Grant Cardone’s FAIL PROOF blueprint to EXPLOSIVE WEALTH

Summary

Podcast Title: Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Episode: Grant Cardone’s FAIL PROOF Blueprint to EXPLOSIVE WEALTH
Release Date: July 22, 2025
Host: Jillian Michaels
Guest: Grant Cardone

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels, Jillian welcomes Grant Cardone, a renowned bestselling author, real estate mogul managing over $4 billion in assets, and one of the world's top business influencers. The conversation delves deep into financial myths, strategic wealth-building, and the intricacies of the real estate market. Grant Cardone shares his candid insights on personal finance, debunking common misconceptions, and offers actionable advice for listeners aiming to achieve financial freedom.

Debunking Financial Myths

Jillian Michaels opens the discussion by challenging prevalent financial beliefs, particularly the necessity of a college education and homeownership as the primary pathways to wealth. She states:

"If I wouldn't have gone to college, but now I want to start a business... It feels kinda rigged. How do I start a business with the odds stacked against me?" [05:05]

Grant Cardone responds by emphasizing that financial literacy isn't the issue; rather, it's the "house rules" ingrained in American society. He argues that traditional advice—like buying a house or attending college—often leads to financial strain rather than success. Grant asserts:

"A house is not an asset. A house is a total liability. And it's an asset to the bank. It's not an asset to you." [08:09]

He also critiques the conventional wisdom around saving money, stating:

"There is no money to be made planning money. The budget thing is a contraction concept." [19:54]

Real Estate as the Cornerstone of Wealth

A significant portion of the conversation centers on real estate investing as a fail-proof blueprint to achieving explosive wealth. Grant Cardone outlines his strategy for building a substantial real estate portfolio:

"Don't start a business. Buy one that's already moving." [13:56]

He explains the importance of acquiring established businesses or real estate properties that generate passive income, rather than starting from scratch. Grant shares his personal success story, highlighting how he transformed a struggling health company into a lucrative enterprise:

"I paid almost nothing for the company. Like nothing. And it'll do this month. It'll do $15 million." [15:36]

Tax Strategies and Debt Management

Grant delves into sophisticated tax strategies and the concept of leveraging debt to build wealth. He discusses how wealthy individuals can use debt as a tool:

"Any debt I can write off is good debt." [39:11]

He elaborates on the benefits of writing off business-related debts and investments, contrasting them with personal debts like credit cards, which offer no tax advantages. Grant also touches upon depreciation in real estate, explaining how it can be used to reduce taxable income:

"You get to accelerate the depreciation... It's incredible." [50:50]

The Land Grab in California

One of the episode's most intense discussions revolves around the "land grab" strategy unfolding in California. Grant warns listeners about government interventions and policy changes that he believes are designed to concentrate wealth and control real estate markets. He explains how increased regulations and taxes in California are making homeownership increasingly untenable for individuals:

"California's absolute collapse is likely intentional... it's a land grab." [56:52]

Jillian adds personal anecdotes about her struggles with homeowners insurance and property remodeling, reinforcing the challenges faced by homeowners in high-tax states.

Personal Journey and Overcoming Adversity

Towards the end of the episode, Grant Cardone shares his inspiring personal story of overcoming adversity. He recounts his battle with drug addiction and how he transformed his life through relentless self-improvement and real estate investing. Grant emphasizes the importance of discipline and strategic investment:

"I've spent the last, now 30, what is it, 42 years focused on my personal self-improvement... and seeing if I could do the same thing for other people." [85:27]

Jillian reflects on Grant's authenticity and resilience, highlighting how his journey serves as a powerful example for listeners striving for financial independence.

Actionable Advice for Listeners

Grant concludes the episode by directing listeners to his resources for further education on real estate investing:

"If people love the real estate thing, if people Google me, you won't have a hard time finding me... Go to GrantCardOne.com/REI." [91:09]

He encourages listeners to take proactive steps in reducing their tax burdens, investing in passive income streams, and leveraging real estate as a primary tool for wealth creation.

Notable Quotes

• Grant Cardone: "A house is not an asset. A house is a total liability. And it's an asset to the bank. It's not an asset to you." [08:09]
• Jillian Michaels: "If I wouldn't have gone to college, but now I want to start a business... It feels kinda rigged." [05:05]
• Grant Cardone: "You have to spend 95% of your time on offense, creating new income, not planning money." [19:54]
• Grant Cardone: "There is no money to be made planning money. The budget thing is a contraction concept." [19:54]
• Grant Cardone: "What I want is what my dad didn't build. My dad died, his income stopped four days later." [41:36]

Conclusion

This episode of Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels offers listeners an eye-opening exploration of financial strategies that challenge conventional wisdom. Grant Cardone's unfiltered perspective on wealth creation, real estate investment, and financial independence provides valuable insights for anyone looking to break free from traditional financial constraints. Through a blend of personal anecdotes and strategic advice, Grant empowers listeners to take control of their financial destinies and build enduring wealth.

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Tune In: For those inspired to learn more about Grant Cardone's real estate strategies and wealth-building techniques, visit GrantCardOne.com/REI and explore his comprehensive resources designed to guide aspiring investors towards financial success.

Transcript

[Jillian Michaels]

I choose Function because it's the only health platform that gives you access to the kind of data most people never see and the insights to actually act on it. Inside Function, you can test over 160 biomarkers covering your heart, hormones, toxins, inflammation and stress. You can even add multi region MRIs and CT scans, all tracked over time in one secure place. It is the closest thing to a 360 degree view of your health. And, and this is why top experts like Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Jeremy London are all behind function. Because let's be honest, what we call normal in healthcare hasn't evolved. Your annual labs, maybe 20 basic markers, no hormones, no inflammation, very little data. I mean, how would you even know if they came back within range? Function is gonna change all of that. It's gonna take all of this murkiness out of your wellness. With tests like free T3 and T4, thyroid antibodies, ferritin and vitamin D, all tracked, explained and actually useful. This is the new normal in health. Your body, your baseline, on your terms. So learn more and join using my link, visit www.functionhealth.com Jillian or use the gift code Jillian at signup to own your health. I know you've got a million gazillion photos sitting on your phone right now. Don't just leave them there. Get them printed for free and delivered straight to your door. With free Prints. They have more than a million five star reviews. Free print is the world's favorite way to get premium quality photo prints. No subscriptions, no commitments, just a thousand free prints a year. So go to freeprints.com or download the Freeprints app directly from Google Play or, or the App Store. Today I am joined by the one and only Grant Cardone. He's a bestselling author, a real estate mogul with over 4 billion in assets under management, and he's one of the top business influencers in the world. And he's about to blow up everything you think you know about money, from college to homeownership, whether you should own, lease, or just take Uber when it comes to cars, we're going to dive headfirst into the biggest financial lies you've ever been sold. And he's going to show you exactly how they have handcuffed you to poverty and how to set yourself free. Then he exposes the nefarious land grab strategy that's quietly unfolding in California. One that could be coming to your city next. From zoning manipulation to strategic displacement, it's a playbook that's designed to concentrate wealth and power. And more importantly, he lays out what you can do to fight back. This episode isn't just about money. It's about power, freedom, and protecting your future. Let's get into it. Keeping it real with Jillian Michaels.

[Grant Cardone]

She's producing her first movie, a short movie. She's 13.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my God. Yeah, she's got. You know, it's funny, they talk about kids not having a grind when their parents are rich. I listened to Andrew Huberman talk about this and how it's like a dopamine hit that they can never realize on their own. And whenever I see super successful people with kids who grind, it's like, what is the secret?

[Grant Cardone]

Do my kids. Are we going? Are we on?

[Jillian Michaels]

Actually, are we recording? Oh, we are recording. I don't leave it in.

[Grant Cardone]

Tell me our kids. Look, there's nothing. I've done a lot of things in my life that I'm proud of. I have never been more proud of how Elaine and I have raised our children. We've homeschooled them now Jillian for seven, eight years.

[Jillian Michaels]

Really? Wow. So even pre Covid then.

[Grant Cardone]

Oh, yeah. Way before it was popular. So this is. They're 13 and 16. The 16 year old finished high school a year ago and she's off doing a competence and leadership workshop right now for two weeks on her own taking care of an engine room on in a boat out in the Bahamas. So she's working her ass off. And then the 13 year old's been with me for the last two weeks. She made, last week she made almost 600 phone calls, cold calls to our customers, raised about, I think she sold. She was one of the top salespeople in the organization last. We have 260 people here and she's crushing people over there. I got a couple 15 year olds that are interning here, friends of mine that send their kids over here. And so, yeah, look, you could be, you know, it's, it's a, it's a weird thing when you're, when you have money and you have, you know, a lot of great things around you and your kids are brought up in it. You got to figure out how to make them understand that, you know, that's mine, not theirs, and they can, they can get their own.

[Jillian Michaels]

So now, right, I'm watching this and I'm thinking two things. And this is where I want to litigate some of these. Or sorry, discuss. Litigate. Wrong word.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. Don't litigate. Don't litigate.

[Jillian Michaels]

Don't litigate. Sorry.

[Grant Cardone]

We're too early in the relationship.

[Jillian Michaels]

Forgive me, I'm so used to using that word these days. Is all I do is end up debating controversial topics, which is unfortunate with liberals. But that, that said, I would like to expand upon, explore and discuss some of these money myths you talked about. And then here's gonna be the top one that isn't on your list that I want you to be thinking about when we get to the end is they're gonna say, well, that was then and this is now. Granted, I'm a 30 year old and the game has changed. You know, you guys had it a million times easier, and the generation before you guys had it a thousand times easier than you did. It's, you know, it's rigged and that's. And it does seem rigged. And I have a bunch of. Okay, so, so start me from the beginning. I'm. I'm a young ambitious upstart, or I'm a lost 30 year old, whatever it might be. I want to go back to college or I want to go to college. You say no college, but you went to college.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, complete waste of time and money networking.

[Jillian Michaels]

I got a network. I got to get my tickets in.

[Grant Cardone]

Maybe not. Maybe not. I mean, maybe, but probably, you know, maybe, but I wouldn't be the first thing I would do. Okay? So the first thing I would do is people have to demyth. You have to. You, you're not. No one is financially illiterate. This is what, this is the. One of the great lies in America. Americans are financially illiterate. No, they're not. Americans are financially programmed to do certain things. It's called the house rules. Okay? It's like when you go into a casino, everybody gets taught how to play blackjack or they teach you how to play the game so you have more confidence to play the game. Yes. And sit down and play the game.

[Jillian Michaels]

Don't hit on this. Stay on that. Yeah, I got it.

[Grant Cardone]

I give you a 16 and I have a six. What are you going to do, Jillian?

[Jillian Michaels]

I want to stay.

[Grant Cardone]

Exactly. That's what the book says.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, that's what the book says.

[Grant Cardone]

Yes, that's what the book says. So we'll, we'll play sometime. But you'll see the whales that'll actually break that. The, the whales will be like, hit, hit this, hit the cardigan. Okay? Now the way we've been indoctrinated, okay, because money is exactly like any other game. Buy a House was created by banks. This was created in the 50s by banks to give mortgages, okay? Banks make more money on a house transaction than any human being has ever made on a house deal. So for 30 years, you're paying 77%. That's 210%. You're going to pay property taxes in Florida is 2% for 30 years. That's 60%.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's a hell of a lot of money.

[Grant Cardone]

Maintenance is 1% a year, okay? And so right there, just the banks and the insurance, the taxes and the insurance would be. You'd have to make like 300% on the money to break even on the house. And you were stuck in one location. So my point is, people. People are being told, oh, yeah, it's.

[Jillian Michaels]

The top way to build wealth. Buy a house.

[Grant Cardone]

Buy a house, okay? There's no wealth in a house. A house. A house is not an asset. A house is a total liability. And it's an asset to the bank. It's not an asset to you. College, complete, complete, terrible ROI on investment. Okay? So, like, they're going to give you all these stats to say, oh, if you go to college, you're going to make $20,000 more than the next person that didn't go to college. But it's okay. It's how Harvard is.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's what. So, like, so let's. There's a door, right? And in this door, you don't get in unless that ticket has been punched. And to be honest, as somebody who didn't graduate from college, there is probably not, I would say, a month that goes by where I'm like, I should go back and finish that degree. And then I'm like, with what time? And then I keep on moving. But it. It's like a fundamental weird insecurity of if I'd gotten that degree, maybe I could have become X, Y, Z, P, D, and Q that I might be intimidated to approach. Like, for example, I was recently having a conversation with News Nation, and they're like, you know, we could start you out here and could maybe consider anchoring primetime. I'm like, I can't anchor primetime. I don't have a college degree. And Michael Corn is lovely. He's the president of the network. He's like, what does that have to do with it? Yeah, but in my brain, it does. Despite the fact that I can interview all kinds of PhDs and MDs, and. But it does.

[Grant Cardone]

I was with JP Morgan yesterday looking at taking a company public. Okay? It could be a. It could be a $50 billion upside. It could be the biggest thing I've ever done in my life.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow.

[Grant Cardone]

They asked Me a lot of questions they did not ask me about my college degree. I have borrowed $2 billion from Fannie and Freddie Mac. They've never asked me my education. Okay? My company sold a billion dollars worth of products on the Internet. No one has ever even mentioned my education level or what my grades were, what my degree was. It's, it's a mythology. Hundreds of billions of dollars and trillions of dollars have been borrowed to go to school, go to colleges. It's a protected entity.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay?

[Grant Cardone]

Harvard got $58 billion in endowment money on the backs of taxpayers and kids and their parents that think that if they go to Harvard, they're going to be better off maybe.

[Jillian Michaels]

Absolutely. Sure. Elite.

[Grant Cardone]

So these are myths, right? These are money myths. There's another one about saving money at the bank. Okay. Saving money at the bank only benefits the banks, benefit the American people. The 401ks, the IRAs, and the Roths. These are, these are house rules.

[Jillian Michaels]

I have all of these, Grant, all of them. I have life insurance.

[Grant Cardone]

We have a financial planner suggesting you do all these things.

[Jillian Michaels]

Of course.

[Grant Cardone]

So we'll get, we'll get an hour and I'll fix all this.

[Jillian Michaels]

Hopefully you'll fix it for me and everybody watching. You're making me feel a little bit better about the college thing. In all fairness, it hasn't stopped me up until now. You're doing all right, but here's the argument. Ready? The argument is as follows. If you don't go to college, you could still be successful. Although Grant Cardone did go to college. But let's name some people that didn't. Right? Mark Zuckerberg dropped out and friggin Steve Jobs dropped out. And you have, you know, the guest dropped out. Yeah. Okay, so you got all those, those people, but they're outliers. They're unicorns.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

You better be a genius and have an unbreakable entrepreneurial energy that never seems to exhaust itself. And that's not you kid. Like, that's, that's what they're going to tell the vast majority of those kids.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. Find the switch, man. Find the switch.

[Jillian Michaels]

All right, so if I wouldn't have.

[Grant Cardone]

Gone to college, I would be worth 10 times more than I'm worth today. I wasted five years. Every bad habit I learned was, was, was. I learned in a classroom. I learned about drugs in a classroom. I learned about alcohol in the classroom. I learned how to cheat in law class in college. Like, I didn't learn. I don't, I can't look back and see one thing that Benefited me. Maybe my typing class with Miss. What was her name? Gardner. Because she was hot. I loved her class. I don't know of another class that benefited me. Wow.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, okay, so let's presume I don't go to college, but now I want to start a business. I was actually just talking to a friend of mine who's a great friend. 20 years does. Has done my hair for 15 of those.

[Grant Cardone]

Your hair's popping off today, Harb.

[Jillian Michaels]

Thank you.

[Grant Cardone]

Thank you. Highlights. The highlights are working. Curls are working. Dude.

[Jillian Michaels]

It's. So she's like, I think I want to take a home equity line. I'm going to pull out 50 grand, and I want to start a company for, you know, to prevent breakage. Like, there's all these products I love, but they're all. Anyway, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, my God, don't do that. Like, you. You won't be able to run the ads for dtc. How are you going to pick, pack, and ship? Like, who's going to do the branding for you? How are you going to formulate? Is it going to be white label? And I talked her out of it. I was like, you know, come up with your idea. Let's. Let's see if we can find you some money people that'd be interested in this idea. But if I'm a young person and I want to start a business. Okay. So you and I both know the odds are stacked against you. Anything that works, Amazon's going to turn around and be like, oh, that seems to be working. Okay. Yeah, yeah, we're going to rip all this. We're going to push you down here, and our product is recommended. Yeah, it's. It feels. This is my point. Everything feels rigged now. So what does a person do looking at the odds being stacked against them? How do I start this business?

[Grant Cardone]

Business.

[Jillian Michaels]

Don't budget for your business. How, Grant?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, I wouldn't. I wouldn't buy a business. I would find a business that's broken and have them pay you to take it over. There's 32 million small businesses in America.

[Jillian Michaels]

There's.

[Grant Cardone]

There's too many businesses already. So your friend's idea that she's going to take a home equity line, number one, she shouldn't own a home. She should rent where she lives. She should take all her equity and have it invested in something that's a guaranteed thing and that provides her with passive income. And she should own a business that costs her nothing. In fact, there's probably a million businesses in America. You could buy this month where they would pay you to buy the business. They would give you money to take a laundry mat. Or there's. I bought a health company. You know about my little health company?

[Jillian Michaels]

A little health company?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, that we bought from Gary Breca. Okay. He ran a company called Streamline. It was suffering. He didn't have a product line, he didn't have inventory. He didn't have any operations, no systems. I loved what he was doing. And I said, gary, look, I'll give you a little money out of the future earnings. I'll make you a celebrity. I'll get everybody to know who you are. We'll blow on the company with marketing. I know how to use social media. And we'll keep you on as a, as a minority owner and, and we'll blow the company up and we'll probably go public and you'll get very rich and you're welcome.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right?

[Grant Cardone]

So anyway, that company did. I paid almost nothing for the company. Like nothing. And it'll do this month. It'll do 15 million bucks. It's got 180,000 customers in it. And we'll probably take that, that company public next year.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, so hold on, Grant.

[Grant Cardone]

So don't start a business. Buy one that's already moving. Like you buy a car or like you go to a hospital. You don't build a hospital to go to the hospital. You just go to the hospital. You don't build a plane. You, you say, hey, I want to fly American to, to can. Right? You, you.

[Jillian Michaels]

What am I looking for in this.

[Grant Cardone]

Vehicle that's already moving?

[Jillian Michaels]

Am I looking for profitability? Am I looking for a brilliant idea?

[Grant Cardone]

When a company only looking for one thing, money. So don't look for passion, don't look for love. Don't look for ebitda.

[Jillian Michaels]

Like profit margin, like, oh, this. Okay, so for example, this company is doing $5 million in sales. It costs them $4 million to run the company, but there's a million dollar profit. But then they're want multiples of that five million. They're going to want no $15 million.

[Grant Cardone]

No, they're not. No, they're not.

[Jillian Michaels]

How are they not?

[Grant Cardone]

Because, because they're going to be like, they're tired. They're old. They're 70 years old. They've been in this business forever. The locations are set up, the contracts are set up, the customers are set up. And let's pretend they're making 200 or $300,000 a year right now. But they're tired of the business. They've been through it. They've been through Covid. They've been through all these problems. Maybe a divorce or legal problems, customer problems. And you walk in and say, look, how about I pay you $10,000 a month and you go away and I'll pay you 10,000 forever, and I'll run everything. You're making 200 grand now. I'll take over all the headaches, all the problems, all the liabilities. They're like 10,000amonth. That's not enough. Okay, I'll pay you 20 grand a month. I'll pay you what you're earning now, and you just go away. And then you get in that business. I mean, you got to learn something. You got to learn about that business. How to make it better, how to market it better, how to. How to put. Turn the switch on, because the switch is probably off, right? Because they. They're old and they're tired, Right? Tired. Could be 35, by the way. I know. I know people that are way. I know people at 15 that are. That are. That. That are tired of the night.

[Jillian Michaels]

You know, it's. I. You sometimes just get fatigue with an investment. Like, we have an investment in a company called Thrive Market. I've been it 10 years. I'm like, I don't care. I want out. And I was like, forget it. I, Like, I don't. I don't. This could be another 10 years. I could take this money. I could invest in some. So one of the partners was like, well, it's valued at $25 a share. I'll give you 19 bucks for all your shares. I was like, well, I got in this for, like, I don't know, adult, whatever it was $6 a share, something, something 10 years ago. I'm like, it's a win for me. But I'm fatigued. I don't want to wait it out. I'm sick of it, tired of it. I want to move on. I have my money tied up in it. And this guy is like, I'll take it. Great. But, yeah, like, I'm not broke, and I'm sick of it. It's a good company, but, yeah, so.

[Grant Cardone]

And there's 32 million small businesses in America. Most of them don't even make any money. It's just a lot of these people went to work for themselves because they didn't want to work for somebody else, only to find out you're always going to be working for someone else.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep. Yeah, I get it. I get it. But now.

[Grant Cardone]

So there's a Bunch of those little hacks out there that people don't know about. You know, like, I did this show called Undercover Billionaire where I got dropped off in Pueblo, Colorado, and they took my name away from me and my money and my social media and my phone, and they gave me a hundred dollars, and my job was to turn it into a million bucks. And I told Discovery Channel, I said, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to. I'll turn it into 10 million, not 1 million. And I don't need the full 90 days. I need, like 45. And. But I failed on my mission, but I did. I did take on the challenge, so I. I missed my target. I didn't do 10 million. I did five and a half million in 88 days with no money and never spent a hundred bucks during. During COVID by the way. So there's hacks, and people just don't know what the hacks are because nobody teaches the hacks.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay. Do you have a book on the hacks, too, that we.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, I do, actually. The wealth creation formula.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wealth creation formula. Okay. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna drive people to that one. But now I have this business, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, I need to budget. You say, don't budget all. Listen, I love my business partner more than anything in the world. All he does is budget. And you're like, nope, don't do it.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, what I'm saying there, I'm. I'm not saying I don't budget. I'm saying you need to spend 95% of your time, on offense, creating new income, not 95% of your time planning money. There is no money to be made planning money. Okay? Like, the budget thing is a contraction concept. It's like, save your money, protect yourself, get your 90 day account, which some people believe in the 90 day account. I don't personally believe in the 90 day account. I replaced. Replaced it with passive income. I don't fund emergencies. I know Dave Ramsey wants to fund an emergency. I'm like, all you're going to do is fund an emergency, bro. You're. You're basically attracting an emergency. You know, you're. You're manifesting an emergency when you have an emergency account.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right? What if the emergency happens, though, when I don't have an emergency account?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, first of all, I would expect that no emergency has ever happened to you. One.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Grant Cardone]

And number two, when you fund the emergency, let's say you had a million dollars in an emergency account and an emergency Comes by and you, you now pay the million dollars. You're like, oh, I'm so grateful I had the emergency account. How much is in your emergency account now?

[Jillian Michaels]

Gosh, I'm just very frigging well insured.

[Grant Cardone]

Zero. You're back to zero again. I'm not talking about insurance, okay? I'm talking about you planned for a three month emergency. It never came in your case number two. If it does come, you're going to go back to zero. So what I do is I just self and I go to zero. I invest all the money that would be an emergency account that pays me passive income that gets me through the emergency.

[Jillian Michaels]

My gosh, Grant, how did you.

[Grant Cardone]

You just gotta get, it's called getting out of the matrix. You just gotta, you gotta get out of the, the, the. We're in a banking, a banking, you know, brainwash basically.

[Jillian Michaels]

Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And they're responsible for 10% of all E commerce in the United States. Literally every company I'm involved with uses Shopify. Maybe you guys have seen me doing ads for a company called Alaya Naturals. This is a company started by a mommy of two from her garage with the help of some extremely credentialed PhDs. And she went to $20 million in sales over five years. With the tools that Shopify provides. Anybody can do it. So if you're worried you can't design a website, Shopify's got you right? They've got beautiful ready to go templates to match your brand style. If you need help, they've got help with everyday tasks like enhancing product images, writing product descriptions, generating discount codes with Shopify's AI tools that are created for commerce. What if people haven't heard about your brand? Well, Shopify helps you find customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns. And if you get stuck, they're always around to share advice. And with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. So turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com Jillian go to shopify.com Jillian that is shopify.com Jillian right now the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks, making us all vulnerable. But you can do something about it. Deleteme is here to make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. Deleteme knows your privacy is worth protecting. Sign up and provide Deleteme with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. Delete Me isn't just a one time service. DeleteMe is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you do not want on the Internet. For me, I feel so much more secure knowing that my personal info has been wiped from the web simply because I don't get all the robocalls. I worry far less about identity theft and so much more. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners today. Get 20% off your delete me plan by texting Jillian to 64000. The only way to get 20% off is to text Jillian to 64,000. That's Jillian to 64000 message and data rates may apply. All right guys, let's be real. Finding the right intimates is a struggle, right? Because most bras, they dig or they gap. I mean, they look great for five minutes and then you wash them and they look like crap. And underwear is the same story. They're too tight, they're too saggy, there's weird seams. They slide up the crack of your warrior end there. I hate that. Which is why I reach for skims every time. The fit is unreal, the fabric feels like butter. Everything stays in place where it's meant to without digging or riding up. My absolute favorite is the skims Boy short. I wear them constantly. I sleep in them. They're soft, they're stretchy, and somehow they manage to be both sexy and practical. They don't bunch, they don't roll, they just work. Whether I'm running errands or I'm relaxing at home, they are the only underwear that I forget I'm wearing. And I got to tell you, that's the highest compliment I can give. So if you've ever felt let down by your lingerie drawer, Skims is the upgrade you didn't know you needed and your body will thank you for. Shop my favorite bras and [e-mail] and after you place your order, please be sure to let them know I sent you. Select podcast in the survey and choose my show in the dropdown that follows. Okay, there's no question about that. And some of it I can see, but some of it I can't. So, for example, good debt, bad debt. Yeah, right now people are drowning in what should be criminal interest rates with their credit cards. I don't even understand how it's legal. 25% interest rate, 30% interest rate. That is loan sharking. And yet somehow it is. Banks people are living hand to mouse. They don't have a choice. They're forced to use their cards, and all they're doing all day long is paying off this insane interest. So for me, I'm like, no, no, no, we have to own the car. No, no, no. We have to own the house. No, no, no, no. But then I'm not investing that money either. So I kind of feel sometimes like my hands are tied. Should I have bought the house and paid the 7%? Sorry, bought the house on a mortgage?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

Paid 7% to the bank. Can I make 7% investing my money?

[Grant Cardone]

You shouldn't have, Bo.

[Jillian Michaels]

But the. Okay, so then I'm paying rent.

[Grant Cardone]

The one. The one that got caught up in the fire.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my God. Well, I've had a few of this.

[Grant Cardone]

How much time? You know, how much time, energy, and creativity you lost to that? Forget the money. Forget the money. The amount of productivity that is lost because of a home is unbelievable. Fixing this, fixing that. I got a plumbing problem. I got a fire problem. I got an insurance deal. What should I. Like, it's endless. But it's the American dream, and this is the way it was pitched. It was a bunch of bankers sitting around saying, hey, we got money. We can't make money if we don't lend money. When. When a bank keeps money on their balance sheet, it's a liability to the bank when they loaned it. When they loan it out, it becomes an asset. Okay? This is house rules. And nobody understands them because we're not taught this. This is what I'm saying. We. We're. We're. We're indoctrinated to fund banks and Vanguard and Merrill Lynch. These are trillion dollar companies. Trillions. Without exaggeration. And. And they've been funded off the backs of 150 million people that are living paycheck to paycheck because they play by the house rules.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, so now you've heard the whole.

[Grant Cardone]

Conspiracy about your car. Either. I'm sorry to interrupt you, because you don't own that, but a frigging lease.

[Jillian Michaels]

Is more than buying it out, right? Nowadays that's. It's like inverted. So much so that I. Yeah, you. You go to buy a car, and I'm like, all right, you know what? I'm going to get rid of this thing in a couple of years. What's the lease look like right now? It's more than buying the car every month.

[Grant Cardone]

What car? What car do you own?

[Jillian Michaels]

Gosh, all right, we have a. We have a few cars because there's two different places for. So I did buy the Range Rover because I saw you say I could write that off. So I did buy that. I bought that one. But then. Okay, so my truck. I got a big four pickup truck for Jackson Hole. And it was more to lease the fricking car than it was to buy the frigging car because of the. Whatever the hell is going on with these interest rates. And I have great credit, and it's 7% grant. That's what I'm saying. Like, it feels impossible every single way you turn. So it's like, well, borrow money. That's smarter. But then I. When do you borrow and when do you buy? What do you buy? What am I buying? Anything.

[Grant Cardone]

What I. What I. What I do with my cars is I'll pay for cash in anything that I can write off above £6,000. So I get an immediate tax write off. I don't. Look, I don't do stuff that I like to do. I do the right thing that. That makes me feel better later because I'm like, I'm beating the system up.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep, I got it.

[Grant Cardone]

And so I don't have any supercars. I have no light cars. Okay. I bought a couple of Teslas because it rewarded Elon. I thought it was the right thing to do, but I put those on leases, and I put them under the company so I can write off the entire payment. I don't really care what the payment is.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right. I got it.

[Grant Cardone]

I mean, if I was doing it all over today, I'd live a mile or two for my house, and I'd Uber everywhere and not have a car. Or the insurance. I mean, just consider insurance on a car. That car in Wyoming that you're not using right now, you're paying insurance on it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and you only use it 20 minutes of the day when you use it.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, it's like four grand, I think every. I can't recall, but, yeah, because I have high freaking coverage limits. And the whole.

[Grant Cardone]

Your insurance should only kick in when you use it.

[Jillian Michaels]

Son of a bitch. So you would.

[Grant Cardone]

Okay, so when you start paying attention to all these angles, the next thing you start seeing is glitches and possibilities and opportunities. And that's the money game for people. Everybody should learn this. By the way, when Trump got in, I wrote him, I said, hey, let's make all Americans wealthy, everyone in America. And I absolutely believe this. Everyone could be in great shape and everyone could be wealthy and everybody could be happy if they actually committed to it. And I don't think that there's a case, a person, a color, a race, an age, that if they committed, they couldn't be wealthy, healthy and happy.

[Jillian Michaels]

Here's what's even crazier right now, Grant, is that you can find. And this has got to freak people out. It makes no sense. There's a house that they'll want $10 million for, but they'll rent to you for $25,000 a month. But then I'm like, if I bought this house, my mortgage would be $50,000 a month, plus property tax, plus insurance.

[Grant Cardone]

Yep.

[Jillian Michaels]

And I didn't think about that when I bought my place in Jackson Hole, which has been a money pit that I've been remodeling for years and has never stopped. So it has drained the life out of me rebuilding this house. I'm like, why did I do this? This was not my first rodeo. What was supposed to be a quarter of what I've spent and a quarter of the time that I've spent on this. And it's been a black hole of stress and it like. And then in California, have they just had their. You know, I've owned three houses in California in my whole California existence. Of the three, two have burned. Two have burned. And I think, okay, you know what? I never want that friggin. And now California has added a mansion tax, which is even crazier. So if it's over 5 million, no matter whether you win money or you or make money or you lose money when you sell it again, you owe us like 5%. If it's over $5 million, which is totally nonsensical. So if I'm some young kid, am I running these numbers, I'm just going to be a renter for the. For like the rest of you're going.

[Grant Cardone]

To be a renter. You're going to be a renter and you should be, you should be glad that you're a renter. Okay? There's no money to be made in homes. Now, what you'd want to do, because that, that $10 million house that you can rent for 25 grand, there's 20 cities in America where the rent is half of the ownership. Miami is one of those cities, you can rent here for 10 grand. The guy, the guy's losing money to rent it for to you or 4,000. They're probably losing money. So the game is you want to flip the model and you want to own rentals that pay you passive income and use the rental income to rent a very nice place where you have zero obligation and you will spend the rest of your life renting. Just like you use your food, you don't own food, okay? You use it to fuel yourself to the next place. And people should have their money invested in three things. One, themself. You should reinvest in you to make you the best, fastest, most perfect version. You can be number two in your business. If you have a business. If you don't have a business, then back into you because you are the business, okay? Business. You've always been the business. And when the business and when the brand and when people start appreciating who you are, they're going to start paying you more money. The more money should now go into investments that, that provide a second or third flow of income that you're not working for and that will last longer than your work.

[Jillian Michaels]

We've all seen God Lover, Susie Orman, and you got to have your Roth and you got to have your 401k. And if you put that, that dollar in the free. Even my kids have a 529 college account every month. I put.

[Grant Cardone]

I'm looking up Susie's net worth right now.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, no. She's so nice.

[Grant Cardone]

I don't know, it's fantastic. But I'm just telling you, like, oh, no.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, gosh.

[Grant Cardone]

I was, I was, I was it. You know, JP Morgan yesterday, Susie Orman. Yeah. And everybody in the room smarter than I am. Everybody.

[Jillian Michaels]

I doubt it. I doubt it.

[Grant Cardone]

They're all smarter than me. They're, they're, every one of them are smarter than me. I'm just telling you. But okay, I'll have one score. That will, that will. It won't matter who was smarter. The smarter people will help me put it together and, and I'll walk out with the bag. So the system's broken. You can look around. There's no way 250 million people in America are not stupid. You cannot have this many people in the wealthiest country in the planet that are all suffering without, without all of them being given the wrong data. I mean, you know about the healthcare business, the health business and the food business. How can you have this many people that are sick without this many people being deceived. Breakfast.

[Jillian Michaels]

I do that all the time.

[Grant Cardone]

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That was a damn, that was a damn sales pitch.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes.

[Grant Cardone]

It saved the damn farmers in this country. It saved the pig industry. And it saved the chicken industry. Right. But it was a scam. I remember. I'm old enough to remember when cigarettes were being sold to women as healthy. Yes, when Valium was not addictive. And then 60 million American women became addicted. Not only addicted, but has the longest half life of any drug. So this is the same thing with money, okay? Money. We have been lied to about the money game. You cannot save money. There's no such thing as saving money. It should not. It's an oxymoron. The banks should not even be able to use it, okay? If I sold a product and said save it here and it lost 90% of its value while it was there, the. The FTC would arrest me. That's the US dollar, Gillian, okay? In my lifetime, it's lost 91% of its value. It's a curve that goes straight down. There's not even. It's just straight down. If I showed you that and said, would you invest in that asset? You'd be like, no way. That's saving cash.

[Jillian Michaels]

So if I'm.

[Grant Cardone]

The banks benefit. The banks don't even save the money.

[Jillian Michaels]

They invest it and they call me.

[Grant Cardone]

No, they call me and say, hey, would you, would you invest. Would you take this money? Because Jillian left it at the bank. So you're investing in my projects and you don't even know it. You just don't get the rewards of it.

[Jillian Michaels]

I get the rewards of it though, with like a few percentage.

[Grant Cardone]

Like get that because it doesn't even keep up with the inflation.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh my God.

[Grant Cardone]

Just this year, let's. Let's pretend you have $5 million sitting around in banks, okay? This year, since January 1, you lost $500,000 in its purchasing value this year.

[Jillian Michaels]

What if I had it in the market? What if I had it in the s and P500 and I'm in. Well, that's Planeteer and friggin Amazon.

[Grant Cardone]

If you had it in those three, you did good. But if you had it spread across 500 stocks called the S&P 500, you would have lost money in that as well. 493 out of 500 stocks have lost money when compared to inflation this year and last year and the year before and the six years preceding that. But CNBC is never going to tell you that because this whole thing's a scam.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh my God. Okay, so I'm not buying a car. I'm not buying a house. I'm investing in myself.

[Grant Cardone]

You're leasing your house, you're leasing your car. You could lease Your house.

[Jillian Michaels]

I do it under my. My company. So I could write it all off. If I have the money, I can buy a car that's over £6,000 to write that off. I. I'm now either investing in my business, I'm investing in myself, but now I have a hundred thousand dollars profit. I'm not putting that in the s and P500, which I thought was genius. I was like, I don't know.

[Grant Cardone]

I don't want to be Susie Arment. I just looked it up.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, no. Oh, God. Okay, so where's my hundred thousand dollars going then? An apartment building could be, you know.

[Grant Cardone]

That'S going to probably pay you somewhere between 8 and 12% a year. And rents are going to double in this country in the next 10 years. So 8 or 12% could become 18 or 24% in the future. Now you're not going to want to do it because 100 grand in California, if you're going to invest there, you don't want to invest in Wyoming. It's not big enough. So you want to be in like 10 or 15 different markets in the country. So, you know, you. It'd be Jillian Michaels. You know, apartment living, great living, keeping it real living. You want to be in large complexes, so you probably want to partner with somebody, be in a large complex in a great location. And every 10 years, those rents are up 50 to 100%. Rent in America? Rents in America will go from 2 grand to 4,000 in the next 10 years. And anyone that owns the kind of assets that I own are going to. They're going to get super rich.

[Jillian Michaels]

Son of a. God. Okay, so what debt is good debt, though, because you'll work with those banks.

[Grant Cardone]

Yep.

[Jillian Michaels]

So this is where I don't. I.

[Grant Cardone]

Any debt I can write off is good debt.

[Jillian Michaels]

How does that work, though?

[Grant Cardone]

If you're making money, you can't write off the debt on a Visa card. MasterCard.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Grant Cardone]

I don't even know how they call it MasterCard anymore, by the way. I don't know if you looked into that. No Master Card. I don't even. I can't believe the black community hadn't risen up like you can't. You real estate agents can't call it a master bedroom anymore, but MasterCard can still call it MasterCard.

[Jillian Michaels]

Son of a bitch. I didn't put that together. God. Okay. It's a very much. Yeah. They are absolutely slave masters without a question, 100%.

[Grant Cardone]

And what they were saying there was. You could be a master of your universe. All this Is false, deceptive advertising. Visa means freedom. There's no freedom, bro. It's a trap. These are slave cards.

[Jillian Michaels]

Sure are.

[Grant Cardone]

So now no credit card for a consumption item is tax deductible. So I make all my decisions based on my wife and I. Like, there's five criteria. Can I write it off? No. Okay, then say no. If I can't write it off now. Oh, God. We have to have it though, Grant. It's going to save somebody's life. Okay, well, that's a different thing that balances out. So there's basically everybody knows what they need and don't need. Okay, do I absolutely need it? Is it tax deductible? Okay, that's cool. I need it and it's tax deductible. That's even cooler. Okay, but is it a maybe? If it's a maybe, we talk about. There's only one thing we talk about.

[Jillian Michaels]

Maybe.

[Grant Cardone]

Okay, the maybes. If it's a no or it's stupid because there's those, nah, we don't need this. And then there's. It's stupid. And you know it's stupid. Wyoming.

[Jillian Michaels]

Best tax laws in the country. Beautiful.

[Grant Cardone]

Okay, but you could have done that without spending whatever you spent there.

[Jillian Michaels]

I don't want to tell you. It's clear.

[Grant Cardone]

I imagine it's insane.

[Jillian Michaels]

Not for you insane, but for me, I'm like, oh, my God, no, it's insane.

[Grant Cardone]

It's insane. And by the way, there's only one exit. That's the other problem. Okay, there's only one exit. You got to find one buyer that likes it as much as you did.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep, I got it.

[Grant Cardone]

The only exit is to sell it.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep.

[Grant Cardone]

That money. So. So what I want is. I want. I want what my dad didn't build. My dad died, his income stopped four days later, the life insurance kicked in. That's a one time thing.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep.

[Grant Cardone]

He had some money sitting in the stock market. He got. My mom got paid every three months because of a dividend.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Grant Cardone]

What I decided to do was when I die, nothing is going to change for my wife, my kids, my church, or anybody that I gave, you know, a score to. Because when I die, I need the. The. Not my talent, my talent ends. And then I need the passive incomes to kick in.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right.

[Grant Cardone]

And so they can outlive, you know, me. I mean, I could, you know, you could. You can live for hundreds and hundreds of years if you set it up right.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's unbelievable. So, okay, so now if you're not using credit cards.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, I use Them, by the way, I do use them.

[Jillian Michaels]

But you pay them every month.

[Grant Cardone]

I've never paid a penny in interest on a credit card in my life.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, I do avoid that like the plague. I use them for like airplane points and Amex points and you know, then I use those points to buy plane tickets and things like that. But if I'm like. But I pay them every month. If I am. Okay, so how are you writing off debt? What debt are you allowed to write off?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, I carry two cards. I carry two of them. One, one is for my personal and one is for business. This is the one that gets banged all the time. And this gets banged every once in a while just to, to let the IRS know that I separate things.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right, of course.

[Grant Cardone]

Okay. And these are basically secretaries. That's all they are. They're just secretaries.

[Jillian Michaels]

Keep track of your expenses.

[Grant Cardone]

And I'm like, oh, I have to pay. I paid for it once and then I have to see it again. Also, if there's fraud, I'm not responsible for it. Even though my wife got, she got hoodwinked by this chick for two and a half million dollars, by the way. You should do that story one day.

[Jillian Michaels]

Are you kidding?

[Grant Cardone]

How Elena got defrauded for $2.8 million by this, this, this person in Las Vegas who just got picked up on 19 fraud convictions, by the way, three Mondays ago.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow.

[Grant Cardone]

But she's going to go to jail for like 190 years.

[Jillian Michaels]

Good, good.

[Grant Cardone]

But anyway, I use these two cards to basically, they're free secretaries. They cost me nothing. I pay them at the end of every month. But I only buy stuff. I, you know, I just. You have to be disciplined. Like you and you are, you guys are disciplined. People have to make a decision to be wealthy, okay? Not look wealthy.

[Jillian Michaels]

Do you ever. What about this one? You hear stories of Jay Z going to buying $100 million house cash. Yeah, but then people are like, no, not really. Like it's some sort of home equity line that he has a low interest rate on and he's really, you know. And then he takes that 100 million and he's putting it into your apartment building. How's he getting that low interest rate though? Because as mentioned, even I have like, I have great credit. You're giving me a 7% interest rate. What am I doing wrong? And why do the friggin Blackrocks and all these guys, like, this is where the game looks rigged. Like these guys are going in and buying up houses thousands at a time.

[Grant Cardone]

They're not really doing that right now. But they're buying companies. They're not really buying. They're buying companies. And the headlines are saying they're. They bought a thousand houses. But they didn't really do that. They bought a company that did that.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, I see, like the headlines.

[Grant Cardone]

The headlines are going to say blackrock zoning all the homes. That's not true. The institutions own very little housing in this country. And Americans, if they put their money together, man, you, this is what Americans should be doing. You should be buying entire neighborhoods. Six, seven, eight, ten people could put their money together and buy a whole block and control the real estate in that marketplace. That would be the smartest advice I could give anybody. So what Jay Z's doing, basically, he had the cash to pay for the house, but rather than buying the house in cash, a big lender said, look, we'll give you a low interest loan. Borrowed the money because they want to keep that cash. They don't want him. They don't want Jay Z to have that money buried in that house. They want Jay Z to have that money working in the market.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, I get it. So they give him a low interest.

[Grant Cardone]

Rate, they give him a loan, and then they justify with the tax break.

[Jillian Michaels]

Son of a. How. Where's the tax break, though?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, the tax break is the interest is deductible on his home loan because he pulled money out to use as a business loan.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my God.

[Grant Cardone]

So your place in Wyoming, if you borrow 750,000 and you're in, you have interest 7% on 750. That's all you can write off. I imagine that house is worth More than 750. Yeah, anything above 750 is not, not, not a interest is not a taxable deduction.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Grant Cardone]

So I have a house in malibu. I paid 40, $40 million for that house. I wrote it, I paid cash for it. I have a house in Golden Beach. Pay cash for that house. I have no debt on either one of them.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Grant Cardone]

They're terrible investments, by the way. I'll make money on both of them. But they're awful, awful investments. They're stupid investments. That, that was of my five things I said, Elaine, I found something stupid and we're gonna do it. And there comes a point where you can do stupid stuff, but it shouldn't be. What people are doing on the way up, which I know is what you want your audience to hear, is like, how do I get up? How do I get out?

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes, I understand. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Like you have that Cushion doesn't matter to you. You. You can afford to make stupid mistakes once in a while, but a person who's trying to get on their feet and become affluent doesn't have that luxury to make those kinds of mistakes.

[Grant Cardone]

No.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep, I get it.

[Grant Cardone]

I have this saying. How stupid can you go? You can go as stupid as your cash flow.

[Jillian Michaels]

Son of a.

[Grant Cardone]

And the cash flow has to be passive. It cannot be something you earned.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Grant Cardone]

So as long as I have passive income, I can do stupid stuff. You do not like. I spend none of my earned income. I heard. Who's the guy that used to do the comedy show, took over for Johnny Carson?

[Jillian Michaels]

Jay Leno.

[Grant Cardone]

Jay Leno. Yeah, Leno. I heard. I heard this. I was probably 40 years old when I heard it. Jay Leno said he had two gigs and he never spent his main income. He spent his weekend income. He would work the clubs on the weekend. He never spent any of his late night TV money. That's what he invested. And he lived off of his. Off his weekend hustles.

[Jillian Michaels]

Unbelievable. So just so I'm clear, I'm now Jay Z. I buy this thing in cash, but I take a home equity line. So I borrow money against my home, but it's not a mortgage.

[Grant Cardone]

And then probably, they probably gave Jay Z a business loan. I don't know this for sure, but they probably gave him a business loan and used the home as collateral.

[Jillian Michaels]

And then he can write it off.

[Grant Cardone]

He'll write it all off. Like last year I had. I'm just being transparent with your audience. Last year I probably paid I don't know what 5% of $2 billion is. A hundred million dollars in interest. All of that is tax deductible.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my God.

[Grant Cardone]

The most you could write off in Wyoming is $42,000.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my God.

[Grant Cardone]

So you tell me what the IRS wants to reward, Apartment ownership or home ownership.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep, I got it. So, like, if I took a business loan against my house and bought an apartment building, I could have a mortgage on that frigging apartment building because it's a business. It's not my home. And then I write off the. The. The freaking son of a gun.

[Grant Cardone]

All the property taxes, all the maintenance, all the pool, all the equipment. I have 14,000 units. I write off everything. And when I buy it, I get a big depreciation. Trump will bring that back this year called 100. 100% accelerated depreciation. This. This is why. This is why Trump always said I don't pay taxes. Yeah, he owns real estate. He Gets to depreciate it, by the way. It doesn't depreciate, it actually appreciates. See all these oxymorons. I get depreciation, which means it's going down. Yes, but it actually goes up.

[Jillian Michaels]

I've never understood that, by the way, because every real estate billionaire has said that to me. They're like, well, I don't pay taxes because it's depreciation. I'm like, but how's the depreciation if when you bought it was a million dollars, now I try to buy it from you, it's $5 million.

[Grant Cardone]

It went up, it didn't go down, it doesn't matter.

[Jillian Michaels]

It's a percentage of the value that in automatically depreciates.

[Grant Cardone]

You say, well, you get, you get. Basically you get to accelerate the devalu. Like your home, your home. When you bought your home in Wyoming, every year your account is adding 1 27th of the price of the home. So if it was 2.7, you get to write off $100,000 a year for 27 years because you're going to have to replace the roof, the appliances, the floors, the walls. That's the depreciation write off.

[Jillian Michaels]

I see.

[Grant Cardone]

In the case of a commercial complex, this is incredible. I'm able to take the complex, let's say I paid 2.7 million for the complex and I'm able to accelerate all the 27 years of depreciation in the first 12 months.

[Jillian Michaels]

Grant, I think you might have just explained to me what I have been trying to grasp for arguably a decade because I'm like, I still don't get it. Like you, you, you're buying this thing, but you owe money on it. But then I gotta pay the interest for it and then I gotta cover all these costs. I got a management company and I could have bet, but I could write all that stuff off.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

And then it depreciates, but it's really going up.

[Grant Cardone]

Okay, now I'm talking dirty to you. Now I can tell.

[Jillian Michaels]

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[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, you're going to get hit. You're going to pay, you're going to pay capital gains tax.

[Jillian Michaels]

Cap gains. You're paying capital gains.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. You're paying regular income tax, but only 20%. It's not earned income. So it's half of what you would normally pay in taxes.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh my gosh.

[Grant Cardone]

You made, you made $4 million. I mean, there's a better likelihood that you're going to, you're going to take the asset and you're going to sell it.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Going to transfer the 4 million or 5 million dollars of profit into a 1031.

[Jillian Michaels]

Give it to kids. Explain to what that means to people that, that 1031 exchange, will you?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, it's just, it's, it's not a great. I don't love it. I don't love the vehicle. I've done 13 of these, but I, I don't love them because they're a little clunky. There's much better things to do, but you would exchange it into another complex, something much bigger and probably newer. That's why you'll see guys start with old stuff, small and old, and then slowly get newer and newer. Like we buy very, we buy almost brand new assets now because they don't require work. And when we go to sell them, they're only 10 years old. You're describing somebody that's probably selling something a 60 or €70 years old.

[Jillian Michaels]

Gotcha. Understood. Okay. Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Like in Scottsdale, Arizona, it's probably going to be. You're selling something 10 or 15 years old in California is probably 50 or 60 years.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Malibu Malibu could be 55 or 65 or 70 years old.

[Jillian Michaels]

So I'm watching you and I want to know, okay, what markets am I supposed to buy in? What you know, how am I getting this home equity or how am I getting enough money to put down? Or how am I doing this? Am I reading that first book? Because obviously you can't tell me everything.

[Grant Cardone]

You guys aren't going to read it. I'm just going to send you a link and it's going to be an. It's got. Actually, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to send a. A video for everybody to watch. It's going to be a 90 minute. I'm going to walk through all this. What you're looking for, ideally, the formula is 32 units should be your first purchase. You're looking for something that's 32 units.

[Jillian Michaels]

I know, I'm recording this.

[Grant Cardone]

And the rents are $200 lower than they should be. That will make you $1.1 million every time you do it.

[Jillian Michaels]

When you say the rents are $200 lower than they should be, you're saying you mean if know what the rents.

[Grant Cardone]

Are in the market?

[Jillian Michaels]

The rents are 1,200 bucks for this one bedroom apartment.

[Grant Cardone]

And you know, they should be 1,400.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, I get it.

[Grant Cardone]

The guy bought it 15 years ago and he's not paying attention.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, so I know.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, he bought it for a million, right? So his rent is making it rich. And he's owned it for 10 years, for 15 or 20 years. And he's like, I don't want to raise the rents. These are all over America, by the way. There's millions, Millions without exaggeration of these properties. Not millions of units, millions of properties. Tens of millions of units where somebody bought it 15 or 20 years ago and they're just not paying attention.

[Jillian Michaels]

Typically raise the rent.

[Grant Cardone]

You would basically go in and say, hey, I bought this property from the owner. And unfortunately, because of what's his name, Joe Biden and Jerome Powell, I have to raise the rents because the interest rates. It's not my fault. Is to. You blame it on Joe Biden if you're in California, because I know he's your friend and. And you would literally blame it on him. Okay. And, and, and then say, I have to raise the rents. I'm being forced to raise the rents. 200 bucks.

[Jillian Michaels]

This is incredible. Okay, okay, so now I want to go back to my conspiracy theory for just a second. BlackRock is buying everything. All right, that's not necessarily true, but foreign countries are coming in and they're being allowed to buy everything. So I'm getting effed there. Companies like Zillow were buying up everything. This is all gamed. I'll be a renter and I'll love it. I. You know, we're. Now that narrative is, if you're renting, you're the slave. And they. They almost spun it. But you and I did talk about what has happened in California, and I want to circle back to this. You were kind enough to come on and join me on, on her take. Um, and we talked a little bit about this, but I want to kind of understand then this concept of a land grab.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

Because everyone thinks, oh, I'm supposed to own, and you're forcing me out to grab my stuff. That is real, though, right? What exactly is that? Because I want to really dig into that one more time. The piece about how California's absolute collapse is likely intentional.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. Well, so, okay, there's a couple angles here. One, let me just go back. The. The. The institutions, or, you know, they're not. That. That. That's a headline. It. It's a myth. Okay. They're not. I am more active buying real estate than most massive institutions are today. The institutions are actually sidelined right now and unable to buy. Anyway. Just a little insider day.

[Jillian Michaels]

Why, though? Because of the why.

[Grant Cardone]

Because. Because their money is tied up. They have massive problems. This is the biggest real estate correction I've ever been in my entire lifetime.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, you say that, but prices are higher than I've ever seen. And so.

[Grant Cardone]

No. No single family homes are higher. Okay? But what I'm playing in is not massive, unbelievable correction going on where I'm at, and no one's talking about it. That, that they. And I've been very, very vocal on this. There will not be a correction in single family homes in America. So quit waiting for it. It's never going to happen. The only way prices would come down is when interest rates come down. Now, nobody agrees with me on this, but I know I'm right. Interest rates have to come down. It would immediately double supply. And when supply goes up, prices come down. Interest lower interest rates will not accelerate pricing. It will bring it down.

[Jillian Michaels]

God, I thought it'd be the opposite.

[Grant Cardone]

I was like, it won't be. And I know I'm right on this, and I know it's a contrarian viewpoint, but if Jerome Powell, he should be replaced. 1.

[Jillian Michaels]

Good Lord.

[Grant Cardone]

One would think he needs to drop rates down to 3% housing in this country is stalled completely. There's no single family homes are selling. There's a tremendous amount of supply, but most people are just holding out because they know, hey look, I'm going to sell it one day and I'm just going to wait it out. So that's number one. Myth number two, China. China's not buying America. Okay? Don't, don't worry about it. Now the third thing you're talking about, okay, the land grab is not for Mississippi, it's not for the Midwest. It's for the, the big metro cities in America, starting with the state of California. Los Angeles is under a land grab right now. Malibu, the Palisades. I just got this in five minutes before you and I went live. Okay, the, because my house was destroyed in Malibu or partially destroyed anyway. Nothing that they promised in the beginning. This came in today, okay, the fast track. There is no fast track. You remember when they said, hey, look, if you just place what is there.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, the footprint, we're going to expedite your permit.

[Grant Cardone]

That's complete bullshit. There's no fast track. They are not, they are not. And I know because my, my, we're literally bringing my house to, to, to get it fixed. The existing plans approval, that's off. The 10% increase, that's off. And you still have to go through a planning check. The Coastal Commission and fema, they said.

[Jillian Michaels]

They were going to completely bypass fema. If you maintain to the exact same.

[Grant Cardone]

Footprint, if you spend over 50% of the value of the property, if it was 2 million and you spend in 1 million, you have to go through coastal, you have to go through plan check and you have to go through female.

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, of course you have to because you gotta fix the frickin house.

[Grant Cardone]

And if you change more than 50% of the house, if you had to fix, if it was a complete tear down, they want you to raise the structure up on Malibu. That could be the same as the cost of the house itself.

[Jillian Michaels]

So what are they going to do then?

[Grant Cardone]

It's a land grab, dude. That's what they're doing. They're making it. This isn't poor people, this is rich people. This is rich people they're stealing homes from.

[Jillian Michaels]

So now they go, okay, so now you, they make your life hell. Because I did go through this in 2018. It took me a freaking year just to clean the property. And I was like, I'm done. I can't. I'm selling the land. I'm, I tapped out.

[Grant Cardone]

You tapped out, okay, so, so what happens is wealthy People tap out very quickly, by the way, when you're negotiating. When I'm negotiating with somebody, I would rather negotiate with a wealthy person than, than, than a scrapper any day of the week. Because wealthy people tap out because they're spoiled, they're entitled.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep. Got other stuff to do. Can't deal with it.

[Grant Cardone]

I'm too rich for this shit. I don't need this. I don't need this. Boom. It's no money. And so they're, they're banking on some of those people on Malibu and pch just saying, hey, I don't have time.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, hell yeah, that's going to happen.

[Grant Cardone]

Oh, 100. I'm 80 years old. I don't have seven years than me.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep, yep. That's exactly what I did in Bonsall Canyon, which was a half a mile in from Zuma beach in my, the house that I sold in 21, thank God, just burned down. And I just thought I, I, I dodged this bullet. I don't know how. So happy, but what in the frig are the odds I'd never get homeowners again? That's for damn sure. I was on a, I was on a watch list for five years. I could not get homeowners insurance for five years. I was like, this was an act of God. Not like I left the fricking toaster on. And, and now nobody is even, even able to get insurance in California. I mean, okay, so who's getting the land though, Grant?

[Grant Cardone]

State would, the state would get it back.

[Jillian Michaels]

They do what?

[Grant Cardone]

The state would get it back and they will be able to control it and then start building micro cities and forcing populations.

[Jillian Michaels]

Can you elaborate on what that means? A microcity.

[Grant Cardone]

So, so the 15 minute cities that we've heard about, okay, look at the Palisades. There's what? I think there's 18,000 confirmed structures down, okay. Which is really probably more like 36 to 50,000 structures because some of those had multiple structures on properties. Okay, so if those are coming in somewhere between 30 and 40% below previous values, by the way, that was reported this week, and most people believe they haven't bottomed out, meaning there's going to be more distress selling. So a guy like Rick, your buddy Rick over there that went from Republican to Democrat to run for governor, who lost, who blew 100 million of his own money after he cowardly went from being a Republican to a Democrat, now he wants to run for mayor. I mean, Rick Caruso's made three, three or four billion dollars in LA while they did this. So I don't trust any of the people in la. They're like, I'm gonna come save it now, bro. You were there the entire time. I wasn't. I left. You were there while all this money was changing hands. None of your shit burnt down, okay? All your stuff is perfectly secure because it's built of concrete, glass and steel. And you have your own fire department. Put the fire out around the property, so. And he wants to run for mayor.

[Jillian Michaels]

You got anybody's better than Karen Bass, though?

[Grant Cardone]

I got maybe, maybe not. But the problem is. The problem there is it's not Karen and it's not Newsom. It is. It is. Around them are bubbles, bubbles condoms after condoms of Democratic condoms that are basically a moat around the Democratic stranglehold on California. That even if I was governor tomorrow, I still can't move through the Coastal Commission. The coastal commission is 12 people that control 1100 miles of coastline. That's four. That's almost 80% of the entire population of California is controlled by 12 people. Jesus. So they're like, Mr. Cardone, you can fix your home, but. But we're not on the docket for you until 2032.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my God.

[Grant Cardone]

I'm like, dude, that's seven years, man. I'm gonna be 74 years old. I don't want to wait that long.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes, that's exactly right. Okay, so now you sell it, and you're selling it to the state, he's taking it back, and then they're putting a condo there. Is what you're saying that's these.

[Grant Cardone]

No, I think that they're thinking about eminent domain on any of the stuff that was not approved. First of all, see if. See how many people you can get to tap out. Okay, Covid, in reverse. Okay, Remember Covid, the vaccine came out and they said, hey, we'll pay you weed or we'll pay you a hamburger. Take the. Take the shot. They got through the first layer and then they went, okay, guys, you need to get the shot. Here's the deadline. Third layer was, we're going to find you. If you don't go get the vaccine, California is doing this. The different thing, okay? They're going to. They're going to do it in reverse. It worked the other way. They're going to do this. Hey, it's going to take a long time. We promise you everything. Here's the hamburger, here's your weed. But it's not going to ever come. Now, we're going to wait you out. And if that doesn't Work. We're going to go and put environmentalists, the FEMA or the EPA in there and say, hey, the beach is toxic and we don't want you there for your safety. So we're going to make this a unlivable zone for the next 10 years. And we're claiming your home.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh my God.

[Grant Cardone]

And they're going to make it a park. They're not going to build condos there. They don't want a 15 minute city on Malibu beach, they want it in the palisades.

[Jillian Michaels]

So the 15 minute city is I took your home where you had four people living vertical and I'm going to put a friggin unit with 16 things.

[Grant Cardone]

Or 60 or 600. We're going to confine people to buildings.

[Jillian Michaels]

And this benefits the state somehow because more people paying, more money we control.

[Grant Cardone]

I mean look, look what they've been doing for years. Running, running the most productive people in their society out of the state. Why would you do that?

[Jillian Michaels]

Why would you do that? That's my, that's my get rid of them.

[Grant Cardone]

Get rid of them and then bring in a whole bunch of people you don't want because you can easily control those people later. We can police those people up. Those people have no money nowhere with all no connections. They're much easier to control as a population. But you got to get rid of the Grant Cardone's and the Jillian Michaels and the Elon's. You got to get rid of those people because they're independent thinkers and they have money and they make noise.

[Jillian Michaels]

You know, I was just talking to Victor Davis Hansen under the pretense of open borders and he was like, it's a whole new demographic for them that they can control. That requires more federal money and oh my gosh. Yeah, so what am I looking for as a citizen then? Am I, am I going to friggin Florida? A lot of people can't uproot as a citizen that's trying to build a life and build a business. Where am I going?

[Grant Cardone]

The wealthy people can. And then the state of California will bankrupt itself and then depend on federal money to save it.

[Jillian Michaels]

And that's good for how that means.

[Grant Cardone]

Every state pays now because the state of California can make more money with one federal check than they can any tariffs they put on the. You know, it's crazy that Newsom talks about Trump and his tariffs when he's the one raising taxes on his own citizens, which is a tariff.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, so let's, if I'm not being conspiratorial here, and it's not Newsome. Why do I feel like he is all on board and he throws gasoline on every one of these fires, Pun intended.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

And he seems to be completely on board everywhere I look. So you've got DeSantis saying, yeah, no, the Chinese are about not buying land here and they're not buying farmland. But Newsom vetoed a bill that would have blocked that. Newsom is like, I have China sf. I'm going to clear all bureaucracy for the government of China, the country of China, the ccp, to buy real estate and build here. All of their bureaucracy gets wiped away through that thing. He made China sf. But, Grant, your life's going to be miserable. How is this guy still like. And now he. His controlled ascent. He is the front runner for the Democrats. He is.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. I think that'd be a disaster.

[Jillian Michaels]

Can you imagine is? No, I mean, it'd be.

[Grant Cardone]

I think he'd be a disaster running.

[Jillian Michaels]

Who do you think he's working for? Honestly? You think he's just stupid?

[Grant Cardone]

No, he's not stupid. This is intentional. This is not incompetence. Nobody should even think that. Nobody should use the word incompetence. This is intentional. You cannot have this much incompetence in one location.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow. Okay.

[Grant Cardone]

Intentional. By the way, I would. You know, it's. It's a plan.

[Jillian Michaels]

Does it leave California and go everywhere? Is this a testing ground? I mean, I don't really raise taxes.

[Grant Cardone]

In 2008, when the economy had crashed globally.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep.

[Grant Cardone]

Why would you raise taxes from 10 to 13% at a time when every Californian was suffering?

[Jillian Michaels]

And they did it retroactively. I'll never forget it. Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

You want to push him out.

[Jillian Michaels]

You'd already spent that money. I remember that year. And you'd set aside your 10%. You'd prepaid it. And then I remember my business manager came back and asked me for a fricking ton of money for taxes. And I was like, I don't understand. Didn't we plan for this quarterly? Yeah, but they just added 3% retroactive. And I thought, what about all the people that can't come up with that money?

[Grant Cardone]

That's right. Okay. And then it is. It is increasingly gotten more difficult. And then when the money's not your pain point, they make you feel insecure when you go to dinner because they allow crime to run rampant. They want you out. And you responded, by the way. You tapped out.

[Jillian Michaels]

I sure did.

[Grant Cardone]

I tapped out.

[Jillian Michaels]

Sure did.

[Grant Cardone]

Arnold tapped out. Stallone tapped out. Tony Robbins tapped out. Phil Milkerson. Tapped out Elon, tapped out Chevron, Tesla, like just go down the line. Like you're talking about billions of dollars of revenue they're pushing out of the state and then at the same time allowed all these other people to come back in and then reward me to go back and visit. Because, like, you're doing your 183 days, they're rewarding you to go back there and play because you're sexy and, oh, Jillian's in town. They want you to come back. Right, but they're trying to bankrupt the state because they want federal dollars.

[Jillian Michaels]

And federal dollars are worth more.

[Grant Cardone]

Too big to fail. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but if it fails, it would literally bankrupt United States of America. That's how big that economy is.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, I see.

[Grant Cardone]

So the federal government will always have to write checks to bail it out.

[Jillian Michaels]

Who benefits from that scenario, though? If it's not the governor, who's winning?

[Grant Cardone]

It's some evil people.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, I get it.

[Grant Cardone]

Some evil. I mean, it's hard to get because it's so. It's incomprehensible to, you know, confront that much evil. But got to remember, this is the largest economy by 185 other countries. It's massive and it's right here. And it's some of the best resources this country has. Probably the most valuable single state resource in the country is the state of California.

[Jillian Michaels]

So the federal government bails them out. Can I presume the profiteers of this would be globalists, whoever politicians that can control the population?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I mean, I know if you could do it here, you can do it in New York. Go do New York, then go do Chicago, and then go do Minnesota or Minneapolis. You know, just keep hitting this. Roll it over to Denver. Now you got six big ones.

[Jillian Michaels]

Would it be China? That, that is like, oh, this is awesome. We're bankrupting these.

[Grant Cardone]

It's communists. It's communists. Okay, I'll give you a perfect example. When I left the state, I don't know if you got audited when you left. I was audited four times.

[Jillian Michaels]

I know it's coming. I'm waiting for it. Everyone tells me it's coming. So it's.

[Grant Cardone]

It will come. And it's worse than the federal irs. So the first three audits, we won completely. The fourth audit, they had found something between me and a partner where the partner had re labeled his partnership with me. There was no financial damage at all, by the way, to the state. We had paid in full. The state said, hey, we're finding you $750,000 because your partner, Dale Christensen. Da, da, da. And I said, guys, I'm going to appeal this. We knew you would. We've already denied your appeal. We pre denied your appeal. And Mr. Cardone, if you do not pay the 750 Friday, we will, we will attach your account and withdraw the money from your Florida bank. That is communism. That is not socialism. That is communism.

[Jillian Michaels]

That is horror stories about that.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

So on a high note, yeah, I now know what I'm going to do with my Wyoming house. I'm going to take a business loan against it and I'm going to buy a 36 unit place in a market that I read about on your thing and I'm actually dead ass serious. I'm doing that one. I'm frigging leasing the cars under my companies. I'm bought, I bought the Range Rover. I'm investing in myself and my business and I am moving out of California then like if I'm living in a place like that, if I haven't tapped out. You should probably tap out then is what you're essentially saying. You should be in an environment where, where you, it's conducive for you to be successful. Is that safe to say?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. 40, 40% of the 40% of your expenses are taxes. So if you're trying to get, if you're trying to get ahead and you're trying to get up, the first thing to do is reduce your tax bill. It's not to reduce your expenditures. It's to reduce the amount of taxes you pay. A criminal organization called the irs. Look, I do everything I can to pay them nothing every year, including buying planes and boats. I'll do anything not to pay the IRS a penny. The IRS does not fund Medicare, Social Security, highways, hospitals, nothing.

[Jillian Michaels]

They don't?

[Grant Cardone]

No.

[Jillian Michaels]

Who fund? That's the state. You're saying funds.

[Grant Cardone]

Typically the state is paying for that or they're printing money to do it.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh my gosh. So the IRS is funding like foreign wars and things like that.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. And they don't, you know. Yeah. And they're not even funding the wars. The most of that money gets stolen before it actually gets to the war grounds. So now it's your right, it's your citizens right to actually pay zero taxes because of the business decisions you make. And, and this is what wealthy people are doing at scale. Corporations are doing it to make investments in their company's expansion. Buying, you know, making, reinvesting in order to Reduce their tax bill, which if you're making a million dollars, it saves you 400 grand right away. And this is what we, this is what I do, you know, probably 50 weeks a year, teaching people how to, how to play the game and get your wealth right and why wealth is so important. And I mean, let's face it, Jillian, you need money on this planet.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

You know, money, everything you want. You know, you guys go for a trip or you want to take care of your mom or your. Whoever it takes. Money.

[Jillian Michaels]

You know, your wife has talked about how she's been with you the whole way and you know, you were her king and all, all of that. And it's quite lovely, to be honest. But the point is that you're a self made man. Can you, can you tell me a little bit about your trajectory to becoming Grant Cardone?

[Grant Cardone]

I'm one of five kids and we grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, a little refinery town. My dad died when I was 10 and he was the, he was the. Oh, thank you. He was the breadwinner. You know, it was 1968, so mom was a single mom, you know, the, the housewife mom. And the day he died, that was a Thursday on. My mom didn't get to go into grief, she went into fear because she didn't know how to bring money in. She didn't know how to manage money. She didn't understand money. She had to adopt all the ideas of other men. Basically, it was a com. You know, all the banking was men then. And so I was learning at 10 years old, whether I knew it or not, a lot about money. She had to sell the house. It was paid for. So I immediately learned before I was 11 years old that a house is not an investment and it is not an asset. It was a liability for my mother, even though it was paid for. I realized that life insurance would not carry a family, even though my dad had life insurance. My dad had no debt, by the way, like Dave Ramsey probably had some influence on him. Before Dave Ramsey was even Dave Ramsey. He had no debt. My dad had done everything, Jillian, exactly the way we're all trained to do it. And my mom was in complete terror because there was no income. There was no passive income, there was no real assets. There was nothing dependable. And so my, my life was being. We were in the middle class, but. But we, we had a house in three square meals a day and all that house, you know, roof over our head. But we didn't have certainty about tomorrow. And there was fear everywhere. And so she was clipping coupons. And that's. That's the environment I grew up in. And I made a decision before I was 12 years old. One day, I'm going to get rich. I am going to be in a position one day to never worry about money. This is a terrible way to live. Like, I became indignant about the middle class that my mom reminded me that I should be grateful for her.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow. What an incredible origin story.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, so take me from there now. You're utilizing fear as a motivator, which, you know, you could. You have two choices. And I always tell people, like, you can allow it to victimize you and paralyze you, or you can utilize it as a source of motivation. And you talk about that in one of the points about emergency funds, but I don't want to jump ahead. So here you are, you're 12. You're. You're afraid, and you're vowing never to feel this way again. Where does the education begin, though?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, you know, I kept waiting for somebody to show up and help me. Right. I had three uncles, and I'm like, I know one of these. First of all, I waited for my dad for probably two years to not be dead. I literally dropped into this fantasy that it was all just a dream.

[Jillian Michaels]

Denial. Yeah, of course.

[Grant Cardone]

Probably for two years. Probably for a good two, maybe three years. I kept thinking, he's not dead. He's coming back.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, great.

[Grant Cardone]

You're a boy. You need a man, right?

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And I'm growing up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, So it's. The other boys are hunting and fishing and learning about boats and how to put cars together. I know nothing, dude. Like, I'm. I'm a little. You know, I need a man, you know, And. And. And I had a mother, but my mother couldn't be a man. She could not be a father. She could only be a mother. Yep, she was a good mother. And I. And I had three uncles. And I'm like, I know one of these uncles are going to show up. You know, once I realized, okay, Dad's not coming back. They never showed up because they had their hands full with their families. And somebody will be your mentor. So for all of you out there that are listening, you're like, yeah, I have the same problem. I don't have anybody. Trust me, somebody is mentoring you, and somebody will grab you. In my case, it was Danny, the local drug dealer, that. That took interest in me. And, dude, I was so, like, I was so hungry for mentorship. I'm like, yeah, let's go. And it became, it became something I could learn about, you know, and so I ended up becoming a drug addict for 10 years.

[Jillian Michaels]

How did I not know this about you to me? Oh, you didn't know this larger than life billionaire, that's, that's like, that's what I, you know, you're. You're the, you're the money guy. You're the larger than life billionaire with the hot wife who's, you know, I lucky enough to have met your wife who's as smart as she is beautiful, but that. I just thought you were just this, you know.

[Grant Cardone]

Oh, no, no, it was nasty, dude. Look, I had 70 stitches put in my head and face when I was 23 years old by a.45 caliber pistol. Overdosed three times. Before I was 23, I had three of my friends when I went to treatment center. All were killed while I was gone and lost another buddy in a motorcycle accident, became a paraplegic. He was. Died of overdose. And just, you know, I. I was a middle class kid that went bad. I was a good kid that went bad because I didn't have the direction of a dad, of a good mentor. And.

[Jillian Michaels]

After all of that, can I just ask you, do you feel, because I imagine this is how I would feel, whether it's PC or not to say it, that if I had come through all of that, I would feel like I was divined, like there was a reason for me to have survived it all and there's something for me out there that's bigger.

[Grant Cardone]

No, not really, no.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my God. I would have 100 felt that way like, like the one guy that survived that plane crash, that India plane crash. I thought if I was that guy, I would think I'm supposed to save the world or something to have survived that. And you're like the things that you've just described that you've survived are. I mean, talk about being an outlier.

[Grant Cardone]

Actually, for me it was the contrary. I mean, I see what you're saying, but for me it was like I was so disgusted with myself. You know, drugs are a terrible thing. I mean, they're terrible, but. But the feeling the drug addict has about themselves every. Nobody starts drugs to be a drug addict. No one in the history of drug addicts has ever started with the intention of becoming a degenerate drug addict.

[Jillian Michaels]

Can I ask you what drugs you were?

[Grant Cardone]

Any drug that you've had. Okay, first, if I came to your house, first thing I'd do is go to your medicine cabinet and find out what you had in the medicine. Wow.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Grant Cardone]

It didn't matter. It didn't. There was no. The guy. The guy that says he has a drug of choice. That, that, That's. That's not true. Nobody has a drug of choice. You're a drug addict. You're a drug addict, period. And you'll use any drug when you're a drug addict, you know, so it was. I was so disgusted with myself, Julian. I didn't think I had, you know, was somehow special. I thought I was a piece of.

[Jillian Michaels]

And breaking my heart today.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. No, so you're so good. You're so, You're. You're so awesome with interviews. But no, I, I did.

[Jillian Michaels]

Didn't know this. And to be honest, I didn't do a ton of homework because I, I wanted to learn about it very authentically with the audience. I was like, you know what? I know the stuff I want to learn from Grant about making money and like, how is the housing market rigged? Like, I have all that, you know, prepared, but I was like, you know, I don't know a lot about this guy, and I'm going to find out today with the audience in the event that they don't. Like, I just thought you probably went to Wharton.

[Grant Cardone]

Oh, no, no.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow.

[Grant Cardone]

The night I was getting, I got a college degree in accounting. And the night I got a college. My degree, I was selling a Chevrolet dealer a Toyota. His wife. I was selling his wife a Toyota. And so that. That's when I had started coming back in my Life. I was 25, went to a treatment center and I. And. And I knew that I had to put my head down and get my money right. Because I was in debt and I had to rebuild. You know, nobody trusted me. I didn't trust myself. My mom didn't trust me. You know, the community didn't trust me. So I had to rebuild. And that was probably five or six years to rebuild. But once I started getting some confidence that I could be a productive member of society, I started putting my head down and spent. I've spent the last, now 30, what is it, 42 years focused on my personal self improvement. Getting, you know, and fixing my life and my friends, my network and my money and seeing if I could do the same thing for other people.

[Jillian Michaels]

Grant, what was the rock bottom moment where you said enough is enough? Was there a relapse after that? Was there a backslide?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, there was no. I mean, there was no relapse after I went to treatment.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow.

[Grant Cardone]

When I was leaving the treatment facility, Paul, the counselor, I think his name was Paul, said, you'll be back here. I said, bro, I ain't never coming back here.

[Jillian Michaels]

That bastard.

[Grant Cardone]

Take your phenobarbital that you guys gave me. Because, you know when you go into treatment centers, they give you more drugs.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

They get you off of the bad drugs, supposedly, and they get you onto the ones they approve.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right?

[Grant Cardone]

I said, take your phenobarbital. Excuse me, but take your phenobarbital. Keep it for yourself. I'll never come back here. He's like, guys like you always come back. I said, who's a guy like me? He's like, you're too ambitious. You're. You're a. What did he say? You're. You're too driven for success. You want to be a celebrity. You want to be rich. I said, bro, I'm going to be all those things. Because in treatment, as you might know, you kind of tell them all your secrets and all the things. So I spilled the beans and said, I'm going to be a special person one day. I'm going to get super rich. I'm going to write books. I'm going to help millions of people. And he's like, people like you always come back here. I said, bro, I'll never come back here. So I know today, 40 years later, Paul probably has heard about me, which makes me very happy.

[Jillian Michaels]

I would hope so. I would hope. I mean, honestly, maybe you'll see this interview. This will be the one. I'm sure he hasn't seen you before now, but the Jillian Michaels podcast will definitely be where he learns about your stellar success. So you're 25, you're grinding, and then where. How do you end up in real estate? What? Because that is, to be fair, all of the billionaires that I've ever met, they look at me and they're like, you want to make real money? Real estate? I mean, I've heard it from everyone. Hannity's like, I'm a better businessman than I am a news anchor. Like, there's not one extremely successful person that doesn't tell me real estate. But it really, honestly, granted, is a bit intimidating because I. It's like all the things you talk about, it's a bit. What. How did you get there? That's what I'm gonna say. What. What got you to this world?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, I had a. I had a terrible sales job when I was 25, but the only people that will hire me in the town that I worked in was a sales company. So I Went to work there. I hated it. But because it was the only thing that anybody would hire me to do, I'm like, I'm going to get good at something I hate. And this is where my kids also get this grind. Like, I am going to learn how to be great at something I don't like to do. And I did. I became so good at it that companies ended up hiring me to try to transform their sales teams into doing what I was doing. And I would end up becoming. I disrupted the entire auto industry with these new ideas about how automobile salespeople should treat customers. Blah, blah, blah. And then in the meantime, I started.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, no, no, no. On the blah, blah, blah. You know, when you. When you listen to. I cannot remember the name of the guy that started. I think it was Hertz. But it was all about, like, looking for the white space where car rental companies weren't and providing the best customer service and having his ass handed to him a couple of times. And I've. I've heard Warren Buffett, I think, tell the story about that guy. What was the strategy that you employed?

[Grant Cardone]

It was. It was. I looked around and the way they wanted people to sell cars was so deceptive and so, like, it took too long. First of all, it's like, the longer you spend with the customer, the better off you are. Don't give them price, build value. And I was like, I just flipped the whole model. You know, wait, wait. You know, spend a lot of time and sell them the car and then talk about price. I flipped the model and talked about price first and payments first and interest rates first. I gave everybody everything they wanted, and I actually ended up making more money in the transaction, not less. I did more transactions in a shorter period of time. And so if you, you know, CarMax, for instance, with the used car operation, they heard what I was doing and flipped their model. Lexus, Saturn. Ford Motor Company started doing one price. All that came because of this innovation and disruption that I started consulting auto dealers on when I was in my early 30s. And they were starting to pay me a lot of money. And I didn't know what to do with the money. I knew keeping it at the bank was stupid because I saw my dad do that. I knew the retirement accounts didn't work because I saw my dad do that. And so I said, I'm not going to do that. And I started buying real estate and just burying the money in real estate. And the real estate started paying me passive income. And I'm like, I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to make. I'm going to get wealthy in real estate.

[Jillian Michaels]

Grant, I gotta tell you, I've. I've spoken to a lot of people in this space, Suze Orman included, and I don't. I don't think I've ever fully walked away with a comprehensive understanding the way that I have with you. And I am confident in my ability to learn more from you, from your assets. And this is no bullshit. Now, I'm now waxing your rear end here. Where can. Okay, so give me a breakdown, by the way, of what resources people should go to of yours right now to start learning more about this, because I'm actually inspired and feeling like I could probably do it. And I, for years have kind of dabbled with the thought of doing the things you talked about, but been intimidated by it. And now I'm like, oh, my God. I think I actually understand it and I think I could actually do it. And if somebody's like, well, I don't have what you have, Jillian, I get it, but if you could do it with a hundred dollars and turn it into five, like, where am I going to go to? How to do that?

[Grant Cardone]

Where you're going to go. If people love the real estate thing, if people Google me and just. You won't have a hard time finding me. Like, I, like, I'm pretty easy to find.

[Jillian Michaels]

So.

[Grant Cardone]

But if there's a thing, I think it's GrantCardOne.com/REI. Real Estate Investing. It stands for Real Estate Invest. GrantCardOne.com/FRIGHT slash REI. That's the link. It's completely free. It costs you nothing. And I'm spending about 90 minutes explaining to people what we do in real estate and how I got started. I started with 3,000 bucks. It turned into a $5 billion real estate portfolio. It's one of five businesses that I own. And, you know, I'm just doing for people what I wished I would have had when I was 10 and 11 years old, when my dad died, I just wanted somebody to show me the way and help me. That's why I went to school, that's why I went to college. That's why I got involved with Danny. And nobody helped. I mean, they did help me, but not really, right? And even so. So I just promised myself that one day, if I ever made it, I was going to help other people. I show my whole life. A lot of people don't like it. They think I'm showing off, but I'M really not, I'm really showing up to show people they can, they can be a better version of themselves, including the money game and owning property or. The best thing about money, Jillian, is that you get, you know, and a lot of people with money don't have this, but some of us do, where you have not just money, but you also. It instills your courage to speak like you do.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

With courage. And, and, and be you. You're willing to lose a sponsor, you're willing to lose a customer, you're willing to lose an audience. And you're like, you know what? I'm fine with that.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep. I, I, some I often say, like, I wish that I had Megyn Kelly's $60 million parachute, because I would go from, like, wolf size balls, like, elephant size.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. No, it's, it's you money.

[Jillian Michaels]

Sure.

[Grant Cardone]

That was never intended to be an arrogant you. You know, it was like, no, no. Hey, all the customers out there that you can't be satisfied. You. I'm getting hit with this thing from California right now with three Democratic judges because of my support for Donald Trump. And I'm like, okay, if it cost me, it cost me money. I have the money. I've worked hard. And this is for everybody. You guys can all put yourself in a position. Everyone can do this. I mean, as long as you don't have more excuses than the solutions, you can put yourself in a position. This isn't a motivational thing. I'll leave that to Tony. But this is a strategic way. Everyone has the data. Strategic way to put yourself and your family in a situation, to have tremendous amounts of wealth, not just a little bit of extra money.

[Jillian Michaels]

Corinne, I can't thank you enough, man. This is, this has been personally like a coaching session. And I'm sure the audience has learned a ton. You're fantastic and so generous with your time. I'm grateful. I know you gotta call your 13 year old back. You said 40 minutes. I kept you for an hour. 40 minutes.

[Grant Cardone]

All right. I had fun with you. It was great.

[Jillian Michaels]

And please say hi to Elena. She's.

[Grant Cardone]

Of course I will. Hey, thank you so much, Jillian.

[Jillian Michaels]

Thank you, man. All right, Hopefully I get to talk to you soon and have fun in San Tropez.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, thanks.

[Jillian Michaels]

Bye. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please, like, comment, subscribe, and share and make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.