How To FLIP $10,000 Into $1 MILLION (How To Build Wealth) | Grant Cardone

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? 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 that cash flow appreciate and provide tax shelters? What would you do?

If you got a thousand dollars, I would like just keep, you know, keep investing yourself until you got another thousand.

Okay.

And, and then invest in yourself, you know, now you got two thousand invested in 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. Like 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. Like 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, you know, business degree.

Right. But you should have dropped out of it. I shouldn't 100% because 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. Yeah. I'm developing skills, I'm working, I'm earning more. Yeah.

Now what's the next step? Yeah. And now. Now it would be, okay, I got to spend money on marketing.

I wouldn't go make.

I wouldn't go look for an investment right now. I'm gonna spend money on marketing now. 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?

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 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 used 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? 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.

That'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 'cause I studied what Coca-Cola was doing. They bought planes. I said, why are they buying planes? Oh, then I learned how they write 'em off. And then I learned how they trade 'em 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 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 any place and not see Coca-Cola. And I was, 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, I 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.

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 owned the building. Well, they don't care if they rent. They could rent it, but they owned it. The elevators were bigger than the studio. One elevator.

That's crazy.

60 people got on that elevator and went to the 120th floor. And then there was 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.

Because 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.

Mm.

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 gonna create a fund where I can tell my audience, Hey, Louis, you can invest with me. I'm gonna 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 gonna call you up and say, how you doing, man? 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 is going to be BlackRock and Vanguard, these are multi, you know, probably going to be worth $20 trillion each in the next handful of years. 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 pharmaceuticals, it's 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, 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 was so, it was such a low level grind.

Let's say you had the right information in 25. Let's just say you had a rich uncle that did what these people did and you got to witness Do you.

Think that you would have been able.

To get there faster? Yeah, 1000 years. 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 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 100 grand a year doing this. My daughters will never get in that vehicle.

What will they do?

They'll be like, I'm not getting in a $100,000 ride. If they can't bring me, they're gonna be like, hey, if this doesn't have a billion dollar possibility, they're gonna pick, 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. 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 would know what industries to pick.

Top three industries to pick.

Hedge funds have to be one of them. Advertising and marketing's got to be a space to be in. Mm-. And probably, you know, something to do with healthcare. If I could scale healthcare, if I could scale the organic alternative medicines, you know, 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 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 algorithms, I think he was, he was at one of the big firms selling stocks before Amazon. Yeah, before Amazon. And then he saw some, 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 you're coming from, but maybe I don't feel that comfortable yet.

Well, then keep, you know, money, if you think money's gonna 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 has 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 have that emergency. Everybody hears about it. Oh, yeah, my guy got in the bud. This happened, blah, blah, blah. But if you have assets, if you'd have been investing in assets, you can always go use those assets for collateral to loan out for 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. That's 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 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 pay 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. I still had this money left over. End of the year, it's just a 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 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.

So I know that. I know it's not a hundred.

So when you guys look at your.

Check, 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? 'Cause 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.

So what is- what is rich? You need to be rich. How much are we talking about?

Because- Just money if we're talking about money.

Yeah.

I think you probably need 20.

20 million. Then you're rich.

You need 20 million. You probably need 20. Now, the problem with this, okay, this is where everybody hates the podcast now. See, the problem is nobody wants to confront the real magnitude of the mathematics. And that's why people, 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 to 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 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. 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 at $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 healthcare issue.

Right.

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? 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, 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. Look what happened in this last election. 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 ain't had a freaking pay raise. You keep talking about unemployment going down. Where's my money? 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 money.

Mm-.

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. You lose money.

Okay?

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 their 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 Keo 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 money then, personally?

Well, let me just say this.

Yeah. If they offer it to you, okay, it's like insurance in Vegas at a blackjack table. You know, when you got, 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 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 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, don't even think about financial investment until you have a hundred 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.

So.

My office feels differently about that, but because we had this phone call like, Hey, will you take 50,000 in bitcoin? And Sherri was like, no, Jared's like, no. I'm like, Hey, dude, take that money, son.

Okay, take that freaking... if it's that or nothing.

Dude, 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...

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 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 with real estate guys don't ever go to dinner with them because.

They never have any cash on me.

I'm broke right now. Really like yeah, we're going all in right now.

So I go find 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 a marketplace Mm-. Because there's nobody, there's nobody that I know in our space that will push as hard for a $9 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, Timmy Sykes. Yeah. He pushes pretty hard.

And you know, he won't drop down to like a $3 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 Snickers.

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 is, 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, 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 'cause 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, right? Yeah, exactly.

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

Well, Ed McMahon was his opener.

They got him hyped 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 job was a barker in a circus. where you'd be like, right over here, you see them 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 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. Dude, that takes balls.

Balls.

Big time. Okay.

Wow. So you're selling $2 stickers and $200,000 programs in anything in between. It doesn't matter.

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

So, so, for a fund you're doing, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, 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'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 is 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. 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 gonna buy from you. I mean, it's all good.

Yeah.

Well, you know.

And how did you sell your wife? Well, share that story, 'cause it was really powerful for people at 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 commit, I go all in, dude. 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. I'm 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, to the. At one point, I.

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. Right? Nobody goes North like that.

Okay?

So I'm living in La Jolla. I'm in a. I'm in a. oceanfront 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 that 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 walked 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 gonna stay, had no clue where I was gonna 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 she was on a shoot that was shooting this TV commercial. And, um, met her, got her number from the directorctor, I said, A, give me your number so I can't do that I said, Oh, yeah, you can do it and you will do It's when is it going to happen.

Right.

Now later, just give it make it easy on yourself. You' going kill yourself in five games.

So let have what 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 didn't 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? Does 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. 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, well, where 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 what they're bad at, know what they're good at. My mom was a good mom. She was terrible at advice like that. Cause 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 call day. Were you dating other girls or?

Oh, shit, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, I was staying in practice, man.

Got to keep it tuned.

Sure, sure.

So.

But now, now that being said, 26 phone calls, okay?

13 months.

13 months. The 26 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 liked. So, Mm-. 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, 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? 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. Wow. You know, you got to commit.

And. And some of that means giving up something, you know? So you're up with something really good.

You 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 gonna hit that kind of commitment, you should be rewarded. You should literally have gold thrown at 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, when money can solve your problems, you don't have that problem anymore. And that's the purpose of money, right?

Do you feel like people can make money, a lot of money, without being fully committed, without mastering skills and continuing to innovate and grow as an individual?

No, and then they're not really committed, you know? So I think they're gonna lose it. I think they could do that for a while.

And then lose it. Yeah.

Yeah. Then, then they're gonna. It's gonna. What happens now?

Yeah.

What do you think people struggle with the most in making money?

Is it that they're trying to find what they love? You know, everybody's going for what they love. The love thing. This is another misnomer in our society.

You made a lot of money doing something you didn't love.

Exactly. Everybody's like, find something you love. The money will follow. Tom told that to somebody yesterday at Starbucks. You know, Tom works with me and some dude just got off the shift at Chevron, 12 hour shift. And then Tom, my guy Tom, you know, who's helps us around the family, is giving this guy Chevron advice about, dude, don't take that job. Go do something you love. I'm like, you don't even know what you're talking about, Tom. Quit telling people Shit, okay? You got no business. You're security here, bro. Okay? Don't give people advice like that. That's dumb. He's like, why is it dumb? I said, bro, you got, you got to, you got, like, you can't just do what you love. People have to do the other stuff, man. We wouldn't have a military, man. There would be no Marines, no Navy, no Coast Guard, no policeman, no fireman, if all you did was what you loved, right? Somebody's got to do the dirty stuff, man. Somebody's got to do the hard stuff. So, I think, you know, this is where I'm trying to be more Lewis Howes, graceful, graceful, you know, I think, you know, that people should follow freedom, man. You know, that freedom and in that chapter on freedom would be, you ain't getting freedom without money. Just not gonna happen. And so, you know, do the thing.

That can make you the most money. And if you love it as well, then it's a bonus.

At least you'll have some options with the stuff you love. Okay, Van Gogh loved art. He never told anybody about it. Selfish, completely selfish. Okay, so many artists go down like this. I'm an artist, I'm not a salesman. Dude, you died and sold one piece of art. Okay, what a damn shame. Okay? How can you produce such unbelievable, unbelievable works and never tell anybody about it? Because you're so freaking self-centered and selfish, okay? And so introverted into self that you're not willing to go out and say, look at this, right? Oh, I don't wanna brag. Again, you're talking about yourself. The guy's selfish. All these people say, well, I'm an introvert. You're selfish, man. Let's call it what it is. Because when you're talking about your introversion, you're assuming no one else is. You're saying that it's not easy for anybody. It's not easy for you, but everybody else it is. Everything is about yourself right now when you're saying that. I don't like sales.

Selfish.

I don't like talking to people. Selfish. I don't like public speaking. You're talking about yourself again, dude. I don't need money. You're selfish, dude. Okay? Your church, your community, the kids, people need money. Okay? Well, that's not who I am. You're talking about yourself again. See, and like I could quit working right now. I don't need to do this today. Financially, I'm done. I can't exhaust it. But it would be selfish of me to stop. Elon Musk, he's an unselfish dude. That's what I know about him for sure. He's a genius and he's unselfish.

Perfect combination. He's trying to move the world forward.

With his gifts, his talents.

He didn't have to do that.

He's made a lot of money. Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban's on TV all the time. By the way, all these super, super successful dudes, they're completely doing what your parents said not to do. Getting a lot of attention, right? I mean, why's Mark Cuban on TV three or four, five times a week? Right. Okay. And then we'll take every interview they give him.

Yeah.

Because he knows attention equals freedom. Attention equals, I can start moving the bar here on the way people do things. Not just money, right? But power and influence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You get bored if you just stopped today anyways. Yeah, dude.

I get a lot of trouble.

You said she won't let you stop.

She won't, she won't. She keeps pushing on me.

Yeah.

Because she knows if I know, that was a good piece that came out in the thing the other night. But it was, it was, Elena pushes me. Elena is the one, she's the one that wants me to be a billionaire. I don't really think about it that much.

Really? I think it's kind of stupid.

But, but, because what are you gonna do with it? You know, she's the one that says, no, no, you need to do it.

Really?

Why? I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a number. It's ridiculous. You can't spend that much money, right? And she's like, no, you need to do it because you can't. One, you're close. Two, you can. And three, you need a goal so big, right? That, that you're chasing that, that you're so interested in that, that you're excited and you're living and you're youthful and you're, you know, you got a lot of and, and by the way, you're not consuming meat. You don't turn into a carnivore because you're bored. And she's right. Because every time in my life when I'm bored, I become destructive.

You get nasty, negative.

Nasty, dude. I get nasty. I get. Because I'm not being productive, man.

Work.

Work is a. I think work is a gift, is, is the gift that doesn't look like a gift from God. you know, that people all talk about. They don't want to work. They hate work. They hate their job. Dude, I love my jobs, you know? I love jobs. I love having a place to work. I've been out of work, you know? I'll take any job. I'd rather any job than no job. I'd go flip hamburgers. I like doing dirty jobs. Micro, I love Micro, you know, because he'll do the dirty job. And I trust people that will do dirty jobs. and I don't trust people that's like, oh, J.O.B. Just over broke. Dude, you're broke now. If you even know that freaking term, you're broke now.

Right.

Okay.

Wow. What's the thing that you think about the most that most people don't know about?

Probably dying. You know?

What do you think about?

Dude, running out of time. I'm not worried about dying. I'm worried about just running out of time.

Like, Running out of time to do what?

For anybody to know me, you know, to have made a difference, like to, you know, my dad, my dad died when he was 52. So he had just, what he thought was just made it. He just made it. You know, him and my mom were like celebrating, oh, we made it, he bought the house he wanted, and 18 months later he was dead. So, and then I watched my older brother, he was 20, 25 I guess. I was 20. He was 25. He died when he was 25. And I'm like, dude, man, this thing's short. This runway's short. Your older brother died at 25. He was, I'm talking to him Sunday night, getting advice from him. I'm 20. I was in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He was in Grand Junction, Colorado, on a Sunday night. I said, man, you think I should do it, man? You think I should do it? He's like, don't do it, man. Don't do it. He was dead the next morning. So I just, like, my whole life, I'm 59, dude. I've been thinking I was gonna die since I was, like, 18. Like, okay, I got a couple more years. Wow. So you'll see me like, I still have this. I'm in a hurry to get someplace, you know, urgency.

I think life is now. Huh?

Life is now.

It's not 10 years from now. That's right. Now it's time to make a decision. Now's the time to push. Now's the time to be more aggressive and go for what you want.

Yeah.

And get freedom.

Yeah. Yeah.

And 10 years from now. the results of what you get 10 years from now is gonna be what you did right now. So like in my office, everything is now, you know? Hey, did you send that deal in? No, I'm gonna get to it. No, you ain't gonna get to it, dude. We're gonna do it right now. Let's do it right now. And I think I shared something with your group the other night about anytime the people that work with me are overwhelmed, we add something.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah, because it proves to everybody, dude, you're not overwhelmed. Come on, you're in drama, dude. You're being like a little girl right now.

Right?

Okay. Ladies, please don't take offense to that. I love little girls, okay? I have two of them and they're like princesses.

But I teach my little girls, don't act like a little girl. Sometimes you got to throw down, dude. Wow. And I love how you do every single day. Everything is measured and everything is tracked and everything is talked about publicly with your team. You think I think you said you have 50 or 60 people on the team. Yeah. Yeah. so at 905 every single morning, the whole team is there. What if someone's late? Is that okay or is it no? No. So everyone's there. 905.

I think that happens twice, second time you're dead.

Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. So everyone's there. And then you list out a number of stats, right? And what are some of the things you guys list out?

Everything that would be validation of success. Yeah. So like your wall here, right? All the people that came in here, you know? that's a validation. That's a reminder, hey, this is working. We don't talk about anything negative in the meeting. Zero. No administration, administrative, turn in your, somebody mentioned the insurance or the carrier or something like that. We don't do that in this meeting. Okay? This meeting is results meeting. All the battles we won. Okay? If 17 people died, that will not be reported in this meeting. This is gonna be all the hills that we took.

Right?

So, it's going to be YouTube views, it's going to be Instagram followers, all the way down to calls, contacts, call time. Like we hit every front. We'll knock on a door, we'll call cold, we'll use technology.

Everything. You talk about you say sales numbers from the previous day as well?

Yeah, everything.

Yeah. and I love how you said that you're constantly looking to execute people. Is that right? I think I said it.

You said it. Totally, totally.

So if it's sale, so if it's.

Not going up, they call me General Grant.

General Grant. If sales are not going up or.

Numbers are not going up, then you're looking for. We look for somebody that. Yeah, we, we, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you're good. No, we, we look for somebody to execute. So we do not tolerate a flat number.

So.

If I go to a company, I'm like, how you guys doing? You know, oh man, we're, you know, we've been, you know, we just, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're on track to do what we did last quarter. You're dying, dude. You understand you're dying, right? You know that you can't keep a flat line, a flat line, gravity will pull a flat line down. So all flat lines are death, basically. Wow. You know, that's flat line, he's flat lining, you know, so flat lines for me, like I'm dying. and I've been there, by the way, I had a company, a couple companies, actually, I let Flatline for a while, and then, and I paid the price of that. So I'm like, I'll never let that happen.

I think it's also like a psychological thing. You just get less inspired, you're less.

Motivated, you're not seeing growth. You know, and this is happened to newspapers, it's happened in TV, happened to Macy's, and nobody wants to pay attention to it. You know, it happened to Blockbuster. They, they just kept saying for years, no, it's coming back. We're coming back. No, you're not, dude. It's over. Okay. So flat lines are also for households. Households in America. By the way, economy defined is the management of a household by definition. And the reason I say this is because when I'm talking about graphs right now, I have this visual image of the graph of the median income in America. And it's going just like this. It was flat for years. It was doing like this for back in the 50s and 60s. And then all of a sudden it flattened out and now it's doing this. It's in this major emergency trend right here. And it's been like this for like 18 years now. Just like doing just like this. You can't reverse this trend by the way. It's too many people responsible for it. So people need to be, this is the middle class that everybody thinks is safe. Okay? If they told you the truth, they would say this is a poverty line today.

Mm-.

Because that's what it will be tomorrow. Wow. So, and these are the people, 76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So they're not looking at this graph. They're like, I'm better off than the guy that's homeless, because I got my two BMWs and I got my two kids going to two good schools in debt on both.

They're all in debt, like up to here, right?

But my house, my house, it's almost paid for in 15 years, it's gonna be paid for. Dude, all that, those are three major scams in America. The house puffed up the banks, right? The schools, the college debt, 1.3 trillion. Tremendous amount of Wall Street money sitting there. That's all pension fund money. And so, but everybody's denying this graph right here, because we're better off than people in Ethiopia. So that's why I look at graphs, right? Because numbers don't lie. People lie.

Yeah.

Numbers don't lie.

That is true.

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, 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, you know, 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's 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 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, 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. 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 the long-term residual income for decades off of your book.

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? '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 wanna 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 gonna actually, I'm gonna 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. 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. Come out here and watch. I'm sick. I was sick from altitude sickness. I'm like, what? What? 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 And then they cut all that out of the show. 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. And 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 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 3. 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. I'm gonna start a new beauty salon. I'm gonna start a new masseuse place. I'm gonna start a new cosmetologist house. I'm gonna 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 gonna 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, ah, you don't seem credible, or how did you take it security wise internally?

Well, what, what you, 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, and listen to his. Well, I did. I raised $30 million and 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 that. 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 Every accredited investor was a non-accredited investor at one time. Every whale was a minnow.

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

Let's see. I mean, that's my deal. You could buy mutual funds and you can go feed Vanguard and go feed the Blackstone's. They own everything, dude. You go make a bet on Disney.

You can buy stocks, you can buy funds.

You can buy gold and silver. Gold is dead. Gold is gold. as 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. 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. Yeah, obviously that's not your thing.

Yeah, no, but I'm studying this whole thing. I'm very interested in the space, right? 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 it? Three years ago?

I still have it.

I remember you said you got paid in Bitcoin. Yeah, exactly. And you said, I'll take your money in Bitcoin and whatever crypto.

Yeah, yeah, I'll take whatever.

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, no, it's $5 million today. 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 got 50 grand for some.

Product you had or something or some grand or whatever. that was a speaking gig, actually.

Speaking gig.

Yeah. And now it's worth. And then. 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 a inflation hedge.

What is it?

It's.

It's a.

It's just a place to store. It's an asset store. It's a.

It's a.

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 in 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 be promoting it.

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

Unless you had maybe a chain or something.

I got a ring, I got a little chain. I lost that. You know, I don't understand it. I think there's more people playing the Bitcoin game today than there are people playing the gold game.

Right.

But anyway, so the case for Bitcoin is just limited, you know, it's, you know, hopefully they're not going to make any more. That's what they say. It is a ledger. I like that. that there's millions of computers backed up saying, hey, this is what it is. And I don't completely understand it.

Right. But 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.

So 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 8 million a month. Okay.

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

Probably eight and a half.

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?

So, what? 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 he 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 a hundred grand a year and $10,000 as passive income, I'm set. You know, so, so like this, 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.

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 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.

I want to do that every month.

I want to do that every month. Wow. And when I get to 30 million, I'm gonna go to 300 million a month.

Wow.

I'm gonna 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 gonna flip this whole thing. I'm gonna 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 trashing 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. Hmm.

How does it feel for you to know that there's money going out? 'Cause I think it comes out like.

The 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 that feel?

I call them and 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 at how much I get, I look at last. Because if everybody else is winning, I know I'm winning.

You're getting big, yeah.

But 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. 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 it's 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 gonna rent for 20 grand a night. It doesn't matter, dude. You wanna be in that house, in that location, on that beach, you wanna bring 12 other people to stay there, you're gonna 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 gonna pay for the house. 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 debt issue. I have my other house in Miami that's paid for. So I bought two houses last year.

It's crazy.

It's insane.

It's crazy, man.

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've got to have 80 grand.

It needs to be in cash, and.

It should be from on 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. Never. Even if you made 10 million. 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, this is how I live. I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever spend or earn income. Really? Never. So, my earned income, okay, if I traded time for it, my earned, I never spend a penny of it. Okay? Okay, now what I do is, I invest all of the earned, whatever's left over after the IRS. So, the IRS is gonna 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.

And it's gonna give me a drip, right? It's gonna 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. you know, but it's kind of hard to make it go away.

Sure.

Right? 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've got maintenance.

Yeah, I know, bro.

I also got income. Okay, I don't have any. Yeah, 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 hundred thousand dollar watch, good. Okay. I can buy 100 as long as I got 200 grand.

Right.

So, and 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 Psalm, 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 gonna click a switch and you're gonna 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. Yeah. 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 every year. If you just do what I tell you to do, you go work a gig, they pay you 130, 000, you.

Take 60 grand, park it.

Wednesday night, I 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, right? 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 work for that. You're gonna step from this one. A-Rod talked about this to me at- at the growth conference. He's like, I knew my earning capacity was going to 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. Yours is 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 Howes 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. 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.

Uh-huh.

Maybe 15 or 20% a year.

You're putting 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 benefit from this. I want rent to go up. Yes. So like not everybody- you- don't want 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 is a really freaking weird deal because the banks aren't paying you anymore and it's going down in value. So the value of the dollar's 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 gonna 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 a good. But you just went from having a.

Job to a second job.

Because now you're managing the property. You're managing it. You're handling problems. income, 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.

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 the 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 gonna 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 tax 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, what is he doing?

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 'em. 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.

But one of the things that inspires me about you is your ability to reinvent after 50. And I think there's a lot of people when they hit 40 or 50, they think of, okay, well, my best years are behind me. I had my opportunity in my 20s and 30s to build something. There's no way I'll be able to build something now in my 50s and beyond. Whereas you kind of said, I'm 50. Now is the time to build. What is the mindset you would share with anyone who's 40, 50, or 60 and 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, 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. I did 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 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. Like nobody really knows my age. Like 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've got a wife named Ava. Had made up names for the kids. I had to make up all that story. And 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 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 a song called 9 to 5. But she's been doing 5 to 9 for years. So I just think people can get better if they want to, or they can get worse. You're either gonna decay, or you're gonna 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? 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 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, nine and ten. 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 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. 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 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, 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 want 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, that's credit card debt, Lamborghini, buying the Lamborghini on debt. Look, if you're going to 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, for, for this Santa Claus for your kids. I know, I know people are going to hate that message. That's why so many people dislike, you.

Know, they, you just don't like the, it's stupid to go in debt. If you want to do it and, and for, for fun or for whatever, then that's okay. But you may, you're not investing in.

A potential greater future. No. Now, if I, if I borrow money for Santa Claus, that's one thing. If I borrow money for to invest in a piece of real estate for my kids? I mean, I know which one's gonna 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't 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 gonna 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. 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, 'cause 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 a year from now? How much debt do you want to have?

Oh, yeah.

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

I hate trillion, man.

See, the 10x 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 gotta quit buying one deal at a time and I gotta buy a portfolio, or I gotta go buy a company. I gotta go eat somebody that's got, you know, 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? Buy 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, do you know three people in your mind who's got 9,000 units or who has a bigger portfolio.

So 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, yeah, that's- 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 think I can do it or not do it.

Just maybe a year from now, we'll do another- We should do a million dollar bet on it. Maybe if you had that, the pressure, 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.

You, you, 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 could, I'm a, I, 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 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 very 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 are the three things you'd like to improve over the next year, personally?

You know, I would love to improve my communication skills. Clubhouses, like the amount of eloquence, the amount of people there that are able to to see other people's viewpoints has been fascinating to me. So number one, I'd like to become a better communicator. Number two, and I think I already am just from being on Clubhouse. Clubhouse has been an incredible gift to me.

Yeah, it's been fun. It's been fun to be in those rooms with you.

Yeah, and so I've learned a lot about how to talk, how to listen that I didn't know because of the two-way communication. You don't get that from from Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, I don't get it from dropping a video on YouTube. Number two is the collaboration. I want to collaborate with more people. Number three, third thing I want to do, you know, I mean, I need to work on my relationships. My personal relationships could be a better husband, definitely a better husband. I've been running really fast. The show was, I think the show caused a lot of friction between me and Elena.

Really?

Yeah, because I was in this thing, bro. Like, I was in hell. And she was giving me pep talks. I'm like, Hey, dude, I don't need a pep talk right now. Like, you don't understand, it's 15 degrees. I'm dying out here, okay? And she's like, you, can do it. You can do it. I'm like, yeah, okay, click. Like, you don't get it. Like, it was, it put a lot of, stress on us and then we were apart. So we learned how to be apart and like, so that's got to get, I mean, just between me and you, that's got to get, I don't know, this doesn't have to make the podcast, but I got some work to do on that just to be frank and honest. Every single thing. Relationships are hard, man. You know, they are hard.

After how many years you've been married? 15.

15 or 16, yeah.

15, 16, yeah. You've been together for over 15 years. What do you say is the, this is an important question and we're going to get to the end here soon. But I think this is huge. How do you navigate building financial wealth and creating a healthy marriage or partnership in a relationship at the same time? Because I feel money is the biggest thing that breaks up or causes stress or with relationships. How do you manage both?

Yeah, it's just, you know, for me, like we don't have money. I mean, I shouldn't say that. Everybody has money problems.

There's different problems.

I just realized when I was saying that, I'm like, oh yeah, I have money problems too. They're just, it's a flip side of the problem. So it's not really a problem with money, dude. It's decision making. Every day I'm doing stuff that's like, you know, there's some things only, you're always by yourself. There's some things in life that no matter how much love you have or how close your partner is, you're still by yourself in that moment. I can talk about it, I can share it, we can hug it out. I'm still left with the burden of that decision. You know what I'm saying? And am I doing the right thing? Like there's a lot of things that I'm involved in that right now that maybe Elena doesn't even want me to do it that way. And she's like, you know, and I'm like, no, I have to do it this way. Like everyone is against me doing it that way except me. We all get wake-up calls.

We get wake-up calls in our relationships, our spiritual walk, we get wake-up calls in our finances. And some people, the phone's ringing off the hook right now. The cool thing is when you get the call, then you have to make the choice. Are you gonna answer the phone?