deals, though, to reach my goal with the investors.

Lewis Howes 2:03:00 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:03:01 Be a better guy, man.

Lewis Howes 2:03:02 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:03:02 You know, just be a good guy and be, be... You know, the thing I'm proud of is I get to be Grant all the time.

Lewis Howes 2:03:09 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:03:09 You know, I'm actually getting to the point where I'm like, "Hey, man, I, I finally got to be what I w- I, I finally became what I wanted to be."

Lewis Howes 2:03:16 Hmm. What was that?

Grant Cardone 2:03:17 Me.

Lewis Howes 2:03:18 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:03:19 You know? That, that I don't have to apologize anymore, and that I quit-

Lewis Howes 2:03:23 Hmm

Grant Cardone 2:03:23 ... screwing up and I quit having to call people and say, "Hey, man, I, I s- I went too far," you know? If I could just pull some of that back without that drug that, that, that psychiatrist was trying to use.

Lewis Howes 2:03:33 Right.

Grant Cardone 2:03:33 You know? That if I'm less dependent upon aggression, you know, and I could, I could kinda manifest more, you know, like you, you talk about.

Lewis Howes 2:03:43 Let it f- let it flow more. There you-

Grant Cardone 2:03:44 Let it flow, dude

Lewis Howes 2:03:45 ... yeah

Grant Cardone 2:03:45 ... let it flow, you know? But, but if I could get that perfect balance of aggression and flow.

Lewis Howes 2:03:50 [laughs] That's a sweet spot.

Grant Cardone 2:03:52 You know?

Lewis Howes 2:03:52 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:03:52 It's sweet, dude. It's hard to find that thing.

Lewis Howes 2:03:54 That sweet spot.

Grant Cardone 2:03:55 You know? To be that... I don't wanna be, I want, I don't wanna be the little stream that drips, you know? I wanna be like...

Lewis Howes 2:04:02 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:04:03 But I don't wanna damage anybody.

Lewis Howes 2:04:04 Right.

Grant Cardone 2:04:05 I don't wanna hurt anybody, you know? I don't wanna, I don't wanna be in competition anymore.

Lewis Howes 2:04:09 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:04:09 But I also don't wanna lose the edge.

Lewis Howes 2:04:11 Right. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:04:12 You know?

Lewis Howes 2:04:12 It's a dance.

Grant Cardone 2:04:13 It's, dude, it's a dance.

Lewis Howes 2:04:14 It's a dance, man.

Grant Cardone 2:04:14 You know? Like, like your girl said to me the other night, she's like, s- she said something before she left. She's like, "I really get who you are."

Lewis Howes 2:04:21 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:04:22 You know? That, and that hits me-

Lewis Howes 2:04:24 Mm

Grant Cardone 2:04:24 ... when people say that to me. Most people don't get who I am.

Lewis Howes 2:04:27 Mm. That's beautiful.

Grant Cardone 2:04:28 You know? And then she said, "I really get who you are."

Lewis Howes 2:04:32 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:04:32 And, and, and a lot of people don't.

Lewis Howes 2:04:34 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:04:35 And, and it, sometimes it hurts, right? 'Cause I know who I really am.

Lewis Howes 2:04:38 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:04:39 And, but I also know the things I'm trying to accomplish for me. You know, like Ryan, Ryan gets who I am, you know?

Lewis Howes 2:04:45 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:04:45 Ryan, Ryan never takes me on. "Man, you're s- you're the best, Grant. You're the best."

Lewis Howes 2:04:49 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:04:50 He just, he strokes me, right? Right through it.

Lewis Howes 2:04:52 Yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:04:52 And, and, and, you know, my wife, I can see my wife, she gets t- she gets tired of the, the, the pounding, you know? But hey, man, I just, you know, I'm a right-handed hitter, you know?

Lewis Howes 2:05:02 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:05:02 Or I got, I got a certain ball that I throw-

Lewis Howes 2:05:04 Yeah

Grant Cardone 2:05:04 ... a certain shot I make, and-

Lewis Howes 2:05:05 Yeah

Grant Cardone 2:05:06 ... it's my go-to, you know? And when, when I get threatened, I'm gonna go to that. And now if I could develop some other set of skills-

Lewis Howes 2:05:13 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 2:05:13 ... you know, that would be, that would be a cool thing.

Lewis Howes 2:05:15 What would it take for you to develop that skill?

Grant Cardone 2:05:18 Uh, you know, I just, I don't know that I need to develop it. I probably just need to get rid of something.

Lewis Howes 2:05:22 Ah.

Grant Cardone 2:05:23 You know? Probably something that has to happen spiritually more than-

Lewis Howes 2:05:27 Mm. Oh

Grant Cardone 2:05:28 ... you know? See, the problem is nobody wants to, like, confront the real magnitude of, of the mathematics, and that's why people are, "Ah, that's ridiculous shit." No, what you're saying is you can't imagine how to get to 20 million. See, I wish somebody had told me this in accounting. I went through accounting for, I spent five years getting an accounting degree. I only went there for one reason. I thought they were gonna teach me how to account.

Lewis Howes 2:05:49 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:05:51 I thought, I thought it was a freaking money course.

Lewis Howes 2:05:53 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:05:53 Okay?

Lewis Howes 2:05:54 No.

Grant Cardone 2:05:55 I'm thinking, in the fifth year, dude, it took me five years to get out of this course, I'm thinking, "This year they're gonna teach me about the money." There's nothing about money. And the only reason I went to that course was to figure out, dude, how do you [laughs] how do you make money? How do you keep money? How do you multiply money? Ba- the basic money class.

Lewis Howes 2:06:10 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:06:12 So, like, if you just do the math. Guy, a guy's like, "Oh, man, 80 grand, I'm good. 80 grand." Another guy's like, "100 grand and I'm good." They, they haven't done the math. Another person says, "If I just make a m- if I just have a million dollars, I'm good." But you haven't done the math, that, the, the actual math, you know? Like, how much money is that really, you know? 100 grand in Los Angeles. 13,000 goes to the state. You have $87,000. Okay? Half that goes to the federal government. You're at $42,500.

Lewis Howes 2:06:39 Mm.

Grant Cardone 2:06:39 I've done the math.

Lewis Howes 2:06:40 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:06:40 Okay? You're at 42 five. You go to Whole Foods once a week just to take care of your little baby girl and your wife. You're broke.

Lewis Howes 2:06:47 Mm. [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:06:48 Okay? So you're broke. You're broke. Okay?

Lewis Howes 2:06:50 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:06:50 And we haven't even p- we haven't even handled the healthcare issue.

Lewis Howes 2:06:53 Right.

Grant Cardone 2:06:53 Trumpcare, Obamacare. You don't care-

Lewis Howes 2:06:56 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:06:56 ... if you don't get your money right. I mean, that's the facts.

Lewis Howes 2:06:59 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:06:59 So most people have never done the math. There is no school on it. There's no class on it. Why not?

Lewis Howes 2:07:04 Why is that?

Grant Cardone 2:07:04 Why, man?

Lewis Howes 2:07:05 So frustrating.

Grant Cardone 2:07:06 But you, do you know how many people the middle class support? How many bad, awful groups?

Lewis Howes 2:07:12 No.

Grant Cardone 2:07:13 You know? I mean, just think about it, man. Like, if the middle class, if 215 million people in America knew the truth, and they weren't sitting there saying, "But look at my two cars. Look at my two little girls, and I got dresses for them. And look, we..." Look at people in Ethiopia. They're starving. You w- you went over to Africa, you know?

Lewis Howes 2:07:29 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:07:29 Compare their situation to our middle class. Everybody here is rich, including the guy on the, on the street corner that's a panhandler.

Lewis Howes 2:07:36 Absolutely.

Grant Cardone 2:07:36 Right? So why-

2:07:39 ... is the, is the freaking killer question. Hmm. Why have so many people been put under the spell of the middle class? That, that is who determines who's the president of a country. Right. Look what happened in this last election. Mm-hmm. Okay? That middle class is starting to get a little edgy right now. They're starting to be like, "Dude, I haven't had a good job. I haven't had a freaking pay raise. You keep talking about unemployment going down. Where's my money?" Okay, I don't get anything at the bank. I earn a half a percent at the bank. So your mom, my mom, my mom, I watched my mom earn 12% at the bank. She earned 1% a month on her money. Hmm. So the battle cry back then was save your money- Yeah ... 'cause you could earn something. Right. Save your money today, what do you get? Nothing. Nothing, dude. You lose money. You lose money, okay? Yeah. So- Inflation is, yeah ... don't take a risk. Don't take a chance. Diversify. Why, why would I diversify? Why- rich people do not diversify, okay? They got the, the wealthiest people on this planet, when they went into trains, they went all in on the trains. Hmm. When Henry Ford went into cars, he didn't diversify. He went all in on cars. Elon Musk, he's going all in on solar, right? That's how you make hits. But the middle class is taught what? Put a little here, put a little here, put a little here, put a little here. Put 27 different things out there. Why? Who benefits from 27 investments? Those people. Wall Street. Yeah. Okay? Start early. Start early. Start early, okay? Get a Keogh account. Get an IRA. Who benefits? Freaking Wall Street, dude. All that money gets pushed over there for 30 years. Mm-hmm. So- So where do you put your main, your, your money then personally? Well, let me just say this. Yeah. If they offer it to you, okay, it's like, it's like, it's like insurance in Vegas at a blackjack table. You know when you got, you, they g- they got an ace up and they're like, "You want insurance?" Dude, if they offer it to you in Vegas, this is what my mama told me. She's like, "If they offer it to you, don't take it." Hmm. So, so if Wall Street offers something to you, it's probably not good for you. Hmm. So where do I put my money? I put my money, number one, where I have total control. Number two, where it is indestructible. Like the investment has to be indestructible. So I'm, I'm indestructible, right? I can invest in me. Mm-hmm. And I'm in control of that investment. Uh, that's the first that I would tell everybody. Like, don't even invest... Don't even think about financial investment until you have 100 grand set aside. Hmm. And until then, you got 5, you got 10, you got 22, you got 50, just keep in- reinvesting that money in yourself, courses, classes, whatever. And, and until, uh, until you're taking the action necessary, the money will show up at the bank if you keep investing in you, the vehicle. Mm-hmm. And then the second thing is w- the, where the money goes, okay, the money's gotta go into something indestructible. No technology can wipe it out, and it needs to be very simple, for me. Like so simple that I can explain it in one sentence. So what's that? Well, it's not Bitcoin- [laughs] Yeah ... 'cause I can't get my head wrapped around the, the, the- Sure ... the, the cryptocurrency, and most people can't explain it to me. But you're receiving payments from, from people in Bitcoin. I will take, I will take your crypto. Yeah. I'll take it, but I'm not gonna invest in it. Yeah. I'll take anything, dude. I'll take your donkey. [laughs] Yeah. You know. Sure. So, uh, my office feels differently about that. Hmm. But... 'Cause we got, we had this phone call like, "Hey, will you take 50,000 in Bitcoin?" And Sherry was like, "No." Jared's like, "No." I'm like, "Hey, dude, take that money, son." Hmm. Okay? Take that freaking exchange. If it's that or nothing. Whatever, man. Dude, dude- Yeah ... take, take it, man. Don't tell people no. Hmm. Figure out how to make it all right to say yes to it. So, um, what was your question? You, you said, what, so- So what are you putting it in then? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I load up. Everybody knows how. I'm load- loading up in real estate. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I buy apartment buildings. And so the simple thing is I buy a place where somebody has to live. They rent it from me, and they're gonna rent it from me for years, and that's gonna pay down the debt on that place. I don't own homes. I don't, I don't buy houses. I buy rental property that people have to live in, that want, they wanna live in because they're great properties. They're really nice properties. And, um, it's affordable living. It's not, it's not this $5,000 a month- Right ... you know, stuff that you live in. Right. It, it's affordable, $1,100 a month. Great neighborhoods, great properties, safe environments. Mm-hmm. We go in, improve them, fix them up, happy living, take care of people. Mm-hmm. We don't abuse anybody. I don't do any government, uh, programs- Right ... even though there's a lot of money in them. Um, and then, and I know that money'll be there for my kids- Yeah ... 30 years from now. I mean, that money'll be there 100 years from now. So you put 100% of your investments in that or either in yourself, your team- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... or real estate? Yeah, in my business. Yeah, yeah. In myself- Yeah ... my business. Every surplus penny. Twice a year I go broke. Hmm. Twice a year I'm like, "Put it all in." Re- into real estate? Yeah. Wow. And then it's gone. And then you have to regenerate. And I gotta go back and- Sell ... I gotta go, but literally I'm, uh, like, like real estate guys, there's a saying with real estate guys, "Don't ever go to dinner with them 'cause they never have any cash on them." [laughs] I'm broke right now. Really? Like, I, yeah, we j- we're going all in right now, so I go to- You could buy big unit or big units, right? I ex- I exhaust my reserves and, and then we gotta go back out and say, "Okay, let's go again." Really? Let's go. Let's go sell a book. Let's go sell a, uh, let's go get a Millionaire booklet out there- Mm-hmm ... in the marketplace. Mm-hmm. 'Cause there's nobody, there's nobody that I know in our space that, that will push as hard for a $9 product as I will. I don't know anyone. Right? Nobody. I don't know anyone. Nobody. I'll go from one, I'll, I'll- Maybe, you know what? Timmy, Tim Sykes- Yeah ... he pushes pretty hard. Do you know who he is? Yeah, but he won't, he won't drop down to, like, a, a, a $3 product, dude. I don't know. Yeah, maybe not, but- I mean, you can come to o- one of my seminars. You'll see me at the back table freaking selling $2 slippers. [laughs] So why is that? Because it, it's a flow, dude. It keeps the flow- Hmm ... going, okay? It's about, uh, money's about, it's about, it's about a, uh, what is this? Uh, it's a cycle. Circulation. It's circulation. It's, it's, it's c- this is has to happen for you to have money. And the, and the bigger the circulation, you know- I was in Australia, I was on this dive. It was a nine-day dive, liveaboard. We didn't see land for eight days.

Lewis Howes 2:13:47 Wow.

Grant Cardone 2:13:48 Dude, I saw so much activity, uh, i- i- underneath, right, at 80 feet and 100 feet. Like, there was economies without any money, tremendous economies where they're trading food, right? I mean, there's all this activity. Giant tunas. I mean, a, a group or bigger than this wall right here, where there was this big, this food, right? There's this, just this cycle of food and ecosystem. And, and that's what the economy is. The economy is basi- basically an ecosystem of people that, that either have confidence or don't have confidence. You know, screaming and yelling. That's why I like New York. I love New York, 'cause you can feel that, that energy. I like a circus-

Lewis Howes 2:14:26 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 2:14:26 ... because, you know, you got the guy hawking. You know Ed McMahon? You remember Ed McMahon?

Lewis Howes 2:14:30 Uh-huh.

Grant Cardone 2:14:30 Okay, Johnny Carson. He, he was-

Lewis Howes 2:14:32 Yeah, yeah

Grant Cardone 2:14:32 ... he was the opener for Johnny Carson.

Lewis Howes 2:14:33 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:14:33 A lot of you, you, you, you might... How old are you?

Lewis Howes 2:14:36 34.

Grant Cardone 2:14:36 Yeah, so you, you probably don't even know who Ed McMahon was. Ed McMahon freaking... He was the opener for Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson preceded, uh, Jay Leno.

Lewis Howes 2:14:48 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:14:49 And the other dude-

Lewis Howes 2:14:49 The late show or whatever, right? Right?

Grant Cardone 2:14:50 Yeah, exactly.

Lewis Howes 2:14:51 Yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:14:51 He was the ultimate late.

Lewis Howes 2:14:52 The night show. Yeah, yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:14:52 Yeah, yeah. Well, Ed McMahon was his opener. And-

Lewis Howes 2:14:55 The guy that hyped him up-

Grant Cardone 2:14:56 Yeah

Lewis Howes 2:14:56 ... for the crowd.

Grant Cardone 2:14:57 Dude, "Here's Johnny."

Lewis Howes 2:14:59 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:14:59 Right? And that went on for 30 years, dude. I grew up with that in my household, right? So, black and white. And, and Ed McMahon, his first, his first job was a barker in a circus-

Lewis Howes 2:15:11 Hmm

Grant Cardone 2:15:11 ... where he'd like, be like, "Right over here." You see him in the Home Depots-

Lewis Howes 2:15:15 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 2:15:15 ... right, to the Vitamix machine. "Ladies and gentlemen, come on over. Come on over, okay? Have something to..." Right? They're pitchmen. They're, they're dragging audiences, which is such a powerful thing.

Lewis Howes 2:15:25 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:15:25 And so many people today are unwilling to do that. Like, "No, no, I'm not gonna do that," you know? Look at the actors and actresses in this town that wait for the audition.

Lewis Howes 2:15:34 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:15:34 Wait for the phone to ring, rather than show up cold to an audition and say, "I know I'm not on the list. They have to see me."

Lewis Howes 2:15:43 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:15:44 Dude, that takes balls.

Lewis Howes 2:15:45 Balls.

Grant Cardone 2:15:46 Big time, okay?

Lewis Howes 2:15:48 Wow. So you're selling $2 stickers and $200,000 programs in b- anything in between, it doesn't matter to you.

Grant Cardone 2:15:54 And, and, and, and in November we raised $15 million for the real estate. So-

Lewis Howes 2:15:58 Hmm

Grant Cardone 2:15:58 ... so, uh-

Lewis Howes 2:15:59 For a fund you're doing, right? Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:16:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, you know, who, who do you know that can go from $1 to 15 million bucks in a freaking, in, in, in literally like just that fast?

Lewis Howes 2:16:10 Wow.

Grant Cardone 2:16:11 B- one thing is because I, I, I'm an ethical person. Like, like, I think people need that sticker. I think people need that book. I think people n- need to invest with me, because I'm not gonna rip them off.

Lewis Howes 2:16:20 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:16:20 I'm not... I, I am in control of that property. Somebody has to be in control.

Lewis Howes 2:16:24 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:16:24 So to the degree that you are a person I believe is ethically, like, clean hands, is to the degree that they can pitch full on-

Lewis Howes 2:16:35 So you can sell as-

Grant Cardone 2:16:35 ... hardcore

Lewis Howes 2:16:36 ... hard as you want, as much as you want-

Grant Cardone 2:16:37 Yeah

Lewis Howes 2:16:37 ... 'cause you know it's right.

Grant Cardone 2:16:37 And if you can't, if you can't, there's something-

Lewis Howes 2:16:40 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 2:16:40 ... either in your present or in your past that you're still uncomfortable with.

Lewis Howes 2:16:44 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:16:45 Something.

Lewis Howes 2:16:45 Yeah.

Grant Cardone 2:16:46 Like, like-

Lewis Howes 2:16:46 Do you feel like you're too pitchy ever? Do you feel like-

Grant Cardone 2:16:48 Sure, sure

Lewis Howes 2:16:48 ... "Oh, maybe I was too aggressive or..."

Grant Cardone 2:16:50 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I've h- I've heard that before.

Lewis Howes 2:16:51 Maybe I've been s-

Grant Cardone 2:16:52 I've heard that before, from people that didn't buy from me.

Lewis Howes 2:16:54 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:16:55 Only from people that didn't buy from me.

Lewis Howes 2:16:57 Really? Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:16:57 The people that buy from me are never complaining about me being too pushy.

Lewis Howes 2:17:01 What do you think about-

Grant Cardone 2:17:01 Yeah

Lewis Howes 2:17:01 ... the people that never buy from you but are following you and commenting and-

Grant Cardone 2:17:05 I j- I, I just ha- either hadn't pitched it right, hadn't found the right time to pitch them-

Lewis Howes 2:17:09 Mm-hmm

Grant Cardone 2:17:09 ... or, or, uh, you know, um, or I have, they, they haven't seen the right product yet, you know?

Lewis Howes 2:17:15 Right.

Grant Cardone 2:17:15 So.

Lewis Howes 2:17:16 The biggest, the biggest and the greatest.

Grant Cardone 2:17:17 Or maybe they're never gonna buy from me. I mean-

Lewis Howes 2:17:18 Hmm

Grant Cardone 2:17:18 ... you know, it's all good.

Lewis Howes 2:17:20 Yeah. Wow.

Grant Cardone 2:17:22 You know?

Lewis Howes 2:17:23 And how did you sell your wife?

Grant Cardone 2:17:26 Well-

Lewis Howes 2:17:27 Share that story, 'cause it was really powerful-

Grant Cardone 2:17:28 Yeah, yeah, she-

Lewis Howes 2:17:28 ... for the people at the dinner when I was saying

Grant Cardone 2:17:29 ... you know, it took 13 months. I had to pitch her for 13 months. I, you know, I'll tell you how I sold her. I sold her the way I get everything done. I just commit first. I commit. I go all in, dude. I, you know, um... What's that place we're working out? What's the name of it?

Speaker 2:17:41 Equinox.

Lewis Howes 2:17:41 Equinox.

Grant Cardone 2:17:42 Equinox. You know, they have commit to something. That's their saying. Their motto is commit to something. I'm like, "Dude, that's a bad idea, okay?" Commit to the right things. Like, don't just commit to something. I was committed to drugs for nine years of my life.

Lewis Howes 2:17:58 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:17:59 Like, to, to, to, to the... At one point, I, it had me. I didn't have it anymore. I couldn't even make the commitment. I didn't have a choice. So Elena, I was in San Diego, California. I lived in La Jolla.

Lewis Howes 2:18:11 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:18:11 Nobody leaves La Jolla to come to LA.

Lewis Howes 2:18:13 [laughs] Right.

Grant Cardone 2:18:13 Nobody goes north like that, okay? So I'm living in La Jolla. I'm in a, I'm in a oceanfront house that... I mean, it was a dream house, dude.

Lewis Howes 2:18:20 Beautiful.

Grant Cardone 2:18:21 It, it was a Playboy's mansion. Like, no, no woman ever walked into this house and escaped-

Lewis Howes 2:18:25 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:18:26 ... with her virginity-

Lewis Howes 2:18:27 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:18:27 ... or her sexuality or anything, okay?

Lewis Howes 2:18:30 Yes.

Grant Cardone 2:18:30 So they all left feeling good about themselves, but-

Lewis Howes 2:18:32 Yes

Grant Cardone 2:18:32 ... but you could come with as much resistance as you wanted in this house. This house had a magical spell on all women, okay?

Lewis Howes 2:18:38 [laughs]

Grant Cardone 2:18:39 And so one day I just got, I said, "No, I need to leave San Diego."

Lewis Howes 2:18:44 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:18:44 And I wanted to get married. I was 35 years old, and I desperately wanted to get married.

Lewis Howes 2:18:48 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:18:48 And I had met enough women in San Diego to know that she wasn't there.

Lewis Howes 2:18:52 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:18:52 Okay? And so I'm like, "I'm gonna sell the house." That's how I do things. Called a realtor up, said, "Let's sell the house." Okay? She's like, "Well, how much you want for it?" I said, "Well, I want all I can get for it, but I wanna sell it immediately." "Where you going?" I said, "I'm going to Los Angeles." I had this idea that my wife was in Los Angeles. I knew she wasn't there. That's all I knew. She's not there. I think she's in LA. I'm gonna go to the big city. So sold the house, like, almost right away.

Lewis Howes 2:19:18 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:19:18 Got all, uh, all the money. Uh, and left a life I had, dude. I knew everybody in Los Angeles. Every restaurant I'd walk into-

Lewis Howes 2:19:26 In San Diego

Grant Cardone 2:19:26 ... I was like the ma-

Lewis Howes 2:19:26 Yeah, yeah

Grant Cardone 2:19:27 ... uh, in, uh, La Jolla, yeah. And, um, knew everybody, right? Had it made, which was one of the reasons I had to leave, right? So-

Lewis Howes 2:19:36 Getting comfortable.

Grant Cardone 2:19:37 Yeah, totally.

Lewis Howes 2:19:37 Mm-hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:19:38 Totally, like complacent. Drove up here, had all my stuff in a car, had everything else shipped- Didn't know where I was gonna stay

Lewis Howes 2:19:46 Hmm

Grant Cardone 2:19:47 Had no clue where I was gonna stay. Never been here. Never met anybody here.

Lewis Howes 2:19:50 Really?

Grant Cardone 2:19:50 Didn't know one person here, dude. Didn't make a phone call. Didn't check it out. Didn't even Google it, going to Los Angeles. I just followed, like, "I'm going."

Lewis Howes 2:19:58 Hmm.

Grant Cardone 2:19:59 And, uh, met her the first night I was here.

Lewis Howes 2:20:01 No way.

Grant Cardone 2:20:02 Met her in a, a, in a RV. She was on a, she was on a shoot. A, uh, uh, they, they were shooting this TV, uh, commercial. And, um, met her, got her number from the director. I said, "Hey, give me her number." He said, "I can't do that." I