"A Once In A Lifetime Opportunity To Build Wealth IS COMING!" | Grant Cardone & Lewis Howes

If you just took the money that you earned and keep reinvesting in assets that pay you, not assets that you wish one day will pay you. If you keep investing in that asset class one day.

Do you think that you wouldn't be able to get there faster?

Yeah, 1000.

Or do you feel like money only comes to you when you're ready for it?

No.

When you're ready to make it and when you're ready to take on the risk or the responsibility.

Sabrina will never make the mistakes I made. Okay, because she won't she won't get in the wrong car. I got in the wrong vehicle. I didn't know the vehicle I got in when I was 28 years old. I could actually make a hundred grand a year doing this. My daughters will never get in that vehicle.

What would they do?

They'll be like, I'm not getting in a $100,000 ride. If they can't bring me, they're going to be like, hey, if this doesn't have a billion dollar possibility, that they're going to pick that this is the wealthy. They put their kids, their kids see things differently. If they're not ruined. Right. You know, if they're not completely ruined and scathed by having whatever they want, then they'll see opportunities different. Yeah. You know, and but when you see the possibility, then you're like, I'm not gonna get in that car, that car, that car. I'm gonna get in a spaceship. So if I was 28 again today, I mean, I would know what industries.

To pick, top three industries to pick.

Well, hedge funds have to be one of them. Advertising and marketing's got to be a space to be in. And probably something to do with healthcare. If I could scale healthcare. If I could scale the organic alternative medicines. So those are three massive spaces. Maybe financial too, the financial world. you know, in the next 30 years, we're probably going to have a, a disruption of the dollar.

Right.

And the way money's, maybe we're a crypto currency, you know, environment in the future. Yeah. So any of that, any of that's going to happen, you know, but, but.

There, the re, the reason I would.

Go there is like, like Jeff Bezos. When I, when I saw the first interview with Jeff when he was saying he was studying I think he was at one of the big firms selling stocks.

Before Amazon.

Yeah, before Amazon. And then he saw something came across his desk where there was a spike in internet activity. Eyeballs going to the internet. That's when he said, I'm gonna go do Amazon. And he followed traffic. I didn't ever follow traffic. He followed scale. He followed scaling possibilities. And then what did he do? He followed this traffic, the possibility. Then he invested in the possibility and then he went into debt on the possibility, and then he was willing to not get paid any money.

But what did I do?

I need money today. I gotta have money this week. I need to have a little more money next week. And if I get a little more money after that, I'm gonna save it all. And then I'm gonna go do that again. And I'm gonna feed the bank, and I'm gonna keep feeding the bank. I don't even know how much money the bank's made off of me for 20 years. Really? We don't know anybody that works harder than Grant Cardone. And as soon as he gets a bag, he brings it to us. What do they do? Hey, y'all wanna borrow this money? Now repeat that 300 million times.

Wow.

And that's the American people.

What about a family that's thinking, you know, I really feel comfortable having six months to a year of savings because I got kids, I got, you know, the rent, I got the all the bills. Yeah. What do you say to someone who's like, you know what, I see where you're coming from, but maybe I don't.

Feel that comfortable yet?

Well, then keep, you know, money, if you think money's going to save you, you know, you're just, Again, they're stacking information on top of bad information.

Okay?

You know, the money that you have saved in the last six months, it's probably dropped 11%. So the money that you have, you got 100 grand, I gotta have six months of savings. I need, you know, 4,000, my bills are four or five thousand bucks a month. I gotta have 30 grand in the bank. Gotta have 30. But they really have 180. So first of all, I guarantee they have more than six months. and they don't even know it because they're living out of Terra.

Right.

It's not logic. Right. You say it's logic. I need six months, but you got three times more than you need. Sure.

Number one.

Number two, you've never had an emergency that costs you 30 grand in your lifetime. Very few people ever had that emergency.

Everybody hears about it.

Oh, yeah, my guy got in the bud. This happened, blah, blah, blah. But if you had assets, if you'd been investing in assets, you can always go use those assets for collateral to loan out. You can do cancer surgery.

You can get a loan out from the bank.

100%. Or if you just took the money that you earned and keep reinvesting in assets that pay you, not assets that you wish one day will pay you, but assets that pay you every month, if you keep investing in that asset class, one day your cash flow will be your emergency account. My emergency account last month paid me a million six. My cash flow.

That's crazy.

My free cash flow.

That's crazy.

That's no work involved. That is not one second of one day. Okay? That was, and that happens every single month in my place. But that's been because I made a bunch of investments for the last, you know, 25 years.

Right.

End of every year, I dump all my cash out every year. I'm like, you need to get as close to zero as you can. and replace it with assets that in January, if I dump out in December, January, I want a payment from that. It doesn't have to be a big payment. Just needs to be a drip off that asset.

Something, yeah.

So I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna buy a cup 'cause the cup won't pay me. So in December, I had a bunch of money. Boom. I'm like, make a deal. You were in it, yes, a couple days ago. Yeah, yeah. Take- you- bought that house. Take that cash, that garbage that you have. I already had a surplus of money. So, if I can't buy two of these, I'm not gonna buy one of them. If I can't write off some portion of it, I'm not gonna buy it. If I can't do it out of passive income, I'm not gonna touch it. Interesting. So, those are my criteria for making investments, right? And it needs the cash flow. So, I took a bunch of this cash that was sitting here just deteriorating, not providing me with safety, and took it and put it into this asset. And people are like, you're ridiculous, you paid that much money for that thing. Okay? We'll see, you know. So I buy this thing, this thing will provide rental income. I think this year I'll make three million bucks on this deal. Wow.

In cash flow. And how much do you have to put down or do you buy the whole thing?

Well, I paid cash for this house.

Gotcha.

So, the reason I did it is not because this is a great deal.

But this is a terrible deal.

Keeping the cash.

Keeping the cash is garbage. This Malibu house is probably one of the worst investments I ever made. Okay. But I had a bunch of surplus cash. I had already bought, in December we bought almost 2,000 apartments. If I could have got another apartment deal, I would have bought another apartment deal with the 40 million.

But I couldn't.

You couldn't find one? I couldn't find another deal, okay? I still had this money left over. End of the year, it's just the.

Thing that I do.

End of the year dump out, literally like flush the toilet on your savings. So every day I look at my savings accounts, okay? It's not because I'm worried about any more money anymore. I know for sure the money's going down in value. Everybody knows that this year. Your money is depreciating, right? It's dropping down in value. What you were told that is 100 grand is not 100 grand. The bank's not even telling you the truth. It's 100 less 11,000.

It's 11% right now.

It could be 34% less. Some people think it's going down 34%.

That's crazy.

But you're gonna still see 100 because this is invisible taxing, right? It's inflation.

Wow.

So I know that. I know it's not a hundred. So when you guys look at your chart, I got 180,000. You're lying to yourself. Because you're not doing all the math on money. This is why Mike Saylor went and took all that money he had and invested in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, yeah. Because he's done the research. So I would listen to him, and I'm not saying you guys should go buy Bitcoin, but I'm not buying Bitcoin at those levels. Okay, I'm buying assets that can provide you with more cash, with more income. Maybe I should be buying Bitcoin, I don't know. But anyway, so I dumped this out. I dumped this for... Now I've been shopping this piece of real estate for 19 months. I've been working this deal for 19 months. So I'm not being like, okay, I just gotta go buy something. I'm not gonna do that. But I'm trying to get rid of this cash to go into an asset that has the potential to go up in value over time. I dump out in January, okay? I do three webinars. That's why everybody wants to know, man, what's the rush to make more money? Because I'm broke, man.

And I got a new house.

Right.

You got bills to pay now, you got expenses.

So January 1st comes, I've done three webinars already to start filling this up again.

Mm-.

Right now, if I walked into January 1st with 40 million bucks sitting in.

A bank account, dude, you're not hungry.

What's the rush, bro? You're not hungry. Yeah, let's plan, let's do some planning this year.

Mm-.

But what I do is I dump out. So every year for the last 15 years, every January, I end up with more assets. I go broke over here and I go up over here.

What are the top assets that will make money for you beyond real estate, do you think?

Let's see. I mean, I mean, that's my deal. You know, you could buy mutual funds and you can buy, you know, go feed Vanguard and go feed the Blackstone and you know, they own everything, dude.

Right.

You go make a bet on Disney, you know, so you could buy stocks, you could buy funds, you could buy gold and silver. Gold is dead, gold is a terrible investment, has been for 10 years. Anybody says it's a good investment, just look at the chart for 10 years. It's down this year. We got major inflation. It's supposedly the great inflation hedge. We have major worry about inflation and gold went down. Yeah. So you can go buy crypto. But you're gambling.

What would be your case for crypto? Let's say you had a billion dollars in Bitcoin and you had to make your case why this is an amazing investment. Obviously, that's not your thing.

Yeah, no, but I'm studying this whole thing. You see, Michael, I'm very interested in the space. So I have probably $6 million in.

Bitcoin, in Bitcoin by itself.

Yeah, somebody gave me some.

I remember this was like four years ago, wasn't that three years ago?

I still have it.

I remember you said you got paid in Bitcoin. You got paid in Bitcoin.

Yeah, exactly.

And you said I'll take your money in Bitcoin and whatever crypto and- yeah, yeah, I'll take whatever. And how much did you get when you originally got Bitcoin? 100 pieces.

100 pieces at 500 bucks? Yeah, yeah, so that's worth 40, you.

Know, whatever it is today.

I don't know.

So what is that? 50 grand?

50 grand you got? No, it's $5 million.

But what did you get when you got it?

How much was it? It was $50, 100 pieces. It was $500 and there was 100 pieces.

So whatever, 50 grand. 50 grand. So you had 50 grand for some.

Product you had or something or some- yeah, yeah, whatever. I was a speaking gig, actually.

Speaking gig, yeah. And now it's worth.

And then when it hit 30,000 again, I bought some more.

Okay.

Because I'm starting to like, okay, this thing could happen. Okay, 28 million pieces, you know, they're never gonna make more. It is not, to me, it is not an inflation hedge.

What is it?

It's just a place to store. It's an asset store. It's not a currency. I don't think it's a currency. 'Cause currency comes from the word current, it means it moves. And I don't see this moving. I see this as a storage. You know, I see this as something that could one day maybe replace gold as a standard. We're certainly gonna move closer to digital universe and money than we are gold standard. We're never going back to the gold standard.

Well, if you have a lot of it, you gotta even be promoting it.

I'm 63 years old. Never had any gold in my entire life. I've never had a gold block gold.

Unless you have maybe a chain or something.

I got a ring or something. I lost that. I don't understand it. I think there's more people playing the Bitcoin game than there are people playing the gold game. But anyway, so the case for Bitcoin is it's limited. Hopefully they're not going to make any more. That's what they say. It is a ledger. I like that there's millions of computers backed up saying, hey, this is this is what it is, you know, and I don't completely understand it.

It's not paying you a dividend.

But that's what I don't like.

No cash flow.

Okay, now I'm in a position, I don't need more cash flow. I don't know how to spend a million six a month. Plus, I had the discipline to go make more money. It's not like I quit working.

Do you have a goal of how much cash flow you want?

No, I have a goal. I have a goal.

Well, the business, Not the real estate.

Yes.

The business last year made, I mean, it made eight million a month.

Wow.

Okay.

So this is on your real estate. The educational side of things.

The events, the books. Probably eight and a half. Okay.

Consulting, coaching, events, books, everything in there.

Gross income, 110 million bucks last year.

Amazing.

Yeah.

No, from, dude, I remember when I couldn't make a hundred grand in a year. Wow.

How does that feel?

Unbelievable, dude. I mean, today I woke up today, Jared hits me today. He's like $643,000 today.

That's crazy.

That's insane. Insane.

When was the last time you made a hundred grand in one year? That you're in the hundred to a hundred to a 200 grand.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. You know, but I remember when I, I remember when that was my goal, Louis. My goal was to make a hundred grand in a year and I wanted $10,000 in passive income. I said, dude, if I can make 100 grand a year and $10,000 is passive income, I'm set. You know, so, like, this all is a bit of a dream to me. Like, it's not like, you know, I never thought I would do this. I never even thought about these kind of numbers.

1.6 million a year.

In the passive income.

A month?

A month. A month. That's passive.

That's just money. That's not you working.

No, no, no. That's not a new real estate deal. That's not, that's not investors. Okay. So back to the goal. What's the goal? My goal, we paid out $3 million a month last year to investors. That's the thing I'm most proud of.

That's pretty cool.

That and what we do with kids is like the two things that I just trip on. I want to send out at least $30 million a month. We sent out 36 million last month. Last year.

You want to do that every month?

I want to do that every month.

And when I get to 30 million, I'm going to go to 300 million a month.

Wow.

I'm going to send out 300 million. a month. I want 10 million investors and I want 10 million investors. I want to send more money out than I've ever made personally. A month. So I'm going to flip this whole thing. I'm going to go from the kid that was worried about the kid that, you know, grew up in a good household, became a drug addict, then he became a salesman. Everybody knows I'm this guy always hit the link. Hit the link. You know, you guys are always freaking trash it on me because, you know, he's always selling something. I'm gonna flip that whole thing to where I'm always sending people money.

What are three things that you believe rich people do differently than poor people?

Rich people do not value money the way poor people do. They invest money, they don't spend it. You know, the best spending is still worse than the best and the worst investment. Like you could make a bad investment that would still be better than a smart spend.

Really? So what's a smart spend? What's a smart spend versus a bad spend?

I mean, I don't really know anything that's a smart spend, but you know, you spend money, when you spend money, you don't get an investment back. And when you invest money, at least you got a possibility. I mean, at the very least, you get a tax write-off. So if I spend money on a belt, I can't write it off. I can only wear it. And if I invest money in a Grant Cardone belt, and wear it on stage and it flops as a product and nobody ever buys it. It's at least a write-off it was at least a promotion. So a bad investment is still better than a smart spin. So wealthy people don't spend money, they invest money. Number two, they also know that money is not required. I think a lot of us, if we grew up poor, we believe it takes money to make money. Our parents told us that. maybe a grandparent or the neighbor or somebody said that to us because that was their how they justified not having their breakthrough and getting trapped. They're like, oh, the reason I didn't get out. And we know everybody's got an excuse in their lifetime. Everybody uses them at some point in their lifetime to trap themselves. This idea that it takes money to make money is not true. It's a myth. It's the number one reason why I did the show, the Discovery show, to debunk that on TV, that I didn't need any money at all. They offered me a hundred bucks. I'm like, Just keep it, dude. Like, no, no, we got to give it to you.

It's part of the show.

And I'm like, I don't need the hundred. They're like, no, but you got to take the hundred as part of the show. So the third thing I would say about wealthy people is they're, I mean, different people have different ways they invest, but they tend to be more focused on the long-term appreciation of an asset rather than give me money this second. And I think they're not stuck in this get rich quick thing.

It's a delayed gratification.

Yeah, they're more like, yeah, I'd rather have wealth tomorrow than rich today. And they do have a distinction between the rich and the wealthy. The super wealthy are looking to create wealth beyond their own means and needs. Like they're not thinking about their kids, their boat, their plane. I know people think that, but that's not actually true. They're actually thinking about how do I create wealth for a lot of people? Amazon's got a million employees. Now most of them only earn minimum wage, but there's some people at the upper level of Amazon that are making fortunes.

Yeah, and I'm curious. You wanted to debunk this myth of that it takes money to make money, which is something I heard a lot growing up and a lot of people think, well, unless I I can't make it because I can't invest it until I have it. So what were the lessons you learned starting from essentially zero, having no money, no context, no relationships, no opportunities in a town that you went to for this show? What did you realize were the keys to actually making money even if you didn't have any?

Well, as you see the show, you see that I actually never make any money, right? the two girls, they actually follow three of us. And the two girls went out and got a job in the first week. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong or my way is better or worse, but they are strategies, okay? They're different strategies. I was not there to get a job or to earn money. I was there looking for one thing, opportunity. I never spent time looking for money ever the entire 90 days, okay? I'm not looking for money. I was actually looking for contracts through the contacts. I wasn't looking for money because I knew the evaluation of the company in the last segment. An evaluator will come in and determine what my company's worth, my new company.

Right, that I created.

And at that point, I just need to validate to him, dude, my company's worth this based on that the entire 90 days. I never touched the first 100 they gave me. And this was to prove to people, dude, you do not need money. Like, it's just, it's not true. You need money. You do need contacts.

You need people. You need relationships.

You need people.

You need the right people, though. The right people that are already in play.

Okay?

Just because the guy's got money. I remember a. A billionaire friend of mine, you know.

He could buy a jet.

And I said, hey, Bob, should I buy a jet? He said, you should.

I shouldn't.

Meaning Grant should, because, and he's way wealthier than I am, he could have bought 40 of them. He's like, I don't have a place to go in mine. You could use yours every day. So you gotta find somebody that's in place, somebody that not just has money, but somebody that wants to do more with their money. So you'll notice in the first 10 days, I don't spend any money. I don't spend money on shelter, not on food, and not on water. Nothing. Then what I do is I end up accumulating assets and it's unfortunate that the viewer doesn't see this. Within five days I have two vehicles. One was given to me by Discovery and the other one was a $40,000 Jeep that I basically used from Ryan, this guy I met, and told him, I'm gonna sell your Jeep. I'm gonna drive it around town and put 10 miles a day on it and I'm gonna sell it. Well, that's a $43,000 asset. My truck was worth four grand. I still had my $100. I lived in a $46,000 RV that I was trying to sell. So, and what's the other thing I did? And I picked up $10,000 to do in a 15% partnership in the equity of the upside of this guy's company. So literally in 10 days, I was accumulating contacts that could get me equity. And the important part of that story is, 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 in advance while I'm picking up the equity.

Ooh, yeah, they're trying to get the get rich quick. Let me give you the money now.

Give it to me now.

Where the publisher is getting long-term residual income for decades off of your music.

Kevin Hart, look at what Kevin Hart did 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, Kevin Hart says, yeah, I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna tell my jokes, but 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 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 make sure you have the biggest weekend that you've ever been here. And I said, if you give me $6,000, I'll take the six 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 gonna stand out in the street, I'm gonna 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. 'Cause what I really wanted from him was I wanted him to front the bill at the print shop so that he could put me in play. Well, I went and ran the whole promotion that weekend. I said, 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 next three 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 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's the one that made the offer. I said, that's awesome. 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 grand. I actually didn't get 10,000.

I got an advance on a partnership.

Which is even better. Wow, that's fascinating. So you never really asked for money. You said, Give me equity with everything.

Give me equity. And then once I got the equity agreement on the upside, most people are willing to give you this.

Because it's more than they've already made. They're already making a certain amount. They never crossed past that probably in years. So they're like, okay, if you can help me 10X it, I'll give you a 15%.

I don't want a piece of what you're already doing. That's not fair. That's an unfair deal. I mean, you know, people are like, I need to ask for more. Yeah, but you don't want to ask and be, look stupid. Like you can't ask somebody to give you something of a company they already have. Also, it's interesting because again, they didn't show this and I look forward to kind of breaking this thing down. We're going to actually, I'm going to create a whole platform where I go in and break the show up and show people what they didn't see. When I left Vegas to fly to.

Pueblo, the production company said, Hey, what's your first move?

First move, I'm going to the bank to drop off the hundred. Second thing, I'm going to the gym to meet people. Third thing is I'm going to find a business for sale and I'm going to see if the guy that owns the company can give me a place to sleep. Those three things happened exactly the way I predicted before I got to Pueblo, before I even knew I was going to Pueblo. I mean, it happened just every one of them. And then Discovery came to me at four days and said, bro, you got to slow down. I said, what do you mean? We don't have a TV show if you keep winning.

Right.

If you make it happen in two weeks, what are we gonna do?

I'm like, okay, come out here and watch me throw up. Okay, come out here and watch. I'm sick. I was sick from altitude sickness. I'm like, you guys got to cover how hard this is for me. I'm terrified, I'm cold, my back hurts.

I don't have a good place to.

Sleep, I'm pissing in a bottle, and then they cut all that out of the show. So, so the point of that story is quit going for some dead Benjamins and start getting you some equity. Okay, $100 bills are dead. They're from the past. Equity is the future. You're better off with a future, if you believe in yourself, than you are with the dead Benjamin.

What are some things people should be looking for in terms of the right people or the right products or companies to say, okay, and how to position and package themselves to make a partnership equity deal. What should they be looking for and how can they position and package the way you did?

Yeah, so like in Pueblo, there's 112,000 people that live there. The average household income there is $24,000 a year. Household income. Like it's one of the most beat up, economically beat up cities in America. They were at 8% unemployment when the country was at three. When COVID hit, it went to 22.

Wow.

Like just ridiculous, right? So now when I'm in a problem environment like that, you have to do the math. So I'm like, okay, there's 112,000 people there. I can't meet them all and I don't want to meet them all. I only have 90 days. So then I said, okay, who's got the money in this town? The businesses have the money in the town. this is the unfair advantage I have in this show, is that I did not go there to start a new business. I went there to find a business that was already banking. A lot of people think I said.

Did you have that intention before?

100%. I said, there's no way I'm going to start a new business. There's 34 million businesses in America. America does not need a new business.

And it's so hard to launch and create momentum, especially if you don't, even with your audience, it's hard to launch a new business.

It is so ridiculous. It is so stupid what people are doing today. start a new beauty salon. I'm going to start a new masseuse place. I'm going to start a new cosmetologist house. I'm going to start a new, you got a new idea, nobody needs it. Like if you were an alien looking down at the United States of America and saying, okay, what is there too much of? Restaurants, bars, and businesses. There's too many of them. And then some kid pops up, Paul pops up and says, I'm going to.

Start a new business.

And the guy from outside the planet is looking down there saying, well, that's stupid. Why don't you just go two-thirds of.

All the businesses in America break even or lose money? So what I'm hearing you say, Grant, is a lot of people have the dream of wanting to start and launch a business. But what I'm hearing you say is it's probably a lot smarter to go find a failing business or a business that's breaking even, jump in, add value.

And see if you can 10x that. Dude, that's how you get on planes. That's how you, you know, you go to the hospital, you need Emergency care, you don't build a hospital, you just go to the hospital. You want food, you go to Whole Foods. You want gas, you go to the gas station. It's no different in business. It's called a going concern for a reason. Find a going concern that's got a brand, go in, that's what I did, I just went in and added value. Once I added value, actually we end up splitting off another business out of that. So out of that relationship, your first question was, hey, who are you looking for? I'm looking for contacts, that can actually become contracts. I'm looking for specific relationships. They have to have money, they have to have credibility, they have to have credit lines. That's the only people I was looking for in Pueblo. Out of 112,000 people, are there 50 of them? I need to meet 50 people that have money, credit, and credibility.

How did you feel, because I saw in the first episode that you got rejected a few times. How did you feel from someone who is getting yeses a lot and building their business so fast to go into a place where people just say, Nah, I don't believe in you, or, Eh, you don't seem credible, or, How did you take it security-wise internally?

Well, what, again, pieces you don't hear is I was in this meeting and this guy starts flexing on me. And he literally, like, I had to sit there and listen to his, well, I did 30, I raised $30 million, I bought all this and I put this together and I'm the king and la la la. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, Dude, I'd like to just drop. I'd like, you want to see a flex right now? You know, the same day I had written a check for like $45 million and I'm having to bite my tongue. Like he doesn't know I could be his investor. By the way, there was a great lesson in that. Like I was nobody. Shaved head, old truck, no name, no social media following. And this guy, treated me just like that, like I'm a nobody.

And you never know who you're talking to or who they're friends with or who their family is that could support you potentially.

Totally.

Like the same day this guy's flexing on me about how he raised 30 million and he's the king of Pueblo and blah, blah, blah. I mean, like what I had in my checking account that day is Grant Cardone. I just wanted to pop it out on him. Shut up, dog. Treat everybody like you never know who you're dealing with. And just because they're having a bad day, one, you don't know who you're dealing with, and number two, more importantly, you don't know who they're going to become.

Yeah, they may not have money yet, but in 10 years, they might have a brand or audience or something that could support you.

Every accredited investor was a non-accredited investor at one time. Every whale was a minnow.

I mean, you've been doing sales for, what, four decades now?

Yeah.

And you've been selling from cars to real estate to everything in between, you know, 11 best selling books. You've been. You've been a selling machine. How did it feel to go in without being able to use any of that and go back to kind of the basics of, like, okay, I'm a brand new car salesman just trying to figure out how to do this thing. How did you have the confidence or the courage? to go in blind and try to build these relationships?

Because I had the commitment. You know, I was committed to the outcome. I always say, Man, commitment comes with time and money.

The thing that you do extremely well.

Is you're a master enroller grant.

And I believe that we're either enrolling people in our vision or we're unenrolling them in our vision every moment, every day, with our content, our posts, our interactions. And we could be unenrolling people in our brand from one conversation or one thing that we we do to piss someone off. Where did you learn the skill of enrollment of getting people to buy into you and your vision?

I think what I do is and I talk about this in seller be sold. I've been a sales guy for a long time and I just learned early on and I was terrible at sales 17 years old 18 19 part time part time sales guy was I was awful. When I finally realized that sales was the only job I could get at 25 years old I'm just like, dude, I just got to tell people the truth, 'cause I can't do all these tricks. The NLP, and look, if it works for you, good, whatever, but the mirroring, the matching, they ask a question, you ask a question, the hot potato, I've heard all these strategies. And I'm like, dude, I just can't do it. I'm just gonna be me. Hey, guys, I'm moving from LA. I'm out of work. I'm looking for opportunity. I'm trying to move my family here. My name's Louis Curtis. 2008 beat me up. I got to get my family out of LA. Real estate's impossible. I can't buy it there. It's priced out of the market. And I'm here in Pueblo because I think there's opportunity here. And that's all I'm looking for. No handouts, no help. I don't, I got an old truck with me. I got no money. I left my kids with, you got to have your story so people enroll, but you also have to be talking to the right audience. I only spent time with people that were able, capable, qualified. I spent no time. I was in a meeting once in Pueblo. I walked into the meeting, assessed the situation, and bounced. I said, Guys, I'm done. I'm out of here. Boom, and I walked out. And my partner at that time, you'll see it later in the later shows, he's like, what just happened? I'm like, There's nothing here, bro.

There's no money here.

There's no opportunity here. and I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell him I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell, I couldn't tell anybody. So I had these little secrets going on. So, you know, how do you enroll people? It's like, you got to get enrolled. You know, my, my, my personal integrity and ethics is why I could sell so hard. And because I believe in my product, I believe in my investment vehicle, I believe in my company. I don't trick people, screw people. Like 35 years I've been in business. There's not one person in 35 years that says, I owe them money.

There's people that try to get stuff.

From me using lawyers and bull, but there's nobody that can say, I ever financially damaged them in any way, not a penny. And so that allows me to go back into the world and push. It allows me to sell tickets for big prices. You know, when I spend $7 million to rent Mandalay Bay, dude, I can sell anybody a $20,000 ticket. like, I spent, you know, somebody complained about my ticket price. I'm like, dude, like, I spent 7 million on this event.

You spent 20 grand.

Who got the best deal?

How did you learn to have courage in your, in yourself when you were, you know, doing drugs? And, you know, I think you're an alcoholic. I think in the past, when you're.

A teenager, maybe not a full-on alcoholic.

No, it was a drug problem. It wasn't an alcohol problem. It was a drug drugs. And just, you know, kind of a deadbeat for Thank you. Off and off many years. How did you learn to kind of build confidence though, so that you could be inspired in yourself to push bigger, to ask for more? How did you do that?

Well, first I quit using drugs.

I mean, the order, everybody wants to get better and have confidence, but the first thing you got to do is you got to quit doing whatever's destroying your self-esteem. I'd like to believe that I could look in the mirror and tell myself, I'm great, and then I'd feel it. But if you're destroying yourself the other 23 hours and 56 minutes, the self-talk isn't gonna matter. So I had to quit doing damage to myself. I hated myself. The worst part of my drug addiction was how, it wasn't just what the drugs were doing to me, and the hangovers, and the lost time, It was the personal, personal deprivation and degrade that I was doing to myself and how many times I tried to quit. I would, Louis, every morning for 10 years, I said, Today's the last day. I'm never going to use again. 15 minutes.

10 years.

10 years, nine years and nine years and like six months.

So what was the deciding factor that actually made you quit?

I finally went, you know, I had to go some place. I had to change my environment. So I went to a treatment center in Minneapolis during the wintertime, late February, I was 25 years old and spent 28 days there in an environment where nobody had drugs, I didn't have access to drugs, and people were starting to talk about, okay, how'd you get here? They ended up putting me on drugs.

In the treatment center.

And I'm like, I don't want the drugs, dude. And they're like, oh, no, you need it to detox to get off. I'm like, this was 30 years ago. They've really ramped it up. that program up now. It's the legal drug dealer now, is the treatment center. But the environment gave me at least, I was able to look around and see the damage drugs were causing these other people, men and women of all ages. And then that really solidified, okay, I'm stopping. But I needed a day, one day not to use drugs, 'cause I had been using drugs every day for nine years, nine and a half years. And so I needed the first day. Once I got the first day, I'm like, shit, I can put together two days. Then my head started clearing up a little bit. 28 days later, I go home to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and that's when the rebuilding really took place. And I had to replace all that drug time, which was a bunch of hours every day. This is what made me the beast, like the savage that I am today.

You had to put that time to good use.

Dude, I had so much free time.

Right, not being high, not doing drugs with friends. Not being with friends that are doing the drugs.

Looking for drugs, finding drugs, losing drugs. You lose some people.

Finding the drugs.

Yeah.

Find them, buy them, lying to people, hiding from people. You know, it was terrible.

It was terrible.

I did that for nine and a half years. It was awful. It's the worst part of my life. It's the darkest, worst part of my life. And so I had to crawl out. And then I replaced, literally, when I was 25 years old, I started every day with a meeting, and I ended every day with a meeting. I'd go to a narcotics anonymous meeting or some kind of 12-step program for, I'll bet you I did that for 15 or 16 years.

So you were all in committed. I'm going to a meeting in the morning and at night.

I'm either, I'm going there to help myself and I'm gonna help somebody else every day.

Wow, 15 years.

Yeah, and then that was my form of helping people. I'm like, I'm gonna help other people that have this problem. That really kept me from going back. And then in the mean, when I wasn't at a meeting, I was studying sales for the first five. When I got out of the treatment center between 25 and 30 years old, all I did every day was study sales, do sales, or I was in a meeting.

That's impressive.

I would drive 25 minutes to work and I would listen to sales tapes. I listened to this one set of sales tapes I had and I would learn how to, how to, how, I would learn the game. Like I would learn how to talk to people, communicate. and it was really communication skills. It wasn't so much sales. It was more logic, how to make sense of a purchase or an investment. And then at lunch, sometimes at lunch, I'd go to a meeting.

What was the, in those early tapes, is there anything you remember that you still use today that seems to work consistently on the science or secret of selling that's very simple maybe for someone to do, but maybe they just don't have the courage or confidence of the reps to do it.

What happened the first when I really started learning from the, in the beginning, what you learn is you're learning from the master, you know? And, and so I'm, I'm duplicating and emulating. Then at some point you cross over and you become the master. And, and if, if you're a guy like me, I'm always looking to improve everything. I'm looking for another little tweak, another little twist. You and I did that with the podcast. I'm looking for that. that next thing all the time, how to make something just a little better, a little faster. And so at some point, I kept studying this guy until I was able. In the beginning, I didn't challenge anything. I used, I duplicated.

I got the script that I learned. Let me use exactly what he's telling me to do, do it.

Whatever I heard, I'm going to be like, I'm going to make that work. That's going to be my stable datum. And once I could trust that, then I could build on top of it. I never yabbed anything. Oh, I got a better way in the beginning. Dude, until I got the results over and over, consistent results, then I started teaching it to other people, then I started learning angles. And then I basically created my own style and my own, I actually almost threw away what I had learned and created this new thing called Information Assisted Selling.

Information assisted selling.

Where I started leading with what people wanted rather than this guy kind of hid. It was the old school, hide it. Don't avoid the price, bring it up later. And that's where I really started accelerating everything, giving people the information up front, allowing you to understand how much this watch or ring was or car was. Before you even asked about it, I'd tell you it's 58,000.

Right away. So you wouldn't wait till the very end, you'd say, yeah, look, if you're.

Shopping for a car, or a watch or a ring or a coaching program, whatever it is, you probably want to know how much it is. I know I would. This particular product is $58,000. It would require about, you know, $2,500 down. Your payments would be about $550 a month. Let's be sure you're on the right product. You see, I've already, I got the value proposition, the money. I got you thinking about money right now. I want you thinking about money. So that when I show the product, you can start making sense of it. Because I can't convince you that it's worth it. You have to convince you. I can build value, but the buyer is the buyer. I can't be the buyer. I can only help the buyer make sense of it.

Is there a certain amount of steps in this selling system that you have?

Yeah, it's like five. Tell them what your intention are my intention is to get you to be to be a service to you to do business with you okay, so right.

Up front if I'm if I'm looking to buy real estate I'm doing a.

Say I'm doing a pot I'm doing a web a webinar and it's a coaching class because you and I are in that space. Yeah, yeah, you've heard me many times open the event with a my intention is to get all of you to be my customer tonight We have a $1,900 program or $9,000 program. We're gonna offer it to you tonight for 9.97 is sitting over there at a website right now right now, if you wanna go click it, get it. But my intention is to make every one of you a customer tonight. The most you can spend with me is $9.97 tonight, okay? Or you spend nothing at all. And then what I'm gonna do is spend the next three days or three hours or 30 minutes talking about this program. But I let everybody know right from the get go. Now, Russell, Russell does it different. You know, he's gonna wait till the end.

So that's step one is be clear.

With your intention about what's my intention? Okay. Second is, what do I have to offer? Three, I need to qualify the lead. Is the lead even qualified to do anything with me? Otherwise, I need to.

They have the money.

Yeah, I need a balance.

Do you tell people, hey, just go ahead and get off this training right now. If you're, if your intention is not to be a customer, or do you allow them to kind of.

No, you can, you can listen if you want to. you can keep listening if you want to. You can watch for free if you choose to. But let's say I'm selling a guy a watch. I mean, I'm going to tell him it's $58,000. We do have a payment plan. Payments could be as low as $300 a month. But let me ask you a question. Have you ever bought a $58,000 watch?

No.

What kind of watch do you have? I got a Seiko.

Great.

How much was it? $200.

Right.

Now he's telling me, hey, maybe move him into some different inventory. I might be on the wrong product.

Mm-.

Okay, so that's step three, I think you said.

Yeah, and then it's gonna be, I'm gonna explain my product, be sure it fits his needs, okay? And then I'm gonna trial close him and say, Hey, come on inside. Let's make this work. Let me make you a customer. Let me get you a watch. Let me get you a car. Let me get you a coaching program. Let me get you started, and then.

I'm gonna close the deal.

Did you say trial close? Is that what you said? Yeah, I'm gonna test it. I'm gonna try to move that. I'm gonna try to move the buyer.

Hey, go to the table.

Right?

For those of you who are ready.

Go to the checkout page. Go to the checkout page.

Go to the landing page, right? And then hopefully I'll close the deal. And then I move into follow up. So it's not really a sales process. It's really a customer experience.

And what have you learned about, you've done so many massive deals over the last three or four years in real estate. What have you learned about negotiations? and the power of negotiating to get exactly what you want in these bigger, you know, mega, multi-million dollar deals that you're doing.

It gets pretty intense, man.

Like, big...

The negotiation process?

Oh, yeah.

Massive egos. Like, you got a lot of people involved. You got very intelligent people involved. Everybody's got money. You know, it's like the whale and.

The.

Great white and the... killer whales there and the humpbacks there and dude, it's a feeding frenzy. Like, you know, everybody's got bulk, everybody's got muscle, everybody's got power, everybody's got money.

Why do you think people are afraid to just talk about money, to make decisions on investing money? They're scared to go earn more. Why are people afraid of money in general, do you think?

Well, yeah, I can tell you for me, like I was always scared of money. you know, and, and I was terrified of it. So, so, like, if you look at still today, like, I look at the bill of everything. It's a bill of everything. If something calls something, I want to know how much it was. And so, like, how much is it? Like, I'm gonna ask that question, whether, whether it matters or not. It doesn't matter where I get in my life. I don't think I'm ever going to be free of. How much was that?

How much is the dinner? How much was dinner?

How much was the tip? How much was the coat? How much was the jacket? What did you know, me and Elena, like Elena's like, hey, it's gonna be fine, man. Like, look at what you've done. We cannot spend this. And I'm like, how much was it? I want to know how much it was because when I grew up, you had to know what things cost. And so the point, your question about money is a terrifying thing because it's the one thing in life that, you know, the NFL is not gonna give me the ball. and I'm never gonna get a chance to golf. I can't win in those environments, but with money, everybody gets money. It's the one place where everybody gets it, and now what do I do? And I can lose it now. So it's a terrifying concept, like power. Very few of us ever get any kind of influence or power, right? Once you get it, you're like, hey, what do I do with this? Am I gonna do it? Am I gonna do the right things with it? And so I think people withhold themselves because they don't we're not educated about money. We don't know where it comes from. We have a lot of misinformation about it. Our parents terrified us. You know, money doesn't grow on trees. Save your money, it'll save you. All these things our parents told us because they were enamored or encumbered with the same kind of liabilities around money. I don't know how to get it. I don't know how to keep it. And the the third, the worst part that we're all at is I don't know how to invest it.

Yeah.

So what I'll do is I'll, some people get good at getting it. Very few, actually. Fewer people at keeping it, but probably more than getting it. There's probably a big group in America that have learned how to keep money.

Because they're afraid to lose it.

They don't want to invest it. They don't want to use it. They don't want to, you know, you know, Kanye talks about this, how white people, how white people save all their money. And they just keep it, they just store it. Like I had an uncle, he buried everything he ever made. It went in the backyard.

Wow.

The other uncle was a guy that.

Bought, he worked hard, very, very frugal.

Italian descent, and he would buy real estate, but it was always buy low and sell high. He actually never sold anything, but that was the concept, buy low, buy the cheapest, lowest, get everything on a deal. If there's food stamps to be gotten, you go get those food stamps. If there's a government deal, get it. If it's section eight and the government will pay you, pay it. So both these guys, different kind of mentalities, were extremely frugal. My other uncle worked in a refinery. He basically saved all his money, paid everything off, got out of debt. That was their lifestyle. My dad died when I was 10. So he paid all his debt off, had everything paid. And so that's all I had, right? Everybody around me was like, Get money.

Keep it.

Keep it. Don't use it. But you should invest, but nobody ever learns that third one. And so I think we're just a bunch of people walking around terrified of this apparent apparency of it's scarce and it's not. And there's nothing scarce about it.

Didn't they just print more in the last year?

We printed more, I think we printed more money since the last last time I was with you than they printed in the last 100 years.

That's crazy.

Since I saw you last.

That's nuts.

So everybody should have got a pay raise. And I know, I know people are scared of the bubble right now. They're like, oh my God, man, things have to real estate's too much and stocks are too much. None of this stuff has gone up equal to the amount of money printing. So if the print is this high, You know, if the print is that high and inflation that we're hearing about all the time is this high, you'd have to assume it would have at least this far to go. But that's only because people don't understand when you print this much money, you need to multiply times nine. Because money, money's printed. When you take your money to the bank, when I take the money that you're going to give me for this great interview today, and I take it to the bank, I put it as soon as it goes into the bank, the bank gets notified and the bank now has the ability to loan that money out nine times. Nine times. Nine times. So they don't keep money, okay? So if you put a million dollars with the bank today, they're going to go make $9 million worth of loans tomorrow.

How do they make that? How do they do it?

Well, that's what they're allowed to do by their regulations.

They can take a million dollars that you give them. That's why they want deposits so much. And then they can go give $9 million in loans on that one. That's right. Within a year, two years, and within one second. In one day they can loan out 9 million.

When you, this is what people don't understand. And this is what our parents didn't understand, okay?

So Bob goes out, Bob or Betty.

Goes out and they work and they make, they do really well and they make 200 grand a year. Maybe they're online doing online sales. Hustle, hustle, hustle, trading their most valuable thing. This is what I did for 25 years, from 25 to 51 years old. spent my most valuable asset time to get money. Terrified. Terrified every second of every day. That's, that's really what's driven me the whole time was Tara. Like when you don't know, you're going to be scared.

Yeah.

So I'm going out to get money. I won't, I won't spend any of it because I'm terrified if I can't, I don't know how to get more. I'm worried I can't keep getting more. So then I get the money and then I rush off and spend my most valuable asset time again to bring it to the bank.

Yeah.

And then they go multiply it.

Dude, they're telling me to save it and they don't. And so when I quit listening to every, everybody that's got an opinion about money online or my neighbors or my uncles, and I started saying, what are they doing? When I quit studying the influencers and started studying the banks, Goldman, JP Morgan, KKR, there's an endless list of these guys. You start studying those guys, Elon, study Elon. Elon doesn't keep any cash. He thinks the whole thing's a joke, which he's probably right. So what does he do? He reinvests everything. He's not paying debt off. He's accumulating debt. But Apple has debt, Google has debt, Facebook has debt, and they have cash reserves that, that are the biggest cash reserves on planet Earth. They could pay cash for everything.

Why do they don't, why do they.

Get debt when they have all?

Exactly.

Why do they do that? Because, because if I take, if I take, man, you got a little whiteboard right here, man. God dang. Okay, so if I take, Apple just did this, okay? I got 90, I want to make a 90 billion dollar purchase. I want to make a nine and, and they're like, yeah, we got the cash for that. In fact, we have cash. Plus another 50%. We got plenty of cash to do this. Okay, and then one of their people says, okay, bro, you do that. That is not a tax deductible event. What we should do is we should go keep this and go borrow 90 billion. Really? At like 0.005%. Like they're gonna pay a half of 1%. for this debt.

Maybe they pay 1%.

Who cares? They're like, I don't care. It's a tax deduction anyway.

Interesting.

So now they have the best of both worlds. They have their cash and they have debt. Now back in when I was growing up, this debt would cost 10, 12, 15, 18%.

It's so cheap now.

This debt, because we print money. Money is not scarce like our parents told us.

Like, well, I was growing up, I.

Bet you I heard, I heard at least from my mother, from the age of 10 to 15, if I didn't hear this 500 or 1000 times, I never heard it once. We don't own the electric company. Turn those lights out, boy. I still have that going on today. My dad, my mom told me my dad would, because he worked so hard, dude. He was so like, oh, I finally got it. I finally made it. Now I gotta protect it. He got stuck in the second piece, keeping it. you know, it's an emotional keep. And so it's not a rational thing, 'cause you're hoarding now, you know? Still today, man, it's tough for me to buy blue jeans if they're not on sale. I'm like, this is stupid, man. Like, I'm just gonna wait.

Right.

You know? So, you know what I'm saying? But it's really stupid that I even worry about it.

Right.

And I'm not saying on the come up, I think you should worry about it.

Right.

But there needs to be where you.

Can turn that switch off. If you could give, you said there's a lot of misinformation and people just aren't educated on money in general when they're growing up, or there's just a lot of information out there.

I think the misinformation is more, it's not a financial. Illiteracy, it's a financial, it's almost like we've been hypnotized with the wrong set of rules.

So if you could only share three pieces of information to your kids or the younger generation or anyone stuck on hoarding and keeping money, what would you say would be those three things that you would share to change the philosophy and mindset around the fear of money?

Well, I think number one is there's a bigger problem with hoarding in this country than there is with spenders. But what we see is, what we hear is all the spenders.

Who are getting into debt.

Yeah.

Oh my god, you know, he did this and he's overspending. But really, really you have more of a hoarding issue than you have a spender issue. Number one, I think people err more on saving and not knowing how to use money than they do on buying Richards and Lambos, even though you see all that around LA. And I know that's, I know these people are, I walk into Vegas and I sit down at a table in Vegas and I know the three guys playing they're playing 10 times more than I am. Like they're playing $2,000 a hand, I'm playing $25. I'm like, I know I'm in a better position to play what they're playing for, but I can't do it. So the advice I would give people is like, I would just assume that everything you know about money is incorrect.

Everything.

Every single thing you know.

Just assume it so you can get back to where?

So that you can actually have a white, you can have a clean A clean board to operate from. Because if you go out right now and try to stack new information, financial literacy on top of, you know, a toxic foundation, it's all gonna get all... That's why when I tell people, don't go buy a house, everybody freaks out. They're like, that can't be right. That can't be right.

Why?

Because that's what you've been told to buy a house your whole life. Because the banks want you to buy a house. Now, everybody just heard that's gonna say, I just saw you buy a house in Malibu.

Right.

I can do anything I want now. Here comes the arrogance. But I mean, I'm in a position now, like if I want to buy that house in Malibu, I can. But on the come up, buying a house is not what you should do. One, I would scrape off that you don't know anything. Two, I would invest everything you can in you. It's tax deductible. You never lose it. A person's personal appreciation will always be bigger than any other asset class.

I love that.

Bitcoin can't match it. Real estate can't match it. My personal asset appreciation will always, it is infinite. You know, who knows? I could be the next male Oprah. Or somebody watching could be the next.

Rock or whatever, right?

Like that, what is that appreciation value? It's straight up. So the first thing people should invest money in, even use debt on, is their personal improvement. If you told me you had to go borrow $1,000 to go to one of your classes to become great, and it had any potential at all, like even a 1% chance of putting you on the road to greatness, I'd be like, dude, you go give Amex or Visa $1,000 right now. I don't even care what the rate is. Because the infinite return, infinite beats 18%.

Okay.

So number one, invest in yourself. Number two, I would invest in your business. Whatever your business is or your department, your division is like the first 30 years of my career. I didn't have I didn't own a company, but but I did invest in my department, even though I worked for a company. I had a secretary. I didn't have the company pay for my secretary. I paid for that. I wanted her to work for me. It was my mom, by the way. And so invest in yourself, you know, like invest yourself, then invest in your business or your department, your skill set. If it's your company, then invest in your company even down to zero. Like I wouldn't keep money around. I wouldn't save for a rainy day. I wouldn't have an emergency account. I did all that.

Why not?

Because you don't need it. What you need is you need hustle. You need other people's money. You need to go knock on another door, make another contact. You don't need reserves of money. So what you need is cash flow.

Okay, so how do we get cash flow?

So by making investments, that's the third. And other things, other things that don't require my skill set. So that would be the third piece of advice, is start investing in real assets, that cash flow, number two, that or B, they can appreciate, three that provide tax shelters. And if you look at those three criteria, Bitcoin doesn't cover it, stocks probably don't cover it, gambling doesn't.

Right.

That one gold doesn't, silver doesn't, real estate, real estate. NFTs don't, yeah. NFTs don't, 'cause they don't cash flow. That's why when you invested in NFTs and you're like, okay, they're cool, you're crossing your fingers hoping, but you don't see a check. With the real estate, I'm sending you.

A check every month.

You're like, okay, I just got another check. I just got another check. I just got, like, you don't have to be in mystery. But the most important thing is that people need to, like, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta know that if you're in, you live in and you're having a money problem, it is not because you're stupid. And it's not because you're lazy.

What is it?

It's because you have the wrong information.

The wrong information.

If you're losing at the table and there's other people winning there, okay, you just have the wrong data. And I believe that Americans, particularly Americans, have the wrong data about money. That they're financially, they have been, they have, like, there's medical misinformation, There is financial misinformation in the marketplace that is perpetuated by the banks and the institutions because every time you operate under their hypnotism, you benefit them. Not your family.

So if someone's got between a thousand and ten thousand and they're trying to multiply it to a hundred thousand, what would be the steps they would take? How long do you think it would take them to go from a thousand or ten thousand to multiply it. And would you say put that all in your own personal investment? Would you put it invest in the business that you're in? Would you invest it in other things like cash flow, appreciate and provide tax shelters? What would you do?

If you got $1,000, I would like just keep, you know, keep investing yourself until you got another thousand.

Okay.

And then invest in yourself, you know, now you got 2,000 invested. You go, go, go. You should start making money faster. At some point you should start like every time you make an investment in yourself if I put fuel in my car it's supposed to take me further.

Right. Right?

So if I invest in myself then, and look, you know, there's things I bought that I didn't get a return on right away. But I didn't quit investing in a course or a workshop or training or education because it didn't work. Or your health or-- I spent 17 years going to school. None of it was any good for me. But it did teach me. It did teach me how to go to school.

How to study.

How to study, how to go there, how to complete a course. I completed college. I'm not proud of that, by the way.

You're not proud you completed it?

No, no, because it was ridiculous. I should have dropped out. I knew it was a bad thing.

What'd you major in?

Majoring in accounting. It's a good degree. It's not like just some business degree. Right.

But you should have dropped out of it.

100%. I mean, I would still, I would still, I would, Well, I'd have a five-year jump on my career. But the problem is I was on drugs. So, you know, actual drugs. If I wouldn't have been on drugs, I would have quit college. 'Cause I would have had enough confidence in myself. When you're on drugs, you can't have confidence. 'Cause you know you're drugged. So everything is second-guess. Because my self-esteem was like through the basement. And so I'm like, I need to quit college. But everybody around me's, oh no, you gotta finish college, you gotta finish college.

I'm like, what do I know?

I'm a drug addict.

Mm-.

And if I drop out, I don't.

Have a degree, then I gotta hire me.

I didn't even worry about any of that. Because, you know, I didn't worry about that. I just didn't have the confidence to follow my intuition. You can't when you're on drugs. When you're not yourself. So what do you do with a thousand bucks, right? You know, I think you just gotta keep investing in you until like, oh, now I'm making $3,000. Okay, boom, reinvest all that again. But what we do is we start taking it off the table, right?

We save it, we don't invest it.

So I think people just need to get on that cycle of like, okay, I'm going to keep repeating this activity. I'm going to reinvest the money in myself, go to the workshop or whatever. Monday, I got to be hustling again. Until, okay, now I got $4,000. Okay, now I got $5,000. Now the income's starting to pick up. Income has to pick up. The income should be an indication that whatever you're learning is helping you.

That's interesting.

Until one day you're like, okay, I have more money here than I can.

Actually invest in myself.

I can't, like, there's nothing I can go to to get rid of this money. You need to get rid of that money though.

All my free time is going to my workshops. I don't have more free time to invest in me. I'm developing skills, I'm working, I'm earning more. Now what's the next step?

And now it would be, okay, I gotta spend money on marketing. I wouldn't go look for an investment right now. I'm gonna spend money on marketing now. Now I'm gonna spend money on marketing to get me more leads. And I would, you know, big mistake I made in my career was not spending more money on marketing.

'Cause you turned, what, 50 when you really started investing in...

I was 50, I was 51 when we started playing the social media game, and I was probably 56, 55 or 56 when we started spending money on marketing.

Wow, yeah. 51 when you started doing social media.

Yeah, yeah. And then, and I should have been spending money, I should have been spending money when I was 25 years old, when I was selling cars. I should have been spending money on ads, but I was scared, man.

So, so what made you not scared 25 years later? 26 years later at 51.

I started studying, hey, what do all these successful people have in common? You know, whether it was the mattress dealer, the car dealer, the furniture dealer, or Elon Musk, they spend money, man. You know, they spend money, they spend a lot of money. And they don't worry about money the way I was worried about it. They use money, you know, they used it. They didn't save it. They didn't hoard money. And the greatest companies on this planet today, the ones that have just like, some of these companies have lost money for 25 years. Look at Amazon.

Yeah.

Reinvest. 1.7 million employees. When I started, I remember I looked at Ernst & Young. I said, I have a buddy that worked at Ernst & Young. I said, how many employees you got? He's like, 240,000.

Wow.

And I'm worried about 10 people? What am I thinking? So when I quit studying individuals and started studying people, everything shifted for me. When I quit trying to be the, you know, when I quit worrying about what Bob was doing or Pete or whoever, and started saying, hey man, what is this big company doing? Because that also relieved me of being competitive with this guy, Pete, and started saying, okay, I'm gonna go do what Coca-Cola does. It's when I bought the plane. Really? Yeah.

How old were you when you bought the plane?

I was 50, maybe 55, the first one. I bought it because I studied what Coca-Cola was doing. They bought planes. I said, why are they buying planes? Oh, then I learned how they write them off. and then I learned how they trade them every three years. That's crazy. So notice every three years, I'm trading a plane. I'm getting rid of it, replacing it with another one. But what are they using it for? They don't use it for pleasure. They're not using it for Instagram photos.

They're using it to go and set.

Up headquarters in other countries. Wow. You know, so, so that's when I wrote, if you're not first, you're last. Because when I started studying these companies, I'm like, Coca-Cola is everywhere. You can't go anyplace. to Nazi Coca Cola. And I was like this big. I was always thinking about what can I keep? And they were thinking about how many shells can we get on? How many eyeballs can we see? So that's when it all clicked for me. And that goes back to that thing about the financial misinformation, right? It's like, who am I studying? And that's when we started to open up the funds for for. I was at, went to New York City to go walk in Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan's offices. I wanted to walk in and see what it was like. These are 100, multi-100 billion dollar companies.

Crazy.

You know? And I walked in, I was like, oh, my God, man, I just, it just all hit me in a second. I've been doing everything wrong.

What were they doing different?

They owned the building.

They weren't renting the building.

They own the building. Well, they don't care if they rent. They could rent it, but they own the. The elevators were bigger than the studio. One elevator. And 60 people got on that elevator and went to the. Went to the 120th floor. And then there was six. Six of these elevators, people going up and down. Everybody told me, don't take people's money. Do not let investors invest with you. Keep the whole deal for yourself. The second I walked into Goldman Sachs.

'Cause all they're doing is getting investor money.

That's all they do.

Okay? And the difference is what I do is I could go to Goldman Sachs, I was there, they would give me money. And I'm like, I'm not gonna get money from them. I'm gonna do what they do. From individuals.

Exactly.

From my friends, from people that follow me, from people that support me, okay? Goldman Sachs will give money to anybody.

Right.

Okay? They don't know how to go to these people. They're not on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or TikTok. So I'm going to create a fund where I can tell my audience, Hey, Louis, you can invest with me. I'm going to kick Goldman out of the deal or JP or whoever. There's a bunch of these guys, you know? It's not that they're doing a bad thing or anything. I'm not saying they're the devil, but they're close, okay? Because they're not going to call you up and say, How you doing, man?

Mm-.

You know, without, saying, hey, you got any money to invest? It's just not, you know, that's not what they do. Their job is to make money, period. So anyway, when I saw that, I'm like, okay, these people are, these are the richest institutions on the planet. They fund everything that happens. The company BlackRock, BlackRock's gonna be, BlackRock and Vanguard, these are multi, you know, probably gonna be worth $20 trillion each in the next handful of years. They'll own, they say they'll own 99% of all the assets on planet Earth. not just in America.

How are they able to do that?

Because they scale, right? Because they think big. So they're funding everything. Everything that happens on this planet from media to pharmaceutical is going to be funded by those two companies. So it just, when you're studying your rich uncle or the neighbor down the street, the think is only so big. And then when I started studying these other companies, I was like, like, okay, this is who, if you want to create that kind of legacy wealth and really help a lot of people, because they are in a position to help or hurt a lot of people. That's the scale you got to think at. Yeah.

But it took you really 25 years to get there to start thinking that way, is that right? Because you weren't able to see yourself spending money for 25 years. You were just trying to earn more.

And more and more.

Yeah, because I was just trying to, because I was, the grind, the grind and the grind was so, it was such a low level grind.

What have you learned about the art of negotiation during, you know, these bigger deals for yourself? How to navigate those?

You know, most of these deals are lost over face. They're not even lost over money. They're lost over somebody losing face. I'm doing a deal right now.

You mean ego or mean like, what do you mean?

I can't, if I give you any more, I lose face.

Okay, got you.

So I'm negotiating a deal right now and I said, look, if I give this guy exactly what he wants right now, he still will not do it. And they're like, why is that? Because he's gonna lose face. So it's people have to win. It's almost never about just the money. It's how do I win? Not just financially, but how do I win and feel good about this transaction? Because I've done transactions before where I supposedly won in the moment, and everybody felt terrible.

So it's not a win unless everyone wins.

Dude, everybody needs to win. Everybody needs to win something. Like everybody needs to feel like good about the transaction. I'd rather pay a little more and make sure you feel good than I pay a little less and you feel bad because I can't do another deal with you now. And I'm trying to do more deals. And then everybody's got a motivation. Everyone has a motivation. Every buyer has a motivation. Every seller has a motivation. Most of the time it has nothing to do with the money. You have to find the motivation.

How do you do that quickly for yourself? Are you asking certain questions to figure out what that is? Are you just listening to their, you know, without asking them what's your motivation, how do you do that?

I could ask that.

Other than money, what do you need? What's your motivation? I could ask them straight up. Asking those kind of direct questions are very powerful. Hey, why would you pick me as a buyer? There's so many other people that could buy this asset. Like that's one I used in the real estate game. These are $100 million projects, some of which you're invested in. So I'm like, hey guys, like JP Morgan's trying to buy this, Blackstone's trying to buy this, Grant Cardone's trying to buy this, and two other groups that have more assets than I have. I'm the little guy on the list. Why me? Why would you pick me? Well, we probably won't. See, that's me qualifying. You know, we're probably gonna give it to, we're probably gonna give it to the guy that just sold the New York Mets. I just lost a deal to that guy. So there was no number, there was nothing I could have done, no number I could have done that would have gotten that deal.

So what does that do for you when you have that information? Does it just allow you to move on quicker to the next opportunity?

Yeah.

Okay, well, I'll keep my, you know, I'll keep my, I stay in real estate. It's called staying by the board. I'm waiting for a rebound. Maybe he blows. Maybe the guy leaves and I'm there waiting for the, waiting for the rebound. I'm just waiting for a ball to fall in my hands.

Right.

And so, so I'll wait, I'll wait until he closes. But it lets me know, hey, go add something else. That's that 10x mentality. Okay, don't depend on this one thing. You know, if you're disappointed, if I'm disappointed, it's because I'm relying on too few of things. If I resent my customer, it is because I have too few.

Too few customers?

Yeah, so everybody, the beauty salon, the restaurant, the bar, the bar owner, the consultant, we've all had the experience of resenting our customers, starting not to like them, and it's because we become dependent upon them. We have too few.

If we're resenting our customer, what is that saying about us? That we're not building our brand, that we're not growing, that we're not selling enough?

Yeah, you didn't go, you didn't build the top of your funnel out enough, because this part of it's easy. Even though you hate them, they never pay you. This is the kind of stuff that goes on. They don't pay me enough. They always complain. They never use the product. No matter what I do for them, they and complain, okay? They're never happy, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, the truth is, those are indications that you didn't build your customer base wide enough, because you now resent them. Your resentment is an indication that you were allowing them too much. And every time they complain to you, it reminds you, Shit, I'm too reliant on too little. And we've all done it. We all do it. I've done it. Right now I'm doing it in my real estate. I told my guy Ryan the other day, I said, We're depending on this one guy too much. And he's like, why do you say that? 'Cause I'm starting to resent him.

So what's the first thing we should do? What's the action steps after that when we resent our customers?

You got to understand, it's not about them, it's about you. It has nothing to do with them. You need to go wide. You need to go get more customers. If you resent Facebook, if Facebook pisses you off, it is because you are too reliant on Facebook.

You gotta get other platforms. You gotta build other leads in other places. There's a ton of social media sites don't rely on one.

Exactly.

And so for me, resentment is always an indication of something about me.

What happens if you resent a family member? If you resent your kids, you're not gonna say, oh, I'm gonna go find new kids.

Yeah, no, but I don't know. I mean, I don't resent my kids, so.

Yeah, yeah.

I might, maybe I'm doing some stuff with my kids. I don't have that particular issue, but maybe I'm doing some stuff with my kids that somebody else should be doing, right? So maybe, you know, I remember when Elena, when we first had Sabrina, I said, Elena, you cannot be with Sabrina every hour of every of the day. And I'm like, I don't want that. We need to get a nanny so that you're not, resenting that your entire life, and I know this is hard for women to hear, but no woman, no man or woman should spend all their time with a kid. How can that be entertaining? I love my kids. I don't want to be with them all the time. Never have wanted to be with them all the time. I want to be with them more now when they're growing up than I did when they were three months old, like, oh, you're so cute, you're so cute until you're not. And so, you know, if you're resenting your kids, maybe it's because you are not willing to spend money on a nanny.

Or thinking of new strategies, just like in your business. What's a new strategy to increase your customers, to increase the top of the funnel to bring people in?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of people will say this, even still today, I know you've talked about this a lot, that money won't make you happy. Do you think most people with money are happy? People that have above their means, that have an abundance of finances in their bank that can buy anything, go anywhere at any time? Do you think most of them are happy? And how do you build wealth and stay happy at the same time?

Well, number one is I don't think, you know, money will not make you happy. Like, if you're not happy, you're not happy. it'll make you jubilant and it'll make you giddy for a second. You know, if I dropped off 100 million, you know, at your feet right now, it would definitely change your attitude for a bit. But sooner or later, you're coming back. You're coming back to your, your, your happiness level. I've never tried to get money to make me happy.

Ever.

I have never thought, oh, I'm gonna go get X money, this much money, and I'm gonna somehow be happier. I've never, ever I don't even know where this concept came from, the connection between the two. You know, I go to the gym, I think I'm gonna build muscle. I go to the water fountain, I think I'm gonna quench a thirst. I go to a football game, I think I'm gonna be entertained. I get money, I never think about, okay, I'm gonna get 10 million bucks and I'm gonna suddenly be happy. I never even think about it like that. I'm gonna get 10 million, and then I'm gonna invest it and I'm gonna pick up 30 million on the next swing, and I'm gonna take 30 million and convert that to 90 million. I'm gonna take that and convert into 270, and I'm gonna get to, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Right?

And then what am I gonna do with it? But, dude, I'm never thinking about it. It's gonna make me happy. We just gave in December $25 million to Irrevocable Trust that will fund a charity for the next 25 years.

Wow.

Another $8 million to charity in cash in December. Like that didn't make me happy either, but it sure made them happy.

For a moment, yeah.

For a moment and they're like, wow man, that's awesome. You know, they all celebrate and everything. Made me feel good. I don't know that it made me happy.

What do you do to cultivate happiness on a daily basis for yourself beyond the money?

Yeah, so happiness for me comes from doing things. Personally, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it comes from accomplishing things. like I experienced my happiness when I accomplished something I'm proud of. So when we do a conference and I walk away and I'm thrilled at the event we put on, the quality, the lights, you know, that feels good. You know, when the people around me are happy, when I look around, when I'm proud of who I'm being and doing every day, you know, that makes me happy. Seeing my kids, my kids are I'm so proud of my kids. They're such a validation that I'm a good guy. When I can't see the good guy in me, I can look at Sabrina and Scarlett and say, Hey, dude, you got to be a good guy to produce those.

'Cause I got good kids. Yeah, I saw the speech. I think Sabrina's was like 11 or 10 or 11. I can't remember when she did the speech on stage. I was like, this girl's a better speaker than me now at 37 as a 10-year-old, 11-year-old, and the confidence and the poise, I was like, that's a, that's a skill right there. You must have been very proud watching her on stage.

Oh my God, just like her dancing down the aisle. You know, that video, I'm so proud of that video. She wrote her own speech, practiced her own speech, threw away her index cards in the middle of it, wrote her own jokes, wrote her own jokes, you know, practiced and knew how to use the teleprompter. I mean, and the same thing for my eight-year-old, like they did that. and so I'm really proud of that. Elena has done a great job with them. They've done communication courses for kids that really helped them have that confidence and social presence. So that makes me so happy, bro. There's nothing that makes me happier than that. My friendship with you, how it's grown and developed, that makes me happy. But money, money, man. You know, being on my plane, dude, sometimes being on my plane, nobody else is on it, just me.

I get giddy.

Like, like, like, those are moments where I'm like, dang, I love this plane so much. You know, finishing the Pueblo project.

Yeah.

Made me really happy and proud. But, dude, I wasn't happy while I was doing it.

Right.

But finishing hard things makes you happy.

Totally. But it was, that was the hardest, hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Probably the best and worst experience I've ever had in my lifetime was undercover billionaire.

How does it feel for you to know that there's money going out? Because I think it comes out on like the 15th of every month.

15Th of every month, bro.

I get an email.

I see my statement.

When you see yours, I get mine.

Yeah.

How does that feel knowing when you receive your 1.6 million, you're also however many thousand people that are invested in you are also getting a check that day. How does it feel?

I call them, say, Hey, how much do we send out? So most important number I have, most important number every day I get how much cash do I have? Second most important number is what we sold each day. And the third one is how much we sending out this month.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

I look how much I get. I look at last because if everybody else is winning, I know I'm winning.

You're getting big.

Yeah.

You know, but the thing that. And the thing that makes me happiest is, like, I know people can't lose with me.

Why is that?

Well, the real estate, it can't go away. you know, Bitcoin could go to 10, 000 tomorrow. My real estate cannot go to 10, 000.

It just.

The value of the real estate is the value of the real estate and supported by income.

Right?

So this isn't a house. The Malibu house. The Malibu house could go down in value, but it's still going to rent for 20 grand a night. It doesn't matter, dude. Like, you want to. You want to be in that house, in that location, on that beach. You want to bring 12 other people to stay there. You're going to pay 20 grand a night. to be there. It doesn't matter whether the house is worth 40 million or 38 million or 32 million or whatever. You're going to pay for the house, you know? So as long as I got income, income allows you to income and time allow you to keep something. It's paid for. I paid in cash. So there's no there's no debt issue. I have my other house in Miami that's paid for, you know, so I bought two houses last year.

It's crazy.

It's insane.

It's crazy, man.

You know, so and I'm the guy that says, don't buy a house. He won't even take his own advice. Oh, I am taking my advice.

But at this level, you can buy what you want because you got the.

Cash flow to come in. Like, I am taking all my advice. I'm not ignoring my own advice, you know? So, I'm not violating any of my rules. If you can't buy two of them, don't even think about it. Number two, if you can't pay for it in cash, don't think about it. Doesn't mean you've got to pay for it in cash. It just means you need to be in that position. if you want a nice watch, build about two of them. The watch is 40 grand. You gotta build, you gotta have 80 grand. It needs to be in cash and it should be from passive income cash, not earned income.

Why is that mindset you need to.

Be able to buy two of them? If you can buy two of them.

Dude, you're probably cool.

So then, then you don't ever like, like, when do you spend? Somebody asked me the question once. Hey, man, when's it all right to spend a rapper? Hey, man, when's it all right to be stupid?

But when you got stupid money, you can be stupid. Yeah.

What is stupid money? Well, stupid money ain't earned income. Mm-.

Mm-. Even if you made 10 million dollars.

I don't care how much you made. If you made 10 and paid five to the IRS and you got five left, you don't spend that. I never spend that money ever. So, so this is- I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever spend earned income.

Really?

Never. So my earned income, okay? If I traded time for it, my earned, I never spend a penny of it. Now what I do is I invest all of the earned, whatever's left over after the IRS. So the IRS is going to bang me right here. I invest all of that 100% of this is invested. I save none of it. I invest this in a real asset that will pay me cash. It's going to give me a drip. It's going to give me a little drip of cash. So maybe this is a million dollars, so this pays me Let's say it pays me 100 grand a year. I can spend this, but I can't spend that now because it's not spendable.

This is illiquid.

The asset, you can't spend.

Can't spend it, can't touch it, can't have it stolen from you, taken from you. But it's kind of hard to make it go away. I do need to fund it, need to, you know, this is what the Bitcoin people, Mike Saylor is going to say, yeah, but you got property taxes, you got maintenance. Yeah, I know, bro, I also got income. Okay, I don't have any yet. I got cash flow, right? So I can keep it, so I get a drip. Now, the drip is how I live. Like if I want to buy a $100,000 watch, good. Okay, I can buy 100 as long as I got 200 grand. So, it's all right to do stupid stuff, but here, when your money is having little babies, not when you're up there on your legs and busting your knees up, doing your song, because one day, he's 29 right now. Nobody, like I know you think you're gonna last forever.

Look at a lot of these guys.

Nobody lasts forever. So what I wanna do is I wanna position him. I said, look, in the next 10 years, if you retire when you're 39 or 49, I want you to go from being, you know, tearing up your space, making big money in your space, and the moment you transition from rapper and become nobody, we're going to click a switch and you're going to be a real estate mogul.

Okay?

So my goal for him is, I said, look, what do you make? And I picked the number. He's like, dude, you just told me what I made last year without knowing what I made. And I hit the number almost exactly. Figured out how many days he did, figured out what he was getting paid. Endorsement deals, everything else. I said, look, I said, when you're 49 years old, bro, you could be.

Worth 200 million bucks.

Right over here.

If you put this much in here.

If you just do what I tell you to do, you go work a gig, they pay you 130,000, you take 60 grand parking. Wednesday night, do another deal. He's like, what am I gonna live on? Bro, you're gonna live on deals. So nobody's gonna know what happened to you. They're gonna be like, hey man, the savage ain't showing off anymore, man.

So I said, yeah, but bro, you're.

Gonna go from-- you-'re gonna show off in a bigger way. Bro, you're gonna show up as a real estate tycoon. You're gonna be-- one day you're gonna show up, it's gonna be 2042. and you're gonna have hundreds of millions of dollars of properties that are paying you every month.

You don't have to go to work for that.

You're gonna step from this one. A-Rod talked about this to me at the growth conference. He's like, I knew my earning capacity was gonna go to zero with the Yankees. At some point. At some point. Everybody's earning capacity is depreciating. So at the beginning it goes up, like yours is still going up, right? You're still going up. At some point it'll hit the top. you'll lose interest, maybe not want to do it anymore, whatever, and then it's going to start slowly going down until you're just not a thing anymore and some younger Lewis house is going to come up and replace you or a bunch or technology or whatever, and your earning capacity is going to go down while it's going down on the way up, you should be planning for that going down and collecting assets over here.

Wow.

So that's why at the end of each year, like if people could do this, at the end of each year, start a new year with More assets and no cash. And do that every year. A year, two years, five years, 10 years, 12 years. Like if I had advice for somebody, I'd be like, man, don't just worry about this year. Start collecting a little bit of assets this year, another one next year. You don't have to own it all. Like the way you're doing it with me. Find somebody that you trust, somebody that's invested, man, and just keep getting rid of cash.

Right.

Because you know, every time I get rid of this money, see, every time I get rid of this, let's say it's, let's say it's 100 grand. Every time I get rid of 100 grand, 100 grand buys me $400,000 worth of real estate, right?

Because you only have to put 20% down.

Yeah, because I'm using leverage. So I'm taking the 100 that's going down in value. Maybe 15 or 20% a year.

You're putting it into 400,000 of real estate. I'm going up, and this is going up in value.

Well, this is good for me because inflation, if you own real estate, you want inflation.

Right.

I want the materials to cost more.

I want the cost of glass to go up. I want, I benefit from this. I want rent to go up. Yes. So, like, not everybody wants inflation if you have cash.

If you have cash, you definitely don't want inflation.

Interesting. Okay. Because it's going down in value, even though the bank might pay you more. Now, what we got right now, what's going on right now, it's a really freaking weird deal because the banks aren't paying anymore and it's going down in value. So, the value of the dollar is going down and they're not paying you anything at the bank.

So, you're just getting double whammy with no chance. Why is it important for people to be investing in real estate now? Like if you could do it now and should they do it on their own in terms of like, okay, I'm going to buy my own apartment building or my own house and do kind.

Of the Airbnb thing. What about that strategy? It's good. It's good. It's a good...

But you just went from having a job to a second Second job. Because now you're managing the property.

You're managing it, you're handling problems, you're collecting rents. That's another job. Actually that's probably not going to be even included as passive income.

Interesting.

So there's a lot of people in multi-level marketing that say that they have passive income. I'm like, that's not passive income.

That's residual income, not passive income.

What's the difference between passive and residual income? Passive income is I make an investment and somebody sends me a check. Residual income, and it could be residual, it could be repeating, recurring, right?

Right.

But if I go collect the rent, paint the place, put in the tenant, that's not passive. That's active income. I had to rent it. I had to collect it. You're trading time for money.

You had to market it. You had to do all that stuff.

What you get from me is passive. You don't decide what color the paint on the building is.

No.

You haven't even been to the building. No. I can't believe it's the 15th again.

Right.

That'S passive income, right? Dividend income is passive income. You invest in Apple computer and they send you a check.

But if you have to work for it, it's not passive.

No.

So the CEO of Coca-Cola made 50 million bucks last year. A lot of money, right? Okay. That's earned income. Government's going to take half of it. Warren Buffett invested in Coca-Cola he was paid 508 million.

Come on.

Last year. That's passive income.

As a dividend?

Yes.

And he doesn't have to pay taxes on it.

You know how many people on the internet want to be the boss? A lot. Dude, the boss don't make any money. The investor does. Don't be the boss. Don't be the CEO. There's so much confusion in the marketplace. Be the investor. Just invest. And what does Warren do? Warren is how I got in real estate. I started buying real estate because I studied the old man. what are you, the old man, when I would read, well, the old man's.

Only invested in stocks, right?

I'm like, I'm not gonna do stocks 'cause I don't like them. But what I wanted to learn from Warren Buffett, what was he doing? What was the consistent patterns of what he invested in? All companies that were, had been around a long time, he did not buy the cheapest company. He never looked for what my uncle looked for. He didn't buy low and sell high.

What was he doing?

He bought fair value in a fair price. He bought the best quality at a fair price. He didn't look for the lowest price. He wasn't looking for the day a stock went down to $1. He never did. He's never done that. He invests in companies that all cash flow leaders in their space. Coca-Cola C. Can candies, Apple computer. He didn't buy Apple computer. for years until he understood that Apple Computer was a cash flow company because of iTunes.

Wow.

That it wasn't a computer company. It was a cash flow generating machine. When I read that, I'm like, dang dude, everything he buys is really real estate. You see? So I'm like, okay, I can't get the, I cannot buy a big enough position. I'm not rich enough to get a big position of Coca-Cola. I don't get on the inside. I'm a little guy, right? So I'm never gonna get access to Wall Street. Goldman Sachs ain't gonna call me and say, Hey, we got this deal going, man. It's gonna be the next Coca-Cola, right? I'm never gonna get that call. So what can I buy? This like Warren. Oh, real estate, man. I can buy the 26 units in San Diego, 'cause I know the neighborhood. I grew up there and I spent some time there. So I know that, so I can buy that. I can go to the bank, I can get a good loan on it, and it cashes cash flows. And that's how I started buying real estate because Warren, he bought for the long term. He bought great locations, great properties, fair price. He's never managed anything.

He's not the CEO of the company.

He's not a manager. He's not a CEO. He never gets rid of the employees that are there. And I was like, man, what are you doing, dude? He's not the salesman, but he is a promoter. Mm-. So when I started watching what his moves, he's on TV all the time, and he takes big positions, giant positions, not little ones. That all that changed everything for me. I quit buying this and a little bit here and a little bit there. It's called diversification. I quit doing that when I watched Warren. Warren is not diversified. I think four investments gave him 70% of all his returns last year.

Wow.

Yeah. And if he wasn't so rich, he'd probably only own three or four stocks. But he's got it. He's so there's so much money now. Elon's another guy never diversified. PayPal was his only investment. When he sold PayPal, he only has three investments today and no homes and no cash.

Really?

No cash.

Oh, he doesn't own real estate or.

He doesn't know his home. He doesn't own his homes. He's all in, man. Yeah. But that's not the advice our parents.

Gave us or our school teachers.

Right.

Where's housing going to be in the.

Next eight to ten years? Do you think it's gonna be what? It's gonna have people in them. Right. And it's gonna be more expensive. And I think people are going to.

Be more renters than they're going to be owners.

Why is that? Because it can be too expensive. Too expensive. So wealthy people are buying all the housing stock in America. the other thing that since the last time I was here, we've had investors, 40% of all the homes in America now are owned by investors, the single family homes, and that's going up.

Wow.

So in 2019, 44% of all the single family housing in America was owned by an investor, a guy like me.

Wow.

That bought it to rent it out, not to live in it. That's, that's three years ago. COVID changed everything. So now you have more people buying real estate to Airbnb it. Great, great idea, but you're working, okay? Two, you're dependent upon one door. So I got to collect the rent. So like you're invested, how many funds are you investing with Nate?

Three or four.

Yeah, so you have hundreds of units that pay you. Not a few.

Right, I might be in five now actually.

Yeah, yeah.

Last year.

Yeah.

Calling me up the last month saying, Get rid of your money.

Get rid of it.

What is the mindset you would share with anyone who's 40, 50, or 60 above who hasn't accomplished what they want yet? What would you say to them based on what you've learned after 50?

You know, I used to tell myself I would never have anything to contribute to the world until I was 50. Because I'm very immature. I've always been described as a rough diamond, like like rough around the edges, abrasive, not much of a filter, you know. I am, I mean, I know everything that people say negative about me, for every one thing the public has, I know every one of them. There's nothing anybody ever says about me that surprises me. I'm like, yeah, I know that. Like, you guys don't think I know that? I live with me every day. Like, I actually did not think I would have anything to contribute worthwhile until I was 50 years old. And that was about the time the economic collapse was, the great recession. And I was so lost in that financially, I didn't understand. I was actually being formed right there. I was being matured. I was being prepared for whatever's going on in my life right now. Really, the creation of Grant Cardone has happened in the last 10 or 12 years, not before that. the Grant Cardone people know today is being developed right now. And I would just tell people that are older, like, dude, you're gonna have more energy later unless you don't. You're gonna have more genius later unless you refuse to. You're gonna have the ability to influence more unless you refuse to influence. And age has got nothing to do with the game. Nobody really knows my age. I was 50 years old when I was in Pueblo. I told everybody, I'm 50 years old. My name is Louis Curtis. I have two kids, beautiful two kids. I got a wife named Ava. I had made up names for the kids. I had to make up all that story. We live in LA and I hate it because if I told people I was me in Miami, If anybody went and searched it and started doing, you know, images, like people do all that stuff today.

I know.

So I would just tell people, man, look, I look at people that are 80 years old, I'm like, dude, I got 20 years left. You know how much damage I could do in 20 years? I know guys that are in great shape. Dolly Parton, I mean, she's still hammering. She never did nine to five. She made some money on her song called nine to five. You know, but she's been doing five to nine for for years. So I just think people can get better if they want to or they can get worse. You're either going to decay or you're going to reboot yourself over and over again.

The 2008-2009 was tough for you, just like it was for a lot of people. What was the lesson you learned then that prepared you for 2020 that you when the recession hit, you said, okay, I know exactly what to do based on that. pain in 2008.

Yeah, well, I was so disappointed with myself then. Like, I had not put my family in a position to, to flourish and prosper because of suppression. You know, the tide goes out. You don't have a boat. Shame on you.

Right.

And I didn't have a boat, dude. I mean, I had, I looked good. I looked good until it happened.

You had a suit, you had the car.

I thought I was good. I thought I was good, but I.

Was too small, small. Small always gets hurt. And that was my big wake up call in 2008. I didn't have enough assets. I didn't have enough money. My business was too small. My customer base was too small. I was too reliant on too few verticals. This was the creation of 10x. I blamed no one in 2008, 9 and 10. I was like, okay, I'm in. I got myself in. This is not about the mortgage crisis. It's not about the builders. It's not about the strippers that got 17 loans. This is about me. I was in this pile of. I was in this fear. I was, I let my family and myself down. Nothing was happening to me. And the most important thing is I was not in a position to take advantage of it. That's the thing that pissed me off. And so I told Elena, I said, the next time this happens, dude, we're gonna freaking rock. and then COVID, it happened. And COVID, I was shooting a TV show and my company would have the.

Best year it's ever had. Wow.

I wasn't even here. We bought more assets this year than we bought the year before. We raised more money this year than the year before it. You know, when Lehman collapsed in 2008, I had $50 million worth of debt. I told Elaine, I said, the next time this hits the fan, I'm gonna have a billion dollars worth of debt. I know, I told her, I said, I'm gonna have a half a billion dollars worth of debt.

We had a $1.2 billion worth of debt.

When COVID hit.

And so people understand, what does that mean?

You want debt. You want debt, man. You want debt. Who gets, who keeps getting bailed out? Only your mommy and daddy think that you should have all your debt paid off. The big boys want debt. They want lots of it. Government has debt. California's, California can never, ever pay all its debts. That's why it keeps shutting down California, because they're trying to get money from.

The federal government to bail them out. What's the difference between good debt and bad debt? Because I think when people might hear.

This, they might say, okay, open up a bunch of credit cards and spend it on whatever you as opposed to. We're back to that first question about spending versus investing, right? So consumer debt is terrible debt, suicide debt. That's credit card debt. Lamborghini, buying the Lamborghini on debt. Like if you're gonna buy a Lamborghini, lease it for 24 months. If you can't afford the 24 months, you can't afford the Lambo. Debt for clothes, Christmas gifts, I mean, it's stupid, it's stupid to borrow money for this Santa Claus for your kids.

I know people are gonna hate that message. That's why there's so many people dislike.

You know, they just don't like the truth.

It's stupid to go in debt. If you want to do it and for fun or for whatever, then that's okay. But you're not investing in a potential greater future.

No.

Now, if I borrow money for Santa Claus, that's one thing. If I borrow money to invest in a piece of real estate for my kids, I mean, I know which one's going to work. If you just follow the tax write-offs, you'll know the right thing to do. I can't write off Santa, I can write off the real estate. So, yeah, bad debt is anything that I have to then pay the interest rate on. Good debt is I made an investment in my consumer or my tenant is going to pay my debt.

That's powerful.

So you're trying to get more debt.

You probably have more debt with me than you even know. Like because of the investments you've made with me, you have debt. You have good debt. You just don't really know it. Your accountant does though, because we're sending them the K1 at the end of the year. That's why when we send you a check, you don't pay income on that check.

That's nice.

Very nice. So you look at your return, but whatever I paid you last year, but that is non-taxable income to you.

Because of the debt that we have.

Because of the debt.

Yeah, exactly.

On the asset.

Exactly.

So what's your goal for for a year from now? How much debt do you want to have?

Oh, yeah.

God damn.

I'd love to double that, dude. I got to double that to get where I'm going. We have $2.3 trillion where the where the 2.3 billion. Sorry, not trillion.

I don't think I'll make it trillion today.

Man, see, the 10 x thing starts.

Getting harder and harder.

Right.

So 2.3 billion worth of assets.

Yeah.

I mean, I'd like to hit six by the end of this year. I don't think it's possible, but that'd be freaking awesome.

So if it was possible, what would need to happen?

I would need to buy a portfolio. I have to change the way I'm doing things. I got to quit buying one deal at a time and I got to buy a portfolio or I got to go buy a company. I got to go eat somebody that's got 9,000 units. I have 9,000, so if I went.

And grabbed somebody's portfolio... So you just need to find someone.

Who'S got 9,000 units or you need.

To... What was the other option?

By, by, by portfolios.

That seems pretty possible.

So, yeah, but you see that clarity right there, you helping me with that clarity shows me who I need to talk to. Yeah, I mean, who are, do you.

Know three people, do you know three people in your mind who's got 9,000 units or who has a bigger portfolios that you could buy?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I got a list of.

100 guys that have bigger portfolios than I do. What would it take from you to get to 6 billion in the next six months, not 12 months? what would it take from you?

I just couldn't close the deals that fast. I mean, some things physically take more time than that. Okay.

I mean, you know, at least that's.

What I'm thinking right now. But look, if I got it done this year, that would be massive.

It would be like, you're talking about.

What I've done in 25 years being done in one year.

Hey, you did the same thing on YouTube last year. You know, 13 years of content, you got more views in one year on YouTube.

Yeah, you're right.

It's all relative, man.

You're right, you're right, dude. That's why, look, I do these podcasts at the School of Greatness, 'cause every time I do one, I end up better off. I don't know what you do to me while we do these, but every time I come out, I'm bigger.

Well, I hear you say it's not possible to do it this year to get to 6 billion from 2.4. But then I said, well, if it was possible, you said, well, I just need to find more portfolios or acquire someone who's got 9,000 units.

And then you'll drop it in there. You'll drop in the good question. Okay. And then I'll start working on it. And then you guys you guys think I can do it or not do it? Just maybe a year from now, we'll do another one.

We should do a million dollar bet on it. Maybe if you had that, the pressure, the time, all those things, maybe you would create.

I don't know, man.

That's pretty hard.

I mean, I'm just, I'm running up against my blocks.

You did this last time, though.

Last two times you ran up against blocks, but then you blew past them.

Dude, you're playing the C, bro. One thing about me, one thing nobody can say that I don't, like I use information, I use experiences, I leverage everything. Like I consume and I multiply. I don't just consume. And too many people just consume and never use. So, what do you mean by that?

They're just, they're consuming information but they're never applying it.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, you're either a consumer a producer or an investor. And I'm all three. I consume it, I produce on it, and then I invest in it. And I'm greedy too, by the way. I'm greedy about my own self-improvement. I'm greedy and I am highly interested in my personal self-improvement because I know that's where it all starts. I have to make me the most important thing in my life because other people can't get better if I don't.

What happens when 90% of the the housing market is owned by investors and not by people that own it themselves to live in it.

People are going to look for, I mean, you know, it's happening right now. It's just unfortunate.

Is the price is going to go through the roof? Is it going to be.

Well, I don't know that the single family, will it go through the roof? I mean, it's, you know, I mean, it's already going through the roof.

Yeah.

You know, it's crazy what's going on. But if you go to Singapore, it's not crazy.

Right.

The rents.

We went to Singapore in 2019. We came back, me and Elena, said we need to buy everything in sight. In America. On America.

Yeah.

We went to Sydney, Australia.

I'm like, Elena, we just need to buy, because everywhere we go, we shop real estate.

Why is that?

Because America's on sale.

Mm.

Because it's so expensive.

So you guys think it's expensive here? Okay. So like California right now, California is making Arizona go through the roof? Because people are leaving the state of California. They're migrating out because of your tax policies.

And taxes. And yeah.

Or they're going to Texas, or they're going to Montana, or they're going to Utah. Okay. California, your governor Newsom this year was nominated as the number one real estate agent for the state of Florida. Because that's what he's doing. The tax policy drove me out of the state nine years ago. We have 800 employees in Miami. Between Miami and the real estate, there's 800 employees. None of them live in California.

Wow.

If they were to drop taxes here rather than raise them, I'd have 800 employees in LA. All my cars would be here. 800 employees in their cars. 800 employees would be eating in restaurants here. But what do we do? They raise the taxes. We go over there. We take all the tax savings, reinvest in the business. The business gets bigger and better. And I'm not gonna give our governor, DeSantis, credit for it because I got.

There before he was there.

So I'm just gonna give credit to the insanity of California. So what's happening now is Arizona prices are going up because California people are going over there. Taxes prices, yeah. So the guy in California sells his house for a million six, walks into Arizona and says, this is a steal at 800. Last time I traded it was 400. He thinks the steal 'cause it's half price to what he left. And that's what people do. They migrate, start moving around. That migration is happening. New York City's migrating to Florida. California's migrating east. But the problem is, with people leaving California, you would think prices would fall.

They're still going up.

But they're not. They're not because wealthy people are walking in saying, I got all this cash. Cash is worth nothing.

I'll buy a second home.

This is emotional. This is not logical, by the way, what's happening. It's not emotional. It's an emotional decision to say, I'm gonna get rid of my cash and I'm just gonna go buy another house.

I got a question about, every time I've had you on, I think the last three or four times, I've asked you about your goals with your assets. I think one time you came on, I think you were at like 90 million or something. I remember it was like 290 million or 90 million in real estate asset holdings.

I think we were buying a deal. I was buying a deal in Houston.

For 90 million bucks. Yeah, but you didn't have more than 400 million, I think. I can't remember.

It did total. At the time, you mean that one interview where you challenged me? Yes. Yeah. So at that time, I think we had...

This was at two places.

Maybe $400 million worth of assets.

Right.

And now today, 4 billion.

4 billion.

Yeah.

And I remember challenging you being like... You did, dude.

Being like, why not go to like 900 million? Why not 10x that? Yeah, yeah. and I said, I got a deal. I'm doing a deal. It's 90 million bucks. It's scary.

I was scared.

I'm always scared in all these deals. And because you're doing it for the first time, you know, it's like the roller coaster, right?

You're like, oh my God, this is gonna be, you know, am I doing the right thing?

So you're at 4 billion now. What's the goal?

The goal, well, we're gonna 10x that.

40 billion. 40 billion, yeah. By when? I don't have a date on it, but I think I can do that. I think I could do that. you know, I think I can do that in, you know, five years.

Five years.

Maybe, maybe, maybe longer. Maybe it takes seven years. Maybe it takes 10 years. It's a worthy goal either way.

Yeah, 40 billion.

Because a lot of, if I do this the way I'm doing it now, a lot of people are going to get help because of it. So that, that would be like, that would be a really fulfilling accomplishment in my life. If I could, if I could have ordinary everyday families like I grew up in, like my mom, like my mom would be proud of what I'm doing. She would be negative first. Nobody ever called her and said, Hey, Consuela, put your money in this. And this investment is going to take care of you. You're going to get a check every month. My mom never, she didn't get a break. And so today, I think that there's going to be families. The goal is that there's going to be thousands, tens of thousands of families. They'll become reliant and know that, Hey, Grant Cardone's going to send me this month. And then I'm gonna flip this entire picture of who I'm gonna evolve again to not taking money from people, not selling things, which I have no problem with. Everything I've sold, I feel great about. Except maybe that one car I sold to my uncle, my cousin Tony. Because I was a little excessive. But, you know, that's gonna be a total evolution of me as a person.

Just paying people.

Dude, sending people money every month. I mean, like, it is the greatest freaking hack in the world. Completely discovered by mistake. The first time I took any money from anybody, we opened a deal up. That fund was $6 million. And Ryan Seacrest and Alaina taught me into doing stupid guys. We don't need it. I had the money. I already bought the deal.

What year was this?

Four years ago.

Really?

2018.

Yeah.

Because you were doing stuff on your own before.

I still buy it with my money today.

So 2018, we closed the deal.

It was a deal in St. Lucie. And I bought it from a group called Waypoint. It took $6 million in down payments. I'd already signed on the loan. And Elena, and do it on this deal, Grant, it's a small deal. Let's just see what I'm like, stupid. We don't need to do this. I tell my friend, I tell people on Instagram, Hey guys, I just opened this deal, blah, blah, blah. Wham, money starts coming in. I said, that's a crazy. I mean, I know how to compare a response because of the webinars and the events and the tickets and the books, right? And people are like 10,000 or I think at that time it was 100 grand minimum, 100 grand a time, bang, bang, bang. And then this one guy sends in 400 grand. And I'm like, who's he? I said, I don't know. I don't know that person. And then they pulled him up, oh, he owns a car dealership up in Michigan. I'm like, I know that guy.

I know that guy. I've been calling on that guy for 20 years.

Called him up on the phone. I said, Hey man, why'd you do this? He's like, I've never bought anything from you. Nothing. Not a book, not a program, not a workshop. I said, why'd you do this? He's like, Because I admire you as a business okay? But I've seen your whole career. I've watched you 17 years. I've watched what you built, okay? Wired us 400 grand. That's crazy. Okay? 60 days later, I sent him one check. It was in March. Sent him another check in April. On the, on, on, in May, he.

Calls up and says, All right, bro.

I'm ready for all your stuff.

Wow.

He bought everything we have. I was like, oh my God, this.

Is the great hack.

I'm gonna turn everybody into an investor. Then they become customers. Because they want me to do well. Now we're partners, man. We're partners. You want me to win.

Absolutely.

So it was like, oh my God, man, having investors isn't a bad thing if it's the right investors. Now we've already had problem with a couple of investors that turned into little wankers. People got in trouble in COVID. I'm like, Good, guys, you need some help. Sending their money back. So if I'm in a position to do that, I want to do this, 'cause this is a really long play for me. And I mean long. I don't mean my lifetime.

This is- Generations.

This is Sabrina and Scarlett beyond them.

Wow.

This could be the year 2200.

Mm.

You know, this is a company that could last forever.

That's exciting.

Yeah.

So, 'cause, you know, that would be, there's a lot of moms out there, like my mom was. A lot of my sister, my sister, my two sisters that don't have income, you know, that, yeah. Goldman Sachs is never gonna call them and say, hey, Diane, you wanna invest in this deal? It's gonna be good for you. We don't use middlemen, we don't use banks. So maybe I can convert some of your audience that has ragged on you for having me here. I know. 'cause nobody is more polarized than you.

That's true.

And I have been, dude. And that's the thing, like you asked me, what would I want to get out of this show more than anything? You know, I know I deliver terribly. Like I'm just, you know, I'm a grinder. I've been grinding. I've been trying to come up from nothing so long. And then it worked. My aggressiveness worked one day. and then I doubled down on being aggressive. Then one day I looked up and the only thing I knew was how to be aggressive. And so now I'm trying to unwind, you know, attacking all the time. Like, I have attack. The attack gene was fully developed in me. Yeah. And I'm not proud of that, right? Like, that's my go-to. My go-to. I remember a lady, she tried to put me on drugs when I I was 21, I was 31 years old, 32 years old dating this girl named Michelle. And she's like, look man, your first response is just aggression. I'm like, yeah. She's a psychologist, you know? I said, yeah. And it doesn't work with her, you know? I'm like, okay. This is what got me out of this trap. So I'm 33, maybe 33 years old. So I'm eight years out of treatment. And I'm just starting to get my feet. Eight years. I'm starting to make a little money. I've got a little company now. I'm starting to do well for the first time. Me and this girl have this thing, but we were two different people. And the psychologist's like, Look, you know, I'm gonna recommend a drug. This is 12 minutes into the interview. I'm gonna recommend, I think it was a Prozac or something. And then if that one doesn't work, then I'm gonna introduce you to a psychiatrist. He's gonna give you this one drug, and then if that doesn't work, we'll add one. And if that one doesn't work, well, I want it sometimes a little bit of an experiment. That's crazy. And I'm like, yeah, dude, what are you trying to do? She's like, I'm trying to take some of your aggression. I want you to just add a second. And then she moves to the girl and says, and now you.

I said, no, no, no.

Give me this, subscribe whatever you want to me. Okay? She's not going on anything because they wanted to get her up a little bit, make her more aggressive. and sure enough they prescribed it to me. One interview, I was there less than 45 minutes.

Wow.

Okay. I ate one of them. I forget what it was, it was one of these.

Something to relax you a little more.

Yeah, yeah, it was gonna add a second. It was lithium, okay. It was lithium, dude. I took it, I took half a tab, and I could feel metal moving through my system. And so somebody would ask me something, But I couldn't. It was like, you had to move through this little metal, almost this little aluminum lake, and threw the prescription away. Got rid of her, went back to being aggressive. Now I'm 35 years old, bro. I would continue to groove in aggressive for the next 16 years to make millions of dollars to fight in an industry that was brutal. cold calling people. Can you imagine cold calling people every day? I could, but I don't want to.

Nobody wants to. It's not fun. And I built this shell, right? Because you get so many rejections, so many no's, so many people wasting your time.

Yeah, and I got to a point where I'm like, okay, the no's and the rejection don't even bother me anymore. Now you become like a machine, man. And I'm just like, like, and everything's competition. Everything, everybody's a threat in my environment. Everybody, every company, every customer, everything is, and that's what built me, right? And then I figured out how to use aggression to get over it. And then I'm 51 years old. I'm like, man, I gotta figure out another way to do this thing. Because is that sustainable for the rest of your life?

No.

No.

So I started doing social media.

Social media comes. I'm like, okay, don't do the aggressive thing. Have empathy. When I met you, I'm like, I need to study Lewis. Right, but I don't know how to make that transition any more than somebody that knows empathy knows how to become aggressive, you know?

Yeah.

And so I'm just, I've just been.

Trying to figure it out, man.

And what do you think it'll take for you to step into who you really want to be?

I just gotta, you know, just every day just, you know, practice a little more about, like, in deals, though. I need to be that in deals. Sometimes I just need to walk away from the deal and let Ryan handle it.

So with some, some grays or some stuff.

Yeah, we did a deal. We bought two deals off market in December. If I was on those deals, I would have completely scorched the entire environment.

Blown it up.

I would have blown everything up.

What's the thing you think you'll be the most proud of if you can create by the end of the year or become?

This year? The end of this year?

This year.

This year. What could I create this year?

Or do or be that you'll make you the most proud of?

I don't know, man.

Like, you know, the kids, I mean, I love my kids, I love my wife. I need to be a better husband. At some point, I can't, you know, doing these deals like that's great. I got to do deals though to reach my goal with the investors. Be a better guy, man. You know, just be a good guy and be, you know, the thing I'm proud of is I get to be Grant all the time. You know, I'm actually getting to the point where I'm like, hey, man, I finally got to be what I finally became what I wanted to be.

What was that?

Me.

Yeah.

You know, that I don't have to apologize anymore. And then I quit screwing up and I quit having to call people and say, Hey man, I said I went.

Too far, you know?

If I could just pull some of that back without that drug that that psychiatrist was trying to use, you know, that if I'm less dependent upon aggression, you know, and I could kind of manifests more, you know, like you talk about. Let it flow more.

Let it flow, dude.

Let it flow, you know? But if I could get that perfect balance of aggression and flow, that's a sweet spot.

Yeah.

It's sweet, dude. It's hard to find that thing. That's a sweet spot, you know, to be that. I don't want to be the little stream that drips, you know, I want to be like. But I don't want to damage anybody. I don't want to hurt anybody, you know? I don't want to be in competition anymore. But I also don't want to lose the edge, you know?

It's a dance.

It's a dance.

It's a dance, man.

You know?

Like your girl said to me the other night, she said something before she left. She's like, I really get who you are. And that hits me when people say that to me. Most people don't get who I am.

That's beautiful.

You know? And she said, I really get who you are. and a lot of people don't. And sometimes it hurts, right? 'Cause I know who I really am. But I also know the things I'm trying to accomplish for me. Like Ryan gets who I am. Ryan never takes me on. Man, you're the best, Quinn. You're the best. He strokes me, right?

Right through it.

And, you know, my wife, I can see my wife, she gets tired of the pounding, you know? But, hey, man, I'm a right-handed hitter. or I got a certain ball that I throw, a certain shot I make. It's my go-to. And when I get threatened, I'm gonna go to that. And if I could develop some other set of skills, that would be a cool thing.

What would it take for you to develop that skill?

I don't know that I need to develop it. I probably just need to get rid of something. Probably something that has to happen spiritually.

More than, you know, see, the problem.

Is nobody wants to, like, confront the real magnitude of the mathematics. And that's why people are, that's ridiculous. No, what you're saying is you can't imagine how to get to 20 million. See, I wish somebody had told me this in accounting. I went there accounting for. I spent five years getting an accounting degree. I only went there for one reason. I thought they were going to teach me how to account. I thought, I thought it was a freaking money course, okay? I'm thinking in the fifth year, dude, it took me five years to get out of this course. I'm thinking this year they're gonna teach me about the money.

There's nothing about money.

And the only reason I went to that course was figure out, dude, how.

Do you make money?

How do you keep money? How do you multiply money? The basic money class. So, like, if you just do the math, a guy's like, oh man, 80 grand, I'm good. 80 grand. Another guy's like, 100 grand and I'm good. They haven't done the math. Another person says, if I just have a million dollars, I'm good. good, but you haven't done the math. The actual math. You know, like how much money is that really? You know, 100 grand in Los Angeles, 13,000 goes to the state, you have $87,000. Okay? Half that goes to the federal government, you're $42,500. I've done the math.

Yeah.

Okay, you're at 42-5. You go to Whole Foods once a week just to take care of your.

Little baby girl and your wife, you're broke.

Okay? So you're broke. You're broke, okay? And we hadn't handled the health care issue. Trumpcare, Obamacare, you don't care if you don't get your money, right? I mean, that's the facts. So most people have never done the math. There is no school on it. There's no class on it.

Why is that?

Why, man?

So frustrating.

But do you know how many people the middle class support? How many bad, awful groups? You know, I mean, just think about it, man. Like if the middle class, if 215 million people in America knew the truth, And they weren't sitting there saying, But look at my two cars. Look at my two little girls and I got dresses for them. And look at people in Ethiopia, they're starving. You went over to Africa, you know, compare their situation to our middle class. Everybody here is rich, including the guy on the street corner that's a panhandler. Absolutely.

Right?

So why is the freaking killer question? Why have so many people been put under the spell of the middle class? that is who determines who's the president of a country.

Right.

Look what happened in this last election. Okay, that middle class is starting to get a little edgy right now. They're starting to be like, I ain't.

Had a good job.

I hadn't had a freaking pay raise. You keep talking about unemployment going down. Where's my money? Okay, I don't get anything at the bank. I earn a half a percent at the bank. So your mom, my mom, my mom, I watched my mom earn 12% at the bank. She earned 1% a month on her so the battle cry back then was save your money because you could earn something. Save your money today. What do you get?

Nothing.

Nothing. You lose money. Okay?

So inflation is, yeah.

Don't take a risk.

Don't take a chance. Diversify. Why would I diversify? Rich people do not diversify. Okay? The wealthiest people on this planet, when they went into trains, they went all in on the trains. When Henry Ford went into cars, he didn't diversify. He went all in on cars. Elon Musk he's going all in on solar, right? That's how you make hits. But the middle class is taught what?

Put a little here, put a little.

Here, put a little here, put a little here. Put 27 different things out there. Why? Who benefits from 27 investments? Those people.

Wall Street.

Yeah.

Okay, start early.

Start early.

Start early.

Okay?

Get a Keogh account.

Get an IRA.

Who benefits? Freaking Wall Street. Dude, all that money gets pushed over.

There for 30 years.

So.

So where do you put your main, your money then? Well, let me just say this.

Yeah.

If they offer it to you, okay?

It's like, it's like, it's like insurance in Vegas at a blackjack table. You know, when you got you, they got an Ace up, and they're like, you want insurance? Dude, if they offer it to you in Vegas, this is what my mama told me. She's like, if they offer it to you, don't take it.

So.

So if Wall Street offers something to you, it's probably not good for you.

So where do I put my money? I put my money number one, where.

I have total control. number two, where it is indestructible. Like the investment has to be indestructible. So I'm, I'm indestructible, right? I can invest in me and I'm in control of that investment. That's the first that I would tell everybody. Like, don't even invest. You don't even think about financial investment until you have 100 Grand set aside. And until then, you got five, you got 10, you got 22, you got 50. Just keep reinvesting that money in yourself. courses, classes, whatever. And until you're taking the action necessary, the money will show up at the bank if you keep investing in you, the vehicle. And then the second thing is where the money goes, okay? The money's got to go into something indestructible. No technology can wipe it out. And it needs to be very simple for me. Like so simple that I can explain in one sentence.

So what's that?

Well, it's not Bitcoin, because I can't get my head wrapped around the cryptocurrency and most people can't explain it to me.

But you're receiving payments from Bitcoin.

I will take your crypto. I'll take it, but I'm not going to invest in it. I'll take anything, dude. I'll take your donkey. My office feels differently about that, because we had this phone call like, Hey, will you take 50,000 in Bitcoin? Sherry was like, no, Jared's like, no. I'm like, hey, dude, take that money, son.

Okay, take that freaking money.

If it's that or nothing, take it, man. Don't tell people no. Figure out how to make it all right to say yes to it. So what was your question? You said, so what are you putting it in then?

Yeah, I mean, I load up.

Everybody knows I'm loading up in real estate. You know, I buy apartment buildings. And so the simple thing is I buy a place where somebody has to live. They rent it from me. and they're gonna rent it from me for years and that's gonna pay down the debt on that place. I don't own homes. I don't buy houses. I buy rental property that people have to live in that they want to live in because they're great properties. They're really nice properties. And it's affordable living. It's not this $5,000 a month, you know, stuff that you live in. It's affordable, $1,100 a month, great neighborhoods, great properties, safe environments. We go in and improve them. fix them up, happy living, take care of people. We don't abuse anybody. I don't do any government programs, even though there's a lot of money in them. And then, and I know that money will be there for my kids 30 years from now. I mean, that money will be there 100 years from now.

So you put 100% of your investments in that or either in yourself, your team, or real estate.

In my business, in myself, my business, every surplus penny twice a year I go broke.

Twice a year.

I'm like, put it all in.

Really?

Into real estate.

Yeah.

Wow.

And then it's gone.

And then you have to reach. I gotta go back in. I gotta go. But literally, I'm like, like real estate guys. There's the same. We're real estate guys. Don't ever go to dinner with them because they never have any cash on them.

I'm broke right now.

Really?

Like, yeah, we're going all in right now.

So I go.

You're buying a big unit or big units.

Right.

I exhaust my reserves, and, and then we got to go back out and say, okay, let's go again.

Really?

Let's go. Let's go sell a book. Let's go sell a, let's go get a millionaire booklet out there in marketplace because there's nobody. There's nobody that I know in our space that. That will push as hard for a nine dollar product as I will. I don't know anyone, right?

Nobody.

I don't know anyone.

Nobody.

I'll go from one.

Maybe.

You know what?

Timmy.

Tim Sykes.

Yeah.

He pushes pretty hard. Did you know he won't. He won't drop down to, like, a.

Three dollar product, dude. I don't know. Yeah, maybe not.

But, I mean, you can come to.

One of my seminars. You'll see me at the back table. Freaking selling $2 stickers.

So why is that?

Because it's a flow, dude.

It keeps the flow going, okay? It's about money's about, it's about, it's about a, what is this?

It's a cycle.

Circulation, circulation. It's, it's, it's, this has to happen for you to have money. And the bigger the circulation, you know, I was in Australia, I was on this dive. It was a nine-day dive, live aboard. We didn't see land for eight days.

Wow.

Dude, I saw so much activity. underneath, right? At 80 feet and 100 feet, like there was economies without any money, tremendous economies where they're trading food, right? I mean, there's all this activity, giant tunas, I mean, a group or bigger than this wall right here, where there's.

This big, this food, right?

There's this just a cycle of food and ecosystem, and that's what the economy is. The economy is basically an ecosystem of people, that either have confidence or don't have confidence, you know, screaming and yelling. That's why I like New York. I love New York because you could feel that energy. I like a circus because, you know, you got the guy Hawking. You know, Ed McMahon? You remember Ed McMahon? Okay, Johnny Carson. He was the opener for Johnny Carson.

A lot of your, how old are you? 34.

Yeah, so you probably don't even know who Ed McMahon was. Ed McMahon, freaking, he was the opener for Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson preceded Jay Leno.

Yeah.

And the other day, the Late Show or whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

He was the ultimate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, Ed McMahon was his opener.

He kind of hyped him up.

Yeah.

Here's Johnny.

Yeah.

Right.

That went on for 30 years, dude. I grew up with that in my household.

Right.

So black and white. And Ed McMahon, his first, his first job. was a barker in a circus where he'd be like, right over here. You see him in the Home Depots, right, to the Vitamix machine. Ladies and gentlemen, come on over. Come on over, okay? Have something to write. They're pitchmen. They're, they're dragon audiences, which is such a powerful thing. And so many people today are unwilling to do that. Like, no, no, I'm not gonna do that. You know, look at the actors and actresses in this town that wait for the audition, wait for the phone to ring rather than show up cold to an audition and say, I know I'm.

Not on the list.

They have to see me. That takes balls.

Balls.

Big time.

Okay.

Wow.

So you're selling two dollar stickers and 200, 000 programs in anything in between. It doesn't matter.

And in November, we raised 15 million dollars for the real estate.

So.

So for a fund you're doing, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you who do you know that can go from one dollar to 15 million bucks in a freaking, in, in, in literally, like, just that fast?

Wow.

One thing is because I, I, I'm an ethical person. Like, like, I think people need that sticker. I think people need that book. I think people need to invest with me because I'm not going to rip them off. I'm not. I am in control of that property. Somebody has to be in control. So to the degree that you are a person, I believe Ethically, like clean hands, is to the degree that they can pitch full on. So you can sell as hard as you want, as much as you want.

And if you can't, there's something either in your present or in your past.

That you're still uncomfortable with. Something.

Yeah.

Do you feel like you're too pitchy ever? Do you feel like, ah, maybe I.

Was too aggressive or... Yeah, yeah. I've heard that before. Maybe I've been, I've heard that before.

From people that didn't buy from me. me only from people that didn't buy from me. People that buy from me never complain about me being too pushy.

What do you think about the people that never buy from you but are following you and commenting?

I just either hadn't pitched it right, hadn't found the right time to pitch.

Them or.

They haven't seen the right product yet.

Right.

Or maybe they're never going to buy from you. I mean, you know, it's all good.

Yeah.

Well, you know.

And how did you sell your wife? Well, share that story, because it was really powerful for people at the dinner. You know, it took 13 months. I had to pitch her for 13 months.

You know, I tell you how I sold her. I sold her the way I get everything done. I just commit first. I come in, I go all in, dude. I, you know, what's that place we're working out? What's the name of it? Equinox. Equinox, you know, they have commit to something.

That's their saying.

Their motto is commit to something. something like, dude, that's a bad idea. Okay? Commit to the right things. Like, don't just commit to something. I was committed to drugs for nine years of my life. Like, at one point, it had me. I didn't have it anymore. I couldn't even make the commitment. I didn't have a choice. So, Elena, I was in San Diego, California.

I lived in La Jolla.

Nobody leaves La Jolla to come to LA. Nobody goes north like that. Okay? So I'm living in La Jolla. I'm in a oceanfront front house that, I mean, it was a dream house. It was a Playboy's mansion. Like, no woman ever walked into this house and escaped with her virginity or her sexuality or anything.

Okay?

They all left feeling good about themselves, but you could come with as much resistance as you wanted in this house. This house had a magical spell on all of them.

Okay?

And so one day I just got, I said, no, I need to leave San Diego. I wanted to get married. I was 35 years old and I desperately wanted to get married. And I had met enough women in San Diego to know that she wasn't there. Okay? And so I'm like, I'm gonna sell the house.

That's how I do things.

Call the realtor up, said, Let's sell the house.

Okay?

She's like, well, how much you want for it? I said, well, I want all I can get for it, but I want to sell it immediately. Where you going? I said, I'm going to Los Angeles. I had this idea that my wife was in Los Angeles. I knew she wasn't there. That's all I knew. She's not there. I think she's in LA. I'm gonna go to the big city. So sold the house, like almost right away. Got all the money and left a life I had. Dude, I knew everybody in Los Angeles. Every restaurant I walk into, I was like the man in LA.

Yeah.

And knew everybody, right? Had it made, which was one of the reasons I had to leave, right?

So getting comfortable.

Yeah, totally, totally like complacent. Drove up here, had all my stuff in a car, had everything else shipped. Didn't know where I was going to stay. Had no clue where I was going to stay. Never been here, never met anybody here. Didn't know one person here, dude. Didn't make a phone call, didn't check it out, didn't even Google it going to Los Angeles. I just followed, like, I'm going and met her the first night I was here.

No way.

Met her in a RV. She was on a shoot, they were shooting this TV commercial.

And.

Got her number from the director. I said, Hey, give me your number. He said, I can't do that. I said, oh yeah, you can do it and you will do it. It's when is it gonna happen?

Right.

Now, later, just make it easy on yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

Kill yourself in five games.

Get ahead while you can.

He gave it to me, I called her. nothing to do with me, dude. It was like, she never.

She didn't even meet me.

You guys never meet at all before. No, we met.

She didn't see me. Oh, you met for, like, a minute.

And she was like, all right. Yeah, yeah, whatever.

I saw her.

She didn't see me. So I called her the next day. Zero interest.

I mean, less than zero.

Does she pick up?

Did she?

No.

Well, yeah, I talked to her. Okay. I'm saying, hey, I'm in. I'm in. You know, I'm done.

I'm good.

You know, I could tell I just.

You know, and so.

Call my mom right after she hung up on me. I said, man, I met my wife. I met my wife. I know who I'm gonna marry. And my mom's like, what have y'all gone out? And I said, no, she wants nothing.

To do with me.

And my mom said, Grant, it takes two. You know, that's the beautiful thing about parents, man. They could teach you good stuff and bad stuff.

You got to know which one they're teaching.

Your parents have limited data. Just know, know what they're bad at, know what they're good at. My mom was a good mom. she was terrible at advice like that. Because when she said, it takes two, I'm like, oh, I hung up. I said, thanks, Mom. I said, I know she's wrong. It takes one person.

One.

It doesn't take two. One person's got to be committed. And I just decided, I said, I'm just going to keep calling her. I'll just keep calling her. I'll just keep calling her until, you know, called her for 26 times for 13 months. Literally write it down.

14 days would come by.

It's.

It's call day.

Were you dating other girls or.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I was staying man. Gotta keep it tuned.

Sure, sure.

So, so, but now, now that being said, 26 phone calls, okay?

13 months.

13 months. The 26th phone call, I'm like, hey, look, I'm gonna rent a shooting club, okay? I'm gonna rent the whole place for me and you to go shooting.

I heard you like to shoot.

Stupid me didn't ask what she likes. so trying to knock the door down. Okay? So she, she's like, she's like, she calls him right back. You're gonna go shooting? You like to shoot? I said, yeah, this was on a Thursday. I think it was on a Thursday. I said, yeah, I got it rented for Saturday. I didn't. Don't tell them, you know?

So, so she hates that. No, no.

So, so, so she's like, I'll go with you. I said, great, I'll pick you up at nine o'clock, okay? I hang up with her. I called this chick that I was going out with the next night. I said, we're off.

Wow.

Okay. And she's like, what?

Why?

What's it? I said, I'm going out with my wife.

Dang. She's like, you're married?

I said, no, but I'm gonna be. So that's that thing about, man, you got to commit, man.

Wow.

You know, you got to commit.

And.

And some of that means giving up something, you know?

So giving up with something really good.

To get something really great.

Yeah, exactly. So you gotta. You gotta, you know, and I I think a lot of people right now are like, they're talking. They're reading stuff, they're looking at quotes, man, you got to find something in you about that's a commitment that's so deep, you know, that it's not about money anymore, but that the commitment's so deep that you should be rewarded for it. And you know that LeBron should be rewarded.

Absolutely.

Okay. You know, and.

Steph Curry should be.

Rewarded big time, right? I mean, like if you're going to hit that kind of commitment, you should be rewarded. You should literally have gold thrown at your your footsteps. You should, you know, which is freedom basically. Like so much money that you get, you know, somebody said once they said, Look, you want, when money can solve your problems, you don't have that problem anymore. And that's the purpose of money.

What's switching your mind to go from 30 million to 300 million dollar deals? And what do you think is needed for someone making 30,000 to get it? to a hundred thousand or a hundred thousand to a million.

So, you know, the switch. Like the switches. If you try to go from 30, I'll just talk about myself, right? Like when I was trying to go from 30 and I remember when I was making 30 grand, when I tried to go from 30 to 100, I just ended up with all the same problems. You know, it's like, okay, I'm making 30. Let's say I'm making pies. I'm making pies. and I'm making 30 pies. It's the same thing, by the way, same restrictions, the physical universe, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough dough, I don't have enough ovens. So the guy's like, I'm gonna go from 30 to 100. Well, you can't do that in the space you're in. So you need a bigger space. But you don't have the money for a bigger space. So the trick is to create a plan around going from 30 to 300, not 100, because the people are trying to edge into it. I'm gonna go from 30 to 40, 40 to 50, 50 to 60. But what they should do is put a plan to go from 30 to 300. Because immediately you'll be like, I can't do it in my kitchen anymore. I need more ovens. I need more money. I need help. Immediately it unlocks you from this budget, this mentality that trapped me so long from wearing about $80 for lavalier mics. Literally, dude, like I was so terrified I damaged my my throat and my lower intestines, okay? Because I didn't understand, dude, $80 in your problem. I was that scared all the time. Like a lot of people see me as a super confident guy, but I've just been scared.

What are you scared of the most?

Dude, I was scared of like, okay, I got something. Now I don't know what to do with it. I figured out how to get it. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know where it should go. So... What did you get?

You mean you got the money?

I got the money or I got some recognition. Or I finally got a little audience. Or I got one industry to know me.

And you didn't know what to do with it.

How do I keep it?

How do you keep it?

I don't think you keep it. I think you need to multiply it.

Ooh. How do you multiply it?

You multiply it by taking the risk to go to other industries.

Because you started in car car, you know, sell, teaching.

Yeah.

Well, everything I, before that, I started.

Stuff that I just lost that. Right? Like, so. And again, I wasn't thinking big enough. When I was in McDonald's and I got fired from McDonald's. Flipping burgers or doing fries or what were you doing? Whatever they had me do. They had me, they had me do what, you know, this is what we do, right? It's a road, it's a factory. And I was 16 years old and, and my dad had been dead six this year. So, like, you know, look, I'm uncertain. I'm 15, 16. I've just had sex for the first time. Dude, everything is so complicated.

Making five bucks an hour, that's one, whatever it was.

No, it's probably like 280.

Wow.

Yeah, but that wasn't the. That wasn't the problem. I was grateful for the 280. But I was awkward. I was not confident. I didn't know how to talk to people. you know, I hated the job, but if somebody said, dude, go learn this game so you can own 50 McDonald restaurants. Like, if I would have had that idea, I bet you I would own a bunch of McDonald franchises today. But I went there just for the 280. Not for, hey, I want to do something. I think I truly think that the thing that I've suffered from the most in my life as I look at Kobe and all these pictures of these great people, you know, dude, I just thought too small. I was worried about the 80 bucks. And I was worried about what the car dealers thought about me, that audience.

And when did you start to think bigger and how did that make you feel when you started to see a bigger vision for your life?

Well, I see these other guys. I see these other people. doing things.

You see a model of someone doing... Mike Tyson.

I was with Mike the other day, right? And you know, when you watch the old tapes of Mike knocking somebody out, I don't care if you're like boxing or not. You watched our, like him in his prime at 19 years old.

It was a machine.

People would be like, whoa. You know, the one-armed catch, you know, the great catch. Like the greatness is always I was pulled at my freaking insides so hard, like literally, I'll cry at somebody doing something great because I know, it's like, dude, that's you. I can't catch a ball and I can't knock anybody out, but I know there's something in me that's destined to do something.

How do you know that something is in you?

Because I can hear it, dude.

I can feel it.

I see it, recognize it. It recognizes it notices in other people, right? So how could I see that in, you know, Kobe or Michael or the singer that nobody knows about? This is not about celebrity because I'm not a star struck guy. I am struck by moments. The comedian, watching the comedian, his timing's just like perfect, dude. He's got the deal down. Like I get so moved, how could I recognize that if it's not in me? You know, the same thing for like criticism of other people, like when I see something I don't like in somebody, I know immediately, there's no way for me to see that in him. If I'm not, that's not in me. The water on the table last night, like not being there, I'm like, how many times have I ignored somebody and not serviced them properly?

Right.

You know, in business. Yeah. Yeah, in business or maybe somebody right now that I'm ignoring, I'm not paying enough attention to or.

So, you know.

That'S been the thing, dude, just that, I want to be great, man. And, you know, and I know there's people that are like, oh, that's because he doesn't love himself. You know, that's the go-to thing. Me and Tyson were talking about.

This.

You don't love yourself? Why?

Why do I need to be great? That's the go-to formula is, well dude, you don't need to be great. You should just love yourself the way you are. You know? And this is what Tyson was saying yesterday. The ego, Grant, the ego. You know, the ego. I said, do the ego save my life.

How so?

All this other stuff, undoing, you know, trying to Trying not to be great, like hurt me a lot. Trying not to do big things was damaging to me.

How was it damaging?

Because dude, it put me in conflict.

Playing smaller, being more humble.

Yeah, yeah man. How can you, you know, I showed up in that big truck, right? It's noisy, man. You could punch a button, it gets noisier and that's what it was built for. It wasn't built to not be loud. And I don't think I was built to be loud or to be small. I was built, I don't think I.

Was built to be quiet.

Like they tell you when you were growing up, be quiet, be seen, not heard, or be whatever the deal is. Don't toot your own horn, don't get too much attention, and don't promote yourself. But look, man, God was the show off, man.

Look what he created.

Just didn't stop either.

It's not quiet.

No.

Okay, rainbows, you know, suns, planets, waterfalls, everything. Yeah, crazy, man. Like when we walk around nature and we look at all that, when I see this, whatever this is growing on your wall, that fungus.

That's fake, but yeah, it looks real.

It looks real, dude. It's like you got to get a shot of that, you know? I'm like, wow, man, that's living. Yeah.

Right?

At least in my imagination.

Yeah, of course.

So why do you think people, you.

Know, I I think we love people that are grateful and have humility, but we also love to see people do great things.

Yeah.

Is there a balance that they should have? Like, also be grateful and humble as opposed to kind of like the McGregor.

Dude, I love McGregor. Yeah.

See, I like that.

That's your energy. You're on that frequency.

Who doesn't like it? Look at how big the audience is.

Look at the rock.

He doesn't have little muscles.

But he's got more humility, let's say.

If you're coming from-- oh, he knows how to play that game.

Oh my God. I mean, there's nobody better than a rock at that. Obama was unbelievable at that. Staying connected. I did. That's what I'm terrible at. I'm awful at. I'm so bad at it.

Why?

I don't know why. I don't know why. I just know I'm bad at it.

It doesn't seem like it's affected your business success.

Oh, I'm sure it has. You know, I'm sure it has. You know, I mean, it has to lose. If it slows. If it slows people down from liking me, like, if people, like my wife tells me, Elena. Tells me this all the time. Like, she's like, the reason women don't like you, Grant, is because, you know, you sound like you don't filter anything.

Right.

And you sound like she, and she's like, she knows, like, the, the, the favorite people in my life are women. My mother, my mother, I would have done anything for her. And she was my best friend.

Yeah.

And I depended on and later, and later, I was with my mother when she died. I was the one she trusted more than, I hope my family doesn't see this, but my mother trusted me. Did not trust me the most when I was growing up. And when she was dying, knew that no matter what, I would do something, I would be there for her. And I would tell her the truth, always tell her the truth. I'm the one that, when my mom, I got a call after Sabrina, we had we just had our first kid right up the block here. And then my sister Diane calls and says, you, need to get here. Now that Sabrina's born. And so I got on a plane, flew to, this is nine years ago, flew to, flew to Lake Charles, and I walked in, my mom's in the hospital, and I'm like, have they told you what's going on? No, what do you mean, Grant? I said, Has anybody told you what's happening now? And she's like, no. I said, well, what do you think's happening? And I was the first one that had the conversation and got her to say, well, I'm gonna die. And I'm like, that's right. That's what's happening now. And dude, it was the hardest conversation I ever had with anybody in my life. And it was like, okay, dude, you're gonna die. This is what's happening now. And my sisters didn't have the conversation with her. My brother didn't have the conversation with her. And I said, okay, that's what's happening. We got, I don't know, 12 hours, 18 hours, 20 hours.

Huh?

That's it, huh? Yeah, and I'm trying to take time out of this thing. I'm like, I don't want it dragging on. Because I know she doesn't want it to drag on. She'd always told me, she's like, Hey, look, when we get to this place, don't let this thing drag out.

I wouldn't want it to drag out.

Right.

Was she in pain or was it... No, not really.

You know?

And I said, Look, how do you want to die? Because you're gonna die. that's what's happening. I know, God damn it, Grant, I know. I'm like, good, you know? She's like, I know, I know. And then boom, she got it. Now it sunk in, nobody was playing the denial game anymore. I'm fucking just like, this is my best friend, dude. And so I'm like, how do you want to die?

Wow.

What do you mean? So I said, you want to stay here? You want to you.

No.

Because she was that kind of woman, right? She's like, I don't want to stay in this Hospital. Good. Where do you want to go?

I want to be in my house.

All right, good. Do you want me to get a car to pick you up? You wanna.

You want to drive home?

You want me to drive you home? Now just get me in my car and drive me home. Wow. And then we got to the house. I just walked her through all the pieces. Where do you want to be? Let me sit.

Let me sit in the living room.

Dude, it was so hard.

Wow. Like, even today, right now, saying it was her body just falling.

Apart or was that cancer?

Oh, she had cancer. The internal is just, yeah, it's cancer. And so the organs are shutting down now. And within 10 hours, let me see, from the time I had the conversation with her the next morning, got her in the Honda, drove her home, put her in the living room for, you know, a couple hours, let her sit in her Lazy Boy. I said, okay, where do you want to finish She's like, in my bed. Took her to the bedroom and.

You.

Know, just about 11 o'clock that night finally. And she said, about 30 minutes before she finished, she's like, She's like, I'm scared.

Wow.

Man, I said, what are you scared of, you know? You got to hold it together, right? Because, and she says, I'm scared I can't die. She wasn't scared of dying. She was scared she couldn't. You got a Kleenex, though.

You got a tissue, yeah. And, you got a bathroom right here?

And, I said, dude, you can do this. You know, you've done everything you needed to do. You did a great job. You don't owe anybody anything. Just rock on, man.

And.

Thank you.

Wow. She was afraid that she couldn't die. Like she would drag on or.

Yeah.

And just kind of be.

She wasn't scared of dying. Yeah. She was scared she couldn't.

Wow.

So.

You were there, was your whole family there?

Oh yeah, dude. I was right there with her.

Had my hand on her.

No doctors in the room.

While she passed?

Yeah. Wow. So, she was my bud, man.

Yeah. Yeah.

God damn.

What was.

I don't know.

What was the greatest lesson she taught you?

Oh, man, she was just. A lot of lessons, man. She. She was a very negative person.

Like.

Like, I have a lot of that. Like the second. Ron Seco said, he says, you know, Grant. you're a positive person. I said, dude, I am not a positive person. Like, do not.

No one should.

Confuse me with a motivational person. Because I'm not. I'm not a positive person.

Why aren't you?

Because. Because I. I understand that people die.

Yeah.

Like, I understand that life is hard and that there's evil. I know there's evil. I I confront. Like, that's what people don't like about me, dude. Like, you know, who.

Who.

Who. Who says, okay, you're gonna die? It's hard, man. It's really hard to be that honest, dude. My dad died when I was 10. My older brother died when I was 20. So by the time I was 20, I'm like, oh, people. Wow, like you start getting used to it. Like, like I know.

Not just your grandparent or something.

No, no, I see, I know, I know, there's people I know today that have never had a death in their family. They've never experienced it.

Yeah.

And then they're shocked when their dad dies. I'm like, what'd you think was gonna happen? Or their dog dies. I'm like, guys, you got a dog. It's a great Dane. It's got a life of 11 years.

Yeah.

Hopefully it dies before you do. you know, so my kids already know, like my seven and nine year old, they already confront the issue of me as a body not being around one day. So my mom taught me a lot, man. She taught me, you know, she taught, tried to talk me out of most everything I ever did, because she was negative. She was a mother, and it's a mother's job to protect you. My mother's 50% negative. Has to be. You're gonna get a cold. Put your shoes on. Don't go out in the rain.

I had.

To learn how not to listen to that 50%. Wow.

Was there anything that she taught you in the end or any regrets from, you know, what you had done or what you hadn't done or a promise you made yourself after she passed. You're like, you know what? I haven't been doing what I really need to be doing here, here, here. Is there anything like that for you?

Mmm. You know, not with her. I mean, I told her when I was a kid, when I got clean from drugs, I said one day I'm gonna buy you a Jaguar. I never bought it for her. She called me one day, she was a funny lady. She said, some football players had bought, had bought their mom a house.

Yeah.

And I was wealthy at the time. But, you know, I was living in La Jolla down the south of here, and I, you know, I'd done well, and I was still single. She's like, so-and-so bought her mom a house, you know? Where's my car? I'm like, he'll end up broke, too. You ain't getting a house, right? She didn't want a house.

I mean, she didn't want any of that stuff.

Yeah. What does she want?

She didn't have a lot of She didn't have a lot of dreams, you know? I don't think she lived way below her potential. And that's why I understand women. You know, my mom was a 50s housewife. And my mother lived for her children. And so part of this, I think, is part of my hardness and the way I prioritize things. I know my mother made a mistake putting her kids first.

Wow.

That was a mistake for her. Wow.

What should she have done?

She should have put herself first. Not us first.

Why?

Because she was more worried about five little kids than her own dreams. And I just, when I watched my dad die, I left her to run everything. he died suddenly and she never dated again. Wow. She was 40. Let's see, I guess she was 38. Never went on a date, dude. Wow. She had a stepfather and she's like, or stepmother and she's like, I'm not giving my kids a stepmother. Everything now was about the kids. And it's just, it's not enough for a human being. Dude, you can't be happy just living for kids that are going to move out. You know, so what advice would you.

Have to women about following their dreams?

All people, men and women, they should be more greedy about their personal dreams.

Well, what if they say, I've got.

These five kids and I've got this responsibility and... Yeah, you do, but you.

Also have responsibility yourself. Like how can I, if I can't take care of me, how can I take care of somebody else? Yeah. This has always been my battle cry. Like, I have to take care of me, you know? And how can I help anyone? I'm fucking broken. I'm messed up, you know? I'm coming out of a treatment center for drug addiction. I didn't need to help anybody else. I needed to get on solid ground, you know? And I needed to make sure I wasn't going back to treatment. And then I needed to clean up the mess that I made. I needed to do this for me.

Because.

And that has been my contention now for many years, like just keep slowly taking care of your neighborhood until you're in another zip code. Yeah.

Wow. Is there anywhere in your life right now that is still broken or still a mess that you need to take care of first?

You know, I let them go. I'm like, okay, I was having this conversation with Jamie yesterday. and I said, well, dude, I don't do that because he's got this person. He's like, oh, she's got so much potential. And I'm like, yeah, I don't do that deal. I don't handle people with potential.

I handle people that want to change.

Yeah. So I would rather somebody that wants to say, hey, what do I do? I'll do it. Then somebody's got a bunch of potential and won't do it.

Right.

What you tell them.

But your own, your own personal life, do you feel like there's anything that's broken inside of you still that to work on every day.

Yeah.

Or do you feel like you've kind.

Of, I'm not, I'm not working on the broken stuff, I mean, of me, you know, but because I have.

Thankfully.

You know, I've repaired a lot of stuff and I'm not dealing with.

I.

Mean, I got a lot of help along the way, so some of the, all that broken stuff and the doubt and the not short sureness, even though there's still me playing small is all doubts, right? You know? What do you doubt right now? Well, I'm just saying like, like, like.

Like, since the last time I left.

I'm like, okay, we're gonna build a billion dollar business. We're at a billion to now. Now you're like, all right. I'm like, I'm going to 10% for sure. Yeah, why aren't you? Now I'm starting to question, God damn, maybe I just go to 20. Like, like, because now all of a sudden we're 30. or 30 maybe, because now the game gets so big that I can truly make a difference. We're talking about hospital difference, countries, like you can make a difference. When you start getting, you start hanging out with billions of dollars of control.

You can make, you can make poverty in a location.

You can make, and you can start influencing the people that have the resources to do the influencing.

So what's the mindset that's going to take you from 1.2 billion now to 10 billion by the end of this year and then 30 billion by the end of next year?

Well, that's not physically, I can't move that fast, right? That would be, that would be, there.

Does need to be increments.

Yeah, there does.

Well, because, that's playing small to me.

No, it's because there has to be foundations. right? There has to be.

You can't just leapfrog it that far without doing the work, without laying the groundwork.

Yeah, and I'm in a physical universe, right? I could do it if I didn't have a body.

Right.

But the body, the body, other people's bodies, their thoughts, their ideas, I'm dealing with a lot of other people. They have times and they go home, you know, at six o'clock. Or, you know, I'm dealing with other institutions that go a lot slower because they're getting conservative now. They don't want to lose. You know, so time, time unfortunately is...

But from one to ten, what's the whole 10 billion by the end of what?

So, I think what's real.

I think what's real is... That could.

Be a 2 billion into 2020 for sure. I can open January 2020.

This sounds small. That just sounds like you're already 1.2. It just sounds tiny compared to what Grand Cardona is capable of.

No, but these are enormous, dude.

This sounds tiny, though.

It's just in the amount. Two billion dollars.

Sounds.

It sounds tiny.

And this level for you, it does sound tiny. I drove a Camry till I was 35 years old. Yeah, but you're 61 and you've been leapfrogging for years now.

Yeah.

It seems like it just seems small.

Wow.

I mean, not small.

It's huge for me, but where you're.

At, I think we could be at.

10 million in five years, though. I think that's Frank Cardone and I think of the.

But you understand how much money you're talking about now. You're talking about Blackstone. Blackstone has $12 billion of assets.

People have money, you just need to get people to open their wallet. Yeah, here it is.

You just need to find the people with the money. I need a bigger team. No, no, I don't need to find that.

They're already there. You know the people that have money.

The whole world has money. Okay, so you just need a bigger team. So I need a bigger team. How big of a team?

What do you need?

I probably need my team probably needs to be, you know, 100 plus.

What do you got, like 50 right now or 30?

Well, we got it depends on what, but if you're just talking about the real estate, right? But I got, dude, I got 13 other deals that I'm running.

So...

It just sounds small to me. Thank you, man.

Thank you so much.

It does.

Thank you. You're a grant cardone.

You're not someone who says, oh, I.

Think I could get to 10 billion by 2024. Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe if I quit doing podcasts.

So you do a bigger team, so you need to be on a higher... It takes time, it takes it.

Yeah. You know, like, like...

I love how he gets fidgety in the seat.

He's like, well, no, I'm like, you,'re like, you know, you know.

It's like Mike Tyson.

I was with Tyson, you know, and he's like, so what do you want to do, you know, in his voice? Hey, what do you want to do, Grant? I want to meet seven million seven billion people and immediately We should get you some of this tape is freaking fascinating. He's like how many of you met so far? I'm like not enough man, but you're gonna help me Mike Right, you know, because he knows a lot of people. Yeah, and a lot of people know him. Yeah, so youo know part of it is just getting the word out to like nobody knows I exist Small amount of people are saying yeah, so tiny dude.

Millions, not billions. Yeah, yeah.

Nobody knows me and even the people that know me don't they're not thinking about me right now.

So how do you get become more known in the last next year or two years?

You know doing things like what I'm doing right now? You know getting on your podcast, getting known, collaborating, working with other people like you have on this wall that are influencers and you know, that, you know, that wanna, that wanna work together. Yeah.

I'm curious, what do you think your superpower is and that, that you're one of the best in the world at.

Yeah.

And what, and how does someone find out what their superpower is? If they're like, I have no clue.

I think your superpowers, like, my, my superpower is probably What do you think mine is? I'm gonna write mine down, what I think it is, okay? But I want to hear what you think mine is. And I'd love to hear what the people think, mine. Everybody's got one, by the way. At least one, maybe many. I know I have one.

I'm trying to think of what you would write down. I think what you would write down is your belief system is your superpower. It's like the way you think, your mindset, this like 10x mindset, this belief system of what's possible. That's what I think you would write down. What I was thinking before that was your ability to enroll people in your vision.

Oh, wow. Wow.

Like your ability to just be relentless about your vision and speak it into the world one-on-one, one to many and say, buy into this, buy into me, buy into my books, buy into my events, buy into my cardone capital, buy into by into the vision.

Yeah, it's interesting. You said that.

So those two things is one, the internal belief system of like, okay, what could I do to 10x and not allowing the fear to keep you playing small, except for, I feel like you might be a little right now.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah.

What did you, what did you write down? I'm gonna miss it.

It's something. Like, no, I wrote, I wrote, I wrote. Let me see. I want you to see it, man. I wrote persistence.

Persistence, yeah. So the relentless.

Yeah, I mean, dude, once I decide I'm gonna do something, it's like there's no letting the chance is me letting go of something that's important to me. A friend. Like, I am either the best or worst friend a person has.

Why?

Because, like, If you and I are in a club and something goes down, I will be there swinging it out. Okay, I have no chance of winning the fight. I can only be a distraction to the thing.

Throwing a bottle.

But you're not gonna see me just run.

Yeah.

Right?

So.

And I'm not gonna run for my dreams. Like, I'm not gonna run for my kids. I'm not gonna run for Malena. I'm not gonna... There's nothing Malena could do that could cause me to run away from her.

Really?

No.

If she treats you horrible every day, screams at you, tries to pull you back from your dreams, threatens to take your kids from you.

Yeah.

Threatens to ruin you in some way.

I mean, none of that will happen, right? But, but, but, Something else you're saying, yeah. But she could cheat on me. I don't think that that would cause me to run away. I'd have to figure out.

Because it'd be because.

Yeah, totally.

I remember you saying, why would it.

Be your fault if your wife cheats on you? Well, because what would allow her to get interested in something else? You know? I wasn't paying attention to her. You know? There's something was out. I had to know it. You know? Like, nobody's ever betrayed me that I didn't know beforehand they were gonna betray me. There's always a sign. It's not intuition either. People are like, oh, I had this feeling. It's not intuition. You saw something happen. There was something you saw happen. There was some minute little movement.

The energy or something.

Like probably a physical thing. Like if you could just go back and look at what did the person do, the sign, or say or do to somebody or not do. Maybe they didn't do something that was, you know, that was consistent with what just happened. And you took that piece of data and filed it. and then you disregarded it. I've always known, every time I've ever been with somebody that got over on me, I'm like, you know, I knew that shit was gonna happen, dude. I don't know why I'm surprised. I'm not surprised. I didn't acknowledge it.

Pay attention or have the conversation I knew that I needed to have.

Or sit down and talk to them about it. And so I think, you know, me, one thing is persistence, two is definitely I understand math extremely well. I understand numbers. Numbers have always been friendly to me and particularly multiplication and division. So that's a superpower I have.

Really?

Yeah.

What do you mean by numbers? How it's a superpower? Why is that?

I just understand them. They're very like, I literally like, I did a two-day seminar after the 10x Growth Conference. We did three days and then I did two more days right behind it. on real estate to about 100 people. For eight hours, for 16 hours total, I was living in this, what was like the matrix to me, a formulas, literally like, I wasn't in my body for 16 hours. For two days, I was not in my body. I was completely exteriorized. And because I was in this topic that I understand so well, and its formulas and values and money and why something works and like, like it was all like algebra. It was like, like all these numbers written on the wall behind me in a chalkboard and I was living in them. And so it's again, I mean, I don't know where it comes from or why I have it or whatever, but I know that's a superpower. And the other one is the ability to know when something's right and say, yeah, we're gonna do that or no, like really fast past decisions.

How do people, why are people so slow on making decisions in life, business, relationships? Why don't they commit on something?

Because I think they, they, this is that conversation about why you guys need to go talk to each other about, we're gonna buy the car. Am I gonna get a training session? Should I buy that? Lewis has got a 300 program. I got, the woman has to go talk to her husband to buy a 300 program.

Vice versa.

Yeah.

Or the guy's you got to talk to her.

His wife?

Yeah.

Because you guys don't trust each other. But mostly you don't trust yourself.

Wow.

There's no way I'm going to talk to Elena. I'm not going to stop ladies and call Elena and say, baby, I bought a 140. I did 140 million dollar deal. What do you think? Now, I got a buddy, him and his wife talk about every real estate transaction they he doesn't get any. He doesn't get any what?

He doesn't get the deals.

Oh, really? They're too busy talking about the real estate deal.

Nobody else made the deal. I'm buying it.

You're right. Wow.

I don't call Elena. Elena. I tell Elena we bought it. She's like, great, man. Let's go do another one.

She's.

She trust.

She celebrate. She trusts me, dude. She trusts the plan. She understands I'm a genius on this.

She's right, this is your superpower.

This is my superpower. You're not gonna question your superpower. Dude, exactly, man. Batman does not consult Superman.

Right?

He's like, go get it, bro. Right?

Like, fly over there. Go save the world.

He can't fly. Batman can't fly, right? Like, he can, so it's my superpower. Alena has her superpowers.

And her power doesn't consult you on.

She never consults me on it.

Yeah.

Never talk, I don't even know what she's doing. I can't even, I don't even understand what what it is. She's bouncing on a ball and she does this. She's gonna hate that I said this, okay? But I'm convinced that her bouncing on the ball is why she stays in such good shape. And she is thinking her world is very ethereal. It's almost like she doesn't live in the physical universe. And she is a What would that be called in Hollywood? They have a name for it. The Muse. She's the Muse. She's the magician. You know, she lives in a world of like, I don't even know what she's doing in it. Like it's all magic, dude. You know, it's some kind of like postulation imagination, And it's not about her. It's about us. It's about something bigger. It's about people we're gonna meet, places we're gonna go. Elena has provided me, come up with so many brilliant ideas that I would have never thought, because I'm in effort, right? My superpower is persistence and push and that relentless. Hers is not any of that.

In the past, for the last number of decades, anytime you saw an economic slowdown, the response was to create inflation. The response was to stimulate.

So go back to 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst, we saw interest rates get cut. There was stimulus by the Federal Reserve Bank.