← Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Grant Cardone: Reinventing at 50 to Build a Multi-Billion Dollar Business from Rock Bottom
00:43:29
Loading summary
Transcript89 lines
- [00:01]
Ilana Golan
Wow, this is going to be such an incredible show today. But before we start the show, I want to ask you for a favor. See, I'm on a mission to help millions leap their careers, land their dream roles, fast track to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or create portfolio careers. Now, this podcast is about giving you a blueprint of how some of the biggest leaders of our time reach success. So subscribe, download, so you never miss it. Plus, it really, really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. So let's dive in.
- [00:32]
Grant Cardone
I am naturally negative. I was raised by depression, baby. Why would I not be scared? The only reason a human being wouldn't be scared is because they're not doing anything new.
- [00:41]
Ilana Golan
Grant Cardone, CEO of Cardone Capital. From building a multibillion dollar real estate empire to teaching millions how to sell, how to scale businesses.
- [00:52]
Grant Cardone
I didn't come for money. I didn't have connections. And unfortunately, I did not spend the first 50 years of my life getting connected. My dad died when I was 10 and everything changed. Drifted into a drug problem when I was 15. Overdosed three times. And I should not be where I'm at today. The biggest hack on this planet is to change the network you hang with. And the fastest way to change the network is to write a check.
- [01:19]
Ilana Golan
I love that. And I keep buying my way in.
- [01:22]
Grant Cardone
And I really, really appreciate you supporting us on the Grant Cardone Foundation. You're in transition right now. It's not too late. I was 51 years old. The economy had collapsed, and I was like, what did I do wrong? What I had done wrong was, oh.
- [01:49]
Ilana Golan
My God, today I have such a treat. Grant Cardone, who was also a ment and somebody that helped me is a fund manager. He's a CEO of Cardone Capital. He's the CEO of Cardone. Training serial entrepreneur is an understatement for you, Grant. But he really, he's like a real estate investor. He's a private equity fund manager. From building a multi billion dollar real estate empire to teaching millions how to sell, how to scale businesses. Seriously, Grant, the 10x movement is not just a slogan. It's your way of life.
- [02:20]
Grant Cardone
Yeah. And it's actually. I wrote a book in 2012 maybe called the 10x Rule, and that thing really hit. It wasn't my first book, and it was a very significant book for me because I was 51 years old at the time and I had plateaued in my career. I was in transition, my industry was in transition. 2008 came, economic collapse had lasted way longer than anybody wanted it to. And it really drained me of resources, energy, focus. And I found myself almost in this mid. You used the word earlier. Late stage career. I was in like this crisis. And you know, you're 50 years old and you're like, hey, I'm running out of time, I'm running out of energy. I've already worked 30 years. I don't want to do this again. Like, I'm going through my money, I'm burning through resources. A lot of people going through the same cycle right now. And so I had to kind of reboot. I didn't come for money, and I never. I didn't have connections. And unfortunately, I did not spend the first 50 years of my life getting connected.
- [03:25]
Ilana Golan
Yeah, let's go there for a second because your story is phenomenal and you weren't born to wealth. And I want to make sure everybody understand that. Let us take back in time to the kid in Louisiana.
- [03:37]
Grant Cardone
Look, I grew up where there was. We had air condition and heater, and we had a three bedroom house for five kids. Mom and dad. My dad died when I was 10 and everything changed. The whole world got flipped upside down.
- [03:51]
Ilana Golan
Take us there for a second, because you talk a lot about that. Also, an undercover billionaire. That was a pivotal moment for you, for your mom, for your family.
- [04:01]
Grant Cardone
Yeah. Because if you're a parent, you know, kids are always watching and they're always learning. And for me, I was learning throughout. The most traumatic moment of a kid's life was just the loss of a parent. And I'm also watching my mom, which I'm very connected to spiritually. I'm watching her go from what should have been grief to fear. I could see it on her face. I don't need a class in fear to know what it looks like. Like, I'm like, shit, she's scared. I didn't know what she was scared of. But then I kept hearing the money thing. Got to sell the house, got to sell the cars, got to downscale, got to move us, got to get closer to the schools when a human being should be in fear right now. I'd also heard 10 years of how we were doing well and how we had. My dad had got us into the middle class and he'd finally bought his dream home. And boom, next day, all that's unwinding. So once, to me, I'm learning. I'm becoming who I am today.
- [04:59]
Ilana Golan
And you're only 10. I mean, you're at that point, you're 10 years old. That is traumatic.
- [05:04]
Grant Cardone
But I'm learning About money. This is all personal finance 101 and a grief class all combined. These two messages are coming. You lost your dad and your mom's scared. And so this conflict comes into, like, sell everything. I learned a house was not an asset. The house was paid for, by the way. So it should be an asset based on what we're told. But my dad's savings got sucked out of savings. The life insurance got sold, the stocks in the market that were paying a slight dividend every quarter, all these things start becoming pieces of data for me to later use in my life. So all I'm telling your audience is we have $5 billion worth of real estate under management. I've never taken any money from a major bank. We have, I don't know, I've raised a billion six over the Internet. Without advertisers, promoters or middleman. I've sold $2 billion worth of products. Some people say I'm a grifter because I'm selling products on the Internet. Educational products, by the way, because I don't believe the education system is good for us anymore. For the most part, not completely, but for the most part. And I did all this without connections and without a great education and without any money, no credit, no debt. I didn't code anything like the geniuses in Silicon Valley.
- [06:20]
Ilana Golan
So take us there. We'll fast forward in a second. But I think it's important. You've been in this trauma age, I think 15 to 25. You were still kind of lost, right? What was it like, Grant?
- [06:32]
Grant Cardone
Yeah, drifted into a drug problem when I was 15. You know, I start drugs at 15, 16 years old, smoking weed and the next thing you know, I'm doing pills. And then I'm, you know, everything, dude, like, like any drug that was available. Next thing you know, for the next 10 years of my life, I go I a middle class kid that falls right off the charts. Overdose three times, you know, have 70 stitches, put my head and face from a guy that came in and beat me up. It was terrible. It's awful. My family almost lost me. I lost three friends. Nasty. I should not have been there and I should not be where I'm at today.
- [07:09]
Ilana Golan
What changed? How did you decide to take control of your life?
- [07:13]
Grant Cardone
Because I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, as the saying goes. It wasn't when I hit bottom, because there's many bottoms, you think the bottom is where you are right now, but there's another bottom, trust me, there's always another bottom of degrade. And then there's death. I just escaped right before death. My mom basically intervened and said, look, I'm done with you. She basically broke this little agreement that we had this little game that we played back and forth that she would take care of me. And she basically said, gave me the middle finger and said, I'm done. And 25 hours later, I was in a treatment center in Minnesota. And for the first time in my life, I put 28 days together without using drugs. And that was the reboot of my life.
- [07:57]
Ilana Golan
Wow. Again, I want people to hear this, because people right now going through really tough times. There have been layoffs. I mean, people are going through a lot. California had this fires. There's a lot of crap going on in the world right now, and there's a lot of suffering. So I want them to hear that you can control your life, that you can decide that you want massive success no matter what. And you are a hustler. Grant. I think of myself as somebody that is hardworking, and I can outbeat almost anyone. But you put a shame on me. So you outwork me any day.
- [08:35]
Grant Cardone
You think about that, like, in relationship to me, and I think about me in relation to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. So I get shameful because thinking about how hard those two guys work, because I know they're maniacs.
- [08:49]
Ilana Golan
So tell us what shifted and suddenly you learned that you love sales and you take that as a gift.
- [08:55]
Grant Cardone
Look, I didn't. I've never loved sales. I don't. I still don't love sales today. So a lot. A lot of people say, oh, you love selling. You're a great salesman. I'm like, I hate sales. Okay? I hate sales. But I do like hitting my targets, okay? So I am very target driven. It's why I hated college so much, is because the targets were too long. It took too long to get there. I hated school because I'm like, I got to be here 17 years or 12 years to get anything done, or three years or a whole semester or whatever. I could do anything over short periods of time. And then my interest in the work or the effort of the target goes up. And the bigger the target is, as long as I'm trained or educated to believe that I can actually hit the target, if I actually believe it's attainable in a short period of time, I'll do almost anything. That's what changed for me. I was in a sales job. I was 25 years old, and the only people that were hiring me was a sales company, and I had to take it. I didn't have a choice. It was the only job I could get and I had ruined my reputation. Where I lived, it looked, my reputation was even ruined with me. So I had to rebuild that. And I had to learn how to be a salesman. I didn't want to be a salesman. But they offered the job. It wouldn't have mattered. It could have been carrying urine, it could have been digging a ditch, it could have been whatever. Whoever would have given me an opportunity, I would have gotten great at it because I no longer had any choices. And I knew I couldn't make excuses anymore. I no longer had the privilege of saying, I don't like this job. What happened was a flip switched because I now made a decision to get good at something. The next thing you know, in a very short period of time. I'm talking about 72 hours. Not only did I get good at it, I started enjoying it.
- [10:48]
Ilana Golan
That shift is absolutely incredible. And I think you took it to a whole different level. By the way, one of your books, Sell and Be Sold is just so incredible because you're trying every conversation there's like two frames, right? You're either selling or you're somebody selling you their crap, right? Like it's like one of them and happening. But you also build the 10x brand and the TEGNX rule to a global movement. Way before anybody understood branding. I think most people didn't really understand what it took. And you were just like, you saw it, you saw the future and we going to tie it to what you see now. But you saw that future really.
- [11:27]
Grant Cardone
I didn't really see a future, really. I mean, I appreciate that, that I would be some kind of like clairvoyant. But it wasn't that. It was just everything that's happened for me has come out of a problem. Everything. Everything that has happened to me in my life, at some point in my life, it was a problem. First, the sales game, it was a problem. I wrote celeb. So it took three hours to write that book. But it took 26 years to decide to write it. Once I decided to write, it took three hours. So it was this 26 years I spent studying this one little sector every day, hours a day. After hating it, by the way, after hating this thing called sales, studied it and then it became a business for me. I would end up being known as one of the top three sales consultants in the world, blah, blah, blah, with the names of like Brian Tracy and some of these freaking icon guys that I used to study. So the 10x rule was born out of another book. Was born out of the 2008 global collapse after working for 27 years or 26 years, whatever the number was. I was 51 years old. The economy had collapsed, and I was like, what did I do wrong? I spent some time looking at it. What I had done wrong was I did not have 10 verticals to work in. I had one vertical, the vertical got cut in half. I had not scaled. I sat down and wrote a book, the 10x rule. I basically figured this formula out. Had I done 10x, I would have gotten cut, but I wouldn't have failed. I would have actually punched through a crisis and benefited from it. Instead, my family suffered from it and I wrote the book called the 10x Rule. That book took me, like, I don't know, three weeks to write. I didn't think much of it. Put it out. It was my sixth or seventh book that I wrote. Put it out. Told my wife, I finished the book. What do you think? I said, it's all right. Boom. Book took off, went crazy. And then out of that was born the 10x movement, which is all these 10x events. And it was really an accident. Just so you know, to know the truth. It was humbly. It was an accident. The 10x rule I stumbled across. Now, the branding of who I am, that was very much planned, including my wife, came from an audition one day.
- [13:48]
Ilana Golan
And by the way, for those who don't know, that's Elena.
- [13:51]
Grant Cardone
Yeah. She comes back from an audition. She's in Hollywood. She comes back from an audition. She's like, oh, my God, this. Their job's terrible. I. You know, and she's crying. I'm like, babe, what's happening? She's like, this audition went terrible. And the same time, I was invited to go on some TV show. And I drive, I don't know, 45 minutes to the interview. The interview was like, 45 seconds long. I'm driving home, 45 minutes, pissed off, out of my mind. Like, you have no idea how angry I feel, like an idiot. I'm like, I just drove an hour and a half to answer a bullshit question for 45 seconds. These people act like they're doing me a favor. I think it was Fox News or something. Same day, my wife got rejected. I came home and I said, this will never happen to us again. And she's like, what do you mean? I said, I am going to make sure everyone knows our name. And that was really the start of the branding. I said, I will never. I am Never going to be humiliated like this. You don't deserve to be humiliated like this. And we're going to build our own audience. And now we have. There's about. I don't know, between us, about 20 million followers online.
- [15:04]
Ilana Golan
Oh, yeah, for sure. Wait, what age was that when you decided that?
- [15:09]
Grant Cardone
We started that at 52 years old.
- [15:11]
Ilana Golan
Incredible. And I think this is so important, Grant, because a lot of our audience, you know, if they're somewhere around that age, they feel like life is over. Did I miss the boat? Like, am I done? I mean, I literally just had somebody on LinkedIn that said, Hey, I saw your episode was Gary Vee, and I decided not to end my life today. And I was like, that sucks. People are suffering right now. So what made that switch of, I'm not gonna give up on this. I'm not just gonna look for another thing to just this, but I'm gonna create this portfolio career, and I gonna make sure my brand is known and I gonna. You know, like, what made that shift and what happened there?
- [15:53]
Grant Cardone
Well, because of that moment, that loss, I was doing pretty well in my life, but nobody knew me. And this was after the collapse. I'm like, nobody knows me, but I expect to do well. How can I do well if nobody knows me? I remember my dad saying at eight years old, two years before he died, he says, look, the most important thing you have is your name. And what my dad didn't understand was the most important thing that you do is protect your name. And the second most important thing is make sure people know it. Because if nobody knows your name, there's nothing to protect. Now, everybody in my dad's little town knew him, but he couldn't go anywhere outside his little town and be known. I can't go anywhere in the world. We flew to Malta one night. We were in London. My daughter comes to me and says, papa, I don't want to go home. I'm loving this trip. We're having fun, you know, we're traveling around the world. She's like, I don't want to go home yet. And I'm like, where you want to go? She's like, I don't know. I said, get a map. Let's find a place to go tonight. It was like, I don't know, 8 o'clock at night. Yeah. We were in London. I said, close your eyes and pick. Boom. She picks the map. Malta. Malta is just south of Italy. Used to be an Air Force base back in the World War II. And I said, let's go To Malta. So I called the pilot. We, we had our own plane at the time. And I said, we're going to Malta tonight. We don't know anybody in Malta. I've never been to Malta. I didn't know where Malta was. We land in Malta two and a half, three hours later. There's people at the airport because I posted I'm coming to Malta.
- [17:24]
Ilana Golan
You're kidding.
- [17:25]
Grant Cardone
Wow. And there's people at the airport at 1, you know, 12:30, 1:00 in the morning. I'm just saying that, that because it's cool. Because if people know you, they can help you. If people know you, they can feed you. People know you, they can find you. We ended up in a hotel that night. I've never, I hadn't told this story, I don't think ever. We ended up in a hotel that night. We hated, it was a last minute booking. We hated the hotel. I called the people that I met at the airport and said, can you help me? And boom, they got me in a different hotel. So the value of being known is so important. And I'm sure Vaynerchuk talked about this, you know, the value of being a brand trusted that people value or think enough of you that they would stop what they're doing and go to the airport and say hi to you.
- [18:09]
Ilana Golan
That's incredible. I think it's so important for our audience. A lot of them are giving a thousand percent to the workplace, which is really important to be loyal. And I do believe in this. But you can't have all your identity attached to one title, one company. You need to have your own brand to stand on its own. Because the minute they lay you off, you're a nobody. And I think this is just something that sometimes we just don't understand, that we also want to build our own brand and that safety net for ourselves.
- [18:39]
Grant Cardone
Well, let me just say that if anybody lays you off and they stay in business, you aren't that valuable. There's going to be hundreds of thousands of people, by the way, they get laid off right now because of Doge. If you guys get laid off, if somebody else doesn't pick you up, it's because you're not valuable in the story. Okay? The last job that I ever lost, I was 29. Then there's another job I lose after that, I lose this job. The company literally goes bankrupt 10 months later. That's how valuable I was to that company. And I think that that's what an employee should do. You should be so valuable to the company. They're dependent upon you. You're not dependent upon them. I left that company at 29, went to work for another guy. In 15 months I am producing more revenue for that next company than the company produced. The position for an employee to be in is you should be so productive that the company is dependent upon you. I posted on X yesterday, hey, I'm hiring federal government employees. We're offering free training and education to all government employees. The first thing I want to teach is how to work again. Second thing, how to sell, do your own startup, grow and scale your business. I'm going to teach you those things for free by the way, not charge the government anything, no taxpayers involved. If you guys want, come register for this free event, your government employee. Except we will not allow anyone from the irs.
- [20:13]
Ilana Golan
I love that. And we literally just published that. We going to help some of them find a job for free for a little bit.
- [20:20]
Grant Cardone
But a lot of those people are going to need to be reeducated.
- [20:22]
Ilana Golan
I agree.
- [20:23]
Grant Cardone
Because they got a bunch of bad habits. They basically been on government dole. Nobody was paying attention. Nobody's holding them accountable, responsible. Nobody's checking on their work ethic or their productivity or their ability to hit targets. And it's a problem.
- [20:39]
Ilana Golan
Hey, I'm pausing here for a second. I hope you're enjoying this amazing conversation. Don't forget to like this video. Subscribe to our channel now. If you're looking yourself to catapult your own career, figure out what's next for you. Get that clarity, fast track your own growth. Check out our free 30 minute training at leapacademy.com training that sleepacademy.com training. Now let's get back to the show. It's true for everything. I mean the comfort zone is a very dangerous place for all companies. I agree.
- [21:09]
Grant Cardone
Yeah, exactly.
- [21:10]
Ilana Golan
So tell me, how did you get into real estate and when was that? Based on that 51 boundary. Right.
- [21:19]
Grant Cardone
I was making decent money when I was 31 years old. I left the second company that I told you about earlier that I was making more money for. I was stacking money away and then what I would do on the weekends is I would look at real estate. I, I've always been interested in real estate. And I remember my dad was a stockbroker and he used to drive around and look at real estate when I was like 6 years old. I'm like, oh, this must be valuable. You know, little kids do all these crazy things and I'm in the backseat of that car thinking one day I'm own some real estate. One day I'm going to drive a car. One day I'm. I'm going to be able to pay for the ice cream. So I didn't want to own a company. I never thought about being a boss. I have never, ever had the idea that I was going to own companies, be a CEO, none of it. But I always wanted to own real estate. And so at that consulting job, I was starting to stack up some dough. I had about 300 grand and. And I'm like, I got to do something with this money. And I would shop real estate on the weekends. And I bought a 48 unit deal in Vista, California, put 300 grand down. I had to borrow another 50,000 bucks and get a loan. I didn't know how to do any of this. And that was my first $5 billion of real estate ago.
- [22:29]
Ilana Golan
But take me there for a second, because one of the things that we're seeing with a lot of people is that fear of money or fear of taking a loan or fear of doing something that you don't really know how were you not afraid?
- [22:45]
Grant Cardone
I was. I was afraid.
- [22:47]
Ilana Golan
Tell me more.
- [22:48]
Grant Cardone
I'm always afraid.
- [22:51]
Ilana Golan
Can you still build empires?
- [22:53]
Grant Cardone
I'm afraid. I'm afraid. Just so everybody knows, I'm afraid most of the time. I'm tired most of the time. I'm lost most of the time. But there's certain things I just hold on to that I know are going to be all right that are going to get me through. But I'm always scared. I always doubt. I never think it's going to work out well. I'm not a positive person and I'm not overly confident, by the way, even though I appear confident to people. I know I appear even arrogant to people, dude. I have to do that to protect myself. But that doesn't mean that's what's going on inside of me. Nobody knows what's going on inside of me except me, including my wife and kids.
- [23:35]
Ilana Golan
So you somehow know how to push it out.
- [23:38]
Grant Cardone
I don't think fear is going away, so I tried to medicate it. It didn't go away. I've tried to make self esteem issues better with cars. It doesn't go away. Like it is what it is, man. I'm not trying to get rid of anything. I am what I am. I am who I am, and I got to be all right with it. And the fact that I'm scared doesn't mean I'm wrong.
- [24:01]
Ilana Golan
So many of my people listening to this have to hear this. And honestly, I need to hear this, so walk me through this for a second. So you are taking a loan and money. You don't necessarily know where it's gonna come from. You know that you could be broke because you've seen your mom, right. So it's not something that is unknown to you what makes you still go for it. And now you just do the same grant, but you just do it on bigger sums of money that are just like, mind blowing. So take me to your thought process because again, the biggest thing holding people back is this.
- [24:38]
Grant Cardone
What happens is. It's a good question, by the way. You know, I don't think I've ever formulated what happens. But number one, I think what happens is I am naturally negative. And I think people think I'm this positive guy. I mean, yeah, I mean, I can have positive responses, but it doesn't mean like, I was raised by depression, baby. My mother grew up in breadlines. My whole life I was like a depression's coming up, depression's coming. And depression, well, depression never came. So I always look at worst case scenario. I always go to worst case. I'm always scared. So I'm 66 now. I know enough to know, hey, brother, if the fear was going to go away, it had gone away in your 30s. So the fear's here to stay. Don't try to get rid of it. In fact, it might be godly. Yeah, I know a lot of my buddies that have gone bankrupt. I know a lot of my buddies that are over their skis. I've never done that. I've never busted out, ever. And so maybe my fear is actually a gift. And number two, I look at worst case scenarios and once I can calculate a worst case, and then I'm like, okay, okay, worst case. Put all this money in the real estate. Let's say the economy goes to the money was worth, the real estate will still be there. I don't have any debt on it. I can't lose it. Okay. It's going to be painful. Okay. It I'm gonna take my kids out of school and I'm a homeschool them. Okay, what's the worst case scenario here? Worst case is you them up and they don't know how to do algebra. I can live with that. At least I them up and somebody else did. Okay, take them out of school. So I just get to a worst case scenario. All my calculations, every investment I ever make in my life, every single investment, I bring it to a worst case scenario. What's the worst thing that can happen. I refuse to lose my money by the way, on investing. So that's not a worst case scenario because I am not losing money. So it's short answer. It's a short answer connected with a whole bunch of little barriers I put around that thesis that I'm going to be scared. Why would I not be scared? The only reason a human being wouldn't be scared is because they're not doing anything new. Because if you're doing something new, you are going to have some level of doubt.
- [26:53]
Ilana Golan
Do you think that being the person that looks at the worst thing, is that making you a better investor? Actually, because I think that probably you're not as optimistic so you're actually finding the actual holes in the, in the deal.
- [27:08]
Grant Cardone
I don't know. You know, I don't know. In an up market and when everything goes right, my pessimism is going to cost me a lot of money. But when everything goes wrong, okay, my pessimism is going to save me from going broke. But I don't think I have the potential because of my deficit of pessimism. I don't think I could ever be one of these hundred billion dollar creators investor guys. It limits my ability to go through the to Mars because you know, I am inherently believe something bad's gonna happen.
- [27:46]
Ilana Golan
I don't know, I think you kind of are in Mars with your multi billion dollar enterprises, not in compari ecosystem.
- [27:54]
Grant Cardone
In comparison to where I came from, I'm doing great. But in comparison to the potential of the ecosystem.
- [28:00]
Ilana Golan
So talk to me about for a second, a hard moment and how did you Overcome it?
- [28:07]
Grant Cardone
It's 2010 and the bank calls and says hey, you need to pay $58 million of loans, you need to pay them off right now. Yeah. And I didn't have $58 million. So I'm like, I don't have 58 million. I can't get a new loan. What do I do? I've never done this before. I've never had a bank call loan. I'm not even late, I've never missed a payment. Foreclosures are popping up all around me. People walking away, giving keys back. I'm not doing anything. And they tell me, hey, you need to pay the loan off. I'm like, what are you talking about bro? I'm not even late. Oh yeah, but you're in technical default. Like the whole world's in a technical default. So I didn't know how to do that. Terrifying. Exhausting.
- [28:49]
Ilana Golan
It sounds sleepless. Like what are you doing?
- [28:51]
Grant Cardone
Not really. It wasn't sleepless, but it was like, okay, what do I do? It's like, terrifying, right? And we didn't have investors at that time, so that made it easier because now I don't have to worry about other people's money. That's a much greater responsibility. We have 18,200 investors now. @ that time, it was just me, so that's easier to deal with because now I only have to worry about me getting back into the boat. I don't have to worry about everybody on the boat. Right. But look, there's a lot of hard things in life. Most of them are not the hard things, by the way. They're not the most difficult things. They're the everyday things, the regular things.
- [29:35]
Ilana Golan
That throw you off, but it's continuous. Yeah.
- [29:38]
Grant Cardone
Look, I would rather have a massive problem. When the. The fires hit Malibu, and my. My house almost burnt down. My family was like, wow, you don't even look bothered. I'm like, yeah, it's a big problem. Like, it's one I could. Nothing I could do about it. And sometimes little problems like, what am I doing? Or why am I doing this again? Okay. I can't. This won't move the bar any. Sometimes it's little nagging things, actually, that are bigger than, you know, the big.
- [30:10]
Ilana Golan
Big problem, big one. Because the big ones, you're just gonna focus all in and you're just gonna solve it, versus the nagging ones that you're just gonna nag you.
- [30:19]
Grant Cardone
Exactly. It's so big. It's so giant. It's so overwhelming. You gotta hit it. You gotta go at it. There's a target. There's a precise problem. Everything's identifiable. And sometimes life is not like that. You don't even know who the enemy is.
- [30:34]
Ilana Golan
And it's incredible. And I've seen that you went to California and I've seen your post.
- [30:39]
Grant Cardone
Exactly what I was thinking about when you said that. You're reading my mind.
- [30:41]
Ilana Golan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I've seen it. I mean, it was devastating.
- [30:46]
Grant Cardone
When you talked about California, a much bigger problem was the going to California and seeing if I could do something about it, as opposed to my house. Right. When I went there, I spent three or four weeks there talking to the people in California about making a change in California. See, that to me, is a much bigger, like, can I do this? Will they listen? What happens? I don't know how to do this. I don't know what the rules are. So those new things, walking into new things, when you don't have to, like, I don't have to do anything new anymore. My life's pretty good. If I was only going to do something new to improve the quality of my life, I don't have to do anything. But for me to have a quality of life, I actually have to do something new.
- [31:31]
Ilana Golan
I don't know if it's your personality or whatever it is or it's the legacy that you're leaving, because again, you don't have to. I mean, the California thing. You also don't need to create a private equity fund. I mean, Grant, you have so many things, you have so many businesses. I can't even say all of them. What makes you. Then go and decide, okay, let me just raid a fund, which is insanity. And to make it even worse, let me try to figure out, how do I do Bitcoin type fun, you know what I mean? It's like, so talk to me about that process.
- [32:06]
Grant Cardone
Thank you for saying that, because all these clickbaiters on YouTube will be like, Grant Cardone's raising money from the regular person, taking $5,000, grifting on regular people. My fee, I think we make $50, a $50 management fee. When somebody puts $5,000 into Cardone Capital, by the way, that 5,000 will be invested in an asset that required me to write a check for probably a hundred million dollars. So now if you multiply 18,000, we have 18,200 investors. If all of them gave me $5,000 and I made $50 on everybody, it's not much. So now the goal is to get that 5 billion, 10 billion, $20 billion. And then you make 1% on 20 billion. Then I'm making a lot of money. I'll make generational money that'll last forever for my kids, my wife. It'll just like keep banging. It'll become a bank.
- [33:07]
Ilana Golan
Yeah, I mean, the $50 is not what's gonna get you there. That's a million dollars if you have 20, 000 people. Right? So that's not it. Right. I mean, you're doing this because.
- [33:15]
Grant Cardone
But if the fund gets big enough, right, because somebody's gonna give me a half. We've raised a billion six. So 1% of a billion six is $16 million a year. That's real money.
- [33:27]
Ilana Golan
That's where it goes.
- [33:28]
Grant Cardone
But I still had the responsibility of the real estate. 15,000 tenants debt, $2.2 billion worth of debt, like, so. God, there's a lot of damn problems. I'm not complaining, by the way. I'm the one that chose this, we're going to take that 5 billion, turn it into 10 billion. I'm going to take 10 billion, turn it into 20 billion. I'm going to keep growing the fun, and I'm going to keep having bigger problems.
- [33:51]
Ilana Golan
Not only that, you have bigger problems, first of all. Yes, they're bigger and bigger and scary and scarier. But you're also kind of babysitting now. 18,000 people.
- [34:01]
Grant Cardone
Yeah, I mean, most of our investors are really, really super, super appreciative. Do we have people that have problems? Yeah, we have people that have all kind of problems. You know, they need money or not. Not even really that many. Or they get a lawyer that says Grant Cardone's rich. Sue him. See if you can get some money out of him. Of course. But look, that could happen in any of the businesses. There's seven businesses. It has happened in all of them. By the way, I've had employees sue me. I've had partners sue me. I have a guy right now acting like an idiot. We're going to crush him. Just finalized a defamation lawsuit for $100 million. It's confidential what the actual results were, but it was very, very good for me, and it was not very good for the other guy. Got a full apology, becomes a partner in a business. It was an unbelievable day for me. It was a legacy. Like one of my seven years from now. I'm going to talk about that settlement. Can't talk about it today, but it is what it is, man. Look, you just got to win in life. You got to win more than you lose. And this is the unfortunate thing. Most of America right now is losing more often than they win or worse. They're not even in a game they can win, which is the bigger situation, unfortunately. The government's not telling anybody. Most people are simply playing a game.
- [35:29]
Ilana Golan
Even if you win, you're not winning.
- [35:32]
Grant Cardone
There's no trophy here. And even if you get a trophy, okay, the trophy's empty.
- [35:38]
Ilana Golan
And that's the heartbeat Seth Godin that we had on the show basically said there's a dead end. You know, no matter how much they're gonna like, run, run, run, run, run, but they're running in towards nothing. It's cool to suck, but talk to me. Also, you have the fund, and on top of this, you also have one of your biggest ever last growth con, which is a global phenomenal. I actually brought my team to it. I think you had Trump at some point. You had Arnold Schwarzenegger at some point. How did you Build this to this size. And why is this the last one?
- [36:15]
Grant Cardone
You think I've been going to events or hosting events or speaking at other people's events for 25 years, and what happened was somebody asked me to go do an event in Dallas. This is how shit happens to me. Most things come out of bad stuff for me. This guy pays me a bunch of money to go speak at this gig. I fly in, I said, hey, what do you want me to talk about? Blah, blah, blah. I said, okay. He wanted me to talk about real estate. When I went in front of the room, I'm like, how many real estate investors here? And not one person raised their hand. I'm like, well, what do you guys do for a living? Entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. Business owner. Business owner. Startup. I said, how many real estate investors here? Not one hand. And so in the moment, I called an audible and said, I am going to switch from what this guy asked me to do and talk about being an entrepreneur. It was one of the best presentations I've ever done to an audience in my entire life. I walked away saying, damn, that was good. That was the best. And the guy that paid me dogged me and complained because I didn't talk about what he wanted me to talk about. I don't even remember his name anymore. If somebody told me what it is, I'd remember Dallas, Texas. I don't know. There was three or four hundred people there. It wasn't a big, big deal. I came back from that gig, told my guy Jared, I'm done speaking to audiences, okay? I will only do our own events, okay? There's no amount of money that anybody can pay me that I'll go to their events now. That is not true anymore. I will. There is a number, okay? But. And then we started the 10X growth conference. That was 10 years ago. It was in 2015. We did our first one. There was 20, 30, 40 people there. It was in Orlando, Florida. The second one was in Cabo. The third one was in Fort Lauderdale. And the fifth one was in Miami. It was 34,000 people there. And that's the story of the 10X Growth Conference. This is our 10 of 10, our anniversary. 10 years. We're going to finish this one this year. And I'm going to take this and throw it away. This part of my life will be over. So I can wait till it dies or I can kill it myself.
- [38:40]
Ilana Golan
And I guess it's a new beginning. So what is the new beginning?
- [38:44]
Grant Cardone
Well, a lot of very exciting things on the horizon. Some of Which I briefly, you know, the California thing is real. I'm going back there to see if I can get 40 million people to save their state. And I think it's very, very important for America, all of America, not just California. There's probably going to be something happen in the public markets this year with our companies that'll be interesting, like a merger, you know, some kind of acquisition, something big. There could be two of those happen. There'll definitely be something happen on the health front. There's going to be an interesting family office wealth concept, possibly event just for our partners. And I said this years ago, one day the 10x growth conference will not be a ticket you buy. It'll be an invitation only event and it'll be only to investors and partners. So that's some of the stuff on the horizon. You know, my kids are 15 and 13, so they'll be transitioning into their full teenage years and we'll support them and work through all that. The real estate bitcoin fund I think is going to be one of the biggest things that I've done. I launched one, we're 95% closed. We're basically taking a piece of real estate that should produce a 10 or 12% return and I think it'll produce a 40 or 50% return every year. I'm combining basically a very volatile asset, bitcoin, with a very stable one that. This is the bitcoin over here. One's liquid, like the most liquid with something that's not liquid at all. And I'm going to combine these and we're going to create new products out of it. And I think this is the perfect timing for it because you have Trump, you got Besant at the Treasury, Howard Lutkin, Commerce Secretary, you got Atkins, the crypto czar or the sec. And you just got a lot of things that this could be a massive. I showed this to Tanner Fitzgerald a week ago up in New York City and this is the first financial group I showed this to. And when I did, there's 12 guys in the rooms and all their eyes popped out of their heads. They're literally like, how many of these can you do? How fast? So I think I could get 10 of those done this year. It'll be about a billion dollars worth of real estate and bitcoin and I think we can take that to the public markets and build something really big with it.
- [41:12]
Ilana Golan
Amazing. So grant advice to your younger self.
- [41:16]
Grant Cardone
I would just give better advice to my 50 year old self. You know, if you're in transition right now. It's not too late. But you do need to change. You're not going to stop the aging process that's happening. Your best photos will be taken today, not tomorrow. If you think you look bad today, you're going to look worse tomorrow. So grab as many photos as you can today and it's not too late. The best stuff I've done in my life has been recently. The last thing I would say to everybody is the biggest hack on this planet is to change the network you hang with. It is the biggest, fastest, easiest hack on planet Earth. And the fastest way to change the network is to write a check and buy it. You literally buy the new network. Okay? Everybody wants money. The moment you get to the audience that doesn't need money, bro, you're finally in the right audience.
- [42:08]
Ilana Golan
I love that and I keep buying my way in. So thank you, Grant, for enabling that you.
- [42:14]
Grant Cardone
I loved having you guys, by the way, when I loved having you on the yacht last year. We're going to do another one of those this year and I really, really, really appreciate you supporting us on the Grant Cardone Foundation.
- [42:26]
Ilana Golan
Thank you, Grant, for everything you do.
- [42:28]
Grant Cardone
Okay, thanks.
- [42:40]
Ilana Golan
Wow. What an incredible conversation. I am so inspired. I hope you are, too. And if you enjoyed it as much as I did, please share it with friends. It really, really helps us bring more amazing guests. And if you at some point want to take yourself and your career to the next level, watch our free training@leapacademy.com training. It's leapacademy.com training and I will see you in the next show of Leap Academy with Ilana Golan.