Grant Cardone: Recession-Proof Wealth Strategies to Dominate Any Economy | Finance | YAPClassic

Summary

Podcast Summary: Grant Cardone – Recession-Proof Wealth Strategies to Dominate Any Economy

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (YAPClassic) | September 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features entrepreneur and bestselling author Grant Cardone, known for his "10X" philosophy and as an unapologetic voice in business and real estate. Host Hala Taha dives into Cardone's origin story, his countercultural approach to wealth-building, recession-proof business strategies, and advice for creating generational affluence. The conversation is candid and energetic, offering both strategic principles and personal anecdotes for entrepreneurs looking to leap beyond the "middle class mindset" and into multiplying income, building an unmissable brand, and thriving in uncertain times.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Grant Cardone’s Early Life, Losses, and Grit

[02:41 – 07:38]

• Background: Lost his father at age 10, then his older brother; raised by a single mother.
• Downward Spiral: Difficult teenage years led to poor decisions and a ten-year struggle with drug addiction.
• Turning Point: At 25, started the journey of self-improvement with little guidance or resources.
• Driving Force:

  "The one thing that has kind of saved me along the way is this divine discontent. Never happy, never satisfied, always wanting to do better."
  — Grant Cardone [05:05]

2. Early Views on Money & Shift in Mindset

[05:50 – 08:16]

• Middle-Class Trap: Cardone observed his mother’s pride in reaching middle class, but experienced it as a place of fear and scarcity.
• Aspirational Fire:

  “If this is the middle class, if this is a good thing, I don’t want it because it doesn’t feel good to me... I told my mom when I was 15... I'm going to be rich one day. And when I am, I'm going to help a lot of people.”
  — Grant Cardone [06:42]

• Purpose Born from Pain: Cardone’s drive to help others is rooted in the void and uncertainty he experienced.

3. The Reality of Wealth, Millionaire Myths & Setting Massive Goals

[07:49 – 10:56]

• Outgrowing ‘Millionaire’ Targets:

  “The idea to become a millionaire is an adopted concept. It is a lazy man’s or woman’s dream... A million dollars is no money.”
  — Grant Cardone [08:37]

• Cautions Against Playing Small: Targets should be 10X what feels reasonable.
• Budgets vs. Expanding Income:

  “You cannot save your way to wealth... Prosperity and affluence come from expansion and risk taking, not from saving.”
  — Grant Cardone [10:19]

4. Cash Flow vs. Cash & Why Saving is “Storing”

[10:56 – 15:35]

• Critique of Conventional Finance Advice: College, saving, and focusing on budgets are ill-advised unless they lead to higher passive income.
• Active vs. Passive Income: Passive income and assets supersede earned income in value.
• On Saving:

  “Money is useless until it is used. A billionaire taught me this... People that create tremendous wealth are taking pieces of paper...and converting it to something else that is more valuable.”
  — Grant Cardone [13:04]

5. Frugality, Discipline & The Path to the First Million

[19:19 – 22:56]

• Delayed Gratification and Frugality: Stayed under the radar, didn’t upgrade his lifestyle with earned income.
• Key Rule:

  “I've never spent earned income to improve my standard of living...I only buy luxury items when I have passive income. So I have these little rules that I put in on myself.”
  — Grant Cardone [20:25]

• All ‘Dumb Stuff’ is Funded by Passive, Not Active Income: Enjoy luxuries only after securing stable cash flow sources.

6. Leveraging Recessions for Massive Growth

[22:56 – 26:54]

• Recessions as Opportunity:

  “Courage is the greatest currency on planet Earth.”
  — Grant Cardone [24:08]

• Massive Expansion During Downturns: Doubled down investments/marketing/effort during 2008-2010 when competitors retreated.
• Prediction:

  “2023 and 2024 will be the greatest wealth redistribution on planet Earth. And this time, unlike 2008...the little guy...could actually benefit.”
  — Grant Cardone [25:31]

7. Business Rules During a Recession

[26:54 – 31:34]

• Step-by-Step Playbook:
  1. Assess Liabilities and Assets: Ruthlessly audit both material and people-based resources.
     • “...write all this down, including people, and I start moving things from liabilities. I get, get rid of them and get down to my assets.” [27:57]
  2. Accept Reality Quickly: Don’t wait for motivation—adopt a blunt, fact-based perspective.
  3. Market Relentlessly: Collaborate and network to get your brand/message out.
  4. Monetize Immediately: Don’t wait for perfect products; start pre-selling and creating revenue streams now.
  5. Scale Aggressively: Organize and automate operations for growth.

8. Omnipresence & Brand Building on Social Media

[31:34 – 39:21]

• Everywhere, All at Once:

  “There’s a word...omnipresence. Omnipresent means to be everywhere all at the same time...Anything that can accomplish everywhere all at the same time will be assigned the designation of powerful.”
  — Grant Cardone [32:18]

• Strategy: Use every available platform (YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, speaking gigs) simultaneously; old school (calls, billboards) + new media.
• Big Goals Fuel Big Actions: Aiming for more than just “middle class” or “millionaire” status is the catalyst for omnipresence.

9. Investing in Visibility & the Network Effect

[39:21 – 42:29]

• The Value of Attention:

  “Would you rather a million dollars or a million friends?... 76%...say they want the million dollars...because they don't know how to convert...If they give me a hundred bucks, that’s 5 million. I 5x the million.”
  — Grant Cardone [41:21]

• Advice: A broad, engaged network is exponentially more valuable than cash in the bank.

10. Daily Routines, Goal-Setting & Mindset

[43:18 – 47:41]

• Morning Routine: Gets up before sunrise, writes down goals quickly—morning, night, and in times of failure or disappointment.
  • “This is magic...for 30 years. No clue how I'm going to accomplish it...I just write it down like I’m going to do it.” [44:30]
• Investor Over Boss: Prefers being an investor (creating leverage/effects) rather than being the CEO/boss.
  • “You don’t want to be a boss. You want to be an investor...Warren Buffett, the investor, made $508 million.” [46:37]

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Memorable Quotes

• On Wealth Creation:

  “You cannot save your way to freedom. You cannot save your business. You cannot save your brand. The only way to save anything—truth, prosperity, and affluence come from expansion and risk taking, not from saving.”
  — Grant Cardone [10:19]

• On Passive Income:

  “The ultimate goal of wealthy people is not to have income at all. It is to have passive income...that produces cash flow, not cash, because cash goes down in value...”
  — Grant Cardone [11:53]

• On Courage:

  “Courage is the greatest currency on planet Earth... if you can take courage and discipline, you become a threat during a contraction.”
  — Grant Cardone [24:08]

• On Social Networks:

  “You want a million friends...because, even if you can only...5% of a million...give me a hundred bucks, that’s 5 million.”
  — Grant Cardone [41:21]

• On Goals and Disappointment:

  “The disappointment is not the target. Your audience is going to find that you could spend two, three, four days in a disappointment only to find out that's not where I'm going. The goal was to move through disappointment until you could get whatever your thing is or things.”
  — Grant Cardone [45:25]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:41] — Grant’s childhood, losses, and journey out of addiction
• [05:50] — Early money mindset & drive to help others
• [07:49] — Why aiming for “millionaire” status is limiting
• [10:56] — Flaws in typical money advice: saving, budgeting, & college
• [12:55] — Why “saving” is really just “storing” money for investment
• [19:19] — Frugality, delayed gratification, and “earned income rules”
• [22:56] — Using the 2008 recession for massive growth; prepping for coming downturns
• [26:54] — Cardone’s five-step plan for thriving in a recession
• [31:34] — Brand omnipresence and being everywhere
• [39:21] — The exponential value of network over cash
• [43:18] — Cardone’s morning routine, rapid goal writing, overcoming disappointment
• [47:41] — Dealing with hate, always “making a difference”
• [49:15] — How to immediately profit more: 10x your goals and see everything as investment

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Actionable Takeaways

1. Assess and Trim: Regularly audit your assets and liabilities—including people—and double down on the strongest assets.
2. Expand Income, Not Budgets: Focus energy on multiplying income streams, especially passive income, rather than penny-pinching.
3. Leverage Downturns: Recessions are an opportunity for massive wealth for those who combine courage and discipline.
4. Be Omnipresent: Spread your message across all platforms; visibility is the new currency.
5. Invest in Networks & Yourself: The right relationships and personal investments (knowledge, skills) yield higher returns than cash.
6. Goal Multiplication: Write down your goals—then 10X them for true breakthrough thinking and action.
7. Only Spend Passive Income: Indulge only with passive, recurring income, not your core earned income.
8. Everything is an Investment: Think of every action, conversation, or effort as creating a ripple effect—make it count for good.

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Final Words

Grant Cardone, with characteristic candor, encourages “young and profiting” listeners to abandon small goals, embrace uncomfortable change, and build lasting wealth through courage, omnipresence, and relentless self-investment. As Hala Taha underscores at episode’s end, these are foundational mindsets and playbooks for anyone looking to “profit in all aspects of life.”

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For listeners new to Grant Cardone or wanting deeper sales/mindset tactics, Hala recommends listening to her more recent interview with Grant (previous Monday's episode).

Transcript

[Host]

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Indeed, Shopify, Mercury, Deleteme and Skims Attract, Interview and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com Profiting Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1per month trial period at shopify.com Profiting Mercury streamlines your banking and finances all in one place. Learn [e-mail] Profiting Delete Me makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off delete me consumer [e-mail] Profiting SKIMS is a solution oriented brand creating the next generation of underwear, clothing and shapewear shop. The Skims Fits Everybody collection at skims.com as always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes [e-mail] deals Yap Gang Most people are taught to play it safe. Save a little here, budget a little there, and hope things work out. But safe won't build your empire and it definitely won't create freedom. My guest today is living proof of that. In this Yap classic episode. We're rewinding it back to my conversation with the incredible Grant Cardone, Entrepreneur, bestselling author of the 10x rule, and one of the most recognizable voices in real estate and business. Grant built his empire by rejecting conventional wisdom and instead he focused on multiplying income, investing in cash flowing assets, and building a brand so omnipresent it was impossible to ignore. Now this was my first conversation with Grant. It was about four years ago. We break down his come up story, we get deep into his playbook for thriving in any economy, and we also talk about how to pursue goals that seem 10 times bigger than what you thought possible. Now I also had a chance to interview Grant for the second time earlier this week and that was one of my favorite recent conversations. My favorite conversation of the year, quite honestly. It was so, so good. We go really deep into sales, we go deep into mindset for entrepreneurship and I just absolutely love that conversation. So listen to this one first to get Grant's background, get all the foundational stuff, and then go listen to my most recent interview, which was last Monday's episode. If you want all of his recent material, if you're ready to ditch average thinking and step into a mindset of limitless growth, then you're going to want to learn from Grant Cardone and enjoy the show.

[Interviewer]

I learned that your father actually passed away when you were just 10 years old and your oldest brother passed away just a few years later. So you were raised by a single mother. I could imagine that wasn't the easiest time. And after doing my research, it became really clear to me that you're a self made man. And honestly that made me respect you like 10x more. Right. And so I'd love to learn about that time in your life, you know, your childhood, your teenage years, how did you grow up and what were some of the biggest life lessons that you learned.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. So again, thank you so much for having me. And yeah, my life, you know, people ask me, my wife asked me that, why are you so hard? I said, dude, it was hard. I grew up in a family where there was a lot of losses over a very short period of time. And then I started making bad decisions out of those losses as I carried them around with me from the age of 15 to 25, my life, I went from having a middle class life with a lot of love and a great family. My parents did everything kind of by the book and they did it right and they didn't make any mistakes. I did started making very poor choices because I didn't have the right people in my life. I was a bit of an outcast, black sheep, kind of rebel, didn't fit in kind of guy. Didn't like school. I liked all the hot chicks in high school, but I wasn't on the football team, so the football players didn't like me. So they beat me up all the time. I was literally in a fight once or twice a week. And that's created this kind of shell on Grant. And then a drug dealer got a hold of me in Lake Charles, Louisiana when I was 15, introduced me to drugs that would take me down the rabbit hole for 10 years. Became a habitual daily drug user, didn't want to be, by the way. Nobody starts thinking, okay, I'm going to become a drug addict. But I made a lot of poor choices. And then at 25, I started pulling myself out of it and turning my life around in the last 35 years now has been me trying to figure out how to be the best version of myself. Most of the time having no idea how to do that. A lot of stumbling. The self made thing, I mean, I'm not made by myself, but I'm certainly. I didn't have any debt, didn't have any connections, I didn't have banks to help me is what I mean with the debt. I didn't have credit cards, I was in debt Failed at seven jobs. A lot of people don't, they see me today and they're like, bro, you got it made. And I've been fortunate enough to be on stages with some of the most successful people on the planet present, including presidents and super celebrities and really, really wealthy people. And all that is me kind of grinding up the food chain. The one thing, I think the one thing that has kind of saved me along the way is this divine discontent. Never happy, never satisfied, always wanting to do better. This personal honesty, not cash register honesty. I'm talking about this personal honesty that I have about myself and about what I'm capable of, of doing, not by your standards, but by what I think I'm capable of.

[Interviewer]

And so when you were growing up, you, like I mentioned, you had a single mother. What was your mindset about money? Because now you know one of your life's purposes is to help other people create wealth. And that's what you do. You're helping millions of people do that. So curious to understand what was your mindset in terms of money when you were growing up and how did that shift over time?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, look, I was brought up in the middle class like I referenced earlier, and my mom was really proud of that. My dad died when I was 10. My mom was extremely proud that they had made it into the middle class because they came from poverty. I, on the other hand, viewed as a 10 year old, 11 years old, 12 years old, 13. I'm collecting data all this time, Hallie, you know, I'm collecting data about how life is. We had a roof over our head, we had food, we had the things that everybody should be grateful of, that we should never take for granted. But also with that, my mom was scared constantly. I watched my mother terrified every day. And by the time I was 15, I'm like, if this is the middle class, if this is a good thing, I don't want it because it doesn't feel good to me. So I told my mom when I was 15, in a, in a moment of rebellious outrage, like a 15 year old that's angry and doesn't have his dad or his older brother anymore, I'm like, I'm going to get rich one day. I had no clue, by the way, how I was going to do this. I'm going to be rich one day. I told my mom, I'm going to be rich one day. And when I am, I'm going to help a lot of people. And that was really born out of this pain, of this frustration of not having a dad. And then hoping my uncles or somebody was going to step in and guide me. And they didn't. You know, they had their own lives and hands full and their own families. And be careful what you ask for. Right. Because I'm like, one day I'm going to help a bunch of people. And today I'm actually helping a lot of people.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

It is the thing that kind of drives me today, that that thing that I came from and didn't have, that void, that vacancy, that emptiness is kind of my purpose today.

[Interviewer]

I love that. Super inspiring story. So let's talk about the middle class. You kind of brought it up and I heard on one of your videos that you were saying, you know, a lot of people think about being a millionaire. The American dream is like, oh, I'm going to be a millionaire. But a million dollars doesn't really cut it anymore. In 2023, can you talk to us about what kind of goals we should set out for ourselves in terms of really becoming successful and being able to live a quality life in today's age?

[Grant Cardone]

Well, look, if your, your idea is to be a millionaire, I've been through all these. I've gone from nothing to. I remember having my first million 5 million, 10 million, 100 million, 400 million, $800 million billion dollars. I told you before this, I closed over a billion 4 of browsers today deals I'm working when I was 15 and 20 years old and 25, I never dreamed. I never dreamed it was possible. And that is where the problem starts. We set targets. And I'm going to say this to everybody that's watching you right now. We set targets that are so below us, so small. The idea to become a millionaire is an adopted concept. It is a lazy man's or woman's dream. I'm going to be a millionaire. That's somebody else's idea. You haven't even thought it through yet. A million dollars is no money. Literally. I know. You'll probably get a bunch of hate on this. I just did a video, I don't know if you saw it, about if you make 400 grand a year, I don't know how you feel good about yourself as a husband and a father. What? Freaking Internet went crazy. Everybody went crazy. What's wrong with him? What about the military and the policeman and the firemen and the single mom and the waiter and the waitress? I'm like, what about them? There's no money left over. Okay? If you do the math on money, this is why I tell people, never get advice From a millionaire. Because when you go from nothing to a million, the first thing you do is you go into conservation. The millionaire becomes a scared person. If you read the book like I did, the Millionaire Next Door, when I finished reading that book, it was a super, super successful book. And it suggested that to become a millionaire, you need to not brew your own coffee, don't go to Starbucks, and you need to buy a used truck. When I got finished reading that book, I'm like, I am not going to be a millionaire. I know this. When you study the most successful people on this planet, they're not talking about where they brew their coffee at home. They do whatever they want to do. They're probably coffee espressos on their plane, by the way. And they're definitely not buying used trucks, okay? They're buying whatever the hell they want. Because spending is not the problem. It is for the middle class. And the reason spending for the middle class is a problem is because they're, they've taken their attention off of income and put it onto a budget. And a budget is a defense, a defensiary position. It does not put points on the board. You cannot save your way to wealth. You cannot save your way to freedom. You cannot save your business. You cannot save your brand. The only way to save anything. Truth, prosperity and affluence come from expansion and risk taking, not from saving. The middle class is built on budgets. It is built on adding and subtracting and wealth is created with division and multiplication.

[Interviewer]

I love what you're saying. You're basically saying, like, don't worry so much about saving. Worry about creating wealth and income generation. Like get more income in. Don't necessarily just penny pinch and think that's going to make you a millionaire. Yeah. Cash flow king. I love it.

[Grant Cardone]

So, look, like most people we go to school, which the whole college thing is just another middle class trap. You're giving up your most valuable thing, time and trading it for debt. Another terrible thing for you. If you just looked at it from a business. The ROI on college is awful. Unless you're going to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a politician and become President of the United States, the return on college is pretty dismal. We're not taught expansion, we're taught contraction. Saving money is a contraction concept. No one ever went broke because they didn't save enough money. No one ever went broke, by the way, because they spent too much. People go broke because their income stops. If you're earning more income than you're spending, then you're always going to be fine. Particularly if it's passive income, not earned income. School is teaching us how to get a job and how to get some money, but they never teach us what to do with the money and how to get money to multiply. So the ultimate goal of wealthy people, for all your listeners, the ultimate goal of wealthy people is not to have income at all. It is to have passive income that is not earned, but that comes from investments. Cash flow, not cash, is more valuable than cash because cash goes down in value. And as it goes to zero, and it will, you want to replace that with assets that go up in value and that spit off little bits of cash so that you live off the cash flow and never touch the capital or the asset.

[Interviewer]

So while we're talking on this topic, I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions about saving. Something that I learned that was really interesting is that you call saving storing money. And I thought that was a really interesting way of phrasing it. Can you explain why?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. So my mom saved money her whole life until she passed. She was still saving money the day she died. And money is useless until it is used. A billionaire taught me this. He's like, grant, your money's worth nothing until it is put to use. And the people that create tremendous wealth are taking pieces of paper, garbage pieces of fiat paper that only have as much value as the people have confidence in. And they're basically taking that paper and converting it to something else that is more valuable than the paper. So I was 31 years old. I'd been storing money, not saving it. I was storing it so that one day I could make an investment in something where it would multiply itself, where it would have babies. I wanted my Ben Franklin to have little Benjamins. I kept storing money until I was certain about an investment. And I made my first investment. My first real investment was $350,000. I bought a $2 million piece of real estate with it. That piece of real estate earned me $5 million of profit in three years. That was more money than I had made in the previous 20 years in any business, any earned income, any job that I've ever worked at. One investment paid me more money in a shorter period of time than I had earned in 20 previous years of earned income. And it was a non taxable event, by the way. It made me a multimillionaire, but it came with no tax consequence, which was like, I just stumbled across this concept. I didn't know that was going to happen, but it was because of the class of investments I was in. So basically what I was doing was trading time for money at my two jobs. I had two jobs at the time. I'm 28, 29, 30 years old. Storing all this money up like a squirrel, like going out getting nuts for the wintertime, Knowing that one day I'm going to use these nuts for something else. And I was studying real estate on the weekends, and that was kind of a side hustle for me. There's this thing I do where I never trade paper for paper. I never trade paper for another piece of paper. Stock certificate, a bond. I never trade for anything. I trade paper for something more valuable than the paper. And for me, that could be me investing in myself. I'm always more valuable than the thousand bucks. Anything I spend on myself is more valuable. Number two, I could be the business that I'm working in to make my business better. Or number three, once my business is going well and I'm doing well, then I want to store money to put it in something that converts paper to an asset that produces cash flow.

[Host]

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[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Host]

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[Interviewer]

Yeah, I think that's, that's really good advice. And it's funny because today you're flying around in a private jet grant. Everybody knows that like you have a lot of money and you're like A little bit flashy, right? But to my surprise, you were really frugal. And that's sort of how you got your first million. You know, you had a million in the bank, but, you know, you were not rocking really fancy clips, Lowe's or fancy car for a while. So talk to us about how you got to your first million. And today, like, even though you seem flashy, after researching you and listening to more videos and really getting to know you, you're actually, like, naturally pretty frugal. So I'd love for you to talk about that.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. So. Oh, too frugal, by the way, I was too frugal, but it did put me in a position to learn discipline. So when my friends were all buying a Rolex or a BMW or going on vacation, I wasn't like, nobody knew I was rich until I was about 45 years old. People were like, hey, what are you doing? I never ever rented a private plane. I've never been on a private plane until I bought my own plane. But this is years, 25 years of me making investments. I wasn't saving money. I mean, I was being frugal to some degree. Just because I personally would never spend earned income. This is something that will. If you use this one principle, you are guaranteed to be rich beyond anything you've ever imagined. I've never spent earned income to improve my standard of living. So earned income, if I make 100,000 and I have 40,000 left over, the whole 40,000 gets stored. Anything extra, I store that to invest. I only can only buy a Rolex when I have passive income. I can only buy a BMW when I have passive income. So I have these little rules that I put in on myself that I believed if I would use these rules, they would make me wealthy one day. I just didn't know how wealthy. I had no idea, to be honest with you. But I was so disciplined. I have great work ethic. That's one thing I have that nobody can take away from me. I work every day, long, long beyond the point where I need to. And then when I work, I should get rewarded. When I get rewarded. I took that money, stored it. So everybody just thought I was just a hard worker. Where I lived, didn't change the car I drove, didn't change the suits I wore didn't change. I didn't wear Rolexes. Like, I didn't do any of that stuff. When my life changed, I think I had. I was married. We had just sold a home to get equity out of. It was 2008 we pulled the equity out of the house. It was the first real house I'd had, but it was really an investment. And I pushed all that money into a. A real estate transaction. And my wife and I rented. We had a baby on the way. It was 2010. The world had come to an end. I'm like, this is never going to happen to me again. And so we really 10x, if you will. These concepts I had been kind of working with for 20 years.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

And so we were very frugal. My wife wasn't buying Chanel. She wasn't buying any of that stuff until passive income came in. That was dependable and indestructible. That's money that I'm not earning because it's money that's coming in because I made a decision. I signed a document and said, okay, I'll buy this asset. And that asset then starts producing passive income over long periods of time, upon which then I can use whatever it is, 600 bucks a month of passive income. I can use that to go or 6,000 or 60,000 or 600,000amonth. Then I can start doing dumb stuff. How much dumb stuff can you do? You can do as much dumb stuff as your passive income.

[Interviewer]

I love it. I feel like that's such great advice. Don't spend your earned income, only spend your passive income. I mean, super brilliant advice. So you mentioned the recession, and maybe this is a good time to kind of pivot into that in the conversation. You and Elena. Elena actually came on my show pretty recently, and I learned that you guys really pivoted your life at the point of the 2008 recession. You guys sort of dominated when everybody else was dying. Right. And so I'd love to understand how you approach the recession differently. And then we can talk about the 2023 recession and what we can do.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, we're definitely going into a big one, and this could be bigger than.08. But the problem with recessions is people deny them for so long. We're in one right now. We've been planning, planning for this since February of last year. So I'm already so far ahead of most people. What happens with a contraction. A recession is basically a contraction. Okay? It's the same amount of money exists in the environment. It's just everybody got lost confidence. And so money doesn't move. Money needs to move. For an economy to be good, money has to circulate. And the faster it circulates, the more confidence it gives people. Right. Well, in a contraction, everything gets stodgy. And slows down, people quit spending. People quit spending money on advertising, marketing, branding, expansion, locations, employees, everything. They just stop. So what happens is if you have the courage, by the way, courage is the greatest currency on planet Earth. It is the greatest asset of all assets, particularly if you could combine it with some vitamin C, with some vitamin D, some discipline. So if you can take courage and discipline, you become a threat during a contraction because people have lost their courage. And because they've lost their courage, they lose their work ethic. They believe there's no reason to go to work except to work to keep their head above water, if you will. Survival. And so during contractions, like, like you wouldn't even know me if it was not for the 2008, 9 and 10 contraction. My whole life was built over the last 10 years because of a contraction and because I used courage. When everybody else went to the, to recess, if you will. Everybody tapped out. I know some people that said, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go to the sidelines for, for the next year or two until this passes. That's when we doubled down. We actually 10x everything. I told my wife in 2010, do not spend any money on anything. Nothing. Zero. I had some college debt. I quit paying it down. Like everything stopped. Everything stopped. So we could basically put all our assets together and use them for something else. So we stopped everything over here so that we could put all we could make big bets on expansion. I'm doing the same thing right now. I'm preparing to make the biggest expansion I've ever had. I believe 2023 and 2024 will be the greatest wealth redistribution on planet Earth. And this time, unlike 2008, 9 and 10, this time the little guy, the everyday guy could actually benefit the people that are in most trouble. If you take the 2000, that was basically everyday people, pizza delivery guys buying houses and strippers. And everybody was buying single family homes, five and six of them. And they couldn't, they got stuck. This cycle is not that this cycle is that times a thousand X. Because these were big giant companies buying lots of apartment buildings or developing apartment buildings that have gotten cracked. This is not in the news yet. Nobody knows this is happening. I happen to know it because that's the space I play in. This is going to be historic orders of magnitude of a problem. If your audience is paying attention, they could create more wealth in the next two to five years than you would in five lifetimes.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's so. It's scary, honestly. But at least you're putting out this challenge, like I mentioned, guys, it's on January 24th. And you can go to unbreakable2023.com to learn more. Grant, let's talk about the rules of business and how it actually changes during a recession. I think this is really interesting, and I'd love to understand maybe what you predict in 2023 in terms of how we can pivot and kind of dominate instead of, like you said, just kind of pulling back. How do we lean in?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah. So I just tell you what we do, right? What I do over my place, I have these little. These little things. I'm like. Like making cookies. I'm like, okay, this is what we're going to do. First thing is you assess your liabilities and your assets. Everybody has them. Everybody's got liabilities. Everybody's got assets. Even a broke person has liabilities and assets. Okay? The people in your life, the things that you own, the decisions that you've made, those are liabilities and assets. This is motivation. Will not get you through this cycle. You cannot stay so excited. Above the amount of negative news you're about to hear, the amount of negative news you're going to hear in this cycle. Data, facts, companies failing, people being laid off, banks failing, maybe some of the biggest names in the world. Like, imagine some of those names failing again. That's going to happen in this cycle. And when that happens, it is impossible to be like, I'm going to be positive and I'm going to get through it. Okay, maybe for a second, that's going to wear off. Like, you're going to do this. And the next thing you got to do is like, I need some money. I need a customer. Nobody's buying. Nothing's happening. And you're going to hit reality. You need a strategy now. So the first thing I do is accept acceptance. Like, you want to just accept where we're at. We're already in recession. There's a reason the government isn't telling anyone. They're going to delay this message. But the big guys are already making their moves right now. They have been since February. They want the average everyday person to be asleep. They benefit by you being on your sofa, just being entertained and not taking it seriously. They're threatened by 300 million people rising up, being pissed off about this redistribution happening. And being angry is not going to help you either. Protest does not make money, makes TV money. So first thing I do is I assess what are my assets and what are my liabilities. What does that mean? It means I look at everything that every decision I have made in my life, including people, draw a line down a piece of paper, assets, liabilities, and start looking at what was an asset that is now a liability. Is there any of these liabilities that could be assets? Is there something I bought that I need to get rid of? And I assess these from one to five. Five is you get rid of it for sure. Three is probably get rid of it. Four is yes, you should, but you're attached to it. Ones and twos you keep. So I just go through, write all this down, including people, and I start moving things from liabilities. I get, get rid of them and get down to my assets. Now I'm going to focus only on my assets. And now I'm going to look at, okay, what am I going to do in 2023 to get rid of this garbage and then to double down or even 10x my assets? This is a very difficult thing for people to confront. It's more than just a kind of a mindset. This is a mindset with books.

[Interviewer]

Got it?

[Grant Cardone]

Now, I've done that already. I've already. I did this back in March of last year. So I'm already starting to accumulate assets in order to go acquire more assets. Now I need a plan. Okay, how do I market my plan to my target? I have a target audience. You're part of my target audience. Okay. I accomplished this today with you. This is collaboration marketing, because I'm collaborating with you to get a message out. Anybody can do what I'm doing. This is not very complicated. You definitely don't need to go to college for it. In five days, you could be an expert. So five things I'm going to do. First, I'm going to fix my. Where. Where am I going? What am I doing in 2023? Assessing my liabilities and assets. Two, I'm going to market this idea to the public. I'm going to work out my branding and my marketing idea. We spend a whole day on doing this. Third thing is, how do I start monetizing this immediately? Not three months from now, not next weekend. I'm, I'm, I'm talking about monetized ideas today. No product creation. I don't need to finish a book to actually get money for a book. I don't actually have to have a product to actually get money. We'll show you exactly how to monetize. I monetize faster than any human being on planet Earth today, except maybe for Elon. A lot of what I do, by the way, I've learned watching Elon Musk. And the fourth thing I'll do is how do I scale that? How do I scale that message out so that it starts becoming something automatic and organized?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, Grant, you are like one of the biggest marketing gurus business influencers out right now. And since you touched on it just a little bit ago, I'd love to kind of understand your strategy for social. I had Alex Hermosi on and he mentioned that he actually did some private calls with you before he blew up. And he. He said that you taught him basically how to dominate on social media. And so I'd love to kind of learn maybe some of the things that you shared with Alex on that call in terms of how you were able to kind of just take over. I mean, you're everywhere.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, that the first thing is to be everywhere. It's not about six pieces of content every day. It's about make sure you are on multiple platforms every day. There's a word in the dictionary called omnipresence. Omnipresent means to be everywhere all at the same time. Anything that can accomplish everywhere all at the same time will be assigned the designation of powerful. Male, female, young, old, it doesn't matter. Anything that can be can accomplish. The concept of being everywhere all at one same time will be assigned altitude or power. Being in one place at one time. Okay, yeah, so you're in one place, but the problem is you're in one place. Okay. And the audience is kind of limited. So today with technology, this is so much easier than it was when I was growing up because it was almost impossible to be everywhere. Look, I could be on YouTube right now. I'm on YouTube right this second, dropping a live video. I got shorts going, longs going Instagram. We just posted on. We can do stories there as well. I can do a story with you right now. I'll be on Twitter. I'll be on Twitter Spaces at least twice today. We'll be on TikTok, Snapchat. I'll be on TikTok until the government kills it. And then I'm also going to do billboards, speaking gigs. I'm having a personal one on one meeting today with a group. I'll have a phone call. I'll go back to old school stuff and do phone calls today. And somebody's going to say, man, I saw you do this interview with so and so last week. They talked about you, me doing that thing with Alex. You're talking about it today. This is the concept of how many different Tentacles can I put into society. So wherever you go, you see me. Do I need to buy an ad, or could it just be organic? I'm willing to do both of those. So networking through marketing is a very easy concept once people have the proper size target. Like, if your target is just to keep doing what you've been doing, you will not do anything that I'm talking about right now. If you believe the middle class is the ultimate end goal, the holy grail of life, to save a little money, have a retirement account, pay your house off, and put your kids through college, you're not going to do anything that I'm talking about. But if you wanted to create massive amounts of wealth in a lifetime, which I'm interested in, by the way, we have 16 companies today worth about $3 billion, $4 billion worth of real estate. I've raised a hundred. I've raised $1 billion in cash over the Internet and sold a billion dollars worth of products and services, and nobody even knows me. So Andrew Tate, he's known by more people than I am, and he's in jail today. So I don't want to go to jail to get known. I need to figure out how to do something that I'm proud of for my daughters and my wife and myself and still get known. And I'll just tell everybody you won't do it if you have small goals. You will not do what Gary Vaynerchuk suggests if you have tiny goals. Because there's no reason. You don't need to do this if you just want to get by or you just want a million dollars. That's why millionaires will never give you this advice. Yeah, Elon's on every day. Elon's on. Warren, in his prime, was doing TV every single day. That was the social media of the day. Bill Gates, if people actually liked him, he would be extremely more powerful than he is, which is terrifying. But he can't hold an audience long enough. Wealthy people have known this for years. Networking, okay? They all hang with one another. They hang with people that can lift them because of their finances and their assets and their connections.

[Host]

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[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Host]

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[Interviewer]

A lot of people are scared about investing in social media, whether that's money or their time. What are your thoughts on that in terms of investing in yourself to grow your brand?

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, I think people are more scared than the money. Again, if you thought you were going to become a billionaire because of it, you'd probably do it. Yeah, there's some number at which a person would walk on glass. Now I know there's people out there say, oh, money doesn't motivate me. Trust me, there's some number. There's some number at which if you thought you could get it, you'd stop everything you're doing right now. And even if you didn't want the money, you want it for someone. There's someone in your life that you love. I mean, if none of this gets your attention, I can't imagine your why they would even follow young and profiting. Why follow here? Anybody? Your audience is going to be like, okay, there is a number.

[Host]

Now my audience likes money.

[Grant Cardone]

There's a number at which you would walk on glass if you knew you were going to get it, if you were guaranteed. That's why I think people don't market because they're not sure they're going to get it. They're quitting before they start. You're actually telling, you're telling the universe of attraction, if that exists. You're telling it, yeah, I want it, but I'm not really willing to do whatever it takes. And so the universe is not going to accommodate the universe. Knows I'm serious.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, dude.

[Grant Cardone]

My enemies, people that don't like me, they even say, privately, I don't like him. I don't like his style. I don't like the way he talks. I don't like the way he's raw, Bro, that guy will not stop until he gets what he wants. So. And most importantly, I know that, okay, it's not that other people need to know that. I need to know that so that when I go into an adventure, I'm not going to stop till I get through the woods. So the other thing I'll say is this, like, people should take a little test. Would you rather a million dollars? You're broke, you have nothing. Would you rather a million dollars or a million friends? And when I say a million friends, I'm talking about friends that will help you. What would you rather have? A million dollars in cash right now or one million friends?

[Interviewer]

Hands down, one million friends.

[Grant Cardone]

Dude, you want a million friends, right? Because even if you can only. They just hadn't done the math. 76% of the people will say they want the million dollars right now. I've done this poll to 35,000 people. 76% of the people, almost every time I do it, 74, 75, 76 will say, I want that million dollars, and I want it right now. The reason why most people want the million is they don't know how to convert. 5% of the audience. 5% of a million people is 50,000. If they give me a hundred bucks, that's 5 million. I 5x the million.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Grant Cardone]

If I could get them to do that every month, it's 60 million. So if you answer the question, I want my million dollars. It just cost you $59 million to take that money?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. People don't realize how lucrative being a social media influencer can be, because I'm one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn. That's where I grew my brand, and that's where everything spawned for me, like my podcast, my business, my clients. Now, no matter what happens, I call it my insurance policy. No matter what happens, I. I can get a job, get a client, make money so much more easily than if I wasn't an influencer. So I totally agree with you.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, it's amazing you've done that with LinkedIn. That's the one I didn't even mention earlier. Probably why I haven't done so well with it, but it's the one that we have not been the most successful with. Or Twitter, by the way. I was being Shadow banned on Twitter for the last five years, so I could never grow it. I didn't know I was being shadow banned until Elon took it over. And I don't think the people at LinkedIn like me either.

[Interviewer]

I can probably help you. I'm running almost all the influencer channels on LinkedIn. So I have a. I have a social media agency and I know all the hacks. So it's just any, like any social platform.

[Grant Cardone]

Yeah, they wouldn't make me an influencer. And it hurt my feelings. I'm like, how am I not an influencer?

[Interviewer]

I mean, you don't need to be in the program to go viral. It's like any other social media platform. There's an algorithm that you just need to know how it works and you need to know how you know.

[Grant Cardone]

I need your help. I need to hire you to help me with that.

[Interviewer]

All right, we'll figure it out. Perfect. Okay, so we're running out of time here. Cause I promised I would get you out five minutes before you had to leave. Let's talk about one of your key mottos before we close. And I want to talk about your morning routine as well. Okay, let's start with your morning routine. You were talking about goals before, so let's, I guess, stay in the flow of goals. I learned that you write your goals down every single morning. And I was really inspired by that. I want to do the same thing moving forward. So I'd love for you to talk about your morning routine because you've obviously, obviously figured something special out there.

[Grant Cardone]

So look, on a perfect day, I'm not the 4:30 in the morning guy, but I do like to beat the sun up. And I do like to get sleep too. Sleep is very valuable to me. Eight or nine hours is like, I'm not the guys. I did four hours was not good for me. I create a lot better results for myself and for my customers and my expansion. When I have sleep, but I'd like to beat the sun up. There's something about that morning, the sun breaking in the morning. There's no science behind this, but it just makes me feel like shit. I got a little head start. I got to beat Big boy coming up. There's some optimism that comes with me beating the sun up. And then the second thing I do is I keep a legal path with me all the time. I'll have one of these old fashioned legal paths. Like I go through hundreds of them in a year and I just write my goals down. It takes me. I can literally do it right now in 45 seconds. These are short, abbreviated.50 billion in real estate, happy wife and kids. Like, it could be just hw plus ks, $150 million in donations. Like, whatever. 150m donations. Like, I'm just doing it extremely fast and there's no mechanics ever. I do that in the morning and I do that again before I go to sleep at night. And there's one other time I do it. This is magic. It's been magic for me for 30 years. No clue how I'm going to accomplish it. Don't know the right people. I don't have the engineering, I don't have the money, nothing. And I just write it down like I'm going to do it. The third time I do it each day is when I have a failure or loss or a disappointment. So probably two times or three times a week when I'm disappointed, I'm disappointed at least 150 times a year, by the way, every year still today, like, oh, God dang, I didn't get what I wanted, you know? Then I'm going to go back and write down where I'm going. Because the disappointment is not the target. Your audience is going to find that you could spend two and three and four days in a disappointment only to find out, that's not where I'm going. That was not the goal. The goal was not to be disappointed. The goal was to move through disappointment until you could get whatever your thing is or things. Then I'm going to go to the office and the office is going to tell me what to do every day. You guys that are CEOs and bosses, you, yeah, good try. Ain't no such thing. You're always working for somebody else. You can get your little T shirt. You get your little shirt, boss girl, or whatever you want to get, but there's no such thing. You don't want to be a boss. You want to be an investor. I don't want to be the CEO. I want to be the investor. I want to invest in things. I want to invest time in people. I want to invest in projects and I want to return. I don't want to be the boss. I don't care who the boss is. So I'd rather somebody else be the boss. And I'm the investor. Let them be the boss. One example, real quick. The guy that runs Coca Cola last year made $52 million. Warren Buffett, the investor, made $508 million.

[Host]

Wow.

[Grant Cardone]

Be an investor, not a boss. I eat three or four times a day, you know, I get a workout in every day. Every day I try to get a workout in, I'll do that 320 days this year. I'll miss 30 days maybe and don't like to miss those. And the rest of the time I, I do what's called 365 GC.

[Interviewer]

What's that?

[Grant Cardone]

That's I get to be me 365 days of the year.

[Interviewer]

You're the best, Grant. I love your energy. I swear, I feel like a lot of people, like you mentioned before, like, there's a lot of hate. Like you're so loved by so many people, but I feel like you get so much like unnecessary hate and like you're just such a good person who's putting out such good work in the world. And I just want to thank, thank you for that and just let you know that like, the more that I learn about you, the more that I'm like, why do people even have. Like, I don't see how anybody could find anything negative about you, to be honest.

[Grant Cardone]

Well, thank you. I mean, I could see why people have found many, many things negative because the funny thing about the haters is by the time they said it, like, I knew it was wrong two weeks ago when I did it. I've had to apologize to people so many times in my life. I just got a shirt that said I apologize in advance. Look, the truth is I always say it the wrong way. I don't sugarcoat it. I destroy the English language. I've had my first book seller be sold, was the best selling book, sold hundreds of thousands of copies with probably 300 grammar errors. Like, I can't even say grammar right. I don't say roof right. I don't say Sunday right. I don't like. But so what? Like, I know I've never tried to be perfect. I've never ever presented to anyone. I'm anything other than just me. And when you get loud, people are going to be like, that's too much. Including family members. But I would rather the hate than no attention at all. Yeah, when people ignore you. Let's say there's somebody who needs help in your life and they're ignoring the help you offer. That is the worst feeling there is in the world. I'd rather be. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I don't need to fix this. I'd rather my, my family member do that because I'm insisting on helping them than them ignoring that I'm helping them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I love that. Well, I think you're doing amazing work in the world. So to close out this interview, Grant, can you tell us one actionable thing our young and profits can do to become more profiting tomorrow?

[Grant Cardone]

Tomorrow, what you would need to do is you need to write down your goals for 20, 23, whatever they are, and then when you're done, go back and multiply them all by 10. The number 10.

[Interviewer]

And what is your secret to profiting in life? That's the last question we ask all of our guests.

[Grant Cardone]

You, look, understand that everything's an investment. Everything you do is an investment. Every word. Everywhere I go, everything I do, I'm trying to create some effect, some positive effect in the world. Even when I trash on people. The Andrew Tate thing, I mean, the whole world is supporting this guy right now. Oh, he's the best. He's the best. Good. Would you want your daughters hanging out with him? Let's do that Poll the same people that said he deserves to be let out and he's doing good things. Good. You want your daughters hanging out with him. How about your sons? You know, if I had a son, I don't know if he's going to be Alpha boy. Not everybody's alpha. Not everybody's meant to be driving, you know, Beast Force. That's not the only way people can be successful on this planet. So, look, I'm always trying to create an effect, man. Create effects. Everything you do is an effect. You could be creating a lazy effect. You could create a freaking dynamic effect. You could make difference for the good, or you can make difference for the bad. But I would just encourage everybody to go make a difference. And if you screw it up and you make a difference for the negative, then go clean that up and make a difference for the good.

[Interviewer]

Gold right there. Grant, thank you so much for your time today. It was such a, such a pleasure.

[Host]

Really, really enjoyed this conversation.