Grant Cardone’s Biggest Takeaways From 2020.

Foreign. You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table. Welcome to the show. This is Darren Clark, the producer, and in this episode of Business Lunch with Roland Fraser, we get to sit and hear Grant Cardone and Roland reflect on the last eight months of 2020. You will appreciate his takeaways, especially if you're struggling right now. Listen through to the end for three things that you can do if you're in trouble right now. Thanks so much for joining and if you're a fan of the show, would you please take a moment to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and go to businesslunchpodcast.com for show notes and more. So without further ado, here is Roland and Grant Cardone.

So I'm just going to hop in, basically and start asking you questions. Is that cool?

Okay, beautiful.

So let's just start out when all this happened. And I know this is kind of. Jared and I were talking a little bit. Is that you, as we did, saw a little bit of a dip in certain parts of your businesses. You got a lot of different kinds. And then it all seems like it's come back. What do you think about that? Like, what is it about change like this that you think causes people to initially freeze and then some of them get past it and some of them don't.

Yeah. So look, I just know that when. I guess it was the third week of what, February or March now?

March.

Yeah, yeah, third week of March. I was just having a birthday. 21st of March was my birthday.

Oh, nice.

I was actually in Pueblo. I don't know if Jared told you this backstory, but I was in Pueblo shooting this show called Undercover Billionaire.

Yes.

Yeah, Discovery Channel. So basically I had been there about 14 days. Just left the 10x growth conference. We were having the best year we've ever had. Like hospitality, airlines, hotels, digital retail, car dealers, you name it. Like the whole world was on this massive expansion. Unemployment, lowest level ever. I get a phone call from D.C. saying, hey, this country is going to be shut down. Want to give you a heads up. At the same time, the same day I get that phone call, Discovery Channel says, shut down the shoot.

Really?

And the guy came to me and says, hey, we got to shut the chute down. Now. I am no longer Grant Cardone on this shoot. I'm a guy named Lewis Curtis. I have no money. I shaved my head. I just spent the worst 14 days of my life with 100 bucks. No place to live, no water, no food, nothing. Can't use my name and these guys. And I was just starting to get a little momentum. And in addition to playing this other guy, I'm having to run my business at night. Right. I'm trying to keep things going. And Covid was starting to show up, and Discovery shut the show down. I'm like, no, no, you guys can't. You gotta be kidding right now. No, no, the country's gonna shut down. We have to shut down the shoot. Covid's a real deal, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

And so I was like, oh, my God. So I got on my plane, flew back to Miami, had a. I think March 25, maybe had a emergency meeting with my staff. I mean, I went into my fear level, went skyrocket, 2008 memories.

But you didn't shut down.

Right?

I mean, that's cool.

Yeah, we never stopped.

Yeah.

Now we came back looking. In retrospect, I made some mistakes. Like, the first thing I did was I shut an apartment down that we had just started. I should not have done that, but I did it because I'm just a very conservative person. And the reason I shut it down was not a financial thing. It was to energetically. I did not want my staff putting energy into a startup that I knew we were going to have to manage remotely.

Right.

And I didn't trust our ability to do that new startup and the other businesses that are mature. So I told my staff, I like, we're killing this department. Everybody was like, don't do it, don't do it. I'm like, no, we're doing it. And then put all your energy on these other departments. And then I met with all my staff and just said, hey, guys, look, we're not getting rid of anybody else. We had to get rid of this department. You will lose your job if your stats. If your outbound stats go down, you will lose your job. I want you to know we just killed a department that I loved and want to make. I have a dream to make it a reality. You will not lose your job if your stats stay up. Your income doesn't have to stay up. Your stats have to stay up. And I don't want to get rid of anybody. And we just basically consolidated all our energy and resources into and just focused on expanding the business despite Covid or the country, whatever. And basically the theme was, ain't no virus gonna stop us.

Right? Right.

I love it.

I love it.

So, you know, like, we are gonna have the single best year we have ever had at this company.

We are too. And I See that with so many people, it's very encouraging. It's exciting. Right.

And I think the re. What happens is people that are committed find the best part of them when they get hit and their commitments get challenged. And Covid certainly is challenged. I mean, look at the people have lost their family members, 40 million people lost their jobs. Industries are just whacked. So you're not interviewing any of those people, right?

No, I am, I am. And it's really cool. The.

But you're not interviewing anybody at Marriott hotels or American Airlines.

I am not, no. But I am interviewing people that own restaurants and things like that.

Right.

And it is, a lot of it is just being adaptable and that's. So that's like what I really want to dig down into with you is what have you taken away that's new for you, that in this last eight months or so, as we've been addressing and dealing, that you think that you're going to take into 2021, that would be good to share with everybody else here.

So, as you know, we've been virtual for a long time and you know, we have been very heavy. Social media and zoom or any kind of video, any way to deliver to the client every day, whether we're paid or not has been a heavy emphasis up. So all we've done really is not just double down on that, but 10x on that.

Okay, okay. In terms of content or amplification or budget or what.

Just everything like every, like now we have no energy being basically we flipped our model so that because it was taken away from us, the in person events, the hotel events, the big, you know, 30,000 person conferences got taken away from us.

Right.

So we leaned, you know, we just leaned hard into that other thing. And then we have executives here saying, hey guys, we're not going backwards, we're going forward. We want to take everybody with us and put in more time if you have to. But we're not going backwards.

Did anything change in the messaging to your clients that were having a challenge? Like the people that were, you know, saying, gosh, this is really hard for us because you have people on contracts that pay every month and some of them might have run into challenges. How do you deal with those kinds of customers?

Yeah, so we had about, we have 2,000 customers, corporate customers that pay us every month. I don't know that this actually happened, but the request for me was, hey, please reach out to the 2,000 people and say, what do you need from us?

Right.

Do you need time? Do you need A break. Do you want to cancel? What do you want to do?

Right.

And they're like, they pick one of those A, B or C. And then we would ask this question, do you plan on going out of business or filing bankruptcy? And they'd be like, no. Well, good, then we're not going to discontinue.

Right, Right. So the three options were, do you need more time?

Do you need time? Do you need help? You want to just keep going, or do you want to cancel?

Okay.

And then when they could pick, whatever. And then I'm like, okay, the next question was, or do you plan on filing bankruptcy?

Right.

And do you plan on, you know, stopping your business? And if they said no to either one of those, we said, well, then we're going to continue.

Right.

They said, no, file bankruptcy. Then we said, well, then we're definitely not going to discontinue. And they're like, why wouldn't you? Because if you're going to file bankruptcy, you want debt, Right. When you restructure, you want to restructure debt. You don't want to restructure. We want to restructure, but we don't have any debt. I mean, you're just not going to get any help like that. So I think the two things that we walked away with was, one, when it gets tough, the executives have to get better.

Yeah.

Not the. Not the everyday people that are running the machinery, but they're executives. The leadership has to be much greater. The second thing is just whatever you lose, you need to figure out how to pick that up times something in these other spaces.

Yeah, yeah. And you did that. Well, two things. One I want to point out. So what I heard you say earlier is that you took a lot of the people who were fixed overhead and said you got to hit these performance requirements, so they're effectively on a performance pay, even if they were not, like on a commission performance or something like that. You're like, dude, if you want to stay here, you got to make.

Right.

And here's the clearly articulated requirement for you to do that. That's really cool. Because then as long as they're hitting that, you're good.

Right? Yeah, I know. As long as they do the right number, the right amount of outflow. The outflow is going to take care of the inflow.

Yeah, yeah. So you get the leading indicator of this many calls made, this many outreaches, et cetera.

Right, exactly. Exactly. And then, you know, it just so happens I was wrong about almost everything.

Yeah. Tell us about that. What were you Wrong about. And how will you address that going forward?

I thought the world was coming to an end.

Did you really?

Okay.

All right.

I was 100% sure that no one would ever pay us again for anything. Literally, for the next three months, every time somebody gave me $1,000, I was like, what is wrong with these people? I would call Jared. I'm like, who is buying anything right now?

Right. Right.

I mean, I was so terrified, Roland, when this happened, that I told my wife, because we get flowers delivered to the house, stop the floral. Okay. That's funny, because. No, it's true, because I remember 2008, and, man, I remember the. I was in a different position in 2008 because I was dependent upon one vertical.

Yeah.

Now I'm like, 2008 is what made Grant Cardone who he is. Like. Like, you know, I'll talk about myself in a third party here. But it really, like, 2008 was a blessing to me.

Yeah.

And we expand. I refused. I knew then that I had depended upon one vertical. You guys have always been across the board, so well done on your end. I was dependent upon one vertical, and when it got killed, I got killed. And in 2008, I said, this will never happen. The next time this happens, it took 12 years. I'm going to have 50 verticals, and I'm going to be able to take advantage of this. So. And it doesn't matter whether it's digital products, corporate products, or multifamily. We're going to buy about $600 million worth of real estate this year. It's all just working right now.

So that's actually a really great lesson that you had during, you know what we call the Great Recession here. Right. And you took away. How would you advise somebody now who's suffering from what you experienced in 2008 to go forward? Because you took a lot of lessons away. You've done a great job expanding into all these verticals. How would you tell them to do that? Like, where do they start if they're a little overwhelmed with all of that?

So, look, if you're in the hotel business, if you're in airline business, you're a pilot. You've been a pilot for 25 years with American. You have for the last 25 years, you have known that American was in charge of your future. Covid is not a virus. Covid. I mean, I understand it is a virus. Covid is more than a virus. Covid is a reminder that your vehicle is broken. If you were in trouble before COVID you're probably in more trouble now.

Right.

Not because you did something wrong, but because the vehicle you're in is not scalable. You're not in control of the future of it.

Right.

That's what I learned from the Great Recession.

Okay, and what would you say if you were going to say, here's the three things. If you're kind of trying to like, like you. You get that now, and you have conscious incompetence, you're aware that the vehicle is broken. What would be the top three things?

Make a decision. Make a decision. Number one, that you're responsible for. Covid like the. The pain that you're feeling, you're responsible for, not the virus China obviously is. Wuhan is responsible for that. Right. But you are responsible for the condition you were in, that you're losing your job, your job's at risk, your retirement's at risk, whatever the case is. Number two, you got to figure out, in addition to your. Whatever your job is, you have to start scaling the job out. You got in. If you're an American Airlines pilot or you own a restaurant or you're in the hotel business, look, you have to scale to something that's indestructible.

And what does that look like? What are the steps?

Well, for me, for me, this is why I buy apartments. Because, you know, if the Internet goes down, okay, my e Commerce business will be destroyed. My apartments will still like, I'm good. At least I got a place to live.

Yeah.

So. And sooner or later. Sooner or later, people will figure out how to pay for their housing. I want to be in spots that are indestructible.

So you want to kind of be like in countercyclical verticals. Right. Protected against different.

Yes. I don't mean diversified.

Yeah.

By the way, I mean in spots that are indestructible that, you know, that can't be. I remember Warren Buffett. For 35 years, Warren Buffett would not invest in airlines, and somebody talked him into investing in airlines, and now he's like, God damn it. I knew I shouldn't have been invested in airlines.

Right.

Because they are destructible. Right. They are replaceable. And so, number two, I would just be. You have to start figuring out how to scale your time and your money into spots, burying your time and money into spots that can't be disrupted. And the third thing is that I would tell people is like, you got to get around guys like you that are thinking big. You don't try to do things alone.

Right.

The people that are suffering Right now are mostly the desperados.

Yeah.

Particularly those people out there that have a lot of potential. Man. Learn how to draft. That's what I love about your event that you guys have done for so many years so well, is that you bring power together. It's not just proximity to power. It's mass numbers of people that are coming together with a, like interest in expansion. And don't, you know, I would just say, you know, maybe you want to watch a movie alone. You don't want to do success alone.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I got one more question. Those three things are money, by the way, to me. Really great. What with number three, a lot of people are scared of partners. They're scared of dependence. They're scared of, you know, they hear horror stories about, you know, things gone wrong. How do you feel about that? How do you vet your partners and make that a positive to get number three to really come across the line?

So what I always do with things like partners are bad, bigger is not better. All these little things that, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket. When I hear all those things, number one, I say, who is that data coming from?

Right.

It's always little people. If I look at help. Oh, yeah, Pete, your uncle.

Yeah.

Never left the refinery. Partnerships are a bad deal. I had a partner back when I was 25 and I lost my deal. Look, there is no super successful people that don't have partners.

Agree.

There is no super successful people that don't think bigger is not better.

Right.

I'm not talking about me and you being successful, Roland. I'm talking about Elon, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett. You talk about people that are really successful. I'm talking about trillion dollar plays, not million dollar influencers.

Yeah.

I'm including myself in that. I don't study those guys. I'll just tell you like, like if I study dice, I say I'm a study dice or I'm a study Elon. I'm a watch dice, but I'm going to study Elon. Say, what's he doing, dude? What did Elon do when he sold PayPal $180 million? He dumped all the money into three deals. Like he went all in.

He did, but interestingly enough, all in with that countercyclical diversification thing.

Right.

Because the three things that he went into would each survive if one of them didn't go. And they were different both economically and risk wise. Right.

And I think he was willing to die. I think he was willing to go Broke. He. His priorities were right. He didn't go buy a house. He didn't go take his cash and put it into a treasury bond.

Right.

Okay, guys, like I'm putting all of it. I'm going to go borrow money to rent.

Right.

So many entrepreneurs out there, they have more equity in their home than they do in their business.

Right.

You borrow money to buy a house, but you won't borrow money to expand and grow your business.

Yeah.

So that's what I would tell people, man. Study different people. Like, like study multi hundred billion dollar companies and what are they doing? Because I can learn. Those are run by people. Those aren't just institutions. Those are. Those guys are making moves and they're putting their money where their mouth is. And watch what they do, not just what they say.

I love it. I love it. Okay, so we got make a decision. We got scale the vehicle that you've got right now and don't be a solo desperado. Get somebody to partner with that's going to help you get to where you need to go.

Right. And lastly, Roland, I would just say, look, man, the biggest mistake I've made in my career until 2008 was I took money. When I made some money, I put it away and I should have the first. That was the good thing to do later. But I should have taken that money and given that money to somebody to elevate my game.

Yeah.

Whether it's information or whether it was through connection to literally just raise my brand a notch. If you've seen what we've done with our 10x growth conference in the last.

Couple years, it's amazing. Really cool.

I know what people are saying about that conference.

Yeah.

And they're like, how'd you do that? I paid.

It was also stunning. Yeah. And I've got a quick thing about that. Stunning. To go to the One in February and see how many people right on the cusp of everything shutting down, felt like they had to be there. That it was full up to the rafters. It was like just speaks volumes to the quality of what you're able to do for people's lives to get them to have that kind of action in a fearful environment like that. Right.

Yeah.

I like what Pete Vargas said this morning. He said. He said, you know, Grant told me that, man, do you know what, you know what my ticket cost to my event? It was $8 million, right?

Exactly. Some guy was. I'll tell your audience the story. Some guy's like, how you get 20 grand for a ticket. So now the question is, why would I pay 8 million to run an event? Your 20 grand is like 7.9 million 80,000 less than my ticket.

But I made the investment and it obviously pays off. That's awesome. Thank you for taking the time to hang out today. Is there anything that you have? I don't know. Sometimes there's some stuff for folks that, like a backstage thing, a tool or a resource or anything like that that you would like to share. Or if not, if you can't think of it off top of your head, we can always.

Money and finance training. Like, we did a bootcamp for 13,000 people.

Nice.

I spent the first three hours like, guys, you have to get your money. You have to get the mental, the financial. If there's not a financial windfall, you are not going to go through the disappointments, the discouragements, the rejection. You're not going to build the skin like everybody that's watching your show right now. Okay. The reason people quit is because the payoff is not big enough.

Right.

And so we have a financial money mindset training course where it actually removes all the limited thinking. And that shows you the exact strategy where you could go from just having a job to literally making whatever you want, producing whatever you want, and make sure you have the right vehicle that will scale and will cash flow so you and your family and your loved ones can have what they want.

That's great. Do you have a link for that? It'll be in the show notes too, but we might as well. For audio people.

Send you the link and I'll send you the link. It's probably going to be GrantCardOne.com forward/something.

All right, I like that. Fair enough. Dude, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time to hang out today.

Always good brother. Appreciate you.

Thank you. You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Frazier. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

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