"How I Went From BROKE To MILLIONAIRE In 90 Days!" | Grant Cardone & Lewis Howes

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-- I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

You've done some amazing stuff, especially in the last year with this show called Undercover Billionaire. Before I talk about the show, I want to give some people some nuggets and ask you, 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 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. Yeah. 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 people.

You need people. You need the right people, though. The right people that are already in play, okay? Just 'cause the guy's got money. I remember 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 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? Oh, Louis, what do you want, Louis? I did that more than once, by the way. What do you want, Louis? You did? 'Cause 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 wanna 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, you never 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 10 exit, 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 100. 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.