Why Saving Your Money Will Make You Broke | Grant Cardone

10x has made my life better. 2x is difficult. How do you 2x? Like, how, how do you actually double something? The 10x concept is this: I'm here and I'm gonna go up here, and it's gonna be so impossible that it causes you to think different. Mm-hmm. It's not that you achieve this, it causes you to think different, strategize different, look at different assets, look at different, uh, mechanisms, change your way of thinking. See, most people try to do this. They're trying to go from something from here to something logical. And the problem with that is only logic can be used in this evaluation. But when you start thinking about 10 times your income, let's say, let's say you're making £100,000 a year and you're like, and £100,000 is hard. And you're like, man, I just hit the £100,000 level. And you're like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing £100,000. So what the individual does now is he's like, man, if I could just do that again next year. Okay. And he's trying to maintain what he did. There's no creating that. There's no new solutions. There's no new ideas in that. So you start thinking about 10x, it makes you, it forces you to think different than what got you right here. Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I watch these videos every day because I need them for motivation. Being around successful entrepreneurs every morning helps me believe that I can do great things too. It's like your morning coffee, but for your goals, kickstarting your day with a blast of positivity. So here is a challenge for you. Try watching one video every morning for the next 30 days, and let's find out together if they help you do great things too. If you're in, leave a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can celebrate with you. So today, let's get some incredible motivation from the one and only Grant Cardone. Enjoy. We're indoctrinated to believe all this bullshit. Save your money, pay off your house, get rid of your debt, plan for retirement. All that benefits Wall Street. It doesn't benefit you and your family. Yeah. We're not encouraged to take risk. Imagine if America was encouraged in school at 8th grade, take risk. Don't save money, invest it, okay? Buy real estate that appreciates over a 10-year period. Stay broke, do not keep money at your bank. Do not fund future emergencies, they may never happen. But what do they tell us? You need 90-day reserve for your personal life, 90-day reserve for your wife, 90-day reserve for your parents, 90-day reserve for your business. And then people start saving money, planning on emergencies that typically never happen. And who benefits? The banks benefit. First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, okay? Signature Bank. They're all in trouble today. What I would tell people to do is stay broke. That's what I do. So I had $50 million worth of debt then in 2012 and a couple million dollars worth of assets. Today, I have $2 billion worth of debt and $4 billion worth of assets. Because I quit saving money and I quit playing the retirement game and quit playing the real estate or the stock market game and I quit gambling. I started trusting, build my business. Number one, first of all, take care of me. Two, take care of my businesses. You know, we had, I think I had 6 employees in 2012. I have closer to 650 today. Saving money is stupid. It is like, it is ridiculous. The only thing that ever happens to people that save money is they end up losing it, and it ends up getting lost, ends up getting stolen, it ends up getting burnt, or it ends up going down in value. But it's never going to get bigger. You save money at the bank, it ain't getting bigger, period. Who does that benefit? We've all been told save your money, save your money, save your money. Who does that really benefit? I remember I read the blackjack book, How to Play Blackjack, right? I knew that book. I knew every card to hit. And then I realized everybody at the table had read the same damn book. Everybody's staying on 16s. Then this Chinese dude comes in and this freaking guy's banging 16s against 9s, like, or 16s against 7s, 6s and 5s and 4s. Everything he shouldn't do, he's doing. He's splitting 10s. And I'm like, and he's making all the money. He was the only one not playing by the book. And so I just think that there's— everybody should buy a house. Maybe not. Maybe not. Okay. Because the wealthy guys never talk about the house they bought. Warren Buffett owns one house. So I got a lot of those little things that, you know, that, that, that I have just observed in my own life that are just, they're just not true, man, period. I believe I'm a spiritual being, not a human being. The spiritual being would have tremendous potential, unbelievable potential. It would be the light on the candle, not the candle. The body would be the candle, okay? And the spiritual being would be the flame. I'm the flame. And I wanna see how hot can I burn, okay? How far can I go? How much light can I bring the world? How much positive truth message can I bring this planet? How much more can I do? And I think the problem is people are settling out with just enough. Pay the bills, take care of my family, get my little box, get my little house, put my little welcome mat on the front, put the little gate around the yard. We're all going to be happy. I don't want the box. I don't want one location. I don't need the welcome mat. I want to know the world. I want to travel the world. I want to do more. I want to be in more places. I want to have friends in every country. I want to inspire people in every language. And I want other people to see and they can do the same thing, you know? And maybe, maybe, maybe at the end of all this, I just become everybody's uncle that I never had. Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight our favorite lessons from the video that will inspire you to remember what you learned today and actually apply them. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there. They asked me a question today that I want to talk about. They're like, Dude, how are you? Everybody we talk to talks about being nice to their people, taking care of their people, doing this for their people. Why is it the answer you have is different? I said, what do you mean? Well, it seems like you're hard on people. I said, no, man, I'm not being hard on people. I'm just trying to take care of my environment. I'm not trying to, I don't practice being a D-I-K. I'm trying to take care of my environment. My decisions are about my environment, right? So little Grant, little Grant's this little phone right here. This is little Grant. He got issues. He needs to clean up his issues. Grant's gotta get hard on Grant. Okay, you guys out there, y'all so soft on your people, it's 'cause you're soft on yourself. Right? That's why you end up with no money. You end up with people betraying you. You end up with people taking advantage of you. Even your kids don't appreciate you. You got to be hard on yourself. I'm hard on everybody around me, but mostly I'm hard on me. Can you listen to the excuses of your employees and salespeople? I have 100 salespeople in one city, and I'm just losing my patience. Yeah. They would never talk around me with it. I mean, the environment wouldn't allow it. No. There's no way anybody would be like, I'm late because of the traffic. They know they're going to get punched in the face. I didn't make appointments because— There's no way. We have a culture. We have 92 employees or something in our office. Well, last time we spoke, You had 60. Yeah, no, we could use 200. We could use 200 right now. So we— I mean, I don't think we would ever hear that, would we, Jared? I didn't hit my numbers because— yeah, I mean, it's just not tolerated. Like, it's not— we don't even talk about don't use excuses. It's just the environment, the culture, because they don't hear me making excuses. So like, if I miss a deal— we do a lot of real estate deals— so if I miss a deal, I'm always going to— what did I do wrong in that deal? First response for me is, what did I do wrong in that deal that they didn't pick me? What did I do wrong that I didn't get that deal? What did we do wrong that we didn't hit our number there? Like, I'm never saying— it's not blaming somebody. Well, I don't have control when I blame. I want control. So Even if they are to blame, right? I want control. I'm not going to assign you blame. If you hit my car, I'm going to, I'm going to say, what did I do wrong? What did I do that allowed you to hit my car? I did something. So even in the most dumb, dumb, like I ended up in a lawsuit where a guy basically found something, sued me for it. I didn't do anything to this dude. My immediate response was, what did I do to create that frivolous situation? He was a criminal, total criminal, sued me for $60 million. He just sued me because he thought he could get something from it. But I did something. And the reason I want to assume that— What? The cause, I want to be the cause point, is because if I assume that position, even though I didn't really do anything, then I can control what I did. I can't control what another person does, but I can spend time and energy controlling what I do. So when— if me and Elena get in an argument, you know, when I'm rational, I'm like, hey, what did I do? Did I not give her— pay enough attention? What did I do to cause that situation? Did I respond wrong in the wrong fashion? And I screw up all the time. Study two multi-millionaires. Do not take heed to this: do not study a millionaire. Once a person becomes becomes a millionaire, the first thing they do, unfortunately, is go into conservation to protect the million. Study multi-millionaires. Study people that have consistently developed and proven, because of tens or twenties or thirties or hundreds of millions of dollars that they've accumulated, that they have the right practice, the right discipline, and they're still expanding. You don't need 22 mentors. Study 2 people deep that have gotten it right. Study 2 people so deep rather than 20 people shallow. I promise you it'll make a difference. If you get a chance to spend 3 days with anybody that's accumulated $30, $40, $50, $100 million, I'll promise you it's a game changer. So put that on your bucket list. I'm going to spend 3 days with a multimillionaire in an environment where I can learn from them. It will be a game changer for you. And also limit your study to 2 people, not 22 people. That will create you from having conflictive data and content and information. What's your best advice to anybody when it comes to scaling a business? What's your secret to scaling? Dude, you gotta scale. There's, there's not an option. But I, I hear other people say, oh, not everybody should scale. If you don't scale, you're not gonna, you have nothing. You don't have a business. You're, you're basically somebody else's bitch, probably even your own. Like there's no such thing as being the boss. Just so you guys know, the smaller the company is, the more bitch you are really. The more, the more controlled you are, the more, you know, if you have 3 employees, they're gonna push you around. Even though you're writing the checks, if you have 30 customers, they're going to push you around because you don't have it. You can't lose customers. You got to scale so that you can lose customers. You have to scale your employees so that you can, like, you're never dependent upon an employee. You know, if you have 3 employees, you got a problem. You got 30 employees, you still have a problem. If you got 3,000 employees, you don't have a problem, right? You don't have a problem. You don't have 3,000 problems. You have a manager or 2 that has 3,000 problems. But you don't have them anymore. That's why you gotta scale. So my first business couldn't scale. It just, it was in a very tiny vertical and I was, I was the authority in the vertical. I was the king of the vertical. So it appeared on paper that I was doing good compared to how my dad did or my grandparents. I was doing phenomenal, but it was not scalable. I couldn't sell it, couldn't exit it. I had to do everything. And now we're in 10X Health. That thing's scalable to the hundreds of billions of dollars. We're in real estate. I've raised $1 billion in cash there. That building, that business got $5 billion worth of real estate. That could go to $10 billion, $50 billion. It could go to $100 billion. Like, there's no limit. As much as I can imagine, as long as I can add good people, it can, it can grow and scale there. Number 1, dude, I would not hang around any losers. No deadbeats, no bad credit people, nobody that can't take care of their car, people with drug and alcohol problems, leave them all alone, okay? They can't get through their classes, they want to skip, uh, they want to add time to everything, they're creating problems in their life for their parents, for their brothers and sisters. Leave them alone. Follow people that are connected. Number 2 thing I would do different: I would go follow the connected people. Sometimes they're the most boring. That's who I'd go follow, man, where their parents are in good shape, they belong to country clubs. I know, I know it's not comfortable for you guys if you came up the way I did. But I would go hang with those people, get connected with them, no matter how uncomfortable. Third thing, I would not follow my talents or my passion. I would follow the money. I would follow opportunity. Okay? I would go look at things that could actually pay off for me when I'm 30 and 40, not do the things that feel good when I'm 24. I would, I would make a decision to get super rich. And now you guys hear me talk about money all the time. Man, you can't— you can. There's not one of you that's seeing this right now that couldn't get super, super, super, super Bezos, Elon Musk rich if you focused on it. You could, okay? You just have to focus on it, okay? If you can make your health better— if I come in this gym every day and work out, I'm going to get in better shape. There's no person that does not come into this gym. I mean, maybe a quarter of 1% of all people on the planet have some kind of physical issue that if they came in here, nothing would change. Otherwise, if I come in here, I don't care how old you are, 65, 25, 15, 5 years old, you come in the gym every day, you're gonna rip out at some point. Okay, more work you put in, the more you're gonna get out of it. Same thing with money. If you wanted to get super rich and you weren't brought up the way I was to just settle, compromise, be comfortable, be grateful— I'm grateful for what I have. Dude, if I would have gone for super rich when I was 20, I would be, I would be mega, mega rich today. How long did it take for you to find someone that had the same point of view on obsession with success as you did? Because it seems like all the authority figures in your life were just like okay with, with like where they were or what they were doing. The environment I was in, the automotive environment, was filled with just a lot of very average people that were satisfied with just having fun on the weekends. Like, if you could just— Kenny, I remember Kenny. If Kenny could just get drunk on the weekend, he was fine. Just make your 70 grand a year, 60 grand a year. If Jose could keep making his 50, 60, 70 grand, and he's the top salesman in the store, he'd been there 15 years or something, and he could get his award, he was happy. Now, prior to that though, I had always been looking for a mentor. I had always been searching. So when my dad died, that guy that I looked up to, I started looking for other guys like that, right? TV's available, right? There's a lot of mentorship going on in TV. Okay, I'm still— I start watching all the gangster movies. Oh wow, there's power, right? There's success. He gets the girl. I'll watch the James Bond movie. So I'm starting to pull in these ideas of role models or success or what I'm going to be because I'm trying to formulate my life. It doesn't matter what— if you're 10, 12, 15, 18, you don't have a choice. You're making— you're trying to become someone who you are, right? Right. So I'm pulling in all this data, half of which is like bad stuff, criminals, right? I forget that they die at the end of the story, you know? Exactly. Um, so those are starting to become my role models. And then when you get into the educational system, schools, high school, college, dude, it's boring. The teachers are boring, right? Like, I don't want to be that guy. And, and so I'm searching for or who can I be? You know, and there's not a lot of— years ago, there's not a lot of role models out there. I want to share 3 things with you that I truly believe in this manifestation thing. Now, I'm not that voodoo, law of attraction guy, but I can tell you images, pictures, locking in on something, looking at other possibilities, getting examples of other people doing things, So, so valuable. I mean, it's our first way to learn is to mimic, is to see as babies are, you know, we see our parents playing with their phones. Guess what? We want to pick up the phone and play with the phone. We see our parents typing on a computer. The kids want to do what? They want to come type on your computer. They don't even know how to use it yet. It's mimicking. It's basically taking something else somebody has done. Boom, poof. Boat. I want boat. Okay, it's the way we learn to cook. You watch your mom cook eggs or fry bacon or make oatmeal, and she's got her own recipe. Guess what? That's the recipe you use. So we end up with all these little quirks and weird habits. Uh, back in the '50s, you know, all our parents smoked. So what happened when the kids grew up? They picked up smoking and alcohol, etc. So the first thing to do is that on the manifestation thing is you got to have some pictures. right? If you don't have those pictures, you know, you don't— you have poverty around you, you have struggle. You have— like, I grew up in struggle. I didn't grow up in poverty. I grew up in a struggle, even though we had enough, okay? It was always this idea that there wasn't enough, even when there was enough. It was crazy. Even when we had enough, dude, it was always this idea that we didn't have enough. And I keep moving around on this because I want you guys to See these views, they're just ridiculous. Beautiful little town of Positano that is filled with magic. Okay. And for those of you who've never traveled here or been over this part of the world, man, come over here, figure out, literally sit down. This is one of the things I do. First, I take a lock in on a picture, bang, yacht. Second thing I'm gonna do is try to get as close to that thing on the manifestation thing, not the law of attraction, but the law of action. Okay, first I see it, then I'm gonna try to get— I'm gonna close the distance. Now, it took me 20 years to get on this beast, okay? But what I can do in between then, and I hope it doesn't take you 20 years, is I'd start collecting pictures and images, okay, until I could actually put my feet on them. Get as close as you can between you and the target. So if it's a boat, a plane, a business, business ownership, an RV, a car, whatever it is, okay, what you want to do is take pictures of it, collect images of it, okay, maybe reinforce those by looking at them often, thinking about them, just playing with it. Don't even worry about how to get it, what it's going to take to get it. And the second thing is to start like closing the distance between you and that image. Could be pictures, could be images, could be research, it could be you going to the car dealership but actually sitting in the car, you know, getting an appointment to go see the house. I remember— this is insane to think this— but I remember when I did not think that I could get somebody to show me a house. I remember when I was like— I was— Elena and I were in LA. I wanted to see this house that was for sale, and I was concerned that they wouldn't think enough of me to even let me see the house. So if you guys have ever struggled with all this limited thinking, okay, but later I bought the house. I literally bought the house, ended up making on that house, I made like $12 million or something. And I did not think when I went into the house that I was gonna be able to even see the house. So if you suffer from a self-esteem issue, our sense of self. Or I was telling my daughter the other day, I said, man, I've had self-esteem issues my whole life, not thinking I was good enough, not thinking I could get there. I'm still doing it today. You know, I started thinking about, you know, last time I was here 20 years ago, one day I'm gonna be on a boat here in Positano. Now I'm thinking one day I'm gonna be here on my own boat. What do you want to be on? Okay, so number one, okay, take a picture of 2, close the distance. And 3, at some point you're going to have to start doing the math. And the math for me is this: what would it take to buy this? What is the resources, the beans, the coins, the dollars, the energy, the output, the number of people I need to make contact with? And if I can't figure that out, just figure this simple math out. How did he do it? How did he do it? How did he do it? What business are they in? What did they do to do this? How did they get it? And maybe it's just a charter, okay? So nothing wrong with that, okay? Hope you guys do well. Hope you figure out some things that really get rich in your mind about your manifestations, about what you want, what your purpose is, what's driving you to fuel you so you can, and you and your family can have a great life. If you ever get to Positano, okay, let me know. When I woke up, what I did was I grabbed a legal pad next to me and I just simply start writing in present tense or in past tense, but not in future, things that I'd like to accomplish in my lifetime. These are really short notes, like, hey, let's say, let's say the yacht's What's on my mind? I'd like to own a yacht one day, right? Or maybe you don't want to own one, you want to charter one, whatever. I would just write down, hey, 300-foot yacht. I don't really have to get specific at that time about whether I'm going to own it or charter it. It doesn't really matter to me. You could be specific, but I'm just trying to bring my mind to some attention. This is an effort, almost effortless process, except except for finding the notepad and writing, this is— this does not require thinking or how-to or mechanics, okay? So like, I might write, okay, I want 100,000 units. We're at 10,000, 12,000 units right now in our real estate portfolio. And I'm like, I want to get to 100,000 units. So I'm just going to write 100,000+ units. Uh, what else did I write this morning? See, every day I'm doing— I'm doing it really, I'm doing it 3 times a day. I'm doing it morning and I'm doing it at night, and the third time I'll do it is anytime I have a fail, an upset, a setback, some rejection, I didn't get what I wanted, then I, I will write down and go, right, hey man, yacht, I want a home in Italy. I remember I used to write, uh, that I wanted a house. If you go back and read the 10X Rule, you'll hear one of my notes in there was to own a home in Florence, Italy. Showed up for a while. Okay, motorcycle showed up for a while, helicopter showed up for a while. But some of this just comes and goes in the morning when I'm writing down my goals. It's almost a form of active meditation, okay, where I'm just like literally scanning my mind for ideas of things I'd like to accomplish in my lifetime. Whatever pops up, I write it down. This whole exercise maybe lasts 3 minutes, 4 minutes long. I leave the writings, scribblings if you will, in the notepad more often than not. And when the notepad is full, I just simply throw it in the trash. So it's not like I'm doing anything that requires any effort here. Okay, it's quick, it's fast, it's easy. I want to great marriage. Okay, so boom, I'm on great health. I don't know what that looks like exactly. What does great health look like to everybody? I don't know. As you grow older, it means different things. And then it opens me up. Oh, I want my 10X Health System. I want to have a million clients on 10X Health System. On Cardone Capital, 100,000 units. And I want— what do I have, 14,000 investors right now? I want 140,000 investors. Cardone Equity Group. Okay. I want to raise $1 billion for Cardone Equity Group and democratize alternative investments for everyday people so they're not just freaking taken advantage of or monopolized by Goldman and JP and Carlyle and the KKR. So we're all these big giant funds. See what's happening? I'm doing it right now, right? I'm just not writing it down. Now, the significance writing it down is it kind of just gets the juices flowing. And I personally find it to be better when I'm doing it with ink than if I'm doing it on a notepad on my phone. What are like some daily habits, daily routines that you have that you've been able to use that have compounded over the last 15, 20 years? Well, the most important one is waking up, man, and making sure you wake up. Ideally wake up when you say you're going to wake up because that's where it all goes downhill from there. Make a decision when you're going to go to sleep at night and when you're going to wake up. I was talking to Tom Brady about this. He controls what time he goes to bed. So that's when he controls when he puts himself down. And, you know, if I, if I'd have known that when I was a kid, 17, 18 years old, I, I wouldn't have gotten 90% of the trouble that I got in. I would've never gotten in trouble because nothing bad, everything bad happens happened to me after 9 o'clock. Right. Like almost nothing bad happened to me during the day. Right. And so one, you know, pick a time to go to sleep. Boom. Go down, get a good night of rest. Yep. Rest is really important. I was watching something Elon was talking about the other day about it. He's got to get 6 hours less than that. He's getting less done during the day. And I know a lot of people out there are pitching 4:00 AM in the mornings. And that might be good for training, physical training or hunting or some other stuff that you're doing. But in business, man, I need to be clear. I need rest. As you age, you're going to need more rest. I had a shoulder injury recently. I'm actually trying to get more sleep right now, not less, to recuperate from that. Sometimes it takes longer as you get older. So one, I wake up in the morning, dude, rested. Two, the second thing I want to do is I want to go get a workout in. Third thing, I want to get my recovery time in. Like, I'm, again, I had to add some things. As things change, as life changes, you add stuff. So then I come to the office and, you know, somebody tells me what to do for the rest of the day. There's one thing that I do do in there that's a ritual that every morning I get a, I think I got it. Yeah. Yeah. I've looked at this thing so often now that every morning I get a report of where our cash accounts are. Every cash account that we have. KPIs. Say again? You got those KPIs, the key performance indicators coming in, the cash accounts. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that, that's more of just a, like, more than a KPI. It's in this case, it's, I want to see where the dough is now. And there might be, I've been doing this for a long time now. I remember doing this when the account was zero. And my goal, by the way, is to get the account to zero. So I'm going to look at my cash accounts and I'm going to look at assets that I'm moving cash into. Because what I'm trying to do is accumulate assets, not cash. Figure out the problems you're having, which needs to be another list right here. Your story comes from your problems. Okay? So look, let's just take this. Who am I? Oh, I'm Grant Cardone. Okay, that's my name. Well, you can only— yo, okay, Grant Cardone. Okay? Now, later what happened because I started telling my story enough, I became somebody other than Grant Cardone. Okay? Over the last 12 years, it's only been 12 years since I started on the multimedia. Did I say the multimedia? See? Okay. Then I became Mr. 10X, and then I became Uncle G, and then I became Master G. These are nicknames that people gave me. Okay? These are stories that you get to tell. How did I become Uncle G? Because one day I told a story about how I was 15 and 16 and 17 years old and I wanted an uncle to help me and they never came. And that I told my mom one day, I'm gonna be an uncle to others. I'm gonna be the uncle to others that my uncle wasn't to me. And somebody started calling me Uncle G, right? See, again, it comes outta stories. Who are you? Who are you? Okay. I'm gonna give you this assignment to sit down and start looking at. Who are you? Oh, I'm a college grad. I graduated from college. Okay, who else? Oh, I'm a father. So what I want you to do is everything— I'm a father, I'm a husband. Okay, this list is going to get real big. I'm a business owner. Anything to do with business owner. Oh, I survived 2008. Huge part of my story, by the way. I saw I resolved 2008 with no bankruptcy. All my friends went bankrupt. That's part of my story. This is going to be the content. Oh, I'm a real estate investor. Okay. Now I'm a cat daddy, which by the way, I'm not proud of. I'd much rather be Tiger King. Okay. Okay. So I'm a real estate investor. All right. Oh, I have $1.8 billion worth of real estate. A lot of you out there, you're like, Oh, he's always bragging. He's always bragging. Look, if you're not telling your story, if you're not bragging about your story, you're not telling your story. Jay-Z is going to tell people until people finally say it about him that he's the Jay-Z. Okay? One day you're going to be able to walk in a room and you will not have to introduce yourself. The whole room will get sucked out. The energy in the room will get sucked out because everybody will do this. Oh, he's here. Look who's here. That's what this is about. It's about marketing yourself until the world knows you to the point you don't have to introduce yourself. When I went to high school and in business classes, my first business classes, and then went on in college to spend 5 years in college studying accounting and getting a master's in business. Not a master's in business, business. I didn't get a master's in business. I got a business degree. I was a master at nothing. I remember getting out of college with an accounting degree and could not balance a checkbook. Didn't know the difference between an asset and a liability. Didn't know how to run a profit and loss statement. Didn't know how to control the top 1 inch of a profit and loss statement. And if you'd asked me what was more important, the most important part of a profit and loss statement, I wouldn't have known what to to tell you. I knew nothing. But I did know one thing. I wanted to learn about money. And because I was so scared about money because of the way I was brought up, the mentality around my house was because we didn't know how to get new money, we had to save, save the money that we had, save for a rainy day. You know, a penny, a penny saved is a penny earned, and money doesn't grow on trees. But I didn't know where it grew. I didn't know how it was manufactured, how created? How can I get some? Why would I save it? How do I earn it? How long does it take to multiply? I knew nothing about money. And so for the past 25 years, maybe 30 years now, I've been studying money. How do I get it? How do I keep it? Now what do I do with it? I was 33 years old when a man told me, he said to me, hey Grant, you know how to make money now. You've learned how to make money. You're putting money together. Your business is working. Now you have to learn how to get money to make money. And that's the first time I'd ever heard that. How do I get money to make money? And I went out and started reading books on money. I read a book about other people's money. I read books about how banks make money. I read books about how people made money. I read about the Rockefellers and the Morgans and the Vanderbilts and all these people that had created these massive massive wealths, um, before there was an Instagram or an internet and, and before you had access to Elon Musk and Bill Gates and Melinda Gates and the Oprahs of the world and people becoming billionaires and the Jay-Zs. And today, like today we look around you, like people are being made into billionaires. Mark Zuckerberg at 26 years old is a billionaire. Like none of this was available when I was growing up. Now, now the potential, the possibility for somebody to be extremely wealthy. I think last week, last week, Elon Musk's net worth went up $8 billion. We have two, two guys running for president. Donald Trump, a billionaire. Michael Bloomberg, is worth $69 billion. He could burn— he could burn Donald Trump's money up. He probably will, by the way. He'll burn Donald Trump's net worth running for the presidential office. Spent $300 million in the first 3 weeks of his run for presidency. He spent more money— Mike Bloomberg has spent more money than than all the Democrats combined and Donald Trump's campaign to date in 3 weeks. It's freaking unbelievable. And it moved him from 0 points in the polls to 15 points as of this morning. Money works, folks, okay? And what you don't know about it will work against you, and what you do know about it can work against you. And I know it worked against me. I didn't have money. I spent the first— once I learned how to make I literally did not know what to do with it. So I started collecting data about money and I started learning from the places where I was comfortable, which is your surroundings, your environment. And in my surroundings, you know, I was told, don't waste money. Don't play with money. Save money. Put money in the bank. Get some money, bring it to the bank. Get some money, bring it to the bank. Get some money, bring it to the bank. Go out and work, get some money, bring it to the bank. And that's what I kept doing. I'm like, well, Wait a minute, dude. I'm feeding the bank. And I was reading this book one day and learned that when I give the money to the bank, when I take the money and put it in the bank, they take the money, convert it to digits. I did not know this. And then they pushed it out into the system and lent it 9 and 10 times. I was like, whoa, they don't even keep the money I give them. When to buy something stupid, because there's going to come a time in life. Jay-Z just bought a $200 million house. Dude, he can do whatever he wants to do. He's worth $2.5 billion. Okay, I don't know that it was the smartest thing to do, but he can do it. When do you do something stupid? You just got a contract for, uh, uh, for $50 million as an athlete. When do you do something stupid? It ain't now. I guarantee you, just because you got a score doesn't mean you should go spend start buying houses and cars and bullshit. Okay, this is when you should do something stupid. Okay, how stupid can you go? I'm going to play a little song for you here that my team created for you. Okay, number one, number one, number one most important thing: when you do something stupid, you need to be able to pay cash. Not that you will pay cash, but you need to be in a position to pay cash for that thing. If you cannot pay cash, Let's say I just got a contract for $12 million as an athlete. I got a movie deal. I got advanced $4 million, okay? And they're going to pay me the other $4 million when the movie finishes. I'm a sales guy and I just got a big commission for $200 grand, okay? I, I sold my company, I picked up $10 million, whatever. You got a score, okay? You would think, oh, I could do something stupid right now. You don't have any cash yet. So if you don't have your cash yet, you ain't do it yet because you ain't got cash. If you can't pay for it in cash, don't do it. Doesn't mean you will pay for it in cash, it means you have enough cash to do it. Number 2, you need to have twice the amount of cash, or you need to buy 2 of them, be able to buy 2 of them. Not that you would, but this will give you assurance that you're not keeping things too tight. So let's say I find a watch I want to buy. The watch is $50 grand. I have to say I can pay cash for the watch, and I need to be able to buy 2 of them in order to say it's cool to do it. That will tell me that I'm ready. The third thing, the third filter here, is this money— these number 1 and number 2, cash and twice— has to come from passive income. This is going to eliminate probably 10x, okay, the purchases that you make, because Most people simply do not have earned passive income. So if you're a ball player and they said, hey, we're going to give you $50 million, you don't start buying houses. My mama wants a house. Good. Can you buy her two of them? The house is $2 million. You got a $50 million contract. That's earned income. Watch this. My mama wants a house. That's $2 million. Okay, can you buy two of them? Yeah, you can. Check, check. But here's the deal. It's not passive income. You're not ready to do this yet. Oh, this is hard, man. Why are you showing me this, Grant? Why are you waking me up to this? Because I'm trying to tell you how to create wealth and never be broke. I want to share with you the 5 benefits of real estate over stocks and bonds. Number 1, and you cannot deny this, tangible asset. Real estate is a physical, very often very difficult to replace asset. It offers the sense of security and the potential for appreciation over long periods of time. Unlike stocks, pieces of paper, and bonds, or even cash savings accounts or money markets, uh, real estate is a tangible asset as opposed to intangible. Real estate investments give you, the investor, direct control over a real asset. Number 2, cash flow. There is no asset— gold, silver, Bitcoin, Bonds or stocks that cash flow like real estate. Real estate investments typically provide a consistent and even monthly passive income for the passive investor from rental income, which offers you a regular source of cash flow for your investors. And by the way, cash flow is what your family depends on. Okay, whether you're working or not, you need cash flow. Number 3, diversification. Real estate investments offer a great diversification from traditional stocks and bonds and potentially reduces somebody's overall portfolio risk. In fact, I'm so, uh, bullish on real estate going forward that I actually have more of my diversification across my asset classes because of the number of doors and different properties that I own in different states. That's right, you can actually take real estate and have diversification because of location and scale. Number 4, inflation hedge. For thousands Over the years, real estate has proved to be a great hedge against inflation that we're in right now, meaning real estate generally maintains or increases their value over time beyond the cost of living rises. Number 5, and the mack daddy, okay, now I wouldn't do this without the other 4, but tax benefits of real estate are like none other. There is no comparison anywhere in the world. Real estate offers the best tax advantages, deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, uh, rehab, CapEx, like it is endless, including accelerated depreciation, which has literally wiped out in many years my income tax bill to zero. Look, it's worth noting that every investment, as you know, has some kind of risk. But if you want the biscuit, you got to risk it. And the best risk for me is to never lose my money, to get cash flow, to get appreciation, to get leverage, and to get the tax write-offs. And ain't but one thing that sounds like that, and it's called real estate. Get invested today. As they say, don't wait and invest in real estate, buy real estate and wait. In the beginning, if you just go back to February, March this year, I would tell my whole team, I said, guys, we're getting ready to go into one of the hardest, deepest, ugliest, nastiest recessions I've ever experienced in my 60 years. And everybody's like, oh my God, here he goes. You know, I'm like, I'm telling you, I'm not— and I'm not a silver, gold, Bitcoin's going to go away, world's going to end. The world never ends. Yeah, this is the most painful thing, you know, that I've learned in 4 recessions is that you always survive them. But, but that's the bad news, you know, you, you'll get through it, you will get through it, you— but most people unfortunately are going to be a statistic because of it. Uh, and, and the big problem is most people move too slowly to accept what's going on. So in the beginning, they lied to us. They've redefined the word recession. They also did that one vaccine. Uh, they're going to redefine what the economy is by the time— they've redefined unemployment numbers. Those are probably at 10% today. They report 3%. Uh, they're lying about inflation today. We're already past the inflation bubble problem. We're probably in deflation now, not inflation. And the issue is not if they're going to lie, if they've lied to us, is how many times have they lied to you? And the way to find that out is to simply ask yourself, is your family doing better or not? 64% of all small businesses in America, there's 32 million of them, break even or lose money. 70%, somewhere between 68% and 76% of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and half of all people that make $100 grand a year in this country live paycheck to paycheck. So those things tell me you cannot have 330 million people in an educated, developed nation where information is available to everyone. You can't have that many stupid people in one place, okay? That means, that means to me They're not— Americans are not lazy. Americans are not stupid. We're not, you know, we haven't— we have data, dude. Most of us have computers and phones. So why are so many people suffering? It's because we have been indoctrinated to benefit Wall Street and the banks. And it's time that people say, okay— and it's happening right now. People are starting to wake up. Social media is actually waking the world up. I think what's going on in the last 3 or 4 years since COVID and the election, COVID, us sending $200 billion to Ukraine. Like, people are starting to wake up and say, wait a minute, something's going on and I don't know if it's, it's in my best interest. So we're going to go into a very difficult recession. We're in one already. They'll tell us later that we were. And businesses are going to go out of business. Uh, households are going to find out that they, they don't have the money, they don't have enough savings, they don't have enough investments. They're going to find out their cash is worthless. They're going to struggle this year in 2023 with even maintaining their business or growing it. But there's a silver lining here, okay? Silver lining is during recessions is when people can actually grow if they have the strategies because there's fewer people to participate and compete with. So there's the bad news, man. The good news is I'm going to grow. There's 3 great pivots I've had in my career, and they all came on the tail of a recession. Warren Buffett recently said the reason they don't buy real estate is because real estate, for most, most of the, of time, for hundreds of years in America, real estate is properly valued. And he looks for assets that are not properly valued or something. They're stressed, they're problematic. And he says the reason real estate, they have not been able to accumulate real estate, uh, at Berkshire is because there's only one thing that causes for real estate to be incorrectly valued, or valued. And that one thing is financial problems. Crisis. A crisis, a debt crisis, or banking crisis. It happened in 1996, that's when I started buying real estate. It happened again in 2008, I bought a bunch of real estate, and it's gonna happen right now. So we have a correction that is completely underway, and it's happening right now. Two, the second reason you wanna be in real estate is because time-tested, okay? It's been around for thousands and thousands of years. Real estate is valuable or more valuable than gold. The reason I like real estate more than gold or silver or hard products or commodities is because it provides me with cash flow, not just a real product, okay? 3, it builds net worth. You know this about your home. Your personal home can build net worth, okay? Your parents bought a house for $28,000 30 years ago. House is worth $400,000 or $500,000 today and it's paid for. That builds net worth. Number 4, major reason, major reason that you want to do this is the tax benefits, okay? Most of you don't understand the tax benefits. Taxes represent 40% of all your expenses, at least. Some of you guys that live in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California, dude, your tax bill's in the 60%. You don't even know it. Employment taxes, Social Security benefits, property taxes, sales taxes, car taxes. God dang it. Every tax. Tax on everything. Okay, number 5, passive income, okay? Passive income. Now, Bitcoin does not offer passive income. Stocks do not offer offer passive income. Uh, 5-year Treasury bills don't offer passive income. Cash at the bank doesn't offer passive income. Work does not offer a passive income. You need passive income. Warren Buffett said, if you don't learn how to make money while you sleep, you will spend your entire life working for money you can't keep. Did y'all know the whole, the whole saying right there? That's what it is. Number 6, okay, number 6, inflation hedge. And we about to go through— some people believe that we're going to go into hyperinflation in this country because we keep printing money. It's probably, it's probably 5 to 10 years from now, but if we go into hyperinflation, if you've ever lived in countries like Venezuela, Argentina, uh, go to Greece, look at what happened in Greece 15 years ago, dude. They were literally burning their money in the streets, okay? They were literally using it for firewood. This is what you never want to do, and I've said for years, never, never, ever over-leverage your properties. These guys were borrowing 80% and 85% and 90%, sometimes 100% of the deal. They were putting basically 20% down that was raised money. Check out what they were doing. They got interest rate, a floating interest rate that's now at 7.5%, and they promised their investors some preferred interest of probably 8% to 12% I don't know exactly what they offered in this deal, but each deal had to basically make 20% a year just to break even, and they hadn't even done the rehab yet. So they had to pay back 20% a year, plus they had to spend $15,000, $20,000, or $20,000 a unit on thousands of units— $20 million— on a bad location. Okay, so they bought product location, overleveraged it, and then they had no cash reserves in case of problems. Like, there's not going to be problems, guys. There's always going to be problems, okay? Every piece of real estate I've ever bought, every business I've ever purchased, every business that I started, every startup I've got involved in, every relationship partnership, every single deal I have ever bought came with problems that I did not forecast. I did not manage. Most of you guys who were buying real estate in the last 3 years, you're like, oh, we're going to have growth every year, we're going to have rent growth forever, everything's going to go perfect, we're going to do our rehab, we're going to keep it full at 95%. Why does everybody use this 95% number? Not— it's impossible. Not, not everybody can be at 95%, okay? Particularly with— they got new assets coming on. These guys were buying assets in terrible locations knowing that new product was coming on in an adjustable rate mortgage market where the Fed said the interest rates are going to be going up. We're undercapitalized, don't have money for the future to buy down the loan, and check it out, didn't even have any reserves to fix the property. We're in America, man. Yeah, there's another guy named Warren Buffett that's worth $90 billion. A little older, been around the game a little longer. And, you know, if you listen to him, he's gonna be like, this game will not end. Not this— this country will not end. Okay, there's 330 million people here. The entire planet depends on America. We're a consumer nation. We consume everything. We consume everybody's good products and goods. It is in the best interest of every plant, every country on planet Earth, including our enemies, which, you know, we're told they're our enemies, but behind the scenes, we're probably buddy-buddy with them. Oh yeah. I don't think this game ends. Okay. And even if it does end, a friend of mine, he had just sold his company, walked away with $4 billion. He's like, Grant, just remember, this planet is like Monopoly. The game only ends when the players walk away. He said, no matter how bad things get, man, 8 billion people, there's always going to be 5 billion of them working. 5.4 billion, 90% of them are going to be grinding out every day, buying clothes, buying food, buying water. You just got to decide if you want to play with those people. If I reach enough people on this planet, and you can today with social platforms, everything from Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat to Twitter's audio spaces, Clubhouses, stages, billboards, and media. If you're creative enough, money will never be a problem. Big shout out to all the haters and the criticizers, the rumor mongers, the gossipers, the people out there that you hear on the Clubhouse or Instagram or Facebook hating on people, criticizing people, making people wrong, bullying them. Just remember this: when you hear that, when you hear somebody hating on somebody else. In my 63 years of being on this planet, I have never in my life had somebody hate on me, and I've had a lot of people hate on me, criticize me, try to shame me, pick out all my damn character defects. Look at all the iron in here, okay? We got something really special back here. I have never ever, never ever had somebody hate on my game that accomplished more than I have. Not one damn time in my life. Elon, those guys over at the top of the food chain, they're not talking about me. They're not threatened by me. Now, I've had some people unable to accomplish what I've accomplished spend all their damn time time talking shit about me. You know, the crazy thing is, when you're talking shit about somebody that's above you, that's accomplished more than you, try throwing shit up at people above you. It's always going to fall on your face. Everybody listening to it saying, okay, yeah, oh, that's funny, that's funny, that's funny. And then they're going to be like, why is he talking so much shit about this guy? You can't shit up here. It's going to fall all over your face, you forehead, your reputation. So look, for all of you out there, just remember, when you're hearing somebody hate on somebody else, that person, I guarantee you, there you'll never find there to be an exception to this rule, the person they're hating on has accomplished more than they have. And the person that's doing the hating has accomplished not nearly as much. It's just a damn fact, man. Look, envy, really envy is the core, the core, the root of pain, envy, jealousy, insecurities, scarcity, trying to, trying to tear somebody else down to build themselves up. And it never works. You just can't do that. You can't get up tearing other people down. All you end up is down. It's like the old crab syndrome in the bucket. They just pulling each other down trying to get up, and they just keep pulling each other down. So remember, when you hear somebody hating on whatever— a person, a company, religion, family, fun, a movement— when you are being bullied or somebody's attempting to bully you, tear you down, ruin your reputation, you are talking to somebody that is filled with jealousy and envy and insecurities and scarcity complexes and narcissism. And when they're hating, they're not creating. When they're not creating, they cannot do better in life. It's impossible. It's like a disease from the inside. So just remember that when you're hearing that, you might want to separate yourself from those that are doing that. You definitely don't want to be that because those that do that don't do much If you over— if you overthink, let's say I'm 1,000x right now. Yeah. And you're not prepared for that type of wealth or pressure or experience or opportunity, then is that too big, too fast? No, you should— you should still think bigger because you're not going to know thinking smaller, right? You're not going to know. You're not— never going to get there, right? I mean, look, the guy thinks too small and he wins a billion-dollar lottery ticket. And he got lucky. He's got problems too. He's just got new problems. He doesn't know what to do with the money. Right. So if I would have thought bigger, I don't have the problem of not taking action. Okay? So I'm not— I'm not that guy. I'm not— you got to deal with whatever you got, right? But, but I know this. If I thought smaller, I would have taken fewer actions. When you start thinking really big, you have to— if you're going to go get this thing, if you're serious about whatever that thing is, I didn't think— I thought here because I, I thought I was thinking, oh yeah, that's achievable. But how can I— like, how can a child, a 3-year-old, think that they can pick up, um, 100 pounds or ride a big horse? They can't. It's like not achievable until Daddy picks him up, puts him on it, and he's like, oh, I can ride a horse, you know, I can ride it. But, but he when he's looking up, he's like, I can't do that. Yeah, right. So when you're looking from— you don't have anything, you're just hungry. It's hard to dream, man. Yeah. Because, because your stomach's saying, pay attention to me or pay attention to my kids or shoes or whatever, whatever your, your, your crunch is. Oh, inflation, cost of bananas. This is, this, this is a fear cycle, man. This is like, like it's them marketing fear to us to stay small so we become consumers, not doers. Consumers are worried about inflation. Okay. Investors want inflation. Producers want inflation. Business owners want inflation. Okay. If you got a career and you got talent, ballplayers want inflation. If you own a sports team, you want inflation. If you own real estate, you want inflation. But we're being told it's, it's bad. Why? Because they're treating you, they're messaging to you as a consumer. Social media is bad for you. It is bad for a consumer. It's not bad for a creator. Right. See, see what I'm saying? So I'm trying to get on the, the cause point, the source point of like, okay, I should have been thinking about how do I build a $50 billion business 15 years ago? Oh, 100%. Really? $100 billion. Okay. What would you have done differently? I would have studied $100 billion businesses. Who did that? I should have been studying Jamie Dimon this whole time. I should have been studying Warren. What did they do? Not what do they say in their interviews? Because I've seen these guys on panels and then I've had dinner with them. Right. And bro, it's two different conversations. They speak differently. Oh yeah. Well, one's for the gram, you know, one's for the audience, for the clip. And the other is like, hey, let's go, let's go carve this deal up. This is how we make money in here. How big could this get? They're always talking about how big can you scale this thing? If you want to stay in the middle class, you know, good. If that's your goal in life, to be in the middle of anything. I'm not peanut butter. I don't really want to be. I've already— I grew up in the middle. The middle, middle of a crowd does not seem like conducive to my survivability. I don't want my kids to be middle kids. I don't want, I want to be, man, I want to take my family to the top. So if you want to be in the middle, pay your debt off. You want to get to the top, learn to use debt. Yeah. 'Cause, you know, and I think Dave would be open to this conversation. I know I would be. I'm open to being wrong. Goldman Sachs isn't worried about debt. JP Morgan's not worried about debt. Elon Musk is not worried about debt. They have debt, they use debt. Apple Computer has debt. Apple Computer has $200 billion in cash. And they borrow money today. Why is that? Because they want to use, they want their cash reserves on their balance sheet, knowing debt is not the devil. Okay, bad debt, using debt to buy a Gucci belt, well, that's just stupidity, you know, but using debt to buy a building that provides me with income, not a house, by the way, I own 2 homes, buying homes are bad deals. Yeah, but buying a home is a terrible deal. Yeah, putting debt on a home is even stupider than buying the house itself. I own— but I own two houses. Like, I'm not telling you guys I don't do stupid stuff. I got these. I don't know what these are. Don't— these shoes are stupid. No reason for anybody to buy these shoes. I don't even know why I have them on my feet right now. They're not even that comfortable. They're probably $800, $1,200 or something stupid. If you're on the come up, that's dumb. Can't write it off. They're too much money. Definitely don't put a credit card on them. But on good debt that pays me, okay, like I bought a house in Malibu, I paid cash, but I'm still, I still have the cost of that money, right? That, that spent $40 million there. I could be earning 5%. That's $2 million a year in 10 years. That $2 million times 10 years, I need to make $20 million on that house just to break even on the cost of money and the purchase. That, that's not maintenance, property taxes, Furnishing the house or fixing it. Buying real estate is really a sales job. It's not really a buyer's job. So in the beginning, when I was buying real estate, I had everything backwards. I thought I needed the money, then I thought I needed the debt. I didn't know anything about either one of them. And then I put the deal third. Today we've just switched it. Hey man, it's the deal. The deal, the right deal will always bring in the right debt. There'll be somebody who'll be like, I'll be the debt on that deal. And the bigger these deals, by the way, the bigger the deals, the easier the deals get. Like the debt, the easier the debt, everything gets easier. Like a 10,000 units would be easier for me to purchase than 1,000. A REIT would be even easier for me to buy. Yeah, we've had those phone calls this week. It would be easier for me to buy a REIT even though I don't know where to get $10 billion or $5 billion. It would be easier for me to buy a REIT than it would be for me to buy a portfolio. So none of us are told this, unfortunately, because, uh, maybe there's an agenda to keep people small. So it's the deal, it's the debt. Once you have the deal and the debt together, dude, the equity, not, not even a problem. There's no shortage of money that will follow a great deal. So this is the last point, because you said this on a show, that requires a salesman, not a buyer. You got to learn how to pitch. You got to learn how to talk to people. You got to learn how to pull people in. You've got to learn how to get attention. And I don't mean salesman in a bad way. More probably a better promoter to learn how to promote and raise money. What's your thoughts and feelings around what is happening and what you think will happen over the next 12 to 18 months? So I'm going to say something that I think most people would disagree with me on. But first of all, inflation is, is a boogeyman that's not even real. Really? Look, I'm just telling you, inflation— even Warren Buffett says maybe 2 people on the entire planet even understand the concept of inflation. What is so complicated? What is inflation? So inflation Yeah, it's a great question. Right. And what is a recession, by the way? Yeah. So inflation is an increased price or price on some commodity that is desired. Right. So you actually want inflation. You don't not want inflation. Why? Because you want your value. You want the value of your products to go up, not down. If you're thinking as a consumer, okay, which you're not dreaming big if you're thinking as a consumer, oh my God, bananas went up. Okay, don't eat them. Eggs went up. Eggs did not go up because of the, the, this boogeyman. Okay. And it didn't go up because the dollar went down in value. So if I— and it didn't go up because we print money. It's none of this is true. Now, I know your audience in the comments, they're going to freaking try to destroy me. So if we print a bunch of money, if you print $1 trillion, okay, and put it in this building right now, nothing inflated. You just printed a bunch of money. It is the distribution of that money. Okay. I distribute the money to a billion people, then they have money. Okay. That even the distribution of the money, sharing $1 trillion would not create inflation. It is when in it is when the money is moved into the marketplace. That's when inflation happens. If the consumer, the dreamer, The person elects to use the money. Okay, so inflation was created because we gave everybody a $1,400 check and people went and bought they didn't need and couldn't afford. By the way, inflation is created by me buying eggs that are too expensive that I can't afford. So if the eggs are too expensive, don't buy them. The marketplace will take care of it. Then I'll go back down. Exactly. Okay, so your supplies will go up and people will be like, I got all these eggs, I want to get rid of them. So let's count. I'll do 2 for 1 or 3 for 1. 4 for 1. What did you do to get from $1 billion to $4.2 in 3 years? I bought more real estate. I mean, that's how you do it. You got to buy the real estate, right? You got to, you know, you got to, you got to either raise money or you got to have money. And both of those are possible. So you guys out there are saying, I don't have any money. Oh my God, if I had money, I'd have done that too. No, you got to either get money, earn money, or you got to raise money. One of the two. And it's easier to raise money if you've already worked and earned money, 'cause then people can trust you that you know how to trade time for money at a job. So, you know, like people trust me, they trust my work ethic. People may not like my energy or they might not like the way I say something, but nobody's gonna say I don't work. They're gonna say, here's, guy's got track record, 35 years showing up, doing what he said he was gonna do. Yeah, he's cocky and he's this and he's that. And he says whatever he wants. But look, you probably would too. Like, like, yeah, but, but I do what I say I'm going to do too. And, and, and, and then I stack real estate assets. We picked up $3 billion, almost $3 billion during the pandemic, and then took a hiatus. We haven't bought anything in the last year, and we're— I'm about to, I'm about to blow this portfolio up. So next time I'm on this podcast, I'll be at $10 billion. This cycle right now that we're in is going to be the biggest real estate opportunity in my lifetime. And everybody is listening like this is— it's time to be ready all the time, not get ready, because it's happening right now. What's your advice to brokers headed into this season? Right. Because most brokers I know have had an epic run the last 2 or 3 years. Epic run, made an insane amount of money, right? They don't even know how to dial. Right, exactly. They forgot how to do the fundamentals, right? They forgot. They stopped doing it because it was so easy. They got a listing and had had 20 offers. So in this current season we're going into, brokers are down 70, 80%. They're forecasting being down 70, 80% in sales volumes. What's the advice for some of the top— for the brokers out there? You know, you need to go back and really, you know, renew those relationships that maybe you've ignored a little bit. Um, I know what we're doing. Like, you know, brokers are very, very valuable to us. Like, insane. Yeah, never pay too much for a broker. They've never earned too much money on a deal. Um, brokers out there, like, you got to find out who's buying. I'm, I'm on the top, I'm on the list. Now the problem with the list today is the other guys on the list are institutions. So you're going to have to go in the list now and find the individuals because the individuals are going to reign power for the next 18 months. I, I got 2 meetings this week from the top 5 groups to go look at their portfolio to purchase. I could not get that meeting a year ago. So I would tell brokers, you guys need to arrange that meeting for me. Individuals, entrepreneurial people with a bunch of powder. I'm sitting on $350 cash right now. $350 big ones. Okay. And I'm raising money every day. And I don't mind moving into this cycle. This— I was built for this cycle. You got to find more guys like me. That did not depend on sovereign funds, hedge funds, and institutions for their dough. How should people be framing their mindset with all this? You want out of anything in the middle, man. You don't want to be bologna on the bologna sandwich. The bologna is what gets eaten. Like, you know, you want to get outside the sandwich. You don't want to be crammed in. You know, you want to figure out what does the top of this pyramid structure do? You know, how do you get at the top for your family? The best health you can get in, the best intelligence, the best connections. How do you have friends and family that all have enough money and mobility and time to go do the things you want to go do with them? That's what these people do. These people want to spend $100 grand on a ticket and spend 3 or 4 days, you know, hobnobbing with one another and staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel where the hotel rooms are $2,200 a night and eating $40 French fries. If they want to do that with themselves, they've got themselves in a position to operate up there with those people. And so that's the big thing. It's not send my kids to college and pay off my mortgage. If you have a spending problem, you know it. So what I want to share with you here is how to never have a spending problem, okay? Because if you earn $400 million boxing and you spend $401 million, you're not You're not going to have any money, okay? And that has happened to many, many ballplayers, fighters, actors, you name it. They spend more money than they earn. So first thing we want to fix here is I need to make more money, okay? If you make enough money, spending will never be your problem. But once you start making money and you start doing stupid stuff with this, which people do, by the way, that's how you get inflation. Inflation is created by the government printing money. You take the $1,400 check. And you go spend it on a, a pair of Guccis that you can't write off, that you couldn't afford, that you couldn't buy two of. You, you put it on credit. You bought stupid stuff. Inflation is created when people get money and go buy stupid stuff with it that they didn't need. Since I was 13 years old, I have been trying to find my way. I've been trying to find my way to this word right here, to my dreams. How do I make my dreams a reality. So like every day, like, I know this: what I pay attention to, I end up getting. You guys ever done that before where you're like, you're riding a bike or something and you're like, I don't want to hit that hole, I don't want to hit that crack, I don't want to hit that crack, I don't want to hit that crack, I don't want that rock, I don't want to hit that thing, I don't hit that thing, and next thing, what? Bang! You fall down, you hit the thing. One thing I do every day, and I'm telling you a little trick in life, if you pay attention to something enough, whether it's good or bad, it's going to become a reality. So when I wake up in the morning, what I do every day, rather than just ending up with some life, whatever the leftovers are, whatever, whatever you get, I don't want to just like get what I get. I want to get what I want. How many of you want to get what you want? Okay. So when I was 10 years old, I lost my dad. My dad passed away when I was 10 years old, and it left me with my mom, my twin brother, my older brother, and 2 sisters. I was the youngest of 5. There was 6 of us. 7 of us in a small house. And the other thing that was in our house was one other thing. Maybe you guys know what this thing is. I tell you what, I'll pay $100 if you know the other person that lived at our house. It's a 4-letter word. Boo! That's right, give this man the $100. Give this man the $100 right here. Okay, okay, the school that pays every day. So check it out, so check it out. So fear, have you guys ever experienced fear in your house? Man, I was in fear all the— every day. I could— and, and the fear made me sad because I could see my mom was scared. I didn't know enough to be scared. I could just tell from my mom. My mom was scared because my dad had passed and she didn't know how she was going to take care of the family. And at that moment, one of my dreams or goals— I really like the word goals better than dreams— One of my goals became, hey, I don't want to live in fear every day. I don't want to have fear every day. I want to have freedom from fear, man. Go get you some equity. You know, Jay-Z talks about this. You're getting— you know, so many of you young brothers are getting an advance while I'm picking up the equity. Oh yeah, they're trying to get the get rich quick. Let me give you the money. Give it to me now. Where the Publishers getting the long-term residual income for decades off of your— Kevin Hart, look at what Kevin Hart did with this, with this show, right? He owns that show. He owns the ticket sales. He was willing to promote it, not just be a comedian where Richard Pryor showed up and got his check, told his jokes. Uh, Kevin Hart says, yeah, I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna tell my jokes, but I'm gonna own, I'm gonna own the entire platform, the equity. So how do you get someone to give you $10,000 when you have nothing to give them in return? Or what is it that you're selling them, a greater promise in return? So what I did was I pitched this guy. I said, look, he's a business owner. He wants traffic in his company. Every, every business owner wants traffic. Every entrepreneur wants traffic to their website. And I said, look, I'm gonna drive traffic to your store. He owned a mattress store, big margins. And I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure you have the biggest weekend that you've ever been here. And, uh, I said, if you give me $6,000, I'll take the 6 grand to the store. In fact, you don't give me the money, just call it in and approve it. I didn't want to touch his money. I never asked anybody for any money. And I said, I'm gonna go run a promotion for you. I'm gonna put together the banners, the logos. I'm going to stand out in the street. I'm going to drive the traffic to your place. What do you want, Grant? Or Louis? What do you want, Louis? I did that more than once, by the way. What do you want, Louis? You did? Because my name was Louis, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, dude, I don't want anything. He tried to give me money to do this. I don't want your money. I just want the opportunity. I want to prove myself. Because what I really wanted from him was I wanted him to front the bill at the print shop. Job so that he could put me in play. Well, I went and ran the whole promotion that weekend. I said, if you, if you send them, if you just authorize the spend, I'll conduct the promo, I'll run it and do it. We did $91,000 worth of mattress sales. We did $15,000 that weekend and then another $65,000 over the, the next 3 weeks. And he's like, dude, you're a star. Now he's like, hey, what do you want for what you did for me this weekend? That was the best weekend we've ever had. And I'm like, I don't want anything except to be your partner. So, so you wanted equity? I want to be your partner, dude. And I said, I want 15% of the upside of your company. I said, what's fair? He's like, 15%. Everything above what I'm doing now, I'll give you 15%. He, he's the one that made the offer. I said, that's awesome. Wow. And then that's when I said, hey, can you give me an advance of $10,000 on the 15%? People think that I asked for $10,000. I actually didn't get $10,000. I got an advance on a partnership, which is even better. Wow. You're never satisfied. You're always looking for something to, to get outta bed for, right? Like to, to be excited about. So, yeah. Well, I had one more building. Okay. I had one. What, what am I doing and why am I doing it? So she says, let's just play a game. Okay. She says, what if you 10x the income of the company now? And I said, okay, then we go from $150 million a year in the internet sales and $340 million in real estate income to— what would that be? $500— $5 billion a year, right? That's a big deal. I'm like, man, $5 billion a year. I don't need all that money. The first thing I did was I do exactly what everybody else does. You know, you stretch the rubber band, it wants to go back to its old size. Right. Yep. I'm like, what do I need $5 billion for? I don't need $5 billion. Now I got to pay $3 billion in taxes. I only got $2 billion left over. What am I going to do with $2 billion? I don't need that. She's like, play the game, Grant, play the game. You know, and I'm literally like, ah, you know why I do it, you know, but then when I start playing it, I'm like, okay, what would I do? You know, I would definitely buy a yacht. I'd buy a $300 million yacht. I'd waste $30 million a year on it. I'd go buy a big ranch that I go to once or twice a year, and then I start thinking about, okay, what would I do with this thing? And I would expand. I would take a bunch of money and expand. I'd probably take some risk on some AI technology stuff to add to our 10x Health system and see if we could scale that worldwide. You know, so it typically what happens for me is in that doing that exercise, it just kind of resonates with me for— and starts to kind of work itself, because I'm still thinking about it 5 hours later. Now, how do you use DMs? How many DMs did we have this just in the last week? 13,000 DMs on Instagram. How do you use them? How do you intervene with the chat on your website? You're going to have a website, you're going to have to have chat on it. Most people have chat, don't even use Instagram chat. What do I do with YouTube? It ain't going away. A lot of things are going to go away. That won't go away. Okay. What are you going to do on LinkedIn? What's the messaging here? What's the messaging on Facebook? They're going to throttle you. You know, they're going to throttle you. Facebook owns Instagram. They're going to throttle you. We've seen the throttling. The inflation was caused by the supply chains blocked up because of COVID And because things weren't getting shipped around the country. It was not caused because— inflation is not caused because of printing money, even though that's what most people believe causes inflation. If I print a trillion dollars and leave it in this room, it would fill up more than this room. But if I printed a trillion dollars or $4 trillion or $6 trillion, whatever they just did, and leave it in this room, there's no inflation. It's a non-event. So this idea that printing money creates inflation is not the truth. Now, if I distribute $6 trillion to every household in America, I still have not actually caused inflation. Okay? Because it hasn't been used. It's not in the system yet. You get a bunch of money. She gets a bunch of money. My daughter gets a bunch of money. I get a bunch of money. Until we move the money into the marketplace. Now, if all these people went out and bought assets, real assets, yeah, of course, every— I'm— we're all able to pay more money because we have more money. So if you just— if your audience can just follow the thinking here, and I'm just asking people to think, think with this, because this is what I'm thinking with. The reason we have inflation is because people were sent $1,400 checks. Some of your audience is not going to like what I'm about to say. Say it. You guys were sent a $1,400 check. You got a $1,400 check. And you went and spent money that you shouldn't have spent on shit you didn't need. That is the new definition of inflation. People that get money and then spend it on stuff they don't need, don't really, don't, don't, are not required living, and you probably couldn't afford and wouldn't have done it had you not gotten that check. Now, people like me, I didn't, I didn't cause inflation. You caused inflation. I went and took my money and invested it. I buried it in projects, in real assets. And so every time I got any check over the last 2 or 3 years, or for the last 30 years, I take all the money I get. It's all garbage. Money's garbage. And I convert it into buildings. I'm walking through your— what is your assistant's name? Uh, Alex Johnson. Yeah, you were awesome bringing me into the building. What was I saying all the way from the curb? Oh my God, this building. I should buy this building. Like, I just get— like, to me, buildings are like, like, they're like, I, I can buy this today if I can hold on for 10 or 15 or 20 years. What would you say your superpower is? I mean, you've done all kinds of things and you've got an incredible track record, but what would you say like your superpower is right now as you sit here today? Oh man, I don't know. I think everybody's got a lot of superpowers. So, so what's the dominant one that you would say, Grant Cardone, when you look in the mirror, it's like, this is what I do. This is my special sauce. One is persistence, man. I just don't quit. Like if I tell you guys I'm going to buy 100,000 units and I am going to own 100, I'll be the one of the largest. Apartment owners in the world. I have never ever stopped. The only way to stop me is to kill me, and then I'm not— I'm, I would even question whether I come back or not. I'm a bone, you know? So, so persistence. I, I have built my persistence muscle up. It was all that cold calling I was doing when I was 30. Uh, the second one is I'm extremely disciplined with money, and it doesn't matter whose it is. Could be your money, your brother's money. It doesn't matter whose it is. I watch money. I never lose it. I respect it and I try to multiply it. Um, and on the same thing on buying property, like, I don't use your money any different than I would my own money. I'm not reckless, um, because I'm self-made. Like, I'm, I came up from the mud and, you know, I've never had a silver spoon. I've never had anybody give me anything. The fact that I've never taken money for an institution and, and got the size that I am is Like, it's really unheard of. If you want to get rich, if you are unselfish enough to secure your money for yourself, your family, your community, and your household— that's what I'm talking about. Rich. Rich is I can give to my church and still give to my family. Rich is I can go on a big trip and still give to my church. Rich is I can take care of my family and my church and still take care of strangers and invest in projects maybe that I love. Rich is, hey, I got prosperity and affluence. Okay, $1 million divided by 25 years is $4,000 a year. Is that right? $40,000. I'm sorry, I missed a zero. Doesn't really matter, it's still no money. You can't live on $40,000 a year. You can't send your kids to decent schools. You can't take care of your mom that's sick. You can't take care of one car wreck, much less a car wreck and a little bit of cancer. You can't do anything, and you can't give anything to your charity. Why? Because you didn't plan correctly. If you want to become a millionaire, number one, you have to decide to become a multi-millionaire. You're going to miscalculate the zeros. And this is what the 10x rule was. The 10x rule was a multiplier. You must multiply in order to add. You You have to learn how to do something a lot of times to ever get good at it. It's not about you, it's about your company, it's about your vision, it's about your dream. It's not about what you want to do. You have to sell. Like, if you look at a financial statement, any financial statement anywhere I go in the world— I go to Singapore, I go to Dubai, I go to Detroit, I go to California, I'm working with the government, I'm working with the military, I'm working with a tech company, a software company, a real estate big company, every income statement, okay, every income statement, the first line on that income statement, the first line in every part of the world without exception, there's no exception to this rule, the top line is revenue, sales, something. It's going to say something about gross sales, revenue. It's the top line of the business, man. Why do you think it's the top line? Because it's the most important thing. And everybody's like, I don't want to do sales. Girls, okay, all right. You, you think I was talking about having sex with the devil? Like, dude, all you're doing is growing your company. There's no way to get away from this. This is not a job, this is a business. And that's why the number one most important thing in our company is that line right there. They are the most protected group of people in the company. Like, there's nobody more protected in my companies than the salespeople. In our real estate, the leasing agent— the leasing agent gets a client, comes in, drives across town, wants to look at our apartment. We should close that deal. They didn't come to my apartment building to say no. They came to my apartment building to find a place to live. When we're trying to fill a stadium with 34,000 people, that's one sale at a time. There's no trick to this. You've built a massive personal brand for yourself, and for anyone out there who is aspiring to do that, to where they can leverage that in their respective industry in the business world, what would you tell them? To build a brand? Yes. Build a brand. You're building one anyway. Look, I've always been a person that people either liked or didn't like, but they knew me. I don't really care what you call me as long as you call me. Like, I might not be the best player, but I'm gonna be out there. I'm gonna make some noise. I'm gonna make some noise. I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna get ridiculed for it too, but I'm gonna make some noise. And if you keep getting out there and making noise, You're gonna figure out, okay, you know, in the beginning you're gonna be awkward and you're gonna be an idiot and you're gonna be made fun of. So the, the first thing, the only thing I can do is like, the guy shows up every day. Uh, last thing I'll tell you, I remember I was growing, I was in high school and I'd go to this place called the Hungry Nine. I was still bored. I was lost in my life. And there was this guy, I don't remember his name right now, but every Friday this guy would get in a fight. Not every other Friday. Friday, bro. Every Friday night, this guy, about 10:30 at night, would go out in the back and throw down with people and never won, okay? And I was like, goddamn. And he'd get up and he'd get up and he'd get beat up, down, and then he'd go back into Hungry Night and get drunk again. Next Friday, bang, same thing. Third Friday, same thing, okay? After a while, people quit fighting that guy. They're like, hey, that guy— and he never won won the fights, by the way. And he, he ended up being the, the most dangerous man on those weekends because they're like, he's going to fight no matter what. And I learned from that. I watched that. I'm like, okay, I don't want to fight because I don't want people hitting on me, but I'm going to keep showing up. And no matter whether they say good things about me or bad things about me, whether I'm good at what I do or not good, I'm going to keep showing up until people say, guy gonna keep showing up, bro, just step aside, leave him alone. The idea that you have to go to some 5-year degree or get a doctorate or whatever. I mean, the most intelligent people on this planet now are starting to be challenged for their ideas. I would not go to college, okay? I would not have 3 months of savings ever. I would be broke all the time. Not broke because I bought something, broke because I invested. I would stay broke because of my investments. My investments, I would live off of cash flow, not cash. Cash flow. Cash coming in. So if I earned $10,000 or $3,000 or whatever extra money, whatever the number is, $1 billion, I would take the entire amount of money, I'd go buy an asset that pays me cash flow, and I would always live off the cash flow, not the cash. I would never spend my earned income. I would only spend income from my investments. That would be a game changer for everybody watching, for you, because you're the only one you care about. That by itself would be a game changer. I would not spend any of my money and I would not save any money. I wouldn't save money. I would not have 3 months or 6 months of savings like a lot of people suggest. The rainy— save for a rainy day, you know, the 3-month emergency account. I would go out, make money, pay my bills, always stay current on my bills. I would never use a credit card to buy anything. If I can't pay for it, I wouldn't do it. That's another mistake you guys are making. That I did not have the problem with. I never bought anything I couldn't pay for, but I took the money instead and I saved it in an account, which is just kind of a reverse way of spending the money because it's just sitting there. You're just wasting it anyway. So don't let it just sit anywhere and don't go buy junk. Okay, what you do is you take the extra money and you will park it into an investment like a piece of real estate that would cash flow for you and provide you with money next month. If you are committed to greatness, and you collaborate with other people and, and lift them up, like make other people great. Yeah. You know, my sister said to me when we were doing this conference, it was 4 days, she's like, my God, you shared— you— this— the, the amount of time you give other people on the stage is unbelievable, right? We did a 4-day event, 9,000+ people. That was incredible. And, you know, I give speakers that— why, Grant, why? You could be up there the whole time. I said, no, I'm sharing. Sharing that platform right now. What does that do for me? First of all, it edifies me for sure. It's like 100%. I don't need to be on the stage. They're on the stage on my behalf. It gives me a network, a built-in network. So we spent $4 million with the Mandalay Bay. Yeah, it was incredible to give me instant. Okay, I got speakers that came from around the world to deliver content. Content. I didn't pay them. I wrote a check to Mandalay Bay for $4 million. I gave them an audience. Most people cannot put 9,000 people in front of themselves. So I did that for a whole bunch of people and gave them a great qualified audience. So you want to do whatever you have to do to do what you're saying, which is build this network, like to reach up. And I realized one day I was watching CNBC one morning, I saw all the players on the planet, the top 50 or 100 players or whatever that number is, they were all, um, showing up in Davos in Switzerland. Okay, Buffett, Gates, all the players, the, the Google boys. I'm like, dude, this— look, what are you doing, Grant? What are you doing, man? You're so stupid, dude. You need to go to Davos. You need show up where the other players are. You need to go there and eat dinner. Eat dinner with the kings and the queens. Now, I know some people— this goes back to this last thing you said about the morality thing. Yeah, I don't need all that. Okay, when you say you don't need all that, you're being selfish. You need to eat with kings and queens and power players because it's going to accelerate everything for your family, right? Like, if you're one of those people that want— you're a Greenpeace The best thing you could do is go eat dinner with Bill Gates, right? Rather than being in your little freaking Zodiac boat, just, just, just doing the Zodiac boat thing, attacking the big ship. You need money, you need funding, you need support, you need people behind you. You can't do anything by yourself. Yeah. And how, and how, so what's the best way that you found to get into those networks of people? Like, what is it? Flow power, man. Flow power to people. When I moved to Miami, me. I called a couple people, business owners here in town, and I said, look, what's your favorite charity? I want to help out. Help out. Flow power to power. Give, give, give. Don't try to get something. Don't try to get on my stage. I have people every day like, hey, I want to do business with you. I got this great idea. I'm going to make you $1 million. Dude, dude, dude, just flow power to me. Flow power to power and keep flowing power to power, right? Get used to flowing power in the direction of power. You've sold billions of dollars in revenue throughout your career. How have you been able to consistently close massive deals? What is Grant Cardone's secret to sales? 80% of everything we do here is free. Now, the 20% that pay me, you know, this year will pay me $150 million, but the 80% got, got a billion dollars worth of advice. They just didn't pay me anything, but they came into my funnel. Right. That came into my, okay, now I know who they are. Can I serve them when they're ready to pay something? Not everybody's ready to pay. Right. So like when I was a kid, man, I, I wouldn't pay for anything because I didn't have any money. So if, if I went, you know, if you walk into a casino in Vegas, you can walk in. You don't have to have money. All you gotta do is walk in. Everything's free. So in my world, I'm a big open casino. Like everything's free. Now when you get in, you're like, you know, I'd like to sit at that table with the whales. Well, then that costs something. Or I want to sit over this table with the $100 players, or I want to go over here and play this game. Well, to do that, then you got to sit down, you got to pay. So we've raised $1.1 billion crowdfunding on the internet. I don't go to wealthy people. I don't go to Mark Cuban and say, hey, fund my project. I've never gone to a big equity fund. Like a Blackstone and say, give me $1 billion. I could, but I don't. I go to— I build a big audience, I create great products and offers, and then I go to that audience and say, would you guys like to invest with me? So out of— we, I think we have 450,000 people in an investor that raised their hand and said, I'm interested in your investments. 13,000 of the 400,000 invested with me. You need to change your mind about closing people. Closing people is when you service them for the first time. You guys need to understand that when you close a deal, when somebody actually buys your product, service, or offer, whatever your offer is, that's when you finally service them. I don't think about the close being, I gotcha, I gotcha. You know, I don't think about it being that. And I think a lot of salespeople think, oh, I gotcha. You know, no, I didn't get you, dude. I finally, I finally serviced you when I closed you. And by the way, that should be the first close. That should be— of the 154,000 people that bought something from me last year, 45,000 of them have bought 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 things, like 30% of our— and I want to get the other 70% to make sure that's not the first thing and the only thing they buy from me. How do you see AI impacting the sales career for an individual? Hey, good, man. You know, let it give you some ideas. You know, let AI let you cheat. Cheat the pitch. If you're calling on somebody in the furniture business, fucking go to AI and say, hey, what are CEOs most worried about with, write a short article about what CEOs are most worried about with furniture. I don't know anything about furniture. I can't know everything about everything, but just give me a couple things to talk about so I have some confidence going in. You said, hey, what does a 20-year-old need? Confidence. AI cannot give you guys, AI cannot be your confidence builder, okay? It could, it could, it can, it can, it could be, it could give you a little juice, but sooner or later you got to learn your own pitch, stand on your own feet, make your own presentation. AI is not going to do that. If it does for you, good. If you can figure out how to do that and, and produce another $10 million a month for me, come over to my place, I'll give you 10% of it, you'll make $12 million next year. Let's roll. If you're just tuning in right now, you need, you need one tip on how to network better, how to increase your inner circle. What is that? Make a list. Make a list, man. Who do you want to network with? It's like getting a job. Yeah. You know, the way, the way, the way colleges are taught how to get a job is you look for the industry that's expanding. It's completely ridiculous. You work for people, not companies. Yeah. So you want to make— so true. That's something I— if I could go back, that I would— that would change that. So, so dumb, dude. What industry do you what industry do you want to work in? Well, I'm an accountant. Yeah. So who's hiring accountants? Oh, the gas industry's hiring accountants. Right. You're not going to work for the gas industry and you're not going to work for a company. You're going to work for a person. Right. So what people— you talk about acceleration, man. Don't go get a job. Go work for a person. Yeah. Right. So I would make a list. Who do I want to network with? Who do I want to eat dinner with? Who, who do I want to spend time come with, right? Not mentoring. I'm not talking about mentoring. You guys mentoring, you need to read a book, right? I don't— I like the mentoring thing is so overblown. I, I've never called somebody and said, would you please be my mentor? Not in a formal way. No, no. What I'll do is I'll, I'll grab a guy that's written this much, this many books, and I'm like, that's my mentoring. I'm gonna read everything that guy put together. Yeah. I'm gonna study every audio program he has. I'm gonna study everything he's done. That's how you get mentoring. So network thing is about how do you hook up with players. If you come up short on your goals, set them higher. Most of us fail when it comes to goal setting. We come up short of what we wanted. Fail high rather than setting too low a target in the beginning. I made this mistake my whole career, my entire career. Number one biggest mistake was I went for a target that was too low. So to become a millionaire, set your target at becoming becoming a multimillionaire. I would say 10 or even 20 if you can think that big. Never quit, never settle. The super financially successful don't stop once they hit their targets. They simply reset and go again. They also don't quit when they have setbacks. They recalibrate and invest in the direction they're going, knowing that their goals are attainable, their goals, their new goals are important, and their new goals are worthy as long is they don't quit. You got to keep your eye on the ball. What is the target for you and your company while everybody else gets distracted? What's the target? Go get the target. In 2010, when I got hammered, I'm like, this is never going to happen to me again. I am going to be a big player. They don't jack with big players. They jack with everybody else. They leave big guys alone. I'm not a big guy yet, but I can get there. I know I can get there. You can't get there if you keep thinking small. You can pay off your cars and you can pay off your house and your bicycles and your kids are gonna get a good education. But trust me, you guys are still gonna be worried when you retire, okay? We have been indoctrinated to feed the beast. I wrote about this in the 10X Rule. Feed the beast, not their beast, your beast. And so what I do is I go hustle, Brad. I go hustle the marketplace for money. You guys see me hustling every day, hit the link, come to this, go to that, buy this, this, get this. Every dollar that comes in, I pay my bills and anything left over, I dump it into a real estate deal and I go hustle again. I'm always broke. I never have any dough on me. If I have dough, I'm trying to get it in a real estate deal where I'm illiquid, nobody can get the money from me. And I go bounce back into the marketplace, make contact with people, try to get some more money, bury it in a real estate deal and cross my fingers and hope that 10 years from now the rents go up on that building. What do you think the best skills are for a 20-year-old to learn today? Confidence. You gotta have confidence, man. You gotta have target attainment. You know, you gotta know, hey, this is my target, I'm gonna get it, I'm not going home until I get my damn target. So you guys gotta be— you gotta, you gotta get like that drug addict. They don't come home without that drug. No money, no credit, everybody hates their guts, skanky, 74 pounds, needle tracks, and the guy still scores a bag. Clip that. I want to start my own business. Yeah. So, like, what do you want to do? I mean, you got to tell me what, what is it you want to do? I want to have a billion-dollar empire. Okay, so who, who's done that? Who do you know? Like, you want— like, that person did it because it's got— it had to be done once, right? Uh, you. Okay, so how did I do it though? I started I started— I've had jobs I never wanted. You know, I, I would get really, really good at that to the point where people are like, man, what are you doing? What do you want? Well, uh, why do you act so good? People should start trying to hire you guys. If you're trying to make a move out, rather than moving to another company— I don't know anything about your company or whether it's a good company or there's bonuses, opportunities— I would look for a company or a vehicle. I call company company's vehicle, where, where the owner of the company was looking for great people and figure out how you can deliver greatness to them, and they want to reward you for that. So I would not— for everybody that's listening right now that might be in her situation, I would not go out and try to start my own deal right now. I would go out and find somebody who's got a deal started. If you watch me in Undercover Billionaire, I didn't go try to start my own company. I found I bought another guy that already had money, that already had credit facilities. He was already in play. He was a good guy. And then, then I basically went in to make his company better. And I asked for a piece of the, a piece of the action. Because you can't get in my room in New York. So you're going to have to leave New York. 7 times. What is your first name again? Is this Samantha? Samantha. 7 times I have moved seeking opportunities. I left Lake Charles, I left Houston, I left San Diego, I left Los Angeles, uh, and, and I made two other moves in order to get where I'm at today. I might make another move. So physically moved my location in order to get what I wanted. And for everybody here, look, if you want to go to the next place, there's one thing you will always have to do, okay? You want to write this down. If you want to get to the next place, you want to go from a million to 10 million, zero to a million, wherever you want to So there will be one thing that I've always had to do. If I want to improve my life, number one, you will always be required to give something up. I don't end up doing things that are destructive when I'm busy doing things that are constructive. The truth is I was never a drug addict. I just had too much free time and made bad choices. This planet is filled with bad choices. Pornography, strip joints, casinos. If you were If you were filled up all day long with activities, if you were addicted to productivity, if you were junkied out on potential, you wouldn't have time for all the other garbage. I wouldn't spend money on stuff I don't need. When is that money spent? When do we waste most of our money on this planet? During the holidays, when we have free time. When do you spend your money? When do you go in debt? On the holidays, free time. Time. So if I can just stay busy, if I can use time and create time— how do I create time? I have 24 hours, and I'm like, I'm gonna jam as much in those 24 hours as I can, and then I'll let you worry about me burning out, because that's what I'll hear next. What about burnout? When you're gonna burn out? Look, I'm 60 years old. The more I do, the more I can do, and the younger I get. The more I do, the younger I feel. The more I do, the younger my body feels. I'm not going to burn out. I'm not a candle. I'm not wax. The counselor back in the treatment center said to me, "Dude, aren't you worried about—" because he's seen my success now, and he's like, "Aren't you worried about burning out?" I'm like, "Dude, you're the burnout, bro. You're the burnout. You're the one that said I was going to come back. You're the one that said I would never make it. You're the one that said don't write books." I've written 7 of them Okay, you're the one that said don't be a star. I am. I have my own TV studio, right? You're the one that said, Grant, don't get rich. Just be satisfied that you don't use drugs again. No, no, I got rich. Okay, I did the Rich, I did the books, I did the TV. I'm gonna be on a billboard. I'm gonna be on a bus, bro. Look, look, what are you doing? I'm not worried about burnout. I am not a candle. Candles burn out. Spiritual beings don't. That word disruptive, what does it mean to you? It means, you know, we live on a planet that is disruptive, like, like the whole disruptive thing is like people like attempting to be disruptive. It's happening whether you want it to or not. Like we're in disruption. So the whole planet, you're in disruption, you're in transition. This is happening. You know, there's a life cycle. Disruption is about a cycle. And products, like people, have cycles of life. And if it's not changing and altering and if you're not growing and having fun doing that in the disruption, like if you're surprised by disruption, then you're not really very aware. Like you'd want to be a little more aware because it's happening everywhere. Retail, retail is going to go through massive disruption. This whole— like, you got to wonder what's going to happen down there. It's going to be mind-boggling. The next 6 or 8, 10 years are going to be probably the most disruptive we've had economically on this planet. The truth is, I have the companies that I have today because I was willing to get hard. I was willing to get hard. OK? I'm willing to literally risk relationships. To do the right thing. People say, man, the right thing is never the hard thing to do. That's not true. The right thing is almost always the hard thing to do. The right thing is almost always the hardest thing to do. Yesterday I had to call this dude. Hey man, look, I love you like a brother, dude. I know you want this deal. I know you need this deal. I know this deal, you guys and your team worked hard on it. I know you're relying on this deal. I know this deal literally helps your family. You're not getting the deal. It was hard, dude. It was hard. But the hard thing, if I did the deal, I'd feel bad about myself. I would have known that I did the wrong thing for my investors. I got all these investors depending on Grant to make the right decision, do the right thing, negotiate the best deal. I got all these investors depending on me, and then I got my buddy over here that wants the deal. Okay, he's got kids too, man. He's got family to feed and everything. And by the way, I agreed to do the deal with him. Listen to this. I agreed to do the deal with him. I am now being torn apart between my social, my moral agreement. I agreed to do the deal and this moral other obligation to these people. When I got all the data together, I'm like, oh, my friend's deal is not as good as this other guy. That I'd really like to get rid of. I'd really like to not do anything else with him. I'm not getting what I want from this other guy, but the deal's better. This is where you gotta make the hard decision. Everybody wants to be the boss, baby. Everybody wants to go to heaven. Nobody wants to die. Everybody wants to be the boss. Nobody wants to make the hard decision, which is typically the right thing to do. And it stirs everybody up. But you told me! I know I did, man. And I told all these people, and I told myself, and I told my dreams, bro, you're not getting a deal. Sorry. And the faster you do the hard thing, the better off it is, the stronger you're going to get, and the more the people around you are going to start doing the right thing. I don't really use the word hustle and grind. No, I use the word prosper. Yeah, I'm not going to work to work. I'm going to work to prosper. I don't, I don't go— I'm not trying to hustle. Yeah, or grind. I those are, you know, I don't want to grind, dude. I want to prosper. Yeah. I want to score. You do? No, I want to score. I don't know that I want to enjoy it. Like my wife, she wants to enjoy it. I don't think about enjoyment. I mean, I do, but I think about, you know, I think about, I want to win the game. I want to, I'm playing the game to win the game. So whether it's a big deal, we're looking at $300 million worth of real estate right now in the U.S. to close, to close by the third quarter of this year? I am very financially motivated. I've never denied it. I say it probably one time a day, extremely financially motivated. I love the idea of measuring things based on financial windfalls. Um, when we did the Miami Marlins stadium, it had nothing to do with money. It was 34,000 people. They're like, dude, that's a lot of damn people. How you gonna do that? Nobody thought about it. Damn, he gonna make a bunch of money. People actually did not think about how much money I was gonna make at the deal. They're thinking, the fuck, how's he gonna do that? How the hell you put 34,000? Marlins Stadium has never ever had 34,000 people in it. Maybe not in an entire baseball season. So Derek Jeter, when I told the owner I was going to do this, he was like, the story goes like this. I said, I walked in, I see the place. I said, Derek, how many people? What's the most people have ever been here? 26,000. Who did that? Joel Osteen. I said, fuck it then. How many people? How many people? Every seat in the house? 26,000. I said, good. How many on the field? He's like, another 6,000 or 7,000. He's like, we've never loaded up the field. I said, bro, that field is bigger than than, than, uh, what is it, 11 players, 10 players, whatever, 9 players, whatever. I'm like, I want the whole place. I'm gonna put 34,000 people in this place. We put 35,000 people in there. He's like, what weekend you want it? I said, just give me a price. I know it's available the weekend I want it. And he's like, but what weekend? I said, just give me a price. I said, I guarantee you it's available the weekend I want it. And then I told him Super Bowl weekend. He's like, what Are you crazy? I told Steve Harvey, Steve, come speak at this deal for a couple hours. When is it, Grant? I said, you available? I said, you're gonna fly from Atlanta 'cause I know you're at the Super Bowl. You're gonna come down to Miami. I'm gonna pay for the jet. I'm gonna send you back for the game. He's like, what? Are you crazy, dude? You cannot do this on Super Bowl weekend. And so the reason we did that, and the reason it was so important for me to pull that off is because, with everyone I knew that weekend. You could hate my guts, like despise me, and you had to take your hat off to me. Because you can't say, you know, the haters came out and said the sound was bad. Okay. All right. You know, but every seat was packed. So, you know, some things you do because It might not have a financial return, but trust me, it made it easier to sell out every event we did after that. I believe that your full potential is not revealed to you until you freaking sharpen the sword, till you're out there in battle and you go fix it and you back up and you have a loss or two and you're like, I gotta win. Like, my full potential is being realized right now. You find your potential by getting up every day, pushing, shoving, okay, challenging the status quo. Many of you are held back simply because you believe something to be true. You know it to be true. Truth is, it ain't true. You're the only one that doesn't know it's not true. And there's a lot of those things in life that people can't find their potential because they're so stuck in being right. So this is my question back to you, and you had a great question. Are you fortunate because you're able, or are you able able because you're fortunate. There's a big difference. Some people are just able because they got the money and the resources. They were born rich. But some people, some people find their fortunes because they're able. I'm able, and I increased my abilities, and I got better and better. And because of that, I became more fortunate. It's like the old adage: the harder I work, the luckier I am. You know, when I was growing up, I didn't see a map of places where you can go and spend time in the ocean and the water's, you know, 65 degrees and blue and beautiful. You have your wife on jet skis and you can spend the night on this yacht, charter and spend 2 weeks on it, or you can figure out how to buy it. Nobody was telling me that stuff. Now once I get out here, you know, they say we're creatures of our environment. You believe that post? Yes, I am a creature of my environment. What kind of environment you want to be in? That's about 2,000 gross tons behind me. The boat I'm on is 1,170, and they're all over the place. Okay, it's not like there's one boat out here. It's not like there's one successful person out here. All these people did something to put this together, and when I see this What I started thinking is, wow, if they can do this, then I can do this. Managing money is impossible if you don't increase your income. How can we increase the income? Like, first, you make it— you people need to be educated that the most important thing is to increase income, okay? Not manage money. See, this is all people being told. They reduce your expenses, but if If I make this much money, if I have this much money come in every month, whatever that number is, and I can only manage it that far, right? Let's say it's 2 inches or 2 meters, whatever. Yeah. Right. Not 2 meters, 2 what? Millimeters. Yeah. Centimeters. What is it? Centimeters. Centimeters. I got 2 centimeters of money, right? So I have 2 centimeters of money. We'll take the number out of it. And I want to manage this. This is what most people are taught. Just manage how much, how little you spend. But what you should be doing is figuring out how to increase the income to 3 centimeters. But we're not taught that. We're taught how to manage down rather than increase up. So the first thing people need to be, like, people just need to be retaught. You need to increase your income. How do I do that? First, you make a decision to increase your income, that that is senior to reducing your expenses. My mom thought she was gonna reduce our expenses Soul, the house. Okay, that's less of a burden. You can't go up by going down. Many people listening don't know your background. You know, grew up in Lake Charles, right? I think you were one of 5 children. You know, you certainly didn't come from wealth. 100%. Like, that definitely— we, I mean, we weren't poor. We weren't poverty, right? I'm not complaining about my— the way I was brought up because there's a billion people that came up way worse than I did. We had food, I had love, I had hugs, I had safety, I had direction, I had schools, I had a bike. My mom drove me to— I could either get on the bus or she'd drive me. Nobody was whipping me or beating me, or, you know, it was not bad stuff happening. And I blew all that. So I had less money when I was 25 than when I was 15. How is that possible? So I ended up with a drug problem, bad drug problem between 15 and 25 that I'm not proud of and that I finally beat. That could have killed me, by the way, could have just as easily beat me. And from the age of 25 till today, I'm just grinding out, trying to figure out every day doing something new, man. Like, I don't have it figured out. I know I don't have it figured out, but I'm in a pretty good place to like, okay, I know some things that are working. And, you know, back to the 10x rule, I double down on that stuff now. I go hard, really hard on a handful of things rather than try to be great at 100 things. Here we are, 2023. A home is $400 grand. It's gone up 15 times and interest rates doubled in the last couple years. So the same, you know, interest rates were 18% back then. It was still a lower payment than on $25,000 than it would be today. And a lot of people are like, I don't wanna own a home today. It's not a great investment, but there's gonna be so many opportunities here. Real estate, there's a couple of vectors that are gonna offer phenomenal, phenomenal opportunities. You mentioned some of the stocks. The most efficient stocks, companies in the world, the Apples, the Facebooks, I don't know about the Netflix 'cause they're gonna get pounded here, but— Yeah, it's tough. Coca-Colas, the McDonald's, these are companies that deliver real products and real, and maybe don't even have to go outside the country to get them, like Dunkin' Donuts. You know, there's no supply issues there. They cook their donuts in the morning and brew their coffee and sell it and make a margin. Real estate is going to be tremendous opportunity, single-family homes and commercial real estate like I buy, tremendous, phenomenal, uh, decades of opportunities. Like, literally, I'll probably buy more real estate this year than I bought in the previous decade, and I bought a lot of real estate. And then small businesses— there's 32 million small businesses that I mentioned earlier, uh, about 18 million of them break even or lose money. Those people that own those businesses are tired. They went through COVID, now they're going through inflation, they're exhausted, they're, they're over 50 years old, some of them over 70 years old, and they're like, I'm tapping out. I think it's a— it'll be easier this year to buy 10 businesses with no money. For your audience that doesn't have any money, you could literally buy 10 businesses today cheaper than you could start your own business. And probably scale 10 times faster than grow your own business 10%. I don't solve people's problems. I don't want to solve their problems. You don't borrow. I create an opportunity. I don't lend them money. I create an opportunity. I create an opportunity because it— look, if I lend a guy money that's got money problems— we had a guy looking at coming to work for us and he made He made a suggestion that he needed X dollars for the job, and then he wanted X dollars lent to him in advance. And I'm like, Jared, you should go back to him and say that you're not going to even present that to me because it would indicate that he's got money problems. And at this point in his life, he shouldn't have those. And you probably don't want to represent yourself in that fashion. So Jared went back to him and said, you know, that's a really bad idea to even tell Grant you want that. And the guy's like, yeah, you're probably right, don't do that. So we don't want to solve people's problems. We want to find the right people. We recruit a lot of people. First thing I did was, oh, I screwed up here when I thought I was good. Second thing is I got to realize what, what did I do wrong? I have to figure out what, what is the thing I did wrong. I identified that, and what I did wrong was, uh, I went too small. So when I wrote the 10X Rule, when I wrote that book you showed or talked about, I'm like, oh, I get it. I needed 10 industries. I was, I had one company that paid me money. I had one industry that paid me, two companies that basically could go out and get it. And then I dumped it into the real estate. The two businesses were both slaughtered. I mean, slaughtered, bro. Like, one day they were doing great, the next day they literally could not pay bills. Right. And I was not part of the mortgage crisis. I had nothing to do with the mortgage crisis. I did not buy a bunch of houses. The 200 units that I had actually in the shopping center actually cash flowed me through the collapse. Wow. So, so when I wrote this, this book was not really written for other people. I was literally trying to figure out what, what am I going to do to get a bigger audience? How am I going to scale to other industries? Industries, right? So back then we had, we talked to one industry every day and, uh, which was automotive. And today automotive was literally 100% of all my revenue. Today automotive is less than 1% of my revenue. For a fire to burn, everybody's like, who started the fire? Dude, somebody who kept it going. You know, I think the better question is, how do you keep the fire burning? 'Cause everybody's got the spark. Everybody's got the spark. It's like, how'd you put it out? How'd you put it out? Who put it out? How do you find it again? And then once you get it again, dude, how do you add wood to it? I talked about this in a book that I wrote called "If You're Not First, You're Last." Build a fire so hot, so big, so enormous that people from all over the world, regardless of who you are, your religion, your race, your age, your sex, They're like, I got to go sit by that damn fire. And like, you could see it from miles away. You know, so like the fact that you say I'm a catalyst to other people, that is such a store of wealth for me. It's like you just filled up this big silo of what should be wheat in it with purpose. And because that is the ultimate wealth. The ultimate wealth is I helped other people. You know, another huge silo of wealth is my personal confidence that I can do— the idea that I can do almost anything. And not saying I can do anything. I can't do anything. But if I don't quit, dude, I could probably figure it out, you know? And I have confidence in myself not to quit today. So, and I think the catalyst that I become for other people today is not the jet. And it's not the money. The ultra, I mean, I think some of that turns a lot of people on and off. I think the real one, the one that really like, that inspires my peers is, dude, your energy, bro, is like, you just always relight. When I thought you were bright, you get it brighter. When I thought you were big, you make it bigger. And I don't do that for people. I'm not trying to please other people. I'm trying to please me. For some incredible Robert Kiyosaki motivation, click the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. The iPhone is the single most powerful. I cannot believe how much power that thing has. So it seems to me, I'm not really religious. I'm not political, but I'm saying that