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Lewis Howes"They Want To Keep You Poor!" (BIGGEST MONEY MYTHS) | Grant Cardone & Lewis Howes
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Chapter summaries
Why People Fear Money: Getting, Keeping, Investing
Lewis asks why people are afraid of money. Grant describes his own lifelong fear, the frugal and hoarding examples of his uncles and family, and why he says people learn to get and keep money but never how to invest it.
- •Grant still asks "how much was it?" about everything because he grew up having to know what things cost
- •Money is frightening because everyone gets it and could lose it
- •Parents' sayings like "money doesn't grow on trees" passed on their own fear
- •Grant's uncles buried, saved or paid off everything, but nobody taught the third step of investing
- •People walk around terrified of an apparent scarcity of money
Money Printing, Bank Lending and Why Corporations Hold Debt
Grant argues that large amounts of printed money mean more inflation is coming, and explains how banks can lend out multiples of deposits. He says he stopped following influencers and started studying banks and companies like Apple and Elon Musk's, which borrow cheaply even when they have cash.
- •Grant says more money was printed recently than in the previous hundred years
- •Banks can loan out nine times a deposit, according to Grant
- •Studying banks and companies instead of influencers changed his thinking
- •Apple borrows at very low rates because debt is tax-deductible while a cash purchase is not
- •Debt used to cost 10–18% but is cheap now, and Grant says he still fights his parents' scarcity habits
Three Pieces of Advice: Invest in Yourself, Your Business, and Cash-Flowing Assets
Asked for three things to tell the younger generation, Grant says hoarding is a bigger problem than spending and that people should assume everything they know about money is wrong. His three steps are investing in yourself, investing in your business, and buying real assets that cash flow, appreciate and shelter taxes.
- •Hoarding is a bigger problem than overspending in Grant's view
- •Assume everything you know about money is incorrect to start from a clean board
- •Invest in personal improvement first, even using debt
- •Skip emergency accounts and rainy-day savings; hustle and cash flow matter more
- •Real assets should cash flow, appreciate and provide tax shelter, which Grant says real estate does and Bitcoin, gold and NFTs do not
- •Money problems come from wrong information, not stupidity or laziness
Turning $1,000 Into More: Reinvesting and Marketing
Lewis asks what someone with $1,000 to $10,000 should do. Grant says to keep reinvesting in yourself until income rises, then spend on marketing, and he tells of staying in college while on drugs and of regretting that he waited until his mid-50s to spend on marketing.
- •Keep investing in yourself and let rising income show that the learning works
- •People start taking money off the table instead of reinvesting
- •Once personal investment is maxed out, the next step is marketing for leads
- •Grant started social media at 51 and marketing spend around 55–56, which he calls a big mistake
- •He says he completed an accounting degree but should have dropped out, and that drugs undermined his confidence
Studying Big Companies: Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs and Scaling
Grant explains that he began to study successful companies rather than individuals. He tells of buying a plane after studying Coca-Cola, visiting Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and deciding to raise money from individuals, and he discusses what he would do and which industries he would pick at 28.
- •Successful companies spend money and reinvest instead of hoarding
- •He bought a plane after learning how Coca-Cola writes off and trades them
- •Seeing Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan convinced him to build a fund for individual investors
- •He says his daughters will avoid a "$100,000 ride" and aim for billion-dollar possibilities
- •He names hedge funds, advertising and marketing, healthcare and finance as industries to pick, and says Jeff Bezos followed scale
Emergency Funds, Dumping Cash Each Year, and Bitcoin
Lewis raises a family wanting six months of savings. Grant says inflation eats saved cash and that cash flow from assets can serve as your emergency account. He explains his year-end habit of flushing cash into assets, the Malibu house purchase, and why he holds Bitcoin but prefers cash-flowing assets over gold and crypto.
- •Grant says savings lose value to inflation and most people already hold more than six months of expenses
- •Assets can be used as collateral, and cash flow can become your emergency account
- •Each year he gets as close to zero cash as possible and replaces it with assets
- •His criteria: can he buy two, can he write some of it off, and can he pay from passive income
- •Gold has been a poor investment, while Bitcoin is a limited store of value that pays no cash flow
Passive Income, Spending Rules and Planning Beyond Earning Years
Grant lays out his rule of never spending earned income, investing it in assets and living off the "drip" of passive income. He uses the example of a young rapper he advises, and says that earning capacity eventually declines so assets should be collected on the way up.
- •Being able to buy two of something is the test for affordability
- •Grant never spends earned income and invests all of it after taxes
- •Passive income comes from investing, while rent collection and MLM are active or residual income
- •Earning capacity declines, so build assets while it is rising
- •Leverage lets $100,000 control $400,000 of real estate, and inflation helps real estate owners but hurts cash holders
Warren Buffett, Concentration and the Future of Housing
Grant explains how studying Warren Buffett led him to real estate and away from diversification and buying cheap. He then discusses investor ownership of single-family homes, migration out of California and New York, and why he thinks America is "on sale" compared with other countries.
- •Buffett buys quality at a fair price for cash flow, not the lowest price
- •Real estate was Grant's accessible version of Buffett-style investing
- •Grant says Buffett and Elon Musk concentrate rather than diversify
- •He expects more renters than owners as investors buy up housing
- •Migration out of California and New York is raising prices in other states, and Grant says tax policy drove his own move to Florida
Cardone Capital Goals: From $400M to $4B and Beyond
Lewis recalls challenging Grant to 10X his real estate holdings, and Grant says they are now at four billion with a goal of 40 billion. He tells how opening his first fund to outside investors, which he discovered by accident, turned investors into customers, and how he wants to send out far more money to families each month.
- •Holdings grew from about $400 million to $4 billion, with a 40 billion target in five to ten years
- •He wants ordinary families like his mother's to get monthly checks
- •His first outside fund was $6 million and drew a $400,000 wire from a car dealer who later bought everything else
- •Investors become partners who want him to win
- •Grant frames this as a generational play
Aggression, Empathy and Becoming Who He Wants to Be
Grant opens up about his aggressive go-to response, including a psychologist who recommended lithium, and how aggression built his career but is not sustainable. Lewis says he has seen Grant grow toward service and spirituality, and Grant discusses wanting to balance aggression and flow.
- •Grant describes a psychologist recommending medication for his aggression, which he rejected
- •Aggression helped him through years of cold calling but is not sustainable
- •He wants to keep his edge while dropping competition and avoiding harm to others
- •Lewis says Grant has shifted from competition toward service over 13 years
- •Grant says the spiritual is senior to the material and that money is a joke to God
Haters, the Bankruptcy Video and Learning Instead of Hating
Grant tells of kids chanting his name at Halloween, then of the backlash to his joking bankruptcy video during COVID and how friends turned on him. He explains how he used to resent others' success and says you can't hate someone and learn from them at the same time.
- •Ten-year-olds knew Grant from TikTok and thanked him for teaching about money
- •A tongue-in-cheek bankruptcy video led friends to speak against him, which showed him who his real friends were
- •He admits he used to secretly misunderstand and resent others' success
- •Grant says you can't hate someone and model them
- •When he dislikes what someone does, he asks what he needs to learn from it, which led him to Facebook and Instagram
Getting from $4 Billion to $8 Billion and Closing
Lewis pushes Grant on what it would take to double his portfolio in a year. Grant says he would need to raise about a billion dollars and buy 12,000 apartments, and discusses why he won't simply go to one big lender. They agree to check back in a year.
- •Grant expects about six billion this year, and says eight would need heavens to open
- •He estimates raising roughly 800 million to a billion dollars
- •One lender could fund it, but Grant wants to bring the investment to tens of thousands of families
- •Steps include doubling the investor base and buying 12,000 apartments, roughly his whole career's total
- •He says he must find empathy while doing it
