125. Grant Cardone Unleashed: 2024 Real Estate Hot Takes

Summary

Real Estate Investing School Podcast

Episode 125: Grant Cardone Unleashed—2024 Real Estate Hot Takes

Broadcast January 22, 2024

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Episode Overview

In this vibrant and candid conversation, host Brody Fawcett interviews real estate mogul, entrepreneur, and motivational author Grant Cardone. They cover Grant’s personal story—from rock bottom to self-made multimillionaire—inspiration for the famous “10X Rule,” the meaning of work-life harmony, philosophies on money, and actionable real estate investment strategies for 2024. Throughout, Cardone’s signature directness and energy shine as he dispenses advice and “hot takes” specifically with newer and seasoned investors in mind.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Hustle and Finding Purpose through Struggle

• Personal Backstory: Grant shares his journey from drug addiction and low self-esteem to success, using relentless self-improvement and hard work in car sales as a springboard.
  • “Worse than the drugs was the loss of self-esteem. The damage to my personal sense of worth. No confidence in myself. … You don't hit bottom. You go through the bottom.” (06:41)
• He emphasizes the importance of serving others and giving back as part of recovery and ongoing fulfillment:
  • “The second thing I did with my free time when I wasn't working, I was helping somebody else get off drugs... I believe I'm still reaping rewards today from stuff I did 30 years ago.” (14:53, 16:13)

2. The Myth of Work/Life Balance—Harmony over Balance

• Grant challenges the idea that entrepreneurs should seek balance between work and life.
  • “I built a bunch of harmony in my life, not balance. ... I built a life, not a business.” (03:59)
• Life integration is his core belief: involving family and interests directly in his work.
• He notes that those early in their career “haven't earned the right to balance” and need to do the “terrible, uncomfortable stuff” to build foundations first.
  • “A lot of people balance before they’ve earned the balance.” (05:08)

3. Building Confidence from Nothing

• Confidence is a byproduct of relentless discipline, learning, and positive obsessive commitment—even (and especially) in situations that are initially hated.
  • “I threw myself into a job I hated. ... I could never sit behind a desk.... I took all that drug addiction energy... and threw it into a job I didn't like.” (07:25–08:47)

4. Self-Education, Mentors, and Inspiration

• Cardone’s mentors were often authors and trainers he never met but studied obsessively (e.g., sales training tapes, books).
  • “Most of my mentors I’ve never met...I studied from afar.” (12:38–13:06)
• Brody and Grant agree that having a ‘permission-giving’ mentor—real or virtual—can transform one’s willingness to go big.

5. Giving, Impact, and Legacy

• Only a small percent of those who benefit from Grant’s materials ever pay him (“7%, maybe less”), but he measures true success by impact, not just financial wealth.
  • “I’ve reached a lot of people. ... I’ve monetized spiritually somehow.” (17:36–17:43)

6. Never Getting Complacent—Reinvention

• Grant describes the multiple “versions” of himself over decades, emphasizing growth requires constant change, including taking risks that may mean temporary setbacks.
  • “Every move I’ve ever made upward required me to give up something... It’s always required suffering or giving up comfort.” (27:27–30:27)
• He cautions high-earning sales professionals, or anyone at a “good” level, not to get stuck:
  • “What I had was so good... it was keeping me from doing something great.” (29:41)

7. Money, Discipline, and the Art of Staying Hungry

• Grant intentionally avoids saving or accumulating personal cash for security—he keeps himself “broke” by investing surplus in assets so that he’s always motivated to create more:
  • “I don’t keep money. I don’t save money. I don’t have a retirement account.” (34:46)
• Advocates for expanding your “budget” not just for consumption, but to include forced investing in assets, so you continue to hustle for growth.

8. Authenticity Over Likeability

• Cardone addresses his polarizing public persona:
  • “None of it is intentional marketing. ... I just tell people the truth. … I back up my big mouth, and more often than not, I'm right.” (38:01, 38:19)

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Real Estate "Hot Takes" & Strategies

1. Why He Doesn’t Believe In Owning a Primary Residence (as Most Do)

• Grant debates Brody on the merits of homeownership vs. investing in multifamily or income property:
  • “The house has no cash flow. It has limited tax write-offs.... The average home in America... has gone up 1% a year, adjusted for inflation.” (52:32)

Homeownership vs. Income Property—Key Arguments

• Grant insists, “Anybody can buy a four-unit deal easier than you can buy a single family home. 5% down, live in one, get cash flow.” (54:16)
• Both agree: using owner-occupant financing to acquire income-producing property is an ideal path for new investors.
  • “I love that people should buy investment properties before they buy a place to live.” (56:30)

2. Investing Scale: Cardone Capital & Syndication

• Cardone describes Cardone Capital as a means for ordinary investors to co-invest in large, institutional-grade deals that outperform most small “do-it-yourself” deals, with transparency and distributions from day one.
  • “The thing that determines how much is made in real estate...is based on the property, not who owns the majority of it.” (58:23)
• While Brody points out that active investors can achieve higher returns if they learn and execute well, Grant underscores the risk and expertise required, especially in adverse markets.
• Warning about new syndicators: “There’s hundreds of syndicators that have failed just in the last two years that had to stop redemptions and distributions. ... They maybe haven’t even managed in a negative cycle.” (63:19)

3. What to Look for in Real Estate Investment (esp. 2024)

• Location is everything: “What part of the country, what spot in your city, and is there enough cash flow to support operations?” (64:31)
• Management quality and ability to take advantage of market corrections are critical.
• Cardone is currently targeting distressed office, multifamily, and retail properties in major cities—anticipates “the biggest real estate correction in my lifetime,” likely eclipsing 2008, but not affecting single family homes. (65:55)

4. Advice for Teaching Kids About Money & Wealth

• Cardone doesn’t give his kids money; they have contracts, work for the family business, get invested profits, and must budget their own spending.
  • “They have a contract for six years... That paycheck goes into Cardone Capital.... They only have $600 a month coming in, they’re spending $800.” (47:12, 48:31)
• Schools won’t teach true financial literacy – “If they're not, I went to college ... I knew less about money at the end than when I started.” (49:04)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the evolution of self:
  • “The number of Grant Cardone versions... is crazy. And I'm the only one that knows all the versions, not even my family.” (24:04)
• On the necessity of discomfort for growth:
  • “Change has always required suffering. ... The best opportunities require a person to give up something.” (29:57, 30:27)
• On raising capital outside institutions:
  • “I said that I would, I would raise a billion dollars for real estate transactions without going to an institution or a Blackstone or Blackrock or JP Morgan. And we did a billion three.” (40:07)
• On authenticity and being polarizing:
  • “None of it is intentional marketing.... I tell it like it is. ... I wish more people just liked me right from the get go.” (38:01–38:15)
• On overcoming cyclical “golden handcuffs”:
  • “What I had was so good, but because it was so good it was keeping me from doing something great. And a lot of times in life, you have to give up what's good in order to go and achieve what's great.” (29:41)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:00–06:30: Grant on harmony vs balance, and the price of early success
• 06:31–09:43: Drug recovery and how self-belief is rebuilt by action
• 14:53–16:13: Lifelong impact of selfless work—“reaping rewards from 30 years ago”
• 27:00–30:27: Reinventing oneself and the necessity of giving up comfort
• 34:46–35:46: Grant’s strategy of never keeping “excess” money but continually investing
• 40:07–41:04: Raising over a billion dollars in real estate without institutional capital
• 52:32–56:36: Detailed debate on whether to buy primary residence vs income property
• 65:55–66:50: 2024 market predictions—multifamily and office distress, single-family housing staying strong

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Final Takeaways

• Success comes from continual reinvention, staying uncomfortable, and refusing to settle for merely “good.”
• Building wealth is not about saving but about acquiring and controlling assets, ideally at scale.
• For new and seasoned investors in 2024: look for opportunities in multifamily, office, and retail spaces, prioritize location and management, and be wary of “hot new” syndicators lacking experience.
• Work and life are best when harmonized, not compartmentalized—design a life with your business and family intertwined.
• Teach your children about money by making them earn, manage, and invest it early.

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For listeners seeking practical, direct real estate and personal growth advice delivered with relentless energy, this interview is full of actionable wisdom and 2024 market perspective from one of the industry’s most visible players.

Transcript

[Grant Cardone]

I said that I would, I would raise a billion dollars for real estate transactions without going to an institution or a Blackstone or Blackrock or J.P. morgan. And we did a billion three.

[Brody Fawcett]

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Real Estate Investing School podcast. This is your host, Brody Fawcett. And today we have an extra special guest that honestly needs no introduction. And as I've been preparing for this interview, I. It's crazy thinking back and going through, through some of this man's stuff, how big of an impact he's had on my life. And we'll get into that a little bit because I didn't even realize a lot of it. But without further ado, Grant Cardone in the house. What's up, Grant, bro?

[Grant Cardone]

Hey, good to be with you, man.

[Brody Fawcett]

Dude, so excited to have you here. And I really mean that when I say, like, you've had such a pivotal impact on my life, really, without even realizing it too much. The very, very first personal development, motivational, any type of book that I read was the 10x rule. And it's crazy because I'm not even that old, dude, but this was on CDs. So I got gifted this. Yeah, crazy, right? I got gifted this from one of my mentors, shout out to Dave Allred. But he mailed this, this to me, this like, book of CDs. And I remember as a freshman in college, laying on my bed, putting it in the, in the DVD player and listening to it over and over. And that was the year I got into door to door sales. I did door sales for eight years. And. And I still remember like putting that in my car, listing the CDs driving out to area. And it was like it was motivation just to get out and to go knock. And so those are like sacred times. And I feel like for me growing up, I had so much drive, but I didn't have direction. And so that's why I say, like, it made such an impact on my life was because that gave me like that direction where I had a place to put my drive. So just want to start off by saying thank you so much for that and putting that out there.

[Grant Cardone]

Hey man, you're welcome. And. And just the fact that somebody listened to it and it helped you go from one door to the next and it got you through that period of time. It's my, it's my gift to. And, and you know, the fact that, you know, one person got something out of it is why I did that. So I've written, I don't know, eight or Nine books now. Most of it is me trying to figure out some problem that I'm having or I'm trying to push through or get through. And writing helps me do that. And then when I put it on audio, typically we wait, we'll do a book, I'll wait a year, talk about it for a year, and then I'll go back and shoot the audio version which expands the content I always read myself because I never want to really turn that over to somebody else's understanding or misunderstanding.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And I ad libbed the book. That book became like a novel on audio that millions of people have downloaded and you know, you know, many, many people have gotten some inspiration from it. So it's super.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

So, so cool, man. And it's, it's become like what you're known for, right? 10x and going big and taking massive action, which I want to dive into. We're going to dive into some good stuff today. A lot of stuff around real estate, investing, but something that's been on my mind speaking of like 10x and taking massive action and you. It's interesting because there's this kind of dynamic right now around slowing down and we were just talking before we started rolling about me living in Maui and you're like, oh, you're on Hawaii time. Are things slow or like, I couldn't do that. Right. And so at what point in life is like, go, go, go, go, go, more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger. Does that get in the way of being fully present and like stopping to smell the roses and getting more fulfillment out of life? It's kind of like the moving target. Right. If you're going big, going big. Right. So I want to hear your thoughts on that aspect of it.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, this is always a dilemma, right? Like, you know, the big question, one of the biggest questions we get is how do you do, how do you do your life and how do you do your business and how do you balance the two? I've never actually looked for the balance. I've never felt out of balance. I get tremendous. I built, basically what I did was I built, I built harm. I built a bunch of harmony in my life, not balance. So I know I don't look like some harmonic. You know, I'm not a calm guy, but I have a lot of activity going on in this bubble around me. But I don't do anything that I don't want to do. Like I'm not doing. I don't do businesses that I don't want to do and I don't do people that I don't want to do. So my circle, I created basically a life, not a business. And I would highly recommend this for people. Rather than looking for balance in your life and business, just build a life that involves your business.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yes.

[Grant Cardone]

When I was a young salesperson, At 25 years old, I didn't, dude, I was looking for paychecks. Like, I. And I would just say this to everybody in the room. You, you may have not earned the right. Not you specifically, but your audience. You guys didn't want balance and harmony and all that. I mean, at some point, maybe you just need to pay a price. Right now, friend. 50 Cent said to me once, he says, hey, Grant, I. I don't have the right. I don't have the liberty. I don't have the. I am not entitled to experience depression on the come up. And I like that. I think a lot of balance before they've earned the balance. Yeah, I just skipped it because I. Basically what I did was create a life. In the beginning, I was completely obsessed with, hey, I need to get my damn life in order. I need to get my finances on order. I need to get my self esteem in order. I need to get my personal sense of self. I need confidence. And so that's all I worked on every day, bro. Like for five years, every single day. I practice confidence, self esteem, action plans, executing on targets, making sales calls, doing terrible, like, like very uncomfortable stuff. But I did that long enough to where I'm like, okay, I feel better about myself now.

[Brody Fawcett]

How, how maybe go into detail on how you build that confidence.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, I think I just gotten out of a treatment center for drug addiction.

[Brody Fawcett]

And this is when you're how old at this time?

[Grant Cardone]

I've been, I've been using. I've been abusing drugs for 10 years. I lost more than the drugs. I mean, people talk about drug problems, but worse than the drugs was the lack of, the loss of self esteem. The damage to my personal sense of worth. No confidence in myself. Other people didn't believe in me, but worse, I didn't believe in me, bro. I was broken. And people were like, oh, you hit bottom? I'm like, no, no, you don't. You don't hit bottom. You go through the bottom. Okay. Nobody actually recovers from the bottom. You go through the bottom.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And one day you're like, oh, I got to turn this around. Or you don't. A lot of people don't turn around.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

So I had a job. The, the company agreed to keep me. I had One shot. And I turned it around, man. Every day I went in, I trained, I educated, I invested money in myself. I borrowed money from my mother. I had no credit, no money. I went to my mom and I said, please lend me $3,000. What are you going to use it for? She thought I was going to use it for drugs. And I said, I swear to you, I will not use it on drugs. I need to throw myself into something, and it's my job, okay? My mom didn't even respect my job. She's like, you have a college degree. You need to become a professional. Use your accounting degree. I'm like, I cannot use my accounting degree, Okay? I can never sit behind a desk. And so I didn't like sales, but it was better than working at the refinery. So, dude, I threw myself into a job I hated. I don't think people understand. I started from.

[Brody Fawcett]

And this was selling cars. Is that right?

[Grant Cardone]

Is this automobiles? And then I did financing for the car dealership, and then I started managing other people. But, dude, I was never not selling. I was prospecting, calling people, running ads for myself. Like, I went freaking maniac.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

I took all that drug addiction energy, all that compulsive, obsessive, destructive, destructive behavior, you know, that it. That it damaged me for 10 years and threw it into a job that I didn't like. Now what's crazy is I didn't know when I was 25, I didn't know this would end up becoming my career. Okay. I didn't know I would end up writing books about sales. I didn't know I would end up. My name would be with the names of, you know, some of this. The most successful sales legends in the world. Right. Tom Hopkins. I mean, I thought I hated sales, and I could never be good at it. And guess what? Once I committed to it and became obsessed with it and quit making excuses, I got good at it. And that career that would end up funding the real estate.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Which is something I'm even more excited about.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yes.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yes. Which I love because, I mean, I have a sales background as well, and that's where I came. That's actually why I got into sales, was to get some active income up so that I could invest more into passive income. For me, it was knocking doors to own doors. Right. So. So I love that. I want to dive into that. But did you have, like. Did you have a mentor or something? You just felt like you. You'd got so low that you're like, I need to do something. It might as well Be sales. You didn't like it. You didn't look forward to it. Was it because of the financial upside that you're like, I'm going to do this and figure this out?

[Grant Cardone]

No, no. It's because I didn't have any other choices. Nobody else would hire me. I didn't do sales because I wanted to. I didn't do sales because I was good at it. I didn't do sales because I like talking to people. I hated talking to people. Who likes talking to a stranger? Who likes approaching somebody that doesn't want to talk to you, by the way? Nobody likes, you know, unless they're good. If you're a great sales person, everybody likes you. You know, it's easy to get people to like you if you're really good at it. But look, when you don't know what you're doing, man, you don't have any self confidence. You're walking up to people like. And you can. You could see fear. You could smell. Customers could smell the fear on me.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And I was. I was not naturally extroverted unless I was around my family. If I was around a stranger, particularly because I was broken now. Yeah, people don't understand. Like, I was broken, man. I weighed a hundred today. I weighed 175. I weighed 130 pounds.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Wow.

[Grant Cardone]

I was great. Okay. Like, literally my body was dying. My. My organs were shutting down when I went to treatment. And so no confidence, man. Like, you can't. No matter what, you know, if you. If you're all beat up inside, it's going to show. You can't hide that thing. And so I had to rebuild all that. Dude. I was either. All I did every day was I woke up when the sun. The sun came up. I woke up and I went to the car dealership. Nobody was even there for two hours. I'd go there, train and practice. I listened to tapes. So my first mentor when I was starting was a guy that did. He did sales training. And I bought a set of tapes from him that $3,000 I borrowed from my mom. I listened to this guy's tapes. It was actually videos, these big Betamax videos before vhs, massive tapes. There was no Apple downloads. Streaming didn't exist.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And, dude, I listened to these tapes. I don't even know how many times. I'm not talking about hundreds, I'm talking about thousands. And I started picking the. I started picking it up. I started. I started sounding like the guy I was listening to.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And it started giving me some confidence because I had A track to run on. Now, that discipline of learning every day, I would end up using also in real estate, 10 years later, how to buy real estate. Because I would study. Most of my mentors I have never met, I've never met him, never had dinner with them, never had lunch with them, never done a private coaching with most of them. I studied from afar.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah, I love that. And I asked that because I think most people that have some sort of mentor that keeps you going. Right. Especially from a standpoint of they give you permission to now go and be successful. Right. And so it's like I, you know, relate back to your book. It's such an, A pivotal time in my life, right. Where I had the drive and not the direction. And it was like, no, you have permission to go do something big and just somebody, even if it's, you know, not somebody real that you meet in person, but you get those words and they're giving you that confidence. Like, that's so powerful, man. So I love that.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. And you know, a lot of people, a lot of people have given up on self help and, or tend to be negative about it. Right. Like it's, it's some kind of. What is it called? Huh? Yeah, it's like, that's why. If that guy's so successful, why is he doing this? You know, people that are successful don't do that. Actually, you know, some of the most successful people I know are the most generous.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And I admit, like, like everything that I've ever written, except for maybe the real estate book I wrote, was literally for me to figure out what I needed to do next. And, you know, when I came out of that treatment center, I did two things every day. I worked on myself to be better as a salesman. That was selfish, completely selfish. That was to improve my finances, my, my 10 hours a day. I needed to manage those 10 hours. Because if, you know, anybody's ever had a drug addiction, a bigger problem than the drugs is their time. So I knew if I could just stay busy, dude, like, I wouldn't use drugs again.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

The second thing I did with my free time when I wasn't working, I was helping somebody else get off of drugs. Sometimes I would go to three meetings a day and morning. In the morning I'd go. At noon I'd go. I'd literally drive 25, 23 miles every day to go to a lunch meeting to talk to somebody about go one day, just one day, just put one more day behind. And then at night or 9 o' clock, at night, if I, if I was available, if I didn't have appointments or something, I try to get over there and do the same thing. And if I wasn't in a meeting, I was, you know, calling somebody that was trying to recover or spending time with recovery people. And I did that for probably five or six years before I really got stability and started feeling some kind of like I had given back enough. I had given back over those five years in helping others again. I didn't know I would end up becoming a teacher and an educator, but that was building another discipline and giving back. By the way, that giving back thing that I was doing with people I don't even know, like, I don't even know some of these people today. Dude, that, that was such. I believe I'm still reaping the rewards today from stuff I did 30 years ago.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Wow.

[Brody Fawcett]

And how you feel or in what, in what aspect?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, definitely how I feel because that's more important than the money. But even, even some of the thing things that just come to me, you know, I mean, a lot of, really, a lot of unbelievable, great things have happened for me.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Things turn out, you know, pretty good for me most of the time.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

I don't know why I'm blessed with that. I knew I do work hard.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

So I get lucky as I work harder, show up all the time, but good shit happens to me. But most importantly, dude, how I feel about myself.

[Brody Fawcett]

Right.

[Grant Cardone]

I think all that when you serve other people really serve up, not trying to just sell them something. And I Look, I've sold $1 billion worth of products over the Internet. $1.2 billion. I've raised another 1.3 billion. So I've made tremendous amount of money promoting and marketing and sales. I have no shame about it. I don't apologize to anybody about it, but, but that is secondary to how I feel because I've reached a lot of people. We did a calculation at the end of last year. Literally less than 10% of all the people that have ever run into my name, probably around 7% have ever given me any money. So 93%, a much larger population, almost 10 times have had taken something from me.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

That, and I never got that I never monetized, but somehow I actually believe that I'm monetized spiritually somehow.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Wow. Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

And that's, that's actually pretty impressive. 7% have paid you money. That, that's, that's crazy. Those stats are, I, I still think really high.

[Grant Cardone]

I, I, I, I told my guys the Same thing I said, there's no way 7% of the people. We had 156,000 transactions last year at Cardone Training Technologies out of 16 million followers online. I think that's how they figured the number. But I'm like, guys, you're. You're assuming there's no voyeurs.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

You're assuming everybody follows me. That buys for me. And I don't believe that to be true.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

So we think we probably. There's probably somewhere. I would predict somewhere between eight and 10 times that number that have seen something, some ad, and never hit on some social media follow. So I agree with you. The number could be as low as 1 or 2%. So I agree with that.

[Brody Fawcett]

Which. Which, I mean, what I love about this, and I mean, it kind of ties into everything we're talking about. But I was at Ryan Pane's office a couple months ago, and one thing he said was, like, he was at a workshop with you. And you're like, hey, raise your hand if you unfollowed me at some point. Right? And a lot of people, like, raise their hand. And he's like, I even raised my hand. He's like, I got sick of you hitting me up again and again and again. He's like, but, like, look where you are. You know, you paid and you're here. And I. I just love this concept of, like, you don't shy away from that stuff. And. And speaking of balance, where you're like, I don't believe in. In B. I haven't ever focused on balance. It seems to me that, like, you don't have to focus on it because it's a lifestyle, and you go hard in every single category. So my question is, do you feel like. Do you really feel like you going as hard as you can in, for example, business? It doesn't mean that family has to take a backseat because you're going so hard there, or if you're going so hard, family, that business has to take a back seat.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, I would argue that I spend more time with my kids than 99% of fathers. I mean, my staff's nodding their head right now. I don't have anything to prove that, but I know. I know what other people do. Look like I've created a life where my kids roll with me almost all the time. Yeah, we homeschool our kids. We didn't homeschool them because we thought it was better for them. We homeschooled them because it was better for me. Now, now I do know that My business gets in the way of my marriage at times, but if you ask my wife, she'd be like, yeah, it's fine. It's pretty good.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

I came home one night after a long day and she's like, how was your day? I said, it was terrible. She's like, why'd you come home? Make it great, right? Yeah. We both knew what we signed up for, man. We signed up for. We wanted to create a great life, not just a happy life, you know, we wanted to create. We, we didn't. We had both kind of given up on the idea of the white picket fence and the two kids and the cardone's welcome home floor, you know, doormat. And we're going to, we're going to get the stuff and then we're going to be happy. We neither one of us believe that's our happy path.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

But rather meeting people, traveling, having new experiences, helping other people in the world. And while we're doing that, expanding and flourishing in our own lives. Why, why shouldn't we benefit from that?

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yep.

[Grant Cardone]

That. That's what we both signed up for in the adventure. So. And also, last thing I'll say is, dude, look, somebody told me the other day they're worried about a black swan event. You know, country is going to get shut down for 90 days. They said, grant, your money's not going to matter if this country gets shut down. I said, bro, let me tell you something. You don't think I know that? Okay, when, when, when, when, when things go to hell, you know what you need? You need, you need to know that you can go hard. You need to know that you will persist. You need to know that you're creative. You need to know that you will never quit. And, and I got all that. I got unbelievable work ethic. So this going hard thing, I know people are worried about it, like it's a liability. Bro, who do you want on your team when shit hits the fan? Yeah, I want Tom Brady on my side.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

Love it. So, so when did you start to. Because we were talking this morning, I had, I don't know, like seven or eight people over my house working out this morning. They're just in, in town hanging out and we're talking about you. And it came up a couple of times. We're like, dude, Grant's, he's been around the block. There's so many of these kind of pop up influencers right now that are like trendy and everyone jumps on the bandwagon, but it's really cool because you've actually. Dude, you've been here a while, and I think that means something, right? Like, you didn't come, you didn't go. Like that means something. When did that shift kind of take place for you? Like, you're 25, out of rehab, start working at this car dealership. You went hard, build your confidence for five years. When was it time to get. Not that you're out of sales. You're never out of sales, right? When was it time to start getting more into real estate? And why was that something that was kind of big on your mind as opposed to selling and making this active income?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, because I knew that I couldn't. You know, I looked around and saw the other salesperson. Salespeople, right. I saw Gene. Gene was broken. I mean, Gene was doing the same thing he'd been doing 20 years before that. Jose, who's not, you know, rest in peace, Jose. He was a guy that sold. He was the number one salesman there. You know, nothing changed. Like. Like these people never left their homes. They never transitioned. They didn't grow. They didn't become some other version of themselves. And so one of the things I'm most proud of in my life, that nobody almost ever brings up, dude, the amount the. The number of Grant Cardone versions that there is crazy. And I'm the only one that knows all the versions. Not even my family knows all the versions, so. All the failed versions, by the way.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Most people don't know how bad it was for me those 10 years. To being a suffering, broke salesman, to being a good salesman. For couple years, I wasn't. I wasn't a great salesman for a couple years. I was a good salesman after I was a terrible one. And I had to go through the period of being just good and. And not sure in the beginning. You're not sure, right? And then all of a sudden, I'm like, dude, I'm starting to get a little confidence here. Then the next thing you know, I got some swag. Now I'm starting to act like a diva. It's like, I'm the king, baby. Then I became the king, and I started. And I started pushing people around, and my. My confidence swollen up, right? So then it's like, okay, you know, you get on that. You get on that for two or three years, and you're great at it. And I'm looking around saying, okay, he was great. He was great. He was great. I don't want to be these guys.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And then I had to become new. New versions of Myself. Then I went on. Then I discovered I had this idea that I could change the auto industry. That this idea I had. I'd reached the top 1% of salespeople in the car business. And everybody kept asking me, what are you doing? I said, I'm doing everything you guys don't do. I give every. I give the customer all the stuff you guys won't give them. Like, you know, car dealers, how they try to withhold everything. Yeah, well, I was just giving everything. And I went on the road and started talking to other car dealers and then manufacturers about a new way to sell cars. And it became popular. And then it's a new transition, new version of Grant now. I became a public speaker and a thought leader, an influencer in a space. I became extremely well known for that. One of the top speakers in the industry. And I got stuck. I got typecast as that guy. There was no real estate. There was no books, There was no big audiences. Nobody really knew my name outside this little vertical.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

So, uh, there was a guy promoting my events, and I went to him, I said, look, bro, I can't keep doing this. I've been doing it for three or four years. And basically, it was a room for full of car salesmen that didn't want to be there. Can you imagine they're being forced to go to this event? I talked to them for eight hours. They hate being there. And I was like, I was making a lot of money doing it, but I didn't love it. I went to the guy promoting my bits. I said, look, I want to start talking to real estate agents. I want to start talking to mortgage brokers, banks, financial people, Wall Street. I want to go this again before the Internet. He's like, bro, stay in your lane. Do your thing. The riches are in the niches. And I'm like, excuse me. And he didn't believe I could do it. You know, I said, no, no, bro, I'm going to talk to millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people. And that's when I broke out and started doing my own stuff and. And went and rebuilt myself and in other industries.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Wow.

[Brody Fawcett]

So was that. Was that a process? I'm sure, you know, one step backwards in order to go, you know, multiple steps forward.

[Grant Cardone]

Oh, no, it was. It was go. It was. It was like 10 steps backwards. I went from making. I was. Went from making, I don't know, a couple hundred grand a year to making 30,000 a year for three years.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Wow.

[Grant Cardone]

It was a failure.

[Brody Fawcett]

So was it just the dream that, like, that drove you where, you're like, this is what I want to do.

[Grant Cardone]

It wasn't the dream, it was the pain. What do you mean? Imagine doing this, what I was doing for another 10 years. I didn't want to be the old version of myself.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

I think that's refreshing hearing you say that, because so many people are stuck in this one version. And I talk about a lot, only because, like I said, I was in this door to door space for so long. And it was great, right? Like, you get in there, they call it the golden handcuffs. Especially when you get into management, you're making overrides, you're making residual off of all the accounts. You have a piece of equity, right? So all these things that they hold you to the company, it's so good, so good, so good. And so many people are like, oh, I can't ever leave. And I remember when I very, very first got recruited to go and do this thing. I was walking down campus in college and, you know, I kind of had some ideas and this entrepreneurship journey I want to take and someone reached out to me. I'm like, okay, it's a good way to go and like, hustle and make some quick money. I can invest in something else. And I kind of got sucked into it. But I remember seeing people that have been already been there for seven, eight, nine years and they wanted to leave every summer. This was my last year doing this. This is my last year doing this. And then they'd have to come back because they didn't have anything else. They'd spend their money. Kind of like what you're talking about. This, this cycle of, like, make good money, spend it, have to make it again. And they were. I'm like, I don't want to be handcuffed to anything. I don't care if it's gold handcuffs, I don't want to be handcuffed to that. And so that's how I got into real estate. Because I'm like, hey, as I'm making this money, I want to leave on my own terms and start building up this wealth outside of what I'm doing. So I have this flexibility and this freedom. And a lot of people are like, even when I left the company, it was obviously kind of a difficult decision, right? Because you leave, you leave everything on the table. You leave your equity, you leave your residual, you leave your people. You recruited everything, right? And like, this is like the dumbest thing you can do. Why would, why would you leave all this? You've worked so Hard to build it up. And I think what you just said just hits home for me personally and even, like all these different stages now when I'm going through. But the best way I kind of can describe it to anybody is what I had was so good that. But because it was so good, it was keeping me from doing something great. And a lot of times in life, you have to give up what's good in order to go and achieve what's great. And I felt it like, so, like as soon as I got out of it, it was the. I'm not saying it's for everybody, but it was the biggest blessing in my life to not stay there and get.

[Grant Cardone]

Held back 100%, dude. Like, every move that I've ever made upward required me to give up something. And most of the time it wasn't, you know, even back to the terrible days, you got to give up something you're comfortable with. Typically, the location. For me, it's always been a location. I had to give up friends, bad habits, maybe comfortable, you know, I'm comfortable in the environment. I know everybody.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Many times I've had to give up assets. Every time I've had to give up something, a location, friends, comfortability. And one of the best moves I ever made was leaving. I had this great house in Los Angeles, California, and we left. We. We sold the house, took the equity, bought apartments with it. We no longer owned a home. We sold, we left all our house, our house, our cars, our friends, our furniture again, I mean, everything. We moved all the way to Miami. Worst weather in the world from the best weather in the world. And took all the money from that, the equity of that house, put it in a real estate transaction, and we went and rented a little condo. And that was one of the best moves. So for me, like your comment about, to me, change has always required suffering. I had to be willing to give something up to get to the next place. Even when I started that transition, I talked about and I went backwards for three years, a lot of people want to move up and they want to move up. They want to. They got a job making 150 grand, and they think that they're going to move to the next job and always make more money. The best opportunities, you're going to go backwards. You're not going to go. You're not going to go to a million dollars on the next opportunity. The best opportunities require somebody, require a person to give up something. I had a guy in here interviewing the other day, and guy wants to make a million Dollars a year, but he's not willing to move. Like, bro, like, what, what do you think? How you think you're going to go from where you are to, to eight times more money?

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah, I love, I love that, Lola, Love that. And that's obviously what holds people back a lot of times, right? They're not willing to have that, you know, sacrifice in the moment for what it could do for them in the future. And what drives me crazy is, is all my friends, that a lot of them are, they're, they're in this industry, right? And they're, they're making good money, especially for people in their, you know, mid-20s, upper-20s. And I mean, you know how this, you know how the sales space is. Like, you can rake in some good, good commissions, but to them, even if they are doing, you know, half a million, maybe pushing a million bucks to them, in their minds, they, they've made it. It can't get any better than that, is it? They, they're top dogs compared to their friends, and they almost like comparing themselves on this circle. And I, I'm just like, dude, you have so much talent. Don't get so trapped in just thinking that you've made it that you don't broaden your horizon. Because I think a lot of it. And this is why, like, I love listening to your stuff because it's like that. Who, who says that's good? Like, not from an ungrateful standpoint, but like, who says that's good? I know, I know other people your age making 10 times that. So, like, why do you think that's good? You know, and because they think it's so good and it can't get any better. They never look for anything else or level. But I think the same thing happens outside of just money, right? And just lifestyle and happiness level and all these different things. It's like, oh, I don't deserve this, or I can't dream bigger or think bigger. So I'm just going to live this life day to day that I have.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. And I think people make, they make sense of it, right? They go, they go back to their, their ecosystem and say, look how good I'm doing. But I've never tried to impress that ecosystem. That's not what I wanted. I remember my mom used to tell me all the time, I love you just the way you are. And I said, mom, you don't get it. I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for me. Okay? I, I, I need to do more. I'm looking for my potential. When's enough, enough? I'll let you know when that happens. But right now I'm seeking out, like, all the great adventures that have ever lived on the planet. They went and sought something they hadn't done yet. And so, you know, I know a lot of people are looking for this, this bliss or this place where you're like, you made it. And this is why I don't save money, dude. Like, like you said, what keeps you going? I said, most of the time, it's just fear. Like, I like, I impose fear on myself. I trick myself in, into hustle. And so I don't keep money. I don't save money. I don't have a retirement account.

[Brody Fawcett]

Do you think that works for everybody?

[Grant Cardone]

I think it would absolutely work for everybody, and I can prove it. Okay.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Okay.

[Grant Cardone]

76% of Americans are dissatisfied right now, today because they don't have any money. They get up tomorrow and work because they have to. So, like, if people would literally, like, just budget different. Like, if you would have a budget, a bigger budget than just car note, house note feeding kids. Increase the budget to include also investing in assets. So let's say you're making six grand a month and you're living on it. Add another 4,000 that you invest and still be broke. Yeah, so I don't make more money to have money. I make more money so I have assets. I've been doing this since I was 30, 28 years old. I get a little extra money. Boom, I put in a deal. Now I'm broke again. So I got to go hustle. Did you see Undercover Billionaire by any chance?

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah. Yep.

[Grant Cardone]

So that entire episode, that entire 13 shows where I get dropped off in Pueblo, they shaved my head. I got a new name. I couldn't use a credit card, couldn't use my identity, couldn't use my social media, couldn't call my friends. I had a hundred dollars, no place to live, no food, no water. And the goal was to build a million dollar business without using my name.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yep.

[Grant Cardone]

They gave me a hundred dollars, and I gave it back to him. I said, I don't need the hundred. And they're like, how you gonna live? I got it. I know how to live on no money. And they're like, no, no, you need the hundred dollars because we need to have it on the TV show. And it needs to go from 100 to 88 to 88 to 68. Hey, I thought you guys wanted to do a reality show. They said, we do. I said, good. I Don't need the hundred. They said, well, how you gonna live? I said, trust me. In 10 days, I had an RV to live in for free. I had a brand new truck for free. I had a tab at a restaurant. And I had a partnership with a $10,000 advance and 15% of a guy's business. Because I know that I don't need money. Like, I have been operating off of no money since I was 25 years old. And people believe they need money and fame to be successful. You don't. But you do need. What you do need is a hunger. And the moment the hunger goes away and you're satisfied, what do people do after Thanksgiving? They take a nap.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And most of America, most of America is simply satisfied.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Wow. Yeah, man.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah. And that just like, obviously that speaks to everything you talk about and who you are. Right. And I, I, it just, it's interesting because you were probably the most loved and hated entrepreneur slash celebrity that's out there. Right. And I don't, I say that as a, as a compliment. Right. You hear the famous quote, like, you have people that in the world that hate you and you become president. Right. And so how much of that for you is intentional marketing versus you being you and you, you preaching from the hill how you feel?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. None of it is intentional marketing. I wish more people just liked me right from the get go. So it is who I am, dude. I just tell people the truth. I tell it like it is. If I think something, I say it.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

And.

[Grant Cardone]

You know, I don't, I don't know another way to do it. I quit trying to be everybody's buddy in high school. Like, I, I remember trying to be most popular, and it was a disaster for me.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And so I made a living as a salesperson telling people the truth. You're on the wrong product. This is not the right product for you. Okay? I can't afford the payment. Yes, you can. And by the way, it's going to make you better if you make that payment. Like, I have been telling people they're wrong for 35 years. And I got a big mouth. I've always had a big mouth. I back it up, I back it up. I back up my big mouth. And, and more often than not, I'm right. And no matter what people say about me, they can, whatever they want to say about me, they can say they can say whatever they want, you know, as long as including my wife, by the way. I'm like, baby, if I'm wrong, 7% of the time, I'm still 93. That's a, that's an A minus. So, so, you know, like some of the stuff that I have done has never been done before. We sold out 34, 000 person stadium.

[Brody Fawcett]

Is it, is that, is that scary committing to that? Because I went to your, your 10x growth con in Vegas and then, and then you say that, right? Because you, I think before you even opened up tickets to sell that you, you were loud about that. Were you ever worried, like, oh, am I going to fill this thing or.

[Grant Cardone]

Of course, dude, I'm scared all the time. You know, I said that I would, I would raise $1 billion for real estate transactions without going to an institution or a Blackstone or a blackrock or JP Morgan.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And we did a billion three, you know, so I told Undercover Discovery Channel that I would do, I'd build a $10 million business in 90 days and I missed, I did five and a half million. I told him I would never use a penny of the hundred dollars and I did it. So like now, now a lot of people, it's like he's cocky and they don't like the confidence. And the reason people don't like that kind of confidence, it could be that I say it wrong or it could be that they lack confidence and they want some of that. And they, and so rather than figured out how to have some of that, they just, they want to, they want to dis it, you know, they want to hate on it. Some people don't like the fact that I'm in shape at 65 years old. So they, they want to say, oh, he's on steroids. Okay, well, all right. But you, you know, you could shoot steroids as much as you want. If you don't get in the gym and actually do something.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Nothing's going to happen to your body. You're not going to have a shape anywhere. Like, like some people just hate, bro. Like some people hate. I know this. In my life, I have reserved hating for other people.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And I, I admire people like I admire Elon Musk, I admire Steve Jobs, I admire Walt Disney. I admire anybody that's successful. I don't hate up the food chain. I, I'm inspired by people that take care of themselves, take care of their money. Jeff Bezos. I was in Greece this past year and Jeff's got this. I'm on a 210 foot yacht that I'm proud of. And Jeff rolls up and he's on like 325ft and he's got a supply boat behind it that's bigger than my boat, a helicopter. Like, he's out there for three months. I'm out there for one week. Dude, I, I didn't hate on Jeff because of that. Like, I, I, I, I'm like, I'm inspired by it. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I know I must have something to do with the hate that's generated.

[Brody Fawcett]

No, I think, I think you're loud about what you believe. And, and you know, that's the thing. Like, you put yourself out there, you wear your heart on your sleeve and you have to, it's the only way to do it. But you're opening up for everybody to stomp on it and it's just going to happen and there's no way around not doing that. I, I want to pivot in some real estate stuff, but I want to tell a story real quick because I went to your 10x growth conference and it's funny because the 10x rule was one of the first kind of self help books that I ever read. And, and this was like the first real conference that I went to, which is crazy because I, I attend a lot of this stuff and I read a ton of books now.

[Grant Cardone]

And so which event, which event did you go to?

[Brody Fawcett]

It was, it was Vegas. I think it was number, was it number two? Your second one?

[Grant Cardone]

Mandalay Bay? Was it a vertical?

[Brody Fawcett]

Is Mandalay Bay? It was Mandalay Bay. You had, let's see, Lewis was there. That's, that's when.

[Grant Cardone]

Oh, yeah, dude, you, you were the, the event before we actually knew what we were doing.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah. Which I love. Dude. That was a different version of Grant. But, but I remember distinctly this story. I've told it a couple of times. But you, you pick somebody out of the stage, you're like, who's, who's got a business? Who wants the floor for a second? Who wants to come up here and say something? You pick this kid. And I don't know, he was VIP somewhere, right? Because he was close to the front over there. And he comes up and he had a couple of minutes and he was saying some stuff and, and you ask him some questions and he went and sat down. And I just remember you're like, bro, you blew it. Like, like, I mean, you called him out in front of however many thousands of people were there, but like, dude, you, you blew it. You're sitting in this room, you have all these people's attention to do business with somebody, to make a connection to, to like do something. And instead you blew it. Like, you blew that opportunity. And I've just always, remember, that's always stuck with me. It's just like, dude, don't ever blow the opportunity. If you ever get an opportunity like that, you better know what you're going to say.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, but we all do, right? Billions of dollars of opportunities I've blown.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And I wish somebody would have given me the opportunity. Like nobody's really given me. Open a door. Like, one thing we do try to do here is open doors for people. And that's what I always wanted as a kid. I wanted somebody to help me. My dad died when I was 10, and, man, I yearned and ached for somebody to help me. I wanted a dad, I wanted a mentor, and I wanted somebody to open doors for me. And I saw my cousins and friends, their, Their parents were opening doors and nobody opened a door for me.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

So I built. I've built a life with like, crashing through shit, you know, when I gave that kid a chance and I've done it a bunch of times, I could, I can't help myself but say, bro, I just gave you a stage in front of 10,000 people and that's what you brought.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Like, stay ready, don't get ready.

[Brody Fawcett]

Well, and he's going to remember that for the rest of his life.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. I mean, you remember it.

[Brody Fawcett]

I remember it. I remember it. That was a while ago. I also remember another story you kind of talked about. And, and I mean, speaking of, like, you're talking about your kids and how you're raising them. They were at the event. Your wife spoke at the event. Right. Like, like you, you practice what you preach. And I love listening to your wife speak and do all these cool things just because of how supportive she is. And my wife has her own business, and that's been a dynamic with us, you know, in our relationship and raising kids at the same time, you know, working through. You have your stuff and I have my stuff. And like, there's, you know, there's, There's a lot going on, but one thing that, that you were telling the story on was someone was over your house. And you basically, like when you little girl and you're like, hey, see if you can go. Go get them to give you 100 bucks. And a lot of people hear that, and they're probably like, dude, what are you, like, trying to teach your kids, like, to go take money from people, you know, But I love it. I've actually, like, done some of the same things even this morning, like, with people over I'm like, I'm like, hey, you should do my little girl learn this like hula dance. I'm like, go do the hula dance in front of them, you know? And she was like, shy. And I'm like, go out there and I bet everyone give you a dollar if you do it. You know, ask them, ask if they'll give you a dollar. So what, what's the line between teaching your kids that and like not being scared to ask for money and not being afraid of money and what it can do for you versus everything revolves around money and not getting too obsessed with money that it distracts from other important things in life, especially at a young age.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, I'm more worried that my kids aren't going to be worried about money. That I am. My kids were, you know, thinking that money is everything. I am more worried about my kids not thinking about money enough than me. Like, I never even think about them thinking everything's about money.

[Brody Fawcett]

How do you do that? How do you, how do you create that though? Because they, you, you're, you're well to do. I'm sure they have a beautiful life. Right. And get a lot of things. How do you, as somebody who is wealthy, teach your kids that they're not going to have everything handed to them?

[Grant Cardone]

First of all, I don't give them, I don't give them any money. We don't give them an allowance. I don't just give them a, you know, here, take money. I would never give my kid money. We pay our kids their own salary and they have a contract with us. They've had a contract for six years. They work for the company. They agreed to the contract. In the contract. There are certain things they have to do. Okay, once a year they get a paycheck. That paycheck goes into Cardone Capital. They never get to touch the money. That's a write off for me, by the way. The money goes into Cardone Capital. The distributions from Cardone Capital that happen every month go to them so they can spend money. They want to go get a boba or a bicycle. Boom. That's how they pay for it. So now the thing I'm trying to teach them now is, okay, guys, the budget part. Like, you only have 600 bucks a month coming in and you're spending 800. Like they have to actually make that transaction to see they really don't know what stuff costs. My kids have been on private plane since they were babies. Yeah, you know, they've been in the nicest, some of the Nicest houses and hotels in the world. So one thing that we have to teach the kids is like, like this is our stuff. This is your stuff. You're just riding along with us.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And so at some point, by the way, you guys are going to be like, I'm out of here. Well, guess what? The next guy going to have a jet. The Four Seasons is going to be a Holiday Inn and your rent's going to be 2500 bucks, not free.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

So I'm not too worried about my kids thinking it's all about money. I'm more worried about them not understanding money. I would. For every parent out there, you know, the schools aren't going to teach your kids anything about money.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, for sure.

[Grant Cardone]

If they're not. I went to college. I spent five years in college. I knew less about money at the end of five years than I knew when I started college.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah, I agree. And I studied finance.

[Grant Cardone]

I had an accounting degree. I didn't have a bad degree. I said, what's the best business degree you can get? If you're not going to get a master's, get a degree in accounting. I said, dude, I'll do that. I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to start a checking account when I was done. I didn't know how to balance. I didn't know the difference. I didn't actually understand the difference between an asset and a liability, a passive investment and an earned income. I didn't know anything about the tax code. Even though I studied the tax code. I didn't know how to hack the system. I didn't know anything about investing. All I knew was you get a job, this is how you're supposed to account for other people's money, not your own. And a drug problem. That's all I got out of college.

[Brody Fawcett]

Here's what's crazy. I'm going to say it, but most people will learn more at a three day event of yours than they will from three semesters of college. Period.

[Grant Cardone]

100%. And I would say that about anybody's event. By the way, you'll learn more at anybody's event than you would learn going to college.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah, I mean, I mean this has been good. I want to, I want to touch on some real estate stuff and I want to respect your time too as we dive into it because I want to talk about cardone capital a little bit.

[Grant Cardone]

Both.

[Brody Fawcett]

But I feel strongly about owning a home for multiple reasons. I know you feel strongly about not owning your primary residence. So I Want to, I want to have that debate for a second. I want to just hear your thoughts on that and tell everybody why you talk about, hey you, you should rent your house.

[Grant Cardone]

Let's play a little game. Okay? You tell me a good reason home and I'm going tell you a reason not to.

[Brody Fawcett]

Okay, I'll start off by saying this. I think that the most money that people have ever made in their life as well as the M.O. the biggest thing that contributes the most to their net worth is their primary residence for the average person.

[Grant Cardone]

Okay, good. I agree with that. If they stay there long enough, they would have some equity built up in their home over the last 50 years. They would have been better off investing in the ETF ETFs and P500. Or even better, if they would have owned an apartment building next to their house, they would have created more equity, more passive income and more tax breaks and more wealth long term than that house would have.

[Brody Fawcett]

I agree, but it's not comparing apples to apples, right. If we're talking about, if we're talking about the same amount of cash that they put in to their primary residence, right. An owner occupied loan, lower down payment, you know, typically three and a half percent, sometimes less in some of these people. Right. As opposed to saving up that money and waiting and waiting and waiting until they have enough or putting it into, you know, one that's not enough money a lot of times to invest into anything as far as like a syndication or part owner of that apartment complex. Right. So as far as leverage and cash on cash return, I would, I would argue that their house is still going to get them more money.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, thank you. And I can see what. Because many people have. But the house has no cash flow. It has limited tax write offs. Okay. The apartment building has unlimited wrote off. Last year I wrote off probably $80 million in interest. The most you can write off on a house is maybe 100 and about $42,000 in interest. Okay? So the appreciation, the average home in America, when adjusted for inflation has gone up 1% a year. I can show you markets that are flat or negative because of inflation. Maintenance, property taxes and the mortgage. Today. Financing a house today at 8% and 8% interest rate. Seven and a half, seven and a quarter, six, six and three quarters. If you could get that loan, you probably can't, you are going to pay in 30 years, 210%. And you know this, and you should be telling your audience about this. 210% is going to mortgage. Okay, 60% in the state of Florida is going to property taxes. 30% of the cost of the property will go to maintenance. So you put those three together, bro, you'd have to make like 300% on the house break even and you're stuck in the same freaking location for 30 years.

[Brody Fawcett]

See, I see it's, and I think there's, you know, if we're talking about location dependence and I know that's a lot of what you get at with this thing, but it's almost like comparing like, you know, a car to a jet. Like you should have bought the jet because it's going to appreciate so much more and so much faster. And it's like, well, yeah, but how many people can go buy the jet, right? And so I think that I, I agree and disagree.

[Grant Cardone]

Anybody can buy today you can buy a four unit deal easier than you can buy a single family home. 5% down on a $500,000 property, $25,000 down payment, live in one of the four units, get cash flow from all.

[Brody Fawcett]

Of them as a, as a primary residence. So live in there as a primary residence. So on, on the real estate.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, yeah, you could, yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

So, so not. So not rent, but live there.

[Grant Cardone]

You would live there and pay yourself rent. Pay yourself rent rather than somebody.

[Brody Fawcett]

Exactly, yeah, yeah, 100%. That's what, that's what I'm getting at too. And that's my other point of like you have to do it a smart way. Right. I'm not saying your average person that gets in over their head and buys a house and lives there forever. I'm saying most people do, which is what, is what most people do. Yeah, it is what most people do. But if you're talking about renting or because what you're, what you're saying, just barely, that's, that's on my side of the argument. That's, that's owning the property, that's living in it. And I'm a huge believer that after a year hits like you shouldn't be living there any longer. You need a house high cop, you need to move on, you get to the next one. And I feel so strongly about this because the very first house that, that I bought, which was kind of on accident, I was in college and renting it out to my, my buddies. But that house is 160,000 bucks, right. And it was almost 10 years ago now, but that has made me over $1 million cash. And I'm not talking about from just the cash flow. Right. There's a lot that's come from the cash Flow even. Even now cash flows a couple thousand bucks a month. Right. So the rents have gone up on it. I didn't live there forever. I moved out, but I did a cash out refinance. So I took that money, I invested that into another property and got that going. Right. So I think that what I'm getting at with property was this, though. It was. Well, this first one that I got, it had multiple bedrooms. It was by college campus. I rented.

[Grant Cardone]

It wasn't a single family home.

[Brody Fawcett]

It was a single family home.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

With multiple bedrooms. I lived in one one bedroom, rented out the rest. Then my wife and I got married.

[Grant Cardone]

It was an investment property.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah. It turned into an investment property.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, yeah. It was. It wasn't. It wasn't your primary residence that you didn't have other income.

[Brody Fawcett]

No, no, no. And if that's the distinction we're making, then I'm 100% on your side. I. 100%.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

I love that people should buy investment properties before they buy a place to live.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yes.

[Brody Fawcett]

Thousand percent. I think you marry the two. Right. You buy it. You buy it with the end in mind. You don't buy it emotionally. You buy it logically. You sacrifice the emotional purchase. So I love that. I love the world. Same page there.

[Grant Cardone]

Have an argument.

[Brody Fawcett]

I'm glad I converted you over to this side of things. You supported me.

[Grant Cardone]

You know what? I'm going to go out by another 12,000 units.

[Brody Fawcett]

So speaking of which, because I want to dive into that. Because I do agree, like, and now that for me, that was the. And I do think, like, yeah, four units and under. You're into commercial. That is a very easy way to buy commercial real estate. Right. But then you graduate into these bigger and bigger deals. And I've been doing more developments lately and it's been exciting and fun. I don't regret the path because I think that was the best way to kind of go and get into it. But now for somebody, I want to know, like, when should somebody invest with you, Uncle G. And. And what you're doing as opposed to, I'm gonna go buy the investment property that I can owner occupy and house hack for a little bit.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, I. I would tell people Cardone Capital was developed to accelerate people's investment career. So we basically buy institutional quality assets, the best possible assets you can buy on the planet here in America. They cash flow from day one. I find the deal, fund the deal, manage the deal. I do everything. This has never been done at scale the way I'm doing it. You're not doing business with Blackstone or JP Morgan, there's actually somebody to talk to. You know the property you're putting your money in, you can literally sign a check. 45 days later you're getting payments. You know, the, the asset that you're purchasing. Like when you put your money in a reit, you have no clue what, what property's paying you.

[Brody Fawcett]

Totally.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, I agree with that capital. You know what property is paying. You can go look at it, see it. You could be a tenant there, you could actually make, you could make a payment there, 1500 and live there and also collect $1500 a month because you invested there. So you know, why would somebody do it with me? One, you're going to make more money with me than you're going to make doing your own deal. Even with a 1% fee and a 8020 split, you still will make more money with me. Because the thing that determines how much money is made in a real estate deal is based on the property, not based on who owns the majority of it. Okay, yeah, real estate, if a real estate deal is a bad deal, when you go in, you can lose money. Okay, I don't do bad deals. I have 35 years of buying, I bought, I don't know, almost $5 billion worth of stuff.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

I buy the best real estate in the country. I have access to every major player after 35 years. I've created unbelievable relationships. We're paying cash for properties today. We don't even use banks right now. And we share this with, with a pool of people that are like minded, that say, look, I don't want to give the money to Wall Street. I don't want it to be with Vanguard and BlackRock and Blackstone and Wells Fargo and Fidelity. I want to do it where 50 or 60 or 100 people buy a trophy $150 million property below replacement costs. During a correction which we're in right now, that property is likely to go up in value faster than a four unit deal in a C neighborhood, in a C town, in a C location with a C10 and it's 40 or 50 years old.

[Brody Fawcett]

Yeah, yeah, no, no, I like that. I think that there's, there's this like concept of a hundred percent of, you know, this deal is way better than 1% of this deal. And it's just, it's like, bro, it's, it's all relative. Right? There's so many things that you, you look at the wrong way when it comes to that.

[Grant Cardone]

And as you know, Brody, nobody owns 100% of the real estate anyway. You're going to have, probably have a bank involved, you're going to have property, the property, the local state is going to be involved. Everybody here, I mean, you guys that want to think bigger than four units. The problem with four units is you're a manager now. You get the 40 units. Now you can afford a manager. You get the 400 units. You can actually have a manager, investors and make distributions to your investors and actually make your family rich. My sister invested with me. She's 10 years older than me. She's 75 years old. I made her a multimillionaire many times over because I convinced her to, to use her retirement money, her 401k money invested with me in a real estate deal. She gets a check for 15,000 bucks a month and has for the last 10 years.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah, I love that.

[Brody Fawcett]

I love that. And I think that, you know, I have mixed emotions when it comes to a lot of syndications and a lot of funds out there. And one of those reasons is I've seen the way that, that I've done it right from my own experience and, and I've seen how many people jump on the bandwagon and almost wave it as a card of like I invested in, you know, X, Y, Z person syndication and they didn't invest because of the return or even look at the experience of that person as much as like, they're so excited. They, they said they made this investment with this person, right? So, so that's one thing there, which I love because I don't think that's the case with you. Like, you, you know what you're doing, you've been there, you have the track record, which I love, but I do think so. So real estate invested school, we have a, an education program, right, where we teach people about real estate. It's one on one coaching program. And a lot of them, like we do encourage them, like, hey, you're, you're making so much money with your active income job right now and you don't have the time to really like vet out these real estate deals, dive into it. So like, yeah, the best bet is probably for you to invest as a passive partner in one of these things. But which by the way, 80, 20 is a really good split as opposed to a lot of companies out there. So I think that's awesome. But on the flip side of that, I do think for the right person and I believe this wholeheartedly, if they'll like dive in and learn about real Estate investing. And they're willing to sacrifice the time and energy that it takes to really dive into it, that they'll be able to grow faster and get significantly higher returns from a cash on cash standpoint if they're willing to put in the time and do a lot of it on their own.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, we, we sent out a hundred million dollars in distributions to our investors in the last 24 months. So I, I don't know how you, I don't know how many people have done that.

[Brody Fawcett]

But yeah, I mean, that's relative. Right, because like it's how many investors and how much money they invested.

[Grant Cardone]

Right, of course. But, but it's still $100 million in cash. There's major institutions that stop making distributions. There's hundreds of syndicators around the country that have failed just in the last two years that had to stop redemptions and distributions. Like I agree with you about people should be beware of syndications, that there's a lot of people out there jumping the game. They haven't managed cash before. They haven't managed investors. They maybe haven't even managed. Managed in a negative cycle, in a bad cycle. I know syndicators that weren't even alive during 2008, like, they didn't, they didn't live through that cycle. Right. They, they don't understand how painful a cycle can turn.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

It can last for three and four years.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

So I would, you said, well, what.

[Brody Fawcett]

Should they look for? What should they look for when they are investing?

[Grant Cardone]

Patient number one, like this is completely, like there's nothing more important than the location of the property. And some people are in states where you cannot invest right now because it's not a friendly state to invest in.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

Number one location. Like what part of the country to what part of your little spot that's a location? And the third is in the spot. Let's say you're in La Jolla, California or you're in, you know, somewhere in New Jersey. What location in that little pocket. And then it's going to be like, does it cash flow. Is there enough cash flow to support the operations? Five, is management going to work, Want to work there? Okay. It's, it's great to think that you're going to buy something in Indiana that's a C property for 50 or 60,000 a door. But who's going to want to manage the deal? Yeah, yeah, you get good this. I didn't know this when I started. You're not going to get a good leasing manager at a shitty property. The best leasing agents want to be at the nice properties in the great locations in the cities where there's migration and jobs and, and it's something robust happening. And then the last thing I would say is, can you take advantage of corrections? Like if, if somebody's going to really dabble in real estate, like, you got to make a career of this or leave it alone, Leave it to the pros, because I want to be able to move. Like, I'm looking at San Francisco right now, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, because they're out of favor and I can go there and steal real estate.

[Brody Fawcett]

What do you, what do you think the future is for this year coming up? What does the market look like?

[Grant Cardone]

We're in the biggest real estate correction in my lifetime. I think this will dwarf the 2008 correction. It will be in multifamily office and retail. It will not be in single family homes. There will be no advantages to buying single family. There will be some opportunities and two threes and fours, but not single family. You're never going to find a deal in single family, folks.

[Brody Fawcett]

You got to force it. You got, you got to get, you got to get creative if you're going to get something like that. It's going to be a good deal. It's probably not going to be face value. There's got to be some, some worker.

[Grant Cardone]

There's no reason for housing to drop. In fact, houses today are 1% higher than they were one year ago in America now. And there's no, and there's almost no volume. And you need volume deals.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Right.

[Grant Cardone]

Price doesn't drop until the debt market gets messed up. And the debt market is not messed up in single family homes.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

But it is, but it is in commercial.

[Grant Cardone]

Like, it's going to be unbelievable. Unbelievable. There's probably $2.7 trillion worth of debt, some portion of which will either go back to the bank or go to a different owner.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

And that's when everything goes on sale and that's how you take advantage.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. Brody, let's do this again sometime, man. This has been great, Grant.

[Brody Fawcett]

Thanks, brother. Thanks for your time, man. This has been good. Appreciate. Appreciate you dropping some bombs and.

[Interviewer/Moderator]

Yeah.

[Brody Fawcett]

Tell until next time for sure.

[Grant Cardone]

So God bless you, brother. All right.

[Brody Fawcett]

Much love, brother. Thanks for your time.