The No BS Guide To Making $10 Million In 10 Years w/ Grant Cardone EP 1439

My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything. It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled, or if you feel exhausted, drained, and like you're never going to be enough. Our brand new book, the Greatest Mindset, just hit the New York Times bestseller back to back weeks. And I'm so excited to hear from so many of you who've bought the book, who've read it, and finished it already. and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book. If you haven't got a copy yet, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book I wish I had when I was 20, struggling, trying to figure out life 10 years ago at 30, trying to figure out transitions in my life, and the book I'm glad I have today for myself. Make sure to get a copy at lewishouse.com/2023 mindset. to get your copy today. Again, lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get a copy today. Also, the book is on audible now, so you can get it on audiobook as well. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode.

If people want to create wealth for themselves, it's not just money, it's people. It's not how much money I have. I mean, we all know about the wealthy person that has no friends. He's on a yacht by himself. And that's not wealth, right? It's just a bunch of money and material collections. So like there's no to me, there's no way to create real wealth by just going inside and got to go. I got to add people.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Welcome back everyone to School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Grant Cardone in the house. My man. Good to see you, brother.

Always good. Always good. Always good. Always good.

I think I've known you for 14 years, I believe now. I think we met in 2009. We did a Zoom interview back in the day when you were kind of just getting started. which is essentially when you were about 50 years young, you know, your late 40s.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, probably. Really?

Somewhere around there, yeah, your late 40s, maybe.

How long have we known each other? 14 years. Yeah, so that I was 51 years old. I don't think I had kids yet.

I don't even know if you had kids. You didn't have one thing you had.

You just got on social media. Yeah, that's right.

You were just like, okay, I'm gonna go all in on this at 50, which is inspiring.

It's amazing what you've built. I was, I was almost broke back then. Right. I mean, I had a house. I had a house and I had cars and I wasn't broke. Right. But, but I was, like, scared. I think that was coming out.

Oh, it was right after the.

Right after the. Yeah.

So, so, oh, a recession.

You were doing webinars.

I was doing webinars and LinkedIn stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You were, you were teaching online and you went from, like, sales to.

Yeah.

Real estate.

Yeah.

And every time you've been on here, My goal is to challenge you to get to the next level of your wealth. You don't need me to do that. You're gonna do that on your own. But it's always fun to have these conversations. And before we get into that, well.

That'S the only reason I'm here, by the way, because, and I was telling you beforehand, I said, you know, there was one interview you did with me where you challenged me. And if anybody's been watching the previous one, they probably remember it. But I was doing a $100 million deal. and you said, well, not, why not a billion? And look, when I was doing this deal, it was like I was picking up something I couldn't pick up, right? It was like so big for me.

You were moving mountains.

To me, I was moving mountains. I'm like, this is gonna be pro, you know, how am I gonna do this? I don't have the money. I don't know the people. I don't have the, like, I didn't have the financing. I'm like, I'm never gonna be able to make this happen. And then you said, would you, why not do the 10x thing, dude, and do a billion?

I was like, and it, when I.

Left here, It wasn't just you saying it to me in the moment. It haunted me when I left here. I kept asking myself that question. Yeah, why aren't you not thinking about the million? You know why? And then we went out and did, I don't know what the next deal was, but it was, I achieved that that year. Right.

From 100 million to a billion.

Yeah. So that's why I'm back here today because now I want to do it again. I'm hoping you've got some good vibe or karma. That was a successful action, so I'm.

Glad to hear this. And I think that was like, I don't know, four or five years ago, and now you're at about 4 billion in assets. And it just keeps growing and growing. And you said the goal is 40 billion now. So it's like, we're just gonna keep 10x-ing it.

Yeah.

What do you think was in the way mentally and emotionally from you thinking and doing a $100 million deal and taking it to a billion in the next year?

It's just, you know, it's just you hadn't done it. You know, so I think we all, you know, I love this dream big, but, you know, the reality is most of us don't dream big. And inflation with the price of things going up. And I've said this for 10 years, you know, everybody asked me, you know, hey, when's enough enough? I'm like, enough is never enough because until enough is enough, if nothing changes, and then one day when you find out enough wasn't enough, it's too late. And so you just found that out with this last period of inflation and bananas, the price of chicken, whatever they're promoting to us now to make people feel scarcity and experience scarcity. If people want to create wealth for themselves, it's not just money, it's people. It's not how much money I have. I mean, we all know about the wealthy person that has no friends. He's on a yacht by himself. and that's not wealth, right? It's just a bunch of money and material collections. So, like, there's no to me, there's no way to create real wealth by just going inside. You got to go out. I got to add people.

Right.

So, like, I say almost yes to almost everything. Somebody asked me to do something or a podcast or an interview. I'm like, yeah, let's go do let's figure out how to do it. Why do you say yes to everyone? Because because it connects me to another person. You know, it adds it adds an experience. Whether it was good or bad, it adds an experience in my life that involved people, not money and physical things, you know, and I don't think people know that about me, but like, I like the interaction with people, even though sometimes I don't want to do it. Right. Like, I don't like going to events. I like running an event, you know, because, but I don't like going to them, but I know going to them, like you said earlier, is me being humble enough to say, I'm going to be a participant. I'm going to go learn something from these people. But it's uncomfortable. You don't know anybody. You're having to meet people. So just for me, wealth is like, how can I meet more people? But if you're thinking like that, and that's the money problem. How am I going to get a million dollars if you're broke? It's through people. It's not through an idea or I'm going to go build something or make something. It's through a person. All wealth comes through people. Right. It doesn't come here, you know, so Elon's got to sell its car to somebody. Right.

People.

Totally. Yeah. So Coca-Cola's got to get somebody to pick up that can and AI has to have somebody to prompt it unless it's going to start prompting on its own.

That's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

With, you know, there's a lot of fear and insecurity right now around the banks collapsing. It seems like more banks are going to be collapsing. around inflation, the US dollar not going as far as it used to go. And everyone's been talking about a recession that's here, that's coming, that's housing, commercial real estate, the banks, all these things. What's your thoughts and feelings around what is happening and what you think will happen over the next 12 to 18 months?

Right, so I'm gonna say something that I think most people would disagree with me on, but first of all, inflation is a boogeyman that's not even real.

Really?

Look, I'm just telling you inflation, even Warren Buffett says maybe two people on the entire planet even understand the concept of inflation. What is so complicated?

What is inflation?

So inflation, yeah, it's a great question, right? And what is a recession, by the way?

Yeah.

So inflation is an increased price or price on some commodity that is desired, right? So you actually want inflation. You don't not want inflation.

Why?

Because you want your value, you want the value of your products to go up, not down. If you're thinking as a consumer, okay, which you're not dreaming big if you're thinking as a consumer. Oh, my God, bananas went up. Okay, don't eat them. Eggs went up. Eggs did not go up because of the this boogeyman. Okay. And it didn't go up because the dollar went down in value. So if I and it didn't go up because we print money. None of this is true. Now, I know your audience in the comments, they're gonna freaking try to destroy me.

So if we print a bunch of money.

If you print a trillion dollars, okay, and put it in this building right now, nothing inflated. You just print a bunch of money. It is the distribution of that money, okay? I distribute the money to a billion people. Then they have money, okay? That even the distribution of the money, sharing a trillion dollars would not create inflation. It is when the money is moved into the market. marketplace.

That's when inflation happens.

If the consumer, the dreamer, the person elects to use the money. Okay, so inflation was created because we gave everybody a 1400 check and people went and bought they didn't need and couldn't afford, by the way. Inflation is created by me buying eggs that are too expensive that I can't afford. So if the eggs are too expensive, don't buy them. The marketplace will take care of it.

Then it'll go back down.

Exactly. Okay, so your supplies will go up. and people will be like, I got all these eggs, I want to get rid of them. So let's count. I'll do two for one, three for one, or four for one. So, and I know, like we've all been told, and I'm a bit of a contrarian, I'm not a conspiracy person, but I am a contrarian. I see that when masses of people go into an agreement about a topic, typically historically they're wrong.

Interesting.

Okay, the cost of goods are going up. We're going to raise interest rates. to reduce jobs. This is what Powell said. There's too many people employed. I'm like, everybody should be employed.

Isn't that a good thing?

Sure. Well, what's the problem?

Why do they wanna reduce jobs?

Yeah, exactly. So, like, why do you wanna put pain on people that need work? Oh, because the cost of goods went up too high. And so they started selling this. Your coffee cup went up, your chicken went up, your aluminum went up, your housing materials went up, okay? everything went up, right? Well, part of that was because supplies were stuck in Long Beach and you couldn't get them out. And then rich people were like, okay, I can't get a chip for the car. How about I pay you 150 for the $78,000 car? Okay, yeah, we do have a chip. Right. And people started spending money that had been distributed on products they couldn't get and paying a premium to get the product.

Wow.

And then, and then for some reason, the whole world went nuts. and started buying. They didn't need. Gucci's went up, cars went up, homes went up. Homes always go up, by the way. Real estate goes up every time there's a crisis. Because people are worried about their money, so they wanna buy something with it. If I'm gonna go down, I wanna have a nice home. Did you buy a home?

I did buy a home.

See, people, after 9/11, people responded like that. They went out and bought homes.

But I did it in the last couple months. I didn't do it like in the middle of the crisis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what they're saying right now is it was because we interest rates were too low for too long. And so now what they're going to do is raise interest rates. Okay. The only people they're punishing right now are people in the middle class. And so I don't know what the agenda is, but I know it's not about inflation because, because raising interest rates, the only people that's hurt is people that want to buy a home or people that need to buy a car or people that a farmer that needs to buy a tractor. or it hurts a bank, a small regional bank. There's 4,000 small regional banks. And there's maybe five or six major mega.

Because they're not able to get loans, because people can't get loans anymore, right?

Well, what happens is, let's say the Los Angeles little Century City Bank, whatever it is, they are holding your money at 0% right now. Okay? But you found out, oh my God, I can go get a treasury bill for 5%. So I'm gonna take my deposit out and I'm gonna put it over here in this treasury bill. Well, that deposit comes out of that bank. When that deposit leaves that bank, they cannot lend money anymore. And banks make money lending money, okay? Banks are very risky. Banks are extremely risky business. They're not a safe business.

So why don't banks start doing, you know, 4 1/2, 5% like these other places are doing with the interest? for people with their money, because they're taking it out and putting it in other places to get 5% right now.

Because if they pay you 4.5%, where are they going to put money to get 5? They got to go buy a 3 or 5 year or 10 year obligation, and you might want your money back tomorrow. So if you want your money back tomorrow, they have this obligation out there. Banks in America are insolvent. We're already, like it's not a banking crisis because the federal government will come in and solve the problem.

Really?

Because I was literally at this milking thing, right? And the verbiage there is, look, there's five banks that are too big to fail, so they don't need to be protected.

What are those five?

JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. I mean, JP Morgan's got probably $8 trillion under management.

Wow.

Wells Fargo, the smaller of the groups, got 2.2 trillion. They're too big to fail. You don't need to do FDIC insurance. It doesn't matter. They shouldn't have any insurance at those banks. They're so massive that if they fail, the entire planet, the entire global system, economic system would implode on itself. So that's called too big to fail, right? Now there's all these 4,000 regional banks. that are just combined won't equal these top five. So they need FDIC insurance, supposedly. So at this Milken Institute, they're talking about, well, what should the limits be? Now, these are the biggest economic, you.

Know, powers in the world.

Yeah. This is guys that ran the Fed, ran the FDIC. Another guy ran the entire budget. Secretary Mnuchin was there. Steve Maduchi and he was at the Beverly Hills Hotel eating breakfast this morning. I was over there. And so these guys are saying what needs to happen. Well, they're saying all money should be insured to any limit, which is crazy, man. Which means, you know, like right now you're protected up to 250,000. Right. Okay. It started out back in the 30s. It was like $5,000.

Really?

Yeah. But, you know, inflation. they had to change it. But the reason they tell you your money's insured is because they don't want you to run to the bank and grab it out.

Because they want you to know it's safe. If something happens, you still got your money. Yeah.

Now the audience is watching this right now saying, man, I got lost in this whole thing. And that's the game right there, okay? Because basically, all this stuff is pretend, okay? We everyday people, think about money different than they do.

How do we think about it versus.

How the- well, we think about it being limited, problematic, I need to insure it, where is it, who has it, they're like, hey, dude, all this is made up. Insure it all. Just protect these five banks. But you can't, because this country needs those 4,000 banks. If you're gonna go get a loan for a tractor, you're not going to JP Morgan.

They're not going to give it to you. They're not going to talk to you.

No, it's too small time. They're not, they're going to give you some JP Morgan little joint over here. Yeah, you want to put a deposit in, it'll be three or four or five weeks before we get it approved.

Right.

Then you're not going to walk in there and get money. You're not going to walk in there and get a loan. So that's a problem in our country. And for anybody that's, you know, feeling like I'm overlooked, people of color that can't get loans, this is going to get worse, not better. Really? People that don't have money that want to get in the game, it's going to get worse, not better. like you don't want to lose small banks, but it looks to me like they want to get this down to a handful of banks. Wow. And then you got to be connected. So so this is when about 12 years ago, I started studying these guys. J. Jp Morgan Goldman Sachs, the sovereign funds. These guys have trillions of dollars. The the Orange County Pension Fund that has $20 billion under management.

Wow.

So what are they doing every day?

You know, what are they doing?

They think in terms of tremendous amounts of money, not little amounts, okay? They don't save their money. None of it is saved. It's all invested. But what do they tell us to do? Save your money, man. Save your money, get invested, diversify your investments. They don't do that. So if you look at what they do, they take major positions. JP Morgan just bought First Republic. They're guaranteed $5 billion profit. They're protected against the first 90 billion in losses. These are inside deals, man. This is an inside game. And so I can't get on the inside, you can't get on the inside, your audience can't get on the inside, but what you can do is you can take a peek at what they're doing, you know, see what moves they're making. And that's why we created Cardone Capital so we could put enough money together. This will become a bank at some point. you know, the goal is to be able to be, I'm going to be at the table with these guys. Okay? So they'll feed me rather than feed me.

Say that again. They'll feed you rather than feed you.

We'll eat together. Yeah, yeah, rather than eating me.

Right, right.

Which is what the fee is.

Right, right.

You know, and unfortunately, that's how big people need to dream now. Like if you want to get above it, and this is what I've been saying to the middle class for a long time, dude, the middle class, is a made up term. It was created and manufactured. It doesn't exist in Europe. Other parts of the world, it doesn't exist. They're manufacturing one in Africa right now. The middle class is a set class of people that should be satisfied with enough. It was basically a label like most labels. that is put on people to explain.

Why you are there.

Okay. Explains why you have this condition. Oh, you're ADD. Okay, well, where's the test? Don't have one. It's inflation. Okay. Where? Where? Show me. Show me the inflation test. Oh, well, this went up to that. Okay, well, we also printed $14 trillion. So based on the amount of money that was printed around the world, we actually don't have any inflation.

Really?

Really? Because if you took the, if you took the amount of money that was printed and took the amount of, of price escalation, you would have a lot further to go to distribute all that money. How should we, how should people be.

Framing their mindset with all this in? You want out of anything in the middle, man.

You don't want to be baloney on the baloney sandwich. The baloney is what gets eaten. Like, you don't, you want to get outside the sandwich. You don't want to be crammed in. You know, you want to figure out what does the top of this pyramid structure do? you know, how do you get at the top for your family? The best health you can get in, the best intelligence, the best connections, how do you have friends and family that all have enough money and mobility and time to go do the things you want to go do with them? That's what these people do. These people want to spend 100 grand on a ticket and spend three or four days, you know, hobnobbing with one another and staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel where the hotel rooms are 2200 bucks a night and eating $40 french fries. If they want to do that with themselves, they got themselves in a position to operate up there with those people. And so that's the big thing. It's not send my kids to college and pay off my mortgage.

What do you think people in the middle class are doing that they should shift in their mindset in order to start getting out of that?

What should you do or what should you not do? both. Well, you don't borrow money to go to college. That's just ridiculous. Unless you're gonna. I don't. I mean, I don't even know why you'd do it to be a doctor. You know, most doctors aren't making money today. So why would you trade five or six or seven years of income time is money? So I wouldn't go to college. I would never buy a home. I would never put debt on a home. if I bought a home, I wouldn't put debt on it. What else would I not do? And these are nevers for me on the come up.

On the come up, yeah.

On the come up, yeah.

Once you have the cash.

Once you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, if you're wealthy and you wanna go buy homes and, you know, buy yachts and stuff, we'll do whatever you wanna do. But, but on the come up, you would never spend your income. You would never spend primary income on improving the quality of your life. you would only invest, I just did a video on Aaron Judge, what he should be doing with this 360 million dollar deal. So that in the fifth year he wouldn't have to pay any more federal taxes. Wow. And actually I saw A-Rod the other day come up to him, he's like, Aaron called me as soon as you posted that video. Wants to know if you're the real deal. So people should not, they should be investing the entire, let's say you could live on four grand. anything you make above four grand, you should invest 100% of that money. And you should invest in things to get your tax write-offs.

What are the main things to get tax write-offs?

Well, there's not very many left. Real estates, like it's the MacDaddy.

Yeah.

I mean, a plane gets you, but you got a service to play and pay for that. It doesn't make sense. But people probably shouldn't start their own business.

Why not?

Because it's just not good. You know, historically, that the person that works for a company makes more money than 60% of the companies in America. Really? Yeah. Almost $20,000 a year. So those people shouldn't save money. People should not diversify their investments. People should not be invested in ETFs, mutual funds. They're making Vanguard a trillion dollar powerhouse. They're not making you any money.

But isn't like Buffett and some of these, you know, big financial guys saying to diversify your money?

Yeah, but they don't. But they don't.

They don't do that.

No, no. He just bought. He just bought his. His first score was Geico. He put all his money in Geico. Elon. Elon made. Had all his money in PayPal. Okay. Sold it. PayPal. he didn't invest half of it. He invested 100% of it, didn't have any money left over to buy a house. He invested all his money in three companies that he owned. Today, I think he's got six investments. He owns every one of the companies. How much of Twitter did he buy? All of it. Steve Jobs had two investments when he died. Apple and Pixar. Warren Buffett started with one, took a bigger position, his position grew so he ends up with more money so he wouldn't bought a second cup and.

Right.

Okay. And he bought a major position. Major. Major. Like he's got major long term positions in these companies. And then what did he do? He started raising money. That's the other thing people should be doing. People should be raising money. A communities of people should be gathering to raise money together to be partners. That's what the middle class doesn't do. I don't want any partners. I don't want any employees. I want to keep it all for myself. I want to stay small. I'm gonna dream big. But I'ma stay small and they don't, dude, they partner. Look, look up, Warren's never started a company. He doesn't manage anything. Every company he buys, he takes a major position. They all cash flow. He understands the company. He does not buy trends ever.

No trends.

Never, never touches a trend. He jumped into Apple. I think Apple was 22 years old when he jumped into it. He didn't jump in early.

Are there any trends you think that are happening right now that people should invest in that you think could take off over the next 5-10-20 years?

Yeah, yeah, that's a trend. You know, they're gonna suck so much money out of so many people. Right. So everybody's gonna go jump on the AI, AI is gonna be the next thing and I gotta get my money in, okay. You still need people. Right. So, you know, AI comes out. I don't. I just start using it. I start playing with it. How does it work? How can I make it work? You know, what does it say about me and Lewis house? Let me see what it says about me and you together. What are similarities between Grant Cardone and Lewis hows?

Okay.

Grant Cardone and Lewis hows are both successful entrepreneurs and authors who have achieved success through hard work, determination, and passion for helping others. Wow. Maybe people didn't know that about me. One similarity between the two is their focus on personal development. That's what you were talking about. And the importance of mindset. Both believe the success starts with developing a positive and productive mindset, have written extensively, both have written extensively on this topic. Another similarity is their commitment to helping others. Interesting. It's exactly what you said at the beginning of this. Okay? I just did this. So like, you saw me do it, right? Yeah, yeah. I didn't write this. Right. They both have created successful businesses and authored books and aim to inspire and equip others with the skills and mindset necessary. they both have a strong presence of social media and their platforms to connect with and engage their audience on a personal level. Both are known for their authenticity, transparency and willingness to share their struggles and challenges in order to motivate and inspire others. That's pretty accurate. Yeah. So, you know, that that's what I do. I figure out how to use something. I think people are going to over invest and over commit to this and.

Think it's going to solve all the problems in the universe.

You think it's more of a trend? Yeah. Some people get wealthy off of it, but not. Yeah, a handful of people, the people at Silicon Valley, they're going to go raise money from JP Morgan, who's going to get a $200 million slow. and JP Morgan is going to make whatever percentage they get. Like JP Morgan just bailed out Republic. They're guaranteed $5 billion. Nobody knows this. Oh, JP Morgan saved the bank. JP Morgan is going to make $5 billion. And they're guaranteed against all losses up to 90 billion.

Wow.

So there's no risk. This is, the inside guys continue to basically chop up all the good stuff. So the big winner is going to be the big major players. That should be inspiration to people. Don't stay small. You got to get big. How do you get big? Do what they're doing. They raise money. They have partners. You know, they spend a lot of time and energy building up a brand. They connect and network with one another. They help one another.

A lot of it is understanding how to build relationships with people. This is what you've done over the last 15 years. This is what these big banks are doing. They're building relationships. And so what I'm hearing you say is we got to be putting ourselves out there to meet the right people that can support us.

Exactly. So I had to go trade time three or four days of my life and a hundred grand to go to that, to go get in those rooms, which is uncomfortable for me. I, I, you know, I'm walking in, nobody knows me here. I'm not a banker, I'm not a JP Morgan, I'm an Instagram guy buying some real estate, you know, a scavenger just trying to pick up the leftovers, whatever they spill, I'm trying to go grab. Sure. You know, until I can grab enough to where they're like, how much you got? Right. So, like when I got there, I had to literally walk in a room, I had to spend a morning figuring out my pitch. When I get introduced to somebody.

What do you say?

What is the pitch?

What do I say?

Yeah, what are you saying? Because the first time I met somebody in a party, they're like, what are you doing? I said, I do a lot of things. And I thought to myself, that ain't a good opening. Right.

I do a lot of things that.

Makes you sound like you don't do anything. Or you do a lot of bad things. Right, right. So by the next morning, I sat down with my team and I said, Hey guys, I need, who am I.

On this Milken Institute?

To this community, to this audience. Who am I? and I literally wrote in my phone, okay, I crafted out my little pitch. Cause what am I going to tell these people? I don't know what they do.

So you're meeting people from all over the world there.

You have no idea. They could be, I don't know who they are. They could be married to a 10x Health System. They might know me, they might not know me, but they're like, what do you do?

Right?

So you see where my note is. I'm a private fund manager, $4,000,000,000 of multifamily real estate. I have a small business incubator, online education business that does 100 million. I'm the founder of regenerative health business called 10x Health System. So the next time, like literally one of my guys that's connected in the space that kind of put this whole thing together. The first time he heard me say, I do a lot of things. I said, bro, I need some help crafting my pitch. Literally like two hours later, somebody said, what do you do? And I hit him with that. He's like, boy, that was a fast pivot. Wow.

Your friend, your partner. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Brandon Dawson, my partner in Cardone Ventures, right? He's like, what a pivot that was. 'Cause then the conversation when he said, oh yeah, tell me about your regenerative business. Tell me about your real estate business. Tell me about how you raised money. So the conversation could extend itself. But it was my opening. And the point of that story was, look, when you go into a new environment, the reason people don't go into new environments is 'cause we're all scared.

They don't know what to say.

They don't know how to react. Dude, I don't know how to shake a hand. I don't know how to meet somebody. I don't know how to get a business card. I don't know how to break the ice. Like everybody, do you have a problem with it? No. I do.

Because I used to have a problem with it.

Yeah, got it.

And I put myself in rooms every week and embarrassed myself for years until I got better at it. So there's a period where I felt when I would enter rooms, I was in my mid-20s and I started to get into these kind of social media networking events and business conferences. I knew nothing about business. And I was the youngest one there always. So I would enter and I made it more about not how can I be interesting, but how can I be interested?

Right, right, right.

Right questions.

Right, right.

And get them talking.

Yeah.

The more they were talking with me, the more they found me interesting.

Yeah.

And I just figured out, okay, what do they need? What's their pain? What's their challenge? Do I know someone that could help them? Because I didn't think I could do it.

Right, right.

I didn't have the skills yet. I didn't have the talent or the experience. But who do I know who could help this person overcome their pain. And by doing that, I became the champion of their, of their problem. I helped them overcome it. And then I became more valuable.

Yeah.

Oh, Lewis has helped me with this. What else can he help me do?

Yeah.

And how can I help him? Yeah, that was, that's what I did. But for, for a couple of years, it was embarrassing. It was uncomfortable.

It is so, like, I didn't know what to say.

I'm 20. It's exhausting. Yeah, it's a lot, you know, but relationships. I was just talking about this the other day, that relationships are how I've built my business. It's how I've generated money. It's how I built my business. The relationship we have with guests who come on the show, if they want to open up or not, based on a relationship, the energy we connect, we create, the relationship with the audience, people watching or listening. Have I developed a good enough relationship with the community? They trust me, do they feel like it's a safe space? Do they feel like they learn and get value? If not, they're not gonna come back. That's right. relationship to people that buy stuff or come to my events or buy my books. Like, I've got to add value in relationships and know what the person wants and figure out how to help them overcome their challenge. That's the way I look at it. Yeah, but there's a lot we can learn.

Yeah.

It's just in these environments where there's four or five thousand people. Yeah, that's tough. And you're moving through them, you know, it's quick. And everyone's looking around. Yeah. Like, I run into Byron Allen. Okay. And Byron's work. I don't know, $2 or $3 billion. I remember him when he didn't have anything. He was in Hollywood Hills, you know, well, he just bought a $100 million piece of property in Malibu. So my opening with him was Byron, Hey, congratulations on that piece you scored in Malibu. And he's like, dude, Cardone, right? I watch your Instagram, man. But my opening, right? He's like, didn't you buy the place on Carbon Beach down the street? So we had, we had that thing, right? and then he's gonna be like, what do you do? Because we hadn't seen each other in 12 years. In 12 years, this guy went from nothing to a couple billion dollars. He's a different guy.

He changed.

You're a different guy too. I'm a different guy. Yeah. Right. But now I still gotta tell him who I am today because he might remember me from that other guy.

Right.

That I used to be.

That old identity.

Yeah.

Oh, weren't you in car sales? It doesn't matter what I was in. What am I doing now? Right. So it's like, I think a lot of people don't One, we don't get in the right rooms. That was the right room for me. Okay, it's the room I have to be in now.

Then they're not prepared when they're in the right rooms. Then they're not prepared.

But you weren't, initially you weren't prepared. No, I wasn't thinking about it. I knew, I knew, that's why I feel awkward being there, right? I feel nervous being there. And that's why sometimes I'll project to people too much confidence, because I'm trying.

To cover up this ego or something.

Yeah, whatever, you know, I got my little strut going, you know, my defensive posture, right? Trying to protect trying to do whatever I'm trying to do. And because I'm still coming from this little think, you know, that I was brought up with.

What is it that you know different about money today 15 years later than essentially when I met you, when you turned 50?

Yeah.

What do you know differently about money now after these last 15 years of experience? Ups, downs, big wins, some big losses and lessons. what would you say to that 50 year old?

What would I say to him? Oh my God, man. What would I tell him? Dude, first of all, I would tell him, bro, take a lot of photos when you're 50. Because no matter how you feel like you look when you're 50, 15 years from now, you're gonna look back and say, that might look good, you know? So take a lot of photos, whatever age you are right now, take as many as you can right now of yourself with the people that you love and care for get as many photos as you can so you can look back later. That's one thing I would tell. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I, I, I mean, I had that cognition the other day on the money game. It should have never been 10x dude.

Well, it should have been a hundred.

I always said it should have been a hundred x, but I did 10x because people couldn't think with it. Yeah, so, but, but really, you know, I was thinking too small back then.

Really?

I'm still thinking too small. I'm telling you. Yeah, I'm just telling you.

You're thinking bigger than back then.

Oh, yeah, 100, but I'm still thinking too small, right?

But I'm also curious, like, if you overthink, let's say I'm a 1000x right now.

Yeah.

And you're not prepared for that type of wealth or pressure or experience or opportunity. Then is that too big, too fast?

No, you should still think bigger because you're not going to know thinking small, right? You're not going to know, you're not never going to get there.

Right.

I mean, look, the guy thinks too small and he wins a billion dollar lottery ticket and he got lucky. He's got problems too. He's just got new problems. He doesn't know what to do with the money. Right. So I, if I would have thought bigger, I, I don't have the problem of not taking action. Okay. So I'm not, no, I'm not that guy. I'm not, you got to deal with whatever you got. Right. But, but I know this, if I thought smaller, I would have taken fewer actions. when you start thinking really big, you have to, if you're going to go get this thing, if you're serious about whatever that thing is, I didn't think, I thought here because I thought, I was thinking, oh yeah, that's achievable. But how can I, like, how can a child, a three-year-old think that they can pick up, 100 pounds or ride a big horse? They can't, it's like not achievable. until daddy picks him up, puts him on it, and he's like, oh, I can ride a horse. You know, I can ride it. But, but he, when he's looking up, he's like, I can't do that. Yeah, right. So when you're looking from, you don't have anything and you're just hungry, it's hard to dream, man. Yeah. Because, because your stomach's saying, pay attention to me or pay attention to my kids or shoes or whatever, whatever your, your, your crunch is. Oh, inflation cost of bananas. This is this, this is a fear cycle, man. This is like, It's them marketing fear to us to stay small so we become consumers, not doers. Consumers are worried about inflation. Investors want inflation. Producers want inflation. Business owners want inflation. If you've got a career and you've got talent, all players want inflation. If you own a sports team, you want inflation. If you own real estate, you want inflation. But we're being told it's bad. Why? Because they're treating you, they're messaging to you as a consumer. Social media is bad for you. It is bad for a consumer. It's not bad for a creator. Right. See what I'm saying? So I'm trying to get on the cause point, the source point of like, okay, I should have been thinking about how do I build a $50 billion.

Business 15 years ago?

Oh, 100%. Really? 100 billion. Okay.

What would you have done differently?

I would have studied $100 billion businesses. Who did that? I should have been studying Jamie Dimon this whole time. I should have been studying Warren. What did they do? Not what do they say in their bull interviews? 'Cause I've seen these guys on panels and then I've had dinner with them. Right. And bro, it's two different conversations.

They speak differently.

Oh yeah. One's for the Graham, you know, one's for the audience, for the clip, and the other is like, hey, let's go. Let's go carve this deal up. This is how we make money in here. How big could this get? They're always talking about how big can you scale this thing? So, like, our 10x Health System, if you saw Dana White, we got Dana on the program a couple of years ago. He went freaking nuts with it. Okay? I mean, but, like, he's like, Grant, it's a $50 billion business by itself. I guarantee you, Grant, he's like, you give me a piece of this company, you know, if you can give me on the next the next race and you know, you want to make, I'll be an investor in your company. He's like, if I've ever seen a 50 billion dollar business, this is one. So that's what we look for. I didn't have 10XL system the last time I was here. I don't think we had it.

No, maybe you're just starting in.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's what I would have done, dude.

I would have, you were studying people.

That have, I would have picked a target, okay? Like maybe somebody wants to be, you.

What?

I want to be like Lewis. Okay, well, okay, he wrote books. I got to write books. Okay, he got a he does an event every year. He's got to do that. He does a podcast. You'd have to do those things to become you.

But people, anybody that set their sights.

On you would be thinking too small. They'd be thinking too small.

100%.

They should have gone to I want to be Oprah, you know, but but they said, I can be Lewis. Okay, Lewis is achievable for me. you pick the fruit off the tree and you can see. You know, we, for whatever reason, my regret is that I didn't say, bro, I'm gonna go to the top of the tree. In fact, I'm gonna own the whole orchard. Wow. Or even the entire forest. You know, and I'm gonna really make a difference. I'm gonna be that Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, I'm gonna be legacy 300, 400 years of, dynasty kind of legacy thinking. This is the biggest regret of my life. Really? Yeah. Because I know I could have done it. Like it kills me. When I see these guys in these meetings, I'm like, when I was using drugs at 17 years old, if my mom said, hey, why don't you learn how to play golf? And I didn't do it. I don't want to play golf. Such a mistake, man. Really? Because those people are connected. golf courses, country clubs, then I would have probably redirected. I should have gone and got a real finance career from a business school. I wouldn't be Grand Cardone, though. I would be somebody else. I wouldn't be the Grand Cardone I found now. I'd be some other version of this. But if I would have not done the drugs, got connected, done a Harvard kind of thing, ended up on Wall Street as long as I didn't have a drug problem. And if I'd have got a drug problem and done all that, I could be in jail, right? But going to Harvard, had a clear head, worked on my spiritual kind of thing. That might have thrown me off too, though, because see, the capitalist thing, it's a material world, bro. It's not very spiritual. There's not a lot of like, There might be people praying there and asking for forgiveness, but there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of like.

How can someone be spiritual? How can someone be spiritual and also be financially abundant at the same time?

Well, I mean, I am. Yeah.

But how do they back that up?

I don't know they've done it in that world though, because that world is about pushing money. You're pushing, you're trading money. They get paid on this.

You're not creating value.

There's no value, dude. There's nobody helping anybody. Okay. There's no like, come on. I have helped millions and millions of people. Like that is a wealth, I can't put it on my net worth statement, but you know, spiritually that wouldn't have happened for me at JP Morgan or any of those places. I'm not saying those people don't help people, but they don't help the number of people I've helped.

So in 15 years, you got to 4 billion in assets, right? For your real estate holdings.

And didn't let the other business go. I mean, the other business grew, too.

Right, exactly. The other businesses are growing, too.

Yeah. Yeah. That business is probably worth today. Could probably worth as much as real estate.

Wow.

Big. Yeah.

Because we're, we're, we're now bringing other companies in.

And you're building other, you're acquiring and building other companies.

Yeah. So there's a, there's an incubator business right now that's got a, about 1.4 billion dollars worth of Revenue coming through it that we're managing. we're going to continue to add to that. That could be 12 billion in the next little bit. What would it take for you to.

Go, you know, for the next five years, from 4 billion to 40 billion?

Yeah.

In five years. What would it take for you in terms of thinking your ability to think differently? Yeah, just Target, man.

First, I gotta have the target. Clear Target.

Is that the goal? 40 billion?

Like when we did the webinar. Okay. When. When you showed me how to do the webinar, first thing I asked, what's the Target?

I wrote a book.

I did a book deal with Audible and Amazon. I'm like, what's the target? They're like, we really don't do it like that. I'm like, okay, well then I don't know what to do. I need a target. I need a target, bro. Specific target. So I would say, okay, I'm gonna do $40 billion in five years. Okay, in five years. That means I need to add $8.

Billion a year for five years.

And you have four billion total right now. Or I need to go buy one company at $40 billion right now. and then I need to partner with, how do I do that? I don't have enough money to buy a $40 billion company. I could, though. I could because there's going to be a crash. So we're walking into crash zone. This is, it's going to happen. So, so it would actually make it faster. Maybe God's going to give me a gift and say, hey, you ready, dude? You got the mindset. Are you looking? Are you paying attention? I'll serve it up to you. Okay, now we're going to go into massive contraction with commercial real estate. in America, we're going to have probably three or four times the bankruptcies across the country than we've ever had. We're probably going to see unemployment spike. We're going to see more banks fail without a doubt. You know, just market here, we've seen three banks fail in the last 40 years. There's never been only three banks fail ever. There's been 300, there's been 900, there's been 600. There's never been three bank failures. Wow.

Ever.

They don't come in threes.

So you know how people die?

They one guy dies, second guy dies, third guy dies, banks never die in threes. So there's more to that to come down. So what would it take? I would have to have a target. Whatever the target is, 40 million. If somebody's like, I want to be a millionaire, boom, get a target, number one, real target, two, do math on it. How many different ways could I do that? So there's got to be a math path, a math way, not a pathway, but a math way.

Right?

I could do one deal, 40 billion. I could do five deals at 8 billion. I could do 41 billion deals. That's a little harder. I got to do 40 deals.

Right?

It's easier actually to do fewer deals. Three, who do I need to meet? Who, not what. Not what do I need to do, who do I need to meet? to serve me up that $40 million deal because there's gonna be a person and that's the thing that people miss. It's always a who, it's not a what.

That's not a what.

Now what do I need to learn? I don't need to learn. What do I need to manufacture? Okay, I didn't start a health company, I bought one. I didn't start a HVAC company. We basically, HVAC is a massive growing business right now, okay? So heaters, air conditions. So we're basically, we're incubating a bunch of them. and we'll probably take those public.

You're buying them.

Yeah, exactly. We're bringing them in, we're managing them. I'll mark, help market for them. Interesting. But I didn't start one. I'm watching what Warren does. Warren didn't start a company. Elon did not start Tesla. Really?

No.

So he, he, he, he bought a technology. Bill Gates did not start Microsoft. He did not write the code. He bought it.

And then he marketed it.

Buy then build. Yeah, buy it and then build it. Don't start it from scratch. How many guys you know, I'm gonna start my own business? Well, most of them fail. Yeah, exactly. And there's 32 million small businesses in America. Nobody's saying, I need another small business. Nobody's asking for that. Like you said, hey, I wanna find out what people want. Nobody's saying, I want my town to.

Have another small business. Yeah, it's so hard to start a business.

Yeah, it's crazy, dude. So hard to start. And in this cycle, I believe people could buy 10 businesses. for in the same sector, for less money than it would take to buy to start one business. And those 10 businesses would have brands already, advertising, customer base.

Yeah.

Yeah. An owner that's tired, a customer base that's already a product line. That's all. It could be 10 laundromats or 10 cosmetology centers. And if you could figure out how to bring those together and organize them, and you could have 10 businesses in 2023, right? with a very little money outlay.

So we got target plus math plus target.

Who do I need to meet? Who do I need to meet? Now hold myself accountable to start making those contacts to do this 40 billion dollar thing. Notice I don't have any money in there. I haven't figured out, well how much money do I need? I don't need any money. Really? Nobody needs money. money is a. Money's already. Why do I need money when there's too much money already? There's so much money. They say we have inflation. Everybody says we printed too much money. Okay, then why do I need to worry about making more of it? It's already done. Who's got it? Who do I need to connect with? I'm telling you, man, these guys at the top of the food train, they. They. They're not operators. they're connectors.

They're not day-to-day running a business.

They don't do anything. They move this from here to there and they pick up a, they pick up a billion dollars of fees right here.

So if you, is 40 billion the target for you?

Is that, well, that would get 40 billion would be the real estate Target.

Right.

Is that the target?

Is that, you feel like that's the target for you there?

Yeah.

I think we can do the same.

In the other business. Sure. Is, do you think it's, I mean, look, if danger's right, I can do 40 or 50 billion out of the health. Right. And if Brandon's right, we could probably do another 30 or 40 billion off.

The, of the business, education business, everything.

Or the business education and consulting business.

Like, but real estate's the thing you're most excited about, right?

I mean, real estate is, is the thing that I think I'm going to have a big opportunity here. I mean, I just love real estate and I know real estate and it's been good for our investors and sure.

So if that's the target, is 40.

Billion the target or is there a bigger, bigger target? 40 billion. 40 billion is a good target.

Five years, man.

Five years is that would be fast. I mean, in a world of possibilities.

I mean, dude, if I could do that in five years, it would be. Let's say that's the target. Yeah. You got the math.

Yeah.

And who do you need to meet?

Yeah.

What would you do then over the night? And let's just predict this is happening.

Yeah.

Put it in your mind that it's happening within five years.

Okay.

It's 20, what is it? Eight.

2028, right? Yeah, 2028. I bought a company. What have you done? You bought one company.

What have you done? You bought one company.

So what I did was I started going out saying, hey guys, I want to go from 4 billion to 40, I want to go to 50, I want to buy $50 million for the real estate. I either want to acquire a company, I want to acquire deals, I want to find broken deals, I want to provide debt on deals. I know there's gonna be a bunch of damage in the marketplace. I'm ready to go. So I start raising money to do that. And then I, but I gotta start talking to people. You can't just raise money and not talk to anybody. And the AI is not gonna go talk to people. These people are not gonna talk to AI. This world, I know the AI, everybody excited about it. For me to get a meeting with Jamie Dimon, it will not be an AI connection. okay? He's gonna want to meet me. Warren Buffett's not gonna do an AI connection.

Right?

Okay. You don't, you want to meet Elon. You don't want to, you want to eat with him. You want to have, you want to sit down and have a weekend with him. You don't want to AI him.

How many people do you think you need to meet a year of the right people in order to do this?

Yeah, I think this is, it gets easier, not harder. you know, probably means I need, the next question is, what do I need to quit doing? What is that? Probably need to quit doing the events.

Really?

Yeah, I came to doing 100 events a year. Can't keep being available to everybody for everything. I mean, you speaking out of vanity. Probably need to quit doing Instagram and Facebook and some of that stuff. I don't want to get rich. Look, I don't want to get bored and- and be bored and- Dude, I don't, I want to have fun. That's the problem with that story I told earlier about if I'd have gone to Harvard and- you've been bored. I don't think I'd like who I am.

Now here's the thing, here's what I'm hearing you say.

Yeah.

You gotta stop doing the events.

Yeah.

This is where you meet people sometimes, but maybe it's not the right event. I need to go to their events.

Got it. So you need to stop. I need to pay, I need to.

Be the spectator now, not the PT Barnum. Gotcha. So you need to stop speaking at all these conferences and be in hosting.

Events and things like that. Maybe we stay with our one big event. Now, I mean, I'm gonna say this, our one big event, it's so big. and we spend so much money there that a lot of these people know me because of those events. They are like, oh, I saw you with that guy, and I saw you with that guy, and I saw you with that guy.

It's the brand builder. Yeah, 100. I mean, that's what Milken's doing. He's doing a big event with the.

Right people, and they're all coming together.

So maybe it's a different type of an event.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

So I'm hearing you wanna, I might have to quit doing the Lewis Howes podcast. Although this is the thing that's jumping you sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. you're saying, you know, social media pulling back on Instagram and Facebook, but these are some of the actions that have gotten you to where you're at.

Yeah, exactly.

So what I'm hearing you say is sometimes the actions that have gotten you here aren't gonna help you get to 100 ads.

That's right. Right. So if somebody has poverty, you know, you don't have anything, you need to start saving money.

Right?

You need to work, grind out, but at some point you gotta quit being a saver and gotta start being an investor. Most people, the middle class just stopped with saving. At some point you got to take the savings and you got to invest. And this is what happened was the trick of Wall Street was we're going to tell people, we're going to keep people unsure and we're going to tell them what to invest in. Because if you don't have confidence, you don't control your own money. So what we're going to do is we're going to create financial We're going to indoctrinate people to be financially scared. So they'll buy our instruments.

Our products and services.

They'll invest in the instruments we tell them to. So we're going to teach the American people to diversify their investments. That's going to be called an ETF. It's going to be a trillion, multi-trillion dollar business. Vanguard. Okay, BlackRock, these are trillion dollar biggest companies on planet earth. They control everything, bro.

Yeah.

Every day you touch Vanguard and BlackRock somewhere. So, because. But what they did was they built the 401K, the IRA and the Roth. Okay. To say, hey, you can save. Take a little bit of your check. Start early. This is an indoctrination program. This is why I say people are not financially alert. They're indoctrinated to do exactly what the street wants you to do. It creates massive wealth for them, not you. So that's how I've created my wealth. I came out of that system. I realized I had been indoctrinated. I'd bought life insurance when I was 20. I had started investing in IRAs and Roth's because I didn't have another vehicle. Well, I took all that money and I started buying the real estate and I started getting control of my own wealth building. I don't give my money to them. I put it straight in the deal. That's why we created Cardone Capital so people could invest in the asset and own the asset, right? And get the benefits of that asset. So you asked me what, why would I, what would I do different or.

Yeah, what would you have done? I mean, to go back to the original question, what would you have done differently 15 years ago? But in thinking of this five year plan, this five year target, Yeah, no.

Well, yeah, this is what I was saying to you. At some point when you start moving up, okay, you got to change. Just like if you were moving down, dude, you got to change what you're doing. If you're going down in life and things aren't getting better and your relationship's not getting better, dude, you got to change the relationship. Either you got to change, she's got to change, or it's got to change. Y'all got to change.

Yeah.

So when you're single and you want to get married, You got to change. Okay? You got to give something up. It's not, you have to add something. You always have to give something up.

Really?

I have, I've never been able to go from here to there and not give up something. They got me here, it got me here. Like I was a great single guy. I knew how to do the single thing. Dude, I had a lot of fun. I had the house, I had the life, you know? But one day I said, I don't want to do this anymore. Everything I wanted I got. and I no longer wanted to do it. Be careful what you ask for. I was a playboy. I was digging in, I was having, but I didn't have kids and I didn't have a wife and I didn't have a partner and I didn't like that. And I was lonely even though I had somebody in my bed. And so, so one day I said, okay, I got to give this up. Now, that didn't mean I had to give up dating. It meant I had to give up the house I had, the place I lived, and I moved. and I went to where my wife would be. So, but I had to give something up. So if you, if you, if you're going to go from zero to a millionaire, when you get to a millionaire, you, if you want to go to the next level, you want to go to 10 million, you will have to.

Give up the millionaire life. What else do you think you need.

To give up to get to 40? 40, what would I have to give up?

All the events, social media, you know.

A lot of the behavior, a lot of my, probably a lot of my behavior. I got to start acting like these guys, got to give a bunch of blue suits. blue, blue, blue, blue shirts and some, you know, probably got to give up the hoodie. You know, I got to fit in, dude. Really? You know, I don't know if I could do that either.

Interesting.

So the problem is now it's like, why would I? Like, I'm going to do this. I did it. I got this for being. See, that's what happens. The ego comes in and says, I don't need to do this. do that. Right. But, but then I got to decide how. That's why I said I got to hold myself accountable to the goal. Is the goal important enough? I'm have to keep reselling myself on this goal. Dude, is important enough. Why am I doing 40 million? Why does it even matter? What am I, am I going to pass it on to Sabrina? Who's going to handle this when I, I'm not around to handle it? Do they even want to handle it? Why?

Why are you doing it now? You've got so much money. You've got, I mean, why am I doing it? You know, you've got so much impact, influence, massive audience.

You're, you're worth billions in your business. I could make a much bigger influence, Ben.

But you're already making a big influence.

I know, but I mean, bro, look, 40 billion, everybody talks to you now. You can start changing things. You can literally, you know, you can start swinging. You know, you can start changing education, which needs to be changed. you got a megaphone. I had a party last week at our house in Malibu. A group called and said, Hey, want to put Rob Lowe on Halt Magazine cover? We know you just bought this house. We think it'd be a great location for our, would you be willing to do it? I'm like, yeah, dude. The things you have, you know, like they may not mean as much to you as they mean to other people. But when other people don't know you and they walk into your things, the right kind of things, you know, it opens doors.

Interesting.

It could be good or bad. They could come in and try to take advantage of you, or they could come in and say, wow, man, you put all this, you know, I want.

To learn more about you.

Yeah.

They become interested. You know, there's that thing you were talking about about you weren't trying to be interesting. You were, you know, you'll be interested in them. I mean, a way to do that is to be interesting on what you've done. Cause, cause power does move to, you know, these people that I want to influence that, that, that I'm going to need to make this next move. You know, they, what do they want? Yeah. Hey, man, I got my place in Malibu. You want to hang out there for the weekend? Here's the keys.

Sure.

I want to give them something they don't have. Here's the keys to the house. Here's another special key over here to the wine cellar, you know, and it's stocked ready for you, you know, and I got somebody to clean the house for you. Those are little perks in life that they don't, that my mom didn't tell me about, that I wasn't thinking about, that the middle class is not funding, you know, my daughter's with me. She's hanging out with me, you know, so. I didn't think about that when I was most like one of the most valuable things is for me to go travel with the kids to have them with me while they're growing up. And so, but that means they got to be homeschooled. That means they probably need a tutor. All this costs money. Now I need another hotel room everywhere we go or two. Okay. If I'm actually going to be really successful, I might need security for them or me, not for me, for them. Really, I'm just worried about losing them. You know, so it gets like these are things we don't budget for, dude. Like most of the people watching right now, everything you have budgeted for in your life, you can pay for. It's the things you didn't budget for, the big dream. But everything else, you got covered. Everything people pay attention to. house note, car note, electric bill, water bill, basics, everything gets covered. What if you just added a whole bunch of other stuff to the list? What if we were all brought up to say, hey, we're going to cover all this stuff. People will be even more productive.

What would you say are the top three ways, the best ways to multiply money then?

Get rid of it. You got to get rid of it. First you got to make it. I mean, I got to collect it. I got to collect some. then I got to figure out, okay, this pays for this basic living. If the cup is the basic living, I'm not. Everything above that, don't spend any more money. Like the rest. The rest of it. If this is four grand and I make seven, the entire three has got to go into Investments every month. Every single month, you know, no weekends, no out playing out, no trips in the beginning. Like, if you want to create real wealth, what. What period of time do I have?

You have 20 years.

20.

Yeah, 20.

I mean, I don't need 20.

10 years.

10 years. 10 years. You gotta have. Don't improve the quality of your living.

Quality of your life for 10 years or for the first few years.

Probably for 10. Wow. I mean, if you want to get rich.

And.

But let's say you're 20 years old and you want to be rich by the time you're 30. Dude, that's totally doable. Yeah.

What?

You're gonna have to pay some kind of price.

What'S the the 10 year wealth generating master class that you would teach people on after 20 to 30 or 25 to 35? So what would you do for 10 years?

Your goal should be in the one top 1% earners in the country. That's $823,000 a year.

$823,000 a year.

$823,000 a year. That should be your first target. If you're a waiter, waitress, I know people in every space, it's a lot of money. you know, let me see how much money it really is. $823,000 a year divided by 12. See, everybody goes to think about what they can do now, but it's not about what, it's about who.

Okay.

Okay, divided by 12, $68,000 a month divided by, we know that much money is available on the planet, right? Sure. Okay, divided by, what is that, 30 days divided by 24 hours divided by 60. It's a dollar 58 cents a minute. A dollar 56.

Dollar, $1.58 cents a minute.

A dollar 58 cents a minute.

Okay. So I'm going to do the math.

It's called the math way.

Yep.

Not the pathway. The math way is the pathway. I need to make $1.58 cents a minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

So it's 823,000 roughly.

Yeah.

So that basically says, oh, I got to automate my time. I got to automate. I got to make money while I sleep. This is what we should have been taught in school, man. This is what we should have been taught as kids. Like, how do I do money? You do it with time. Okay, you don't do it with a job. You're not gonna get, you're not gonna get $823,000 a year at a job. There's no job that's gonna hire you and pay you $823 without you having to go back to college and spend time and invest money. Just doesn't work like that. So I'm like, okay, where can I get $1.58?

A minute.

A minute. Or how could I get 823, 000 people to give me one dollar? That's the other way to do it. So what I'm gonna do is do a bunch of different math ways. I'm gonna do, like, maybe 12 or 15 different ways to get this much money. Notice I'm following the money right now. I am not doing anything.

I'm thinking about. What do people need?

What do people need? What do people want? What's the product? What's the service? What's the idea? What am I passionate about? Dude, I'm just tracking money now. I'm hunting money, I'm hunting a number.

Right?

All I'm doing is breaking the number down. Okay.

Okay, so- you-'re 25 or 30?

Yeah, I could make, I could get 823,000 people to give me $1. I could get 82,000 people to give me $10. I could get 8,236 people to give me $100. I'm like, this, I could actually do this. I could get 83 people or 830 people to give me $1,000. you think that's doable?

100%.

There's 8 billion people on the planet. Can I get 830 people to give me 1000 bucks? Okay, for what? What would they give me $1,000 for? They might just give it to you as a gift. I don't even have to build anything. If I could reach enough people, could I get 836 people to say, would you loan me $1,000 for the next 10 years? I'll pay you back in 10. It's all about who knew, okay? So now I'm like, oh, now I need to start marketing my name. I need people to get to know who I am. Then I back in the product. Okay. What do these people want? What do they need? So that's what I would do. Okay. Now out of the $823,000, if I actually achieved it, I know it's achievable. I've done it myself. If I did that one year, then the next year, I'm going to be like, how can I do that in six months? okay, the next year, how can I do that in one month? If I do that in one month, I'm gonna be like, how can I do that one week? And then one day I'm gonna be like, how can I do it in a day? Wow. I've done all that, by the way. I woke up to that this morning. That's crazy.

That exact number.

So that's when I had breakfast. I said, okay, it's time to get up. Wow. Because I gotta go work hustle the next day. Right. Okay. So, so now what do I do with the money? Right? Let's say, let's say I can live on $70,000 a year, $80,000 a year. I'm not spending any the 80,000 or anything above the 80, 720,000. This is the advice I gave Aaron Judge. You earn 40 million a year, spend none of it, invest all of it, live off your endorsements. Wow. Do not spend any of your earned income. Do that for 10 years.

It's going to be another level. Bro, he would be worth, he would.

He would take 40 million, he would buy a billion dollars worth of real estate every year. 40 million, he'd buy a hundred million dollars worth of real estate every year. in 10 years, he'd have $1,000,000,000 worth of real estate. That is probably worth two or three billion. His income from that when he retires, by the way, his contract's over now. He'll be 40 years old. He's useless to the major. Maybe he's an announcer. Okay. But watch what, and he gets an announcing deal for half a billion in the 10th year. The tax deduction he would get from the 10 years that he invested that money would offset the half a billion dollar ESPN deal, right? But he would be getting 40 billion, 40 million a year to 400 million. He'd be earning $24 million a year from the passive income, but he'd have $2 billion worth of assets if anybody can track that math. And that's what I would do. So back to the guy making 800.

Yes.

Now, the person watching this, she's a waitress and she's got two kids at home. She's like, I'm never gonna make 800. It's because you already gave up on the idea. like, you never, you never, you never said, that's the target. And you keep thinking you got to wait tables and you, you quit already. So that, that, that's the mistake I made, dude. Like, the first mistake I made was nobody said, hey, man, you could make a billion dollars a year if you wanted to. You don't have to make a million.

That was never the target for you.

No, all the, all the books, all the books, everything we're told was to be a millionaire. you know, be a millionaire or just make enough money to be happy or just make enough money to pay off all your bills or you got to reduce your spending. You know, everything is about don't go get coffee, you know, buy used truck, don't get debt. Everything's about what not to do rather than what to do, what you can do. The financial planners tell you what not to spend rather than telling you, how do I create wealth for myself?

What's the dark side of making a lot of money? because there's a lot of people that want more money, but there's also a lot of wealthy people that we hear about who have horrible lives.

Yeah. Yeah.

They don't have great relationships. Their kids hate them.

Yeah. Yeah.

The third wife or whatever it is.

Yeah.

They're unhealthy, they're sick. What is the dark side of money and extreme wealth that you've seen around some of these incredible individuals, but also what you've seen with your wealth?

Yeah. I'll tell you personally. Personally. Like, you know, Now, the dark side is, okay, more responsibility. The threat of looking like an idiot if things go wrong. Oh, he f*cked it up. A lot of responsibility, dude. People, we have, I don't know, 600 employees now. You know, if you screw it up, that's a terrible one. It's haunting. every night I go to sleep with that, screw it up, mess it up. You know, people don't like people that are rich, man. Like, there's a lot of projection on, on, on the group.

So.

I don't do enough for other people. you know, what have you done for us? No matter what I tell them I've done, it's not enough.

Not enough.

Well, why'd you do, why didn't you give more? You know, you know, now, now there, and then there's the, oh, it didn't make me happy. Why did I do all this? Nobody gives, you know, about the house in Malibu. Most of the time we don't find time to go use it. I'm like, that doesn't feel good. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm like, I bought this and now nobody's got time to go see it. The kids are going to grow up, you know, they're going to bail out. They want to go do their own things and I'm stuck with the house.

Right.

Nobody wants to come hang out with me and that didn't feel good. So there can be like, look, the loneliness was going to come either way in that situation, right? The like, who's with me? You get rich and you're still going to get old. Right. You know, you get, as you get older, things become more or less interesting.

Really?

Well, yeah.

How so?

There's some things you can't do, dude. Like, you know, you know, just, you know, you just can't do them or things hurt or. Right.

Body's breaking down or.

Yeah, dude, my break a shoulder. And I don't, I don't know. I don't know that that shoulder would have broken 10 years ago. I know it broke now, and now it's gonna probably take longer to heal. And I'm more of a about it, you know, come a goddamn I heard my mama. Now, I, who knows? I could have done that when I was 40 or 30 or whatever, right? But I know when you're 25 years old, you're healing faster. Yeah. Producing more of everything. So, you know, look, money doesn't stop any of that stuff. so anybody that thinks you're going to feel younger because you're richer, I don't know that that's true. You know, you either have, you're either excited about life or you're not, you know? So I think you get a lot of, like I did it the other night, I was watching this guy, he's worth $8 billion and he's running this thing. And I'm like, that's, if that's how you act when you get a billion, I don't know if I want it right. Well, that was me doing exactly. what I've seen other people do to me.

Really?

Yeah. But it was weird. I was at this event and dude, the thing was weird. I was like, I felt like I was in Twilight Zone. But the first thing I did was I made it about his wealth rather than maybe he's just a weird dude.

Right.

Who has money.

And he's worth eight.

That's not how he got there.

No, maybe he's always been weird for what I know. But I kind of projected the wrong, kind of put the wrong meaning on it, right? So, Now, what I've seen with other people is dude, the drugs, the prostitution.

The extremities of it all, right?

Bro, it's like endless. The amount of dissatisfaction, you know, the appetite for pleasure and which doesn't look like pleasure and the out ethics and the, but, but, but I've seen that at the broke level, too. So it's just on a yacht now.

Rather than it's just more extreme.

Yeah, it's more, more. Everything's more extreme. The, the people that use you and just around you, the yes men kind of phenomenon. Oh, you're the best. You know, nobody will tell the truth to them. That's terrible. Like, I don't, I don't have a lot of friends. I don't have a lot of people around me. Like, if you see me rolling around, it's always. a couple people. Yeah.

Your family and a couple people.

Yeah. It's not. I don't have groups of people around me.

What is it that the. The wealthy that you've seen when they get wealthier? What do some of them forget about in terms of, like, their mindset or their discipline? Are there certain things that they lose?

Yeah.

When they become wealthier, I was.

I was on Twitter spaces last night, and this lady. Constantly talking about, you know, how she pulled herself up from the bootstraps and how she made it. And it's like a complete disregard for people that are not white, that are, don't have connections, that weren't taught how to work hard. Like, that are like, I'm like, like, like Cindy, you're not, you're not, you're forgetting the rest of the world. Oh, no, God, why do you always say that? I'm like, I'm telling you, man, I had it easier than many people. Okay? I would not have what I had if I didn't work. But you can't just always go back to the work hard thing. Like there's a lot of people, there's a lot of unfairness. There's tremendous amounts of unfairness. And, you know, it's not just about, oh, I'm gonna work hard. Okay, but when are you gonna make a connection? How do you get into that connection? how do you get people to know who you are? Like, it's not easy. And you just act like you could go out there and do it again today. Okay, let me see you go out and do it again today.

You know?

Well, yeah, but now I'm 50, Garrett. I said, okay, well, there's a lot of people out there that are 50 years old. They got to go do it today. But you just said it's easy. We'll go do it. That's why I did that show, Undercover Billionaire. Yeah. And so. But it's not easy, dude. It's not easy to connect with people. It's not easy to put it together. It's not easy to let have people bring you into their life and share time with you. I think wealthy people have forgot that, you know? And then they're like, oh, I can earn, like she's telling me, she can earn five percent of her money. I said, 99% of this room will never get five percent from a bank today. Oh, yeah, they can get it easy. All you got to do is go in and negotiate with the bank. You got $400 in a bank account. You ain't negotiating with the bank. Right. It's just ridiculous. She's forgotten that 64% of people in America don't have 400 bucks.

Wow.

And a savings account for an emergency.

What's the debt like for most people? How many people are in debt in America? Do you know that?

No, I don't know what the number is. I know that I think they just did a thing that said 40% of people that make a million dollars a year still are living paycheck to paycheck. 40% of people that make them 250 grand a year are living paycheck to paycheck. People that make, it's like 40% of the people that were making a million a year or something said they were living paycheck to paycheck. But that, that's not because of inflation. That's because they spent money they shouldn't have spent. They thought they were entitled to because they're millionaires.

They live above their means.

They live above their investments. not their means. Interesting. They lived within their means but never invested.

All right.

And thought that they were always going to be more valuable and more valuable. That's not how value works. Your value as a human being is going to go like this. Okay? It's going to go up. Whatever you're doing, you're going to go, hopefully you get to go up. You don't go fly a line the whole career. I mean, if you're a maid and you never got better at being a maid, you're going to be flat the whole time, right? But if you go from May to I'm going to own a series of.

You get more skills, you get more skills now.

I own a company, your value is going to go up a senior later your value is going to start arcing out. Why is that? Technology, you're getting older, you can't service as many people, you didn't grow your company and the value of your company or your talents, you're a baseball player, making 40 million bucks a year, sooner or later, bro, they ain't gonna pay you anything. Tom Brady, who's making a bunch of money, he's going to be paid more as a commentator. Crazy. So he's gonna have a boom, he's gonna have a big spike because his brand is so much. Now, if he draws an audience, if he doesn't draw an audience, contract will be renegotiated and/or they'll kill him and his income will go down. But he should have been loading up on assets. I've always been preparing for this bell curve to do this. Well, grants no longer valuable to people. And the point where I'm no longer valuable, you've got assets. Assets are gonna be like, Boom. They'll kick my value up. Interesting. They'll catch up with my earned income and replace it.

Right?

And people should have that target. Your target should be not to make more money, but to have more money that you don't make to match what you do make.

From your investments.

Yeah, exactly. So I'm making 80 grand a year back in that example, 80 grand a year. and then I'm going to go to 800. Let's say you figure that out along the way, you're just accumulating assets with the other 700,000 so that one day your 800 grand that you're making now, you're making another 800 from income from the investments. So with that, when the first income goes away, the second, that second layer of investments starts to pay you and your family. and that becomes your life insurance. That becomes your Keo 401k retirement plan. But you're invested in things that you own, not things Wall Street owns. And you get the tax write-offs they get. You get the benefits and the loopholes and the power.

Right.

And that's what I'm trying to teach my kids, you know, like Sabrina. So Sabrina's ordering food yesterday and she's like, she looked at the menu. I let her pay all the bills. I've been doing this since she was probably six. You pay the bill with your money, right? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. You pay, you figure it out. You do the- yeah, how much should the tip be? Yeah, what's the tip? Okay, check the bill. Make sure you go through every item. Make sure we didn't overpay. I really don't care. It's just a good practical skill for her, right? She's like, Papa, they were supposed to take this off. Good. Ask the lady to take it off. In fact, don't ask her to tell her. Just say, Ma'am, you need to take this off.

We didn't like it.

So I'm teaching her how to get stuff back. I'm teaching her how to confront people.

Like all the uncomfortable skills you gotta learn. How many people do you know that.

Are not willing to say, take it off? They're just like, yeah, I don't do it.

I'm just like, yeah.

So then I'm like, okay, Sabrina, what do you want to tip these people? And then she'll be like, I think we should tip this guy 15%. I said, why is that? Because he was pretty good, but not great. Okay, next cut. I said, but listen, we like to eat at Nobu, right? So what you might want to do is hit him 15 and give the matrony 50.

Right.

Make sure we always get a table.

We always get a table and slip 50 in. So now she's learning these skills, right? But she called me yesterday. She said, Papa, the French fries at the Beverly Hills Hotel are $34. I'm not ordering. I said, yeah, you shouldn't. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I don't know if that's inflation or location.

By both.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's what I'm teaching, too. We don't give them money. We don't give them an allowance. I don't think any kid should be given an allowance. Interesting. Why not? We. We make them in. They want money. They become an employee of the company. They work for the company. We give them a series of things to do.

We pay them once a year.

Okay. We give them a big check at the beginning of the year. That money goes into Cardone Capital. Wow.

And they live off the distributions. Come on.

Yeah, that's an.

It is.

That's cool. It's a tax write off.

Right.

So now, and then when they're 18 years old, they'll probably have, we're doing about 50,000 bucks a year for their salaries right now. Started at 30.

Wow.

They said, how can I get a raise? I said, you can do more things. Next year they got 40. Now they're at 50. Sometimes they'll get a bonus for doing.

Extra stuff, but they don't get the money. They never get the money.

It's invested and they get that money. That money is invested, they get the distributions. I think they're $667 a month now. Wow. In cash flow. That's amazing. So when they want, hey, I saw this sweater. I like how much is it? 200. I said, good. How you want to handle it? Because I ain't got your money. You got your money. Yeah.

You know?

So they're like, yeah, I want to buy this out of my, out of my checking again.

Right.

Okay, good.

And that they, they feel better. Interesting. Then I relying on you constantly to buy them stuff.

Let's say if they see something that's 800 and they only got 667. They're like, I don't have enough money. I said, well, why don't you, let's do a loan. Let's do a deal. You can borrow $137 from me. So they do. I said, and then I'll just, I'll grab it from next month. I said, I got your assets, so you can sign your assets over to me. You know?

Wow.

So when they're 20, they're gonna know they've never touched their capital. They will create wealth over the next 10 years, but it'll be their own wealth. It's not something I gave them. And I benefited by working with them. I have fun with them.

Wow.

Like they're taking all the Cardinal University stuff right now and they go in and watch, they review a video and then they do their version. So we're creating 10x Kids University.

Oh my gosh. That's amazing.

Right?

That's cool.

So kids can teach kids.

That's cool. Well, if you could only teach your kids, three lessons about money.

Yeah.

What would those lessons be?

People, number one. Meet. Meet people. No one's a stranger. You know, it's a. It. Money's a people game. Two, once you get it, dollars. And number three, and put it in something that's. That. That you're guaranteed. I saw you had a guest that talked about doubling money every year. I'm like, it is. like you're going to lose money trying to do that.

Really?

100. That's not. It's not even. You don't need to do that. If you earned. If you earn seven or 8% on your money and invested every year, you'll be so rich when you're. When you're. When you need it, you'll be rich Beyond if you don't lose any. So I would tell them, number three is just invest in things where you can never lose your Capital and. And stay away from degenerates. and dead beats and people that don't value money and degenerates basically are people that spend more money than they than they earn. They're degenerates or criminals by nature, by the way. Anybody that spends more than they have is a criminal. It's a violation of a spiritual law.

Even if they get a loan out or if they are investing in something.

You spend more than you earn. You are a criminal. you're a degenerate criminal. That's a spiritual rule. It's like, I don't need the state of California to tell me what law I broke. I just broke a spiritual moral code.

A contract.

What about getting a loan out and.

Getting debt to invest in something that you can't afford? Was this make money?

Sure. Okay, well then that's good.

That's good.

That's good. But I'm talking about somebody borrowing money to buy a Gucci belt because they want to show off because they want to be, look what I got. Got it. Or buying a Lamborghini. because you're trying to impress somebody. Right, right, right. You know, you're a degenerate or going to the casino and playing, playing and having alcohol and going to the strip joint, throwing away $5 bills that you can't afford. Like, there's a lot of people that spend money they can't afford to try to be a big shot. Right.

Men and women, by the way, it's not just guys that do it.

Yeah.

What about the three lessons you would share? I feel like these are very practical lessons. Meet people, don't lose it. and put it in something that gets, you know, guaranteed returns and don't be around the deadbeats.

Stay away from the deadbeats.

Right.

Because they'll steal it all.

What about the three lessons around the emotional relationship to money and how people should think and feel about money? Because a lot of people are afraid of it. They feel uncomfortable, they don't talk about it.

Yeah.

They, you know, keep it to themselves. How can we shift the relationship to money that we have so we can have a better experience emotionally and spiritually about money.

Well, you got, you know, for me, for me, I got a, like anything I've ever had a problem with, okay? I had a problem with drugs when I was 23 years old. And then I'm hiding it. You know, anything you're hiding, you're gonna have problems with. The secret keeps you sick. You know, money is very secretive for most people. Just ask them what they make. and all of a sudden everybody goes, oh, I don't want to tell you that. The IRS knows what you make. Okay, like, I mean, everybody, you know, the people that you don't like know already what you make. Your boss knows what you make. You don't know what you make. Most people don't know what they make because they went into the secret, the drug addict doesn't know how much they use. The alcoholic doesn't know how much they drink. It's, they're not accounting for anything. You know, the relationship that goes bad, they're not inventory and why it went bad. so you got to inventory your money. I said this to you one other time. First thing I look at every day is my money. I know. First thing every day. I have a great relationship with my money.

Did you always have a good relationship with money?

I lost a quarter when I was eight years old. My dad gave it to me to get me out of the house. We walked down the street and I was playing with the quarter, flipping it like a. Like a. Did I tell you the story? I found that.

And my twin brother's.

He's playing with his, or he wasn't, but I was playing with mine, and I flipped it. Missed it and it went into a manhole and I couldn't get it. I couldn't retrieve it. My arm was shorter than the bottom, right? So I go back home, I'm crying. Man, my brother went to the store and he got bubble gum and I didn't freaking man. And my dad said, what'd you get? I said, Papa, I lost my quarter. And he's like, you lost it? Man, he freaking got mad, bruh. Like, he ain't like, what do you mean you lost it? I said, well, I was flipping it. never play with money, you know? And he just hammered me. I said, remember like it was yesterday, right? Never play with money ever. And I'm crying and I walk away. My grandfather grabbed me. Tony Neil came to this country on a boat. Never had papers to live here. Was a gambler, sole wife. He said, son, let me tell you something. Old Italian guy, he says, you dad, he's got a point about not playing with money. There's another way to look at this. He says, never go anywhere with just one quarter. You might lose it. And I was like, okay, he's like, think about that in your life. You have to make a decision between those two things. And so that's always like, don't play with it and never depend on one quarter. 'cause you might lose it. So get a bunch of quarters, man. Yeah. 'Cause you're gonna need it, right? And if you don't lose it, the government's gonna grab it, they're gonna tax.

It, someone else is gonna take it.

They're gonna inflate it, they're gonna rob it, they're gonna steal it. So, you know, number one, I think I would just say the healthy relationship is look at it every day. Okay, two, inventory your beliefs around money. I think most people are taught that money's bad. It's sinful. And three, I would never, I would not connect, I would not try to create any relationship between money and happiness.

Ooh.

You know, I don't, I don't know why anybody tries to attach any connection between the two. you know, when people say, hey, money won't make you happy, I'm like, they have nothing to do with one another. It's like me saying, I want to fly, and you saying, but you should swim or something. What's it got to do? What are the two things have to do with one another? I need money to pay bills. I need money to buy gas. I need money to help the Grant Corn Foundation out. I need money to buy. To buy a ticket to the Milken Institute. I need money and it's got not, I'm not, when I'm trying to make money, I'm not trying to be happy. And I don't, anybody that tries to put the two together, like, they're different conversations. They should not be, they shouldn't be talked about together.

If money, but if money doesn't buy happiness, what does get happiness?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I, I think that's everybody's like, Purpose for me gives me, you know, when I've done a good job, when I've helped somebody, that makes me happy. Yeah. When I go home at night and I'm like, hey, I worked hard today, right? That makes me happy. I didn't have to make any money. When I make good decisions for my family, that makes me happy. You know, I'm proud of myself.

So.

So money doesn't bring you happiness.

It's never made me happy.

Might make you feel more secure or.

Or so most of the time it makes me a little more like, oh, okay, now what do I got to do? You know, but it doesn't make me like, it might make me proud, but it doesn't make me. I'm like, I don't get happy. If you gave me a billion dollars right now, I would be exhilarated. I would be intrigued. I would be. I don't know that I'd be happy. Would you? If I gave you a billion, would you be like, oh, I'm happy. My happy meter went up.

Now I'm already happy.

Yeah.

So when it increased, it would give me probably a level of, like, a rush or an excitement of, like, okay, what can I do with this now? Or how can I help more people?

Or who can I hire? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm already a happy person.

Yeah.

So it might bring me energy or.

Yeah. Yeah. For a couple of days or a.

Week or something, and then that would go away.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I don't know. Anybody out there? You got a billion dollars? You want to throw it down on me? We'll see if it makes me happier, but. But we would be excited about it. We'd all be talking about it. We'd probably go have drinks tonight. You can believe this, man. Here's 10 grand, you know? Right. It was so cheap. Okay, here's the bull, it's gonna start, man. Yeah. You know?

Let me ask you about your happiness scale.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you were at 100 million versus.

Where you are now. No difference.

In the 4 billion. You're at the same level of happiness when you're at 100 and now.

Well, I don't think, I really don't think about it like that. Like, I don't think about, I don't think about happiness much, by the way.

Really?

No, I don't, I don't, I don't really, I think about choices a lot.

Are you a pretty happy person?

Am I happy person?

On a scale of one to 10, 10 being like consistently throughout a full year.

Yeah, I don't think about happy. I don't, I don't measure happy.

What do you measure?

I measure accomplishments. I measure targets. I measure, you know, who, who I'm helping, things that I can actually physically measure. things that are measurable.

Oh, you can't measure joy and happiness.

And I don't know how to measure it.

Okay.

Like, how do I measure it? How do I account that something happened? It's just that it's just really. Okay.

Do you feel happy on a day-to-day basis, like consistently?

Do I feel like on a scale.

Of one to ten?

I don't think I'm miserable.

Oh, yeah, I'm not miserable. And then 10 being you're a happy, fulfilled inner peace.

You've got joy in your heart. Yeah, I know. No, no, I'm not that. That's not what I'm thinking about. But where are you on that scale? I don't know. On that scale, I'm probably like a six. A six. Five or six, yeah. I'm not thinking about joy. I'm not thinking about contentment. I'm not thinking about action. I want the action. I want the grind. I want the action. I want the possibility. Like the political thing, like hanging out with, we were just talking to Newsom yesterday. I'm like, man, I can't imagine playing in your arena, bro. Like, it seems so intriguing to me. He's like, Look, you don't want anything to do with it. I said, no, that's what I mean. Every time I bring up politics to anybody, they're like, you want nothing to do with this. I'm like, Sounds intriguing. Like, to me, that wouldn't be a happy place. Right.

But it will be an action place.

Interesting place. It would be like, oh my God, man, somebody's gonna rip my face off. Or I'm gonna rip their face off. But somebody's face has got to get ripped off. Let's keep it real in that game.

Yeah.

In order to get to that. So, so I don't think about, you.

Know, is happiness, is happiness something you want more of or no?

Do I want more happiness? Dude, I want more time is what I want. And I want more health with time.

And health bringing more happiness.

As long as I have people around me that I want to be around. Okay. Because I don't want to be around, I don't want to be around people I don't like. okay, under any condition. That's the thing that makes me most unhappy. Really? I don't like being around people that don't do stuff. I don't like people that talk about doing something and don't. I don't like people being around people that can't pay bills and can't throw in and can't contribute. And because I know they can. So I'm like, I can't be around people that, like, it's very, very difficult for me around, be around both. Extremely difficult. I get very unhappy, and because I'm so transparent and because I'm so outspoken, like I'm going to call somebody out, right, while they're there at the table with me and it's going to embarrass my wife. I was doing dinner and we were doing dinner in our house with Rob Lowe and the guy across from if he's pitching E Lana. E Lana doesn't know she's getting pitched ha ha Bleb and by bleb and by Ble and by Blepa and by did this, I did that, I did this, I did that. I don't mean to raise any money. I did this. I don't need to raise any money, but did, and I know what he's doing, right? And I said, bro, what'd your company make last year? It's private information. I said, okay, well then once you keep the whole thing private. Look, either share it or keep it to yourself. Like you're pitching my wife on this deal. You're not going to tell me, and like, and I call him out, Alina's, hit my hit, does your girl do this? No, because I'm not confrontational as you. She's punching me, she's punching me on the table. I'm like, bro, You're not gonna tell me how much money your company made. It's bull. Rob Lowe's right over here. Everybody's getting tense. Oh man. But I can't help myself, dude. And so here, if I sit on it, Louis, if I sit on it, I'm definitely not happy. Sit on what?

If I don't say it.

I've got you.

If you hold back, yeah. Then I'm not being me.

Nah. Then I'm like, I feel like a fraud and I feel like a liar and I had to listen to this guy's bull. I'm running out of time in my life and I had to listen to eight minutes of bull that I know is bull.

Wow.

My bull meter is going freaking, you.

Know, and so time and health.

Time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, and then people do have the people, you know, the people I like being around, people that I enjoy, you know, like, I enjoy being with you. I don't come here because just to do this, I enjoy being with you. I like you, you know, like, you know, I just, there's certain people I like being around. and there's other people like, it wouldn't matter if they had a hundred billion.

You wouldn't want to be around them.

I will never do that.

Wow.

I don't want it. I don't, you can't buy me. Like there's not, there is as financially motivated as I am.

I will not be around people you don't like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do deals with people you don't like.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's probably why the Wall Street, the Harvard Wall Street, Grant Becomes a Banker thing would have never worked out for me.

Sure. Sure.

I would have, I would have, I would have not made it.

But is happiness, do you want that scale to go up though? Or are you happy with 100%?

I mean, of course I want to, but I want to contribute more. I don't think about, I want to be more happy. Maybe I'm already happy. Maybe I'm actually a 10 and I don't know, and that's why I'm not trying to get happier. Sure. You know, but I don't think about happy, like a temperature. It's like a temperature to you.

Just an assessment.

Yeah, but it's like 68 or what's your perfect setting, temperature setting?

I mean, like, oh, a temperature?

Yeah, a temperature.

When I go to sleep, is it 69, 68?

Yeah, yeah, so the colder the better for me.

Right, me too.

My girl, she freezes too much, but yeah. Okay, so whatever, but I don't have a happy temperature. Interesting. So maybe I'm already, maybe I'm happy and now I'm looking for, hey, I want contribution. I want impact. Impact, I want legacy. I'm trying to figure out how to extend 100 years. That's really the number one thing that interests me is how could Grant Cardone still be relevant in 2123?

Why is that so important for you to be relevant in 20 years?

Well, I don't know. I don't know why exactly, but I would say one thing is because when my dad died, I mean, people forget about you pretty quick. like it's not nothing. You know, and I'm getting to that part of my life where I'm like, I'm closer to that thing happening than, you know, staying alive forever. So my dad, he at 52 by 53, I mean, nobody was talking about him. I talk about him more today than they were talking about him a year after he died. And I got more people to talk to. More people know my last name today. than everybody in my family ever. So that to me, that's a contribution. If my dad's around somewhere drifting through the universe or universes, he's like, man, he's disseminating the name. That's what he told me was always the most important thing. Your last name, nobody can ruin your last name. Nope, except you. Nobody can take away your name. And what he didn't understand was, you know, kind of disseminated. And so Walt Disney, Dude, he's been dead 75 years. Okay? Like there's people that we will be talking about Jesus, you know? It's gangster, man.

Why is legacy so important when you're never gonna be here after you're gone to experience it?

Well, I don't know that you're not. I don't know that you're not here, you know? I don't know that you're not here. Sure, sure. I don't believe I end.

Right.

I believe survival is a circular thing.

Sure, sure.

Like I'm gonna come back and, I think I'm going to come back.

You may not remember it or know that what's happening.

Maybe I do. Maybe I get to remember it. If I worked on it, maybe if I, you know, but I know this. I'm going to feel good about a lot of places I go to and a lot of people I meet. I'm going to feel good because I made more contributions than I didn't. I gave more than I took. And I'm going to have this vibration, you know, with these people and these particles and these. You got 60 trillion cells or something in you. You know, you know, maybe what's going on with a little tiny part of you. and, and we're unconscious about the other 59 trillion activities that are all communicating with one another, you know? And so I don't know that I don't come back here in 50 years and I'm like, what up, Lou? What's that, man? You know, or whatever. Maybe you got a different name, a different body or whatever, whatever. But we still got this kind of Rhythm or something happening. We're doing some kind of future podcast or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. and.

And what's the biggest fear for you at this stage?

What's the biggest fear? Well, kid. My kids, man, my kids, I. You know, they're 14 and 12, so now I'm worried about. Okay, at some point, they're going to be like, we're out of here.

All right, we're gonna get a boyfriend. We're gonna go to school.

We're gonna do whatever we want. Yeah. Yeah. All that bugs me out. You know, I'd like to hold on to that a lot longer. So, I wish I had had more kids. Really? Me and Alaina, we actually talked about maybe we adopt a kid. Really? Yeah. 'Cause we've been good with our kids. Like one of the best things I've done in my life is raise kids. I'm a great father. Yeah. So I'm very, very happy about how I did that.

But you waited till you were 50, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you wish you would have had kids sooner? Or do you feel like it was the right time?

Yeah, it was the right time. I wasn't, you know, at 40, I wouldn't have been a good father.

What are you most proud of about being a father?

The, the thing I'm most proud of is like, you know, the time I spend time with them, both of them. When I'm not spending enough time with Scarlett, I go spend time with her. Hey, let's go get a boba. Let's go. Like, I literally make time during the day. And I'm like, let's go someplace by yourself, just me and you, you know? And I can tell, man, when I do it, they feel it. My and two, their friends all think I'm a superstar. I love that. You know, they don't always like it, right? You know, and, and, you know, I'm glad. I'm glad the kind of life. I have some regrets, but I I'm glad of the life that I've kind of showed them or shown them. And, and, and I don't think that that spoils him.

What'S the biggest regrets?

Sometimes, particularly with Sabrina, Sabrina spends the most time with me. I have been. Because she spent so much time with me, she'll see me doing stuff as an adult and as a Grant Cardone wild man.

Yeah.

I don't mean bad stuff. Right. I mean, just me being me, just me calling people out. You know, she hears. you know, when I'm done with something, she hears me talking to myself about it. This guy's blood, they hear everything, bro. Like everything. They remember everything. They hear everything. No matter what they're doing, they pick it all up, everything. And they'll tell you about it later.

They remember it.

They remember it. And they take it literal, you know? So she's called me out a couple of times. Well, you said so and so about Baba Bum, I'm like, well, yeah, I did say that. You know, you said you didn't trust that guy. Why are you doing business with him?

You know, because something happened.

I'm like, I knew I shouldn't trust that guy. And then. Then we continue the relationship. And then later, she's like, you said you didn't trust him. Why are you doing business with him? I'm like, well, baby, now I gotta explain it, right? Sometimes you do have to compromise a little. This, a little of that, blah, blah, blah, but. so, yeah, I I regret that. I regret her ever seeing, like, any of the kind of the adult activities, having a drink or wine or something, you know, it gives them approval.

Couple final questions for you. You're 75.

10 years.

10 years out.

Yeah.

What have you accomplished that you're most proud of in business and in life outside of business? and what is the number one thing your 75 year old self is saying to you right now? If you could time jump.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And see what you created in the next 10 years.

You need to enjoy life more, bro.

This is what he'd be saying to you right now. Enjoy life more.

Yeah, you got to enjoy life more. Take more pictures right now. Take more pictures. Enjoy life more. you know, invest more time in your relationship with Elena and make sure you guys figure out how to grow old together, you know, because you see, see, there comes a certain age where you're like, okay, I can't just get rid of my wife, you know, because it looks stupid. Like, everybody goes through relationships where they're like, okay, if there's a hard time or hard patch, you're like, okay, one thing you can always do is bail. That's always an easy fix. I'll just bail. But the problem is you gotta start with another relationship. Right. When you're 75 years old, bro, no age looks good on you. It all looks stupid. Right. You know, I saw a guy the other day, man, he walked out with like a 25 year old, and I'm like, this don't look good, bro, right?

I mean, something was broken in your.

Relationships and you weren't able to maintain the relationship. Yeah, I mean, you're going to start over. So like, like me and Elena got it. We, we, we work like it, making sure we're doing it. But it's hard, man.

Relationship.

Probably the most challenging thing is that, that relationship. Really?

Yeah.

It's just hard. I'm going one way. She's going another way. I'm picking her up tonight. She's in another city. When I get home, she goes to Cancun tomorrow to do a deal. we're both doing this and that and then we pick, you know. So you what I would say is enjoy life more. I need more extended periods of time just enjoying myself.

Yeah, that's good.

Less stress, less stuff. And I don't mean I'm gonna put my phone up. I'm gonna still play the game, but we're gonna go on a yacht for two weeks for her birthday, her 50th birthday. That'll be a great time together. And then. you know, I don't know. What would 75 tell 65? You can do it, bro. I think even say, let's go that 40, bro.

Go for 400.

Let's go, let's go, let's go. Like you're just limiting yourself. What I've done already is impossible from.

Where you came from and all these things.

From where I came from, I should be dead. I should have been dead at 25 years old. or in jail, okay? Or in some mental institution, messed up forever. Any of those three things could have happened to me. Instead, I became this guy. And I'm grateful. And I had, I don't know that I had any breaks. I know when people say, oh, you had luck, I'm like, you grinded, bro. I don't think I, like, I'm looking for which break are you talking about? Because I don't remember.

Right.

I've been grinding. And so, and I'm proud of the grind, you know? But I wanted to turn into something more than money, you know? 'Cause that's not a good feeling either. You don't want to die and have some money in a bank. And that's why that legacy thing becomes important. Hey, could Cardone Capital become a bank? It would live. in the year 2100.

Wow.

And people would bank at Cardone Capital or Cardone Capital becomes a function so that everybody can become their own bank.

Wow.

So those are some things that we're looking at right now, how we, how we can, you know, basically put everybody back in charge of their own game. How could we influence the education system? So anyway, that, that stuff, AI is going to I mean, AI is going to destroy colleges and schools.

Right.

Gives you all the answers. So it's exciting, dude. It's an exciting time. You know, the next 10 years, I could probably do more than I've done in the previous 65 years. Wow.

You know, I want to do more.

Fun stuff with you. You know, your girl.

Let's do it.

Yeah.

You know, let's go. Let's go travel the world together. I'm in man.

I'm in man.

Final question around this, because I think this is interesting around love and money.

Yeah.

And relationships. You're saying, you know, the relationships, the most intimate relationships can be some of the most challenging and they're hard work, especially if you're both doing big things.

Yes.

Would you have had any conversations differently around money before you got married? And how did the conversation shift when there's two powerhouses now?

Yeah.

Who are, you know, traveling and making money and doing deals and speaking and, you know, it's not a traditional.

Yeah.

Okay, one's at home all day, the other one's out making money and this is how it is.

Yeah.

Would you have had any conversations differently before marriage about money? And how does it work now with two powerhouses making money?

Yeah. So we would, you know, Elena once said to me, she's like, what if I made more money than you? I'm like, do it. Do it, bro. Like she's like, oh, no, you would be, you would not like that. I said, man, I'm telling you, try it. Okay. Make more money than I make and see if I'm bothered by that. 'Cause I would not be, not even a little bit, because I'm making my own. Now, a guy that's not working and pitching and contributing and stretching, and then.

It would affect him.

Yeah. I'd feel like, yeah, 'cause then she's paying for everything. So, number one, we have separate accounts. Well, I've always, I'm like, we're having seven separate accounts. When we met, we had separate accounts, and now we're gonna have separate accounts. You're gonna manage your money. I'm gonna manage my money. okay? That way we can see if there's anybody doing dumb. Okay? And number two on that, I will always take care of you. And she's like, oh, you don't need to take care of me. In the beginning, I'm like, oh no, I want to take care of you, dude. Like it's part of my deal. I like paying the bills. You don't have to pay any bill.

You could, but you need to have your own account. So you don't have a joint account. No. Not for like shared expenses or anything. You're just, you pay for your own stuff.

You pay for everything.

And she pays for her stuff.

Yeah.

So you want something? Go buy it. Okay.

You.

You can't buy it. You tell me I'll handle it.

So.

But I make all decisions around the money, like, not around her money, but around this money. And so.

But.

But she also works in the company, so we figured out how she works in the company and contributes to the company, and she gets a piece of the action of the whole company. Wow. Not just her efforts. so I don't want her looking at just what she did, but how she brings value to everything. Right.

So would you have any other conversations before marriage or.

Yeah, I probably would have had some different conversations. No, knowing what I know now, you know, like what?

Eh, just what questions should you ask or get clear about or agreements or.

Dude, I mean, look, she always, she, we've always wanted similar things. you know, she, she, I'll tell you the biggest value Elena brings is that she thinks way bigger than I do.

I know, yeah.

Way bigger.

So.

Unfortunately, I'm the one, she bounces on a ball. She doesn't want me to tell anybody this, but she loves to bounce on a ball and think it's work for her. She's doing her work. She's basically creating this universe. And when I walk through the house and I see her doing it, I'm like, oh my God. what am I gonna have to do now? You know, because I know it requires me to do something. I think it's gonna require me to do something unless we just. So. But what would I have done different? I mean, we're. We. That. That's not a problem area for us. It's really not. It's because I produce a lot, and I don't make a lot of mistakes. And I do what I tell my kids, you know, meet a lot of people. make sure it connects to money. Don't spend any time with degenerates. If we spend any time talking about anything, it's about how to get rid of some of the problem particles and that don't lose money and then invest in things that are going to take care of us long term. And she's completely supportive of that. And she likes the big score. She loves the big thing. Like the 40 billion, 400 billion. She could, she could think about a trillion. This was her idea. Cardone Capital was her idea. Not mine.

It's big, man. Big man. Final question.

Most important thing you can do, by the way, is get the right partner.

That's huge.

Probably the most important thing.

How do you know it's the right partner around money?

I don't know how other people do it. And you guys better talk about it. Yeah. You know? So, like, I remember. I knew she was the right partner because I would give her, like, five dollars when we were back here in LA. Or what. What happened was I would have a bunch of money. in my pocket and the ones and the fives, I'd be like, you hear, you're gonna have the ones and the fives. And she would get thrilled. She was acting. She would get thrilled. Thank you so much. She'd take $8 and she was so happy about it. I'm like, oh, I know this is the right chick.

She's not ungrateful, like, give me more ideas.

Yeah, how about a couple hundred? Never. Then one day I got her to tens and she's like, oh my God. I said, take all the tens in there. Everything below a ten you can have. And she was thrilled. You know, we'd go to dinner and she'd say, thank you. Thank you for paying for dinner. It's always, it was, you know, I didn't need that, but it was respectful and it was appreciative and it was like, even when we were married, hey man, you know, thank you for taking care of the house. And she does less than that right now if she sees this, but, but she used to, she was unbelievable that, that I knew that was one thing I knew that, that made her the right person for me.

Wow.

And she was fine. fun, dude.

She.

She was a lot of fun.

Yeah.

She wanted to do fun stuff.

That's cool.

Yeah.

I think you give one final message to people watching or listening who are scared of what's to come. They're unsure about their money, the economy, all the crisis that's about to happen. What's the message you would leave behind?

Well, you know, the word crisis in China means opportunity. I think it's called. It's Weegee. and it literally means opportunity. And we are about to go into the biggest opportunity I know of my lifetime. I thought it would have been here already. I've been waiting for the last year preparing for it. I thought it would have been here. I thought it was going to be here last year around September, October, and it came and passed and it's not, hadn't happened yet, but it's coming and it's going to be ugly. It's going to be nasty. you need great people around you. You need people that are ready for this. You know, you need people on the same page. There's going to come, come a time where people need to start. Maybe now, look at all your finances. What's an asset? What's a liability? What do you, what can you get rid of right now? This is a liability. Get rid of it and prepare, prepare for Armageddon.

And.

And because Armageddon is going to offer tremendous opportunities, there's going to be more banks that fail. Wall Street's going to have a terrible, terrible week. And I wouldn't, you know, don't be surprised when this happens. Be ready. Don't be surprised.

Grant Cardone on social media, grantcardone.com, Cardone Capital. How else can we be of support and service to you?

Dude, just, I love you. I love your audience, you know, and I appreciate them putting up with me. And I know you get a lot of heat sometime for having me on. So, you know, I appreciate everybody letting me be who I am and, you know, figure my way out too.

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