Grant Cardone - "How to 10X Your Life"

Hey everyone. Welcome to the what now Audio Experience. These episodes are my way of giving you that real, raw, authentic look into business and what it actually sounds like. Some of these conversations are recorded in the studio, some are on the red carpet, and some are with my friends over at dinner. So the audio may be a little rough, but what really stands out to me are some of the behind the scenes conversations that take place when the camera is turned off because they provide so much value from people who are living and breathing business every single day. That's what I wanted to do. Bring you something that represents what business actually is, not just what you see on social media. No fake gurus. And by the way, if you need more help with your business, please visit the what Now Academy at www.wharnow.academy. there you'll learn what to do now and what's coming next to build a great business. Be sure to connect with me on social media at Scott Duffy Media across all channels or visit my website@www.scottduffy.com. let's do this.

On this episode of the what now audio experience, I'm going to be speaking to Grant Cardone now. I absolutely loved this day that we spent together. Grant was in Los Angeles, staying in the Hollywood Hills because of a storm that was taking place in his home state of Florida. And I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with him at his home. We did an interview for Entrepreneur while I was there. But what stood out the most about the day and still does to this day for me is when I first walked in the door, his daughter walked up to me and she stuck out her hand. She looked straight in my eyes and she said, my name is and I can do anything. And I thought that was so dope. That was so cool. And it really set the stage for the entire day. You know Grant. For those of you who are just getting to know Grant, he's incredible. He's an international speaker, he's an entrepreneur. Most of you know of grant through TEDx. He's the author of the TEDx Rule. He is the co founder or the founder of the TEDx movement, the TEDx Growth Conference. He has been named the number one marketer to watch by Forbes magazine. He's got a $1.8 billion multifamily real estate portfolio. I mean, Grant is incredible.

And one more thing I think I want to say before we start this episode is this. I remember sharing the stage with Grant down at an event in Arizona and we were talking before he went on and we were talking specifically about what separates people that are really great at what they do but don't know how to monetize it or don't make the kind of money is the guy or the gal that's sitting right across from them that might not be nearly as good, but is making a ton of dough. And what he said to me is this. He said, scott, always remember that the best known beats the best every single day of the week. The best known beats the best every single day of the week. And that's always stuck with me. I hope you guys enjoy this episode with Granted.

Thank you for tuning in. Hey, everyone, my name is Scott Duffy with Entrepreneur magazine and S1 Media, and I am here with the one and only Grant Cardone. Well, so, okay, so we talked a lot of business. And everyone knows about 10x. Everyone knows, you know, the work that you've done in real estate and auto, the Fortune 100 companies you've done consulting with, ranging from Google to Ford, building out sales processes and all kinds of cool stuff, Right? We can talk about that. But what I really want to talk.

About is your killer daughters.

Your daughters are awesome. And I saw three things when I.

Walked in the door today.

Three things I seriously have never seen before. And it started with how they shook my hand, right? Well, it's not only a nice grip.

But this is so cool.

They shook both of them shook my hand, and they said, my name is and I can do anything.

That was so cool. How'd you teach them that?

You know, so, so look, I, you know, I hear parents, I hear people meet kids and they'll say, oh, your kid's shy. I remember somebody walked up to one of my kids one day and said, oh, your kid's shy. And I said, hey, man, my kid's not shy. And I grabbed Sabrina. I said, look, you're not shy. You just. It's his responsibility to make you comfortable, too, you know? And I told the dude, I said, dude, my daughter's not shy. You're ugly. I didn't say that in front of her. But, and, but I told the kid, I said, look, look, you want to. You want to control how people feel around you, right? And you want to always have a sense of control. So we just started practicing. How do you introduce yourself? How do you make eye contact? What are you going to say? Who are you? What's your pitch? And so we worked out a pitch, you know, and I said, look, your name's Sabrina. Your name's Sabrina Cardone. You know, there's a lot of things you could say right now to get people's attention. A lot of people know me. So you could say, I'm Grant Cardone's daughter. You could say, I can do anything. But you want to, you want to snap, you want to set a hook, you want to get people's attention.

Right?

And she's like, yeah, I can do anything. And the trick about kids is if you teach one of them, you don't have to teach a second one because they're going to do it. So Sabrina and Scarlett will both introduce yourself. I'm sure once you meet them, they'll say, hey, my name's Sabrina and I can do anything. And then we start working on things like the handshake. Good. Like, like they really do a good handshake for little kids.

They do a great handshake. It's firm, they look you right in.

The eye and not eye contact. We had to work on that.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

And, and I should work on those things.

We, we at our house, we call the five and five rule. So five fingers for five seconds looking in the eye.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. So five and five. The other thing that I saw, I.

Know grown ups that can't shake hands. I, I know, I know 20 year olds that, like, they're doing the limp fish thing. The limp fish thing is never popular with anyone.

Right, right. Well, it's so important too, in selling and trying to sell yourself. I mean, the way you make that introduction. And so the second thing. So the first thing I saw that was so killer was the introduction. The second thing that I saw was the YouTube videos. And your daughter walked right up to me and she said, I have a YouTube channel. And I am, I'm.

She's eight. She's eight years old. That work?

So tell us about that.

So, you know, they want stuff all the time, dude. She's on the Shopkins and the LOL dolls. I think they're called lol. I'm not sure, but.

I get tired of buying them stuff, man. I'm like, look, I can't. I want. It doesn't matter to me. Right. Financially, it doesn't matter. But I worry that like, like this money wasn't given to me. Whether it's $5, $50, $20, I went and earned this money, you know, and, and so I grew up with nothing. So like, you know, if you got a nickel at my house, that was a big deal. You got a quarter, you, you had done something to earn it. So I struggle with, you know, we're Flying private. And I'm like, oh man, is that going to screw them up? You know, I worry about that. So I'm like, I try to, I try to make sure they're in exchange, meaning they did something to get that. So like I, I just put them on an allowance. I made it 20 bucks a week. Elena said, it's too much. So I said, okay, well, we'll make it $10. So, so, and we tell them, hey, every deal can change, so you better get what you can while you can, because the deal can change. So I'm trying to teach them if they ever decide to like, like, like, you know, be responsible for whatever I leave, you know, that they can protect that. And so the YouTube channel was just a way to say, look, you have a hundred subscribers now that you got, like, just because I'm me and how.

Many people that are watching have a hundred subscribers? Yeah, like she's already got 100 subscribers and she's eight.

And dude, every day she's begging for something. I need 20 bucks. I need 10 bucks. I'm like, good, dude, you, there is no shortage of money. I can hook you up with any amount of money you want, but you got to do something. What do you want to do? And she's like, what can I do? I don't. I said, that's for you to figure out. My eight, my six year old was out here. She swept the whole entire pool yesterday for a dollar. We have a maid that could have done it. Okay, but, but I'm like, you do it. Okay. They bring up my clothes. Okay, we. So, so, so anything I can get a six year old body to do so that they feel like one. They're participating, they're helping out like adults because every little kid wants to be an adult. You did. You couldn't wait to grow up, right? And so we want to give them a sense of control and exchange as little young grownups.

I was having a conversation just kind of shifting the business. I was having a conversation yesterday with one of my mentors who we've talked about, David Meltzer. And one of the things that Dave and I were talking about was how so many people, entrepreneurs have great ideas, right? They have amazing innovations they've come up with, but they have a really difficult time shifting from innovation to monetization and understanding how to sell. What advice would you give to those people?

Well, you and I talked about this just a few minutes ago. You know, like, I have zero shame on marketing, promotion, pitching, asking. I think that there's, you know, There should be money attached to every exchange. Now, I know, I know not monetizing is very popular today. I know it's a popular. It's the battle cry. Something about the long game. I'm in it for the long game, dude, I'm in. What game you think I'm in it for? Okay, because you're playing a long game does not mean you can't get paid today. By the way, 99% of the people watching this need to be paid today in order to pay the bills. Take, take care of your kids and buy your kids a shopkins. Not to mention help out with Irma or Harvey or Puerto Rico or Mexico City. Like, there's plenty of people need help. If you're not monetizing right now, how can you help?

So I think the deal is people are building business ideas without saying, who will pay me for that idea? Right now I have a T shirt that says who's got my money? On it. You know, who's got my money? As a. I'm not going to give you his name. But, but he's an ex. He just retired out of baseball and he was at an event I did, and he heard me say, my battle cry is, who's got my money?

So in all my businesses, I started all my businesses with no money. And, and I woke up every morning, I'm like, who's got my money today? Okay, who's got my money? Not. Not. Who needs my product? Plenty of people need my product that don't have any money. Who's got my money? Okay, who will pay me right now?

And then how does that entrepreneur determine their value? Because how many times have you run into somebody that they don't know? They don't either feel good charging for their service or they're not. They're not sure what to do.

This is, this is the issue. This is the. If I went back and did one thing different in my career, I would teach my. I would teach my money concepts before I taught my sales concepts.

Wow. And, and that, that is super powerful. Teach the money concepts before the sales.

Concepts for the business concepts before the sales concepts. But like, like, like, if you're going to learn math, you should attach it to, to money. So money is a vital. No matter what business you're in, money is the economic. It is the, the. We live on an economic planet. There's gravity and there's money and, and there's oxygen. Those three things you have, they're going to influence your life. So.

One thing I have always done well and then there was a period of time where I forgot it was. I've been extremely money motivated ever since I was a little kid. I wanted, I remember wanting money and I didn't want money because I wanted things. I wanted money because I wanted control, because my dad had control. My dad controlled everything in the household. And all I could figure out was, why is that dude got so much control? And it was because he had the money. My mom didn't know anything about money. So whoever's got the money is literally almost in every situation. Whoever controls a checkbook has control of almost everything that's going on. So I'm like, I just want to control. I want to be able to go where I want, do what I want, say what I want. Like, like, I like being a big mouth, right. I'm not a social person. I like offending people. You know, I like to say whatever's on my mind. Right. I don't have a lot of filters. And so.

The point of that is this. If, if you understand money, like people need money.

Yeah.

Now most, most people that, that I meet, they like, I want to start a business. I got a great business idea. How much money is it going to make? Well, it's not going to make any money for three or four years. Well, dude, how's that a business? Yeah. Okay, you're not Netflix.

Sounds like a hobby.

Netflix is an aberration.

Yeah.

Okay. The, the, the wait, wait, wait till the big. These companies that start failing, like when people finally give up on them, they'll say, there's no money to be made here. So I want money, man. I'm not a Netflix guy. I'm not a guy that can just raise a bunch of money and go buy stuff. It's not what I do. Right. And I know that's popular as well today, but most people can't build that business. You need to start thinking about simple businesses. That landscaper down there is going to charge somebody today. Now I'm going to tell you, I think his idea is much better than most of the ideas that come to you. You know, Larry was saying about the customer service, but Sam Zell, he's like, well, you know, they really don't have good customer service. I'm like, better customer service than you have. And this is what I say in one of my sales books. Customer comes before service. You got to get a customer that will pay you and then complain. Okay. Get a customer, don't take care of him first. Get a customer first, then service him. And I think a Lot of people trying to service to get a customer they never get, and they never ask for any money.

What about the person who's started to sell? Okay, so their business is picking up, they're starting to sell, they want to generate more revenue, but they feel like they can't afford to hire a sales team or put sales processes in place. How do we handle that?

So again, like, like now, now we're down to, you know, there's 28 million small businesses in America, most of which read entrepreneur.com 22 million of them, though, need to read a little more, right? And need to study a little more. Because 22 of the 28 million small businesses have no employees. Some guy or gal decided they're going to work for themselves.

I read a stat recently. 53% of all billionaires worked for someone else. Okay? 53% of them, okay? Now how many people do you know are like, I don't want to work for anybody else? This is what you hear people say, I don't want to work for anybody else. I don't want to sell?

Right?

Okay, 53% of all billionaires, okay? The 100 richest people on the planet, not just billionaires, the richest came from working for somebody else. So the point of that is we don't know a company that's ever done it by themselves. Like one individual. Okay? Maybe Jesus is the. And Even Jesus had 12 guys working with him. Okay? So, right. I mean, he had a team, right? You got to have a team, man. I don't know how you're going to. You want to become more than a salesman, you know, like, once you become a great salesperson, your goal is got to become. I want to become a great business person. And that means you need to. You need to understand money. Money is to be used to share with others so that you can get control of something bigger. Right? So I don't want money to save money. You and I were brought up, but your mom, I'm sure, taught you. So save you money. Save you money. Save for a rainy day, right? You heard that? Yeah. You live in Orange county, dude. It never even rains.

She should have said.

Which, by the way. Which, by the way, is really concerning to me, just kind of because we're talking about your kids. Is I lived in an area where we have to pay extra attention to making sure that our kids really understand the value and the work that needs to go in, you know, to every single day to make these things. Yeah, yeah.

Like, the kid was going off today, and I said, look, yeah, here's the deal. Here's. Here's the 20 year. You can go buy your little thing. I don't give her a lecture about, it's not going to be worth anything tomorrow, I said. Or when you get to the store, fondle the little package, look at it, smell it, do whatever you want to do with it. You can even open it there if you want to. Okay. And by the way, if you come home with the 20, I'll double it next week. So I'm trying to teach her. Right. She's got choices, right? So. So it's back to the.

But what you did is you. When you did that, I saw this. I saw this happen.

It was awesome.

What you did is you said, think about that. Yeah, let's think about that. And you took her through that process.

Yeah. And then it's. It's her choice.

Yeah.

Now she gets to make the bad choice and the good choice or whatever that is. Right. So. And then I have to be disciplined enough. Look, he's rapping Cartering. I have to be disciplined enough as a parent to stay, like, strong, like a stranger. Like, the real world is going to treat her later because the real world is not going to give her a break. So back to this money thing. And this is why I would go back and do my career different, because the money thing needs to be figured out. Money concepts of yesterday, Dave Ramsey, even Kiyosaki, okay? These ideas of compound interest. For example, there is no compound interest on planet Earth today, okay? When you're paid a quarter of a percent at the bank, you can compound that every day. You can compound it any way. You can compound it every hour. Dude, it's a half a percent. And the compound interest was created at a time where our parents were earning 8, 9, 10, 12% at the banks. So that doesn't exist today. So you got to really start thinking about, do I want to save money? Money's earning a half percent. It's going down in value every second of every day. The purpose of money is you want to take money as fast as you get it and. And reinvest in your business and. Or reinvest in hard assets that can produce more money.

When's the right time to pay yourself?

I think the right time to pay yourself is like when you. When. When you have so much money, you can't figure out how to get rid of the money. So I made a mistake early on at paying myself first. Like. Like, I took money. I hoarded everything. Okay? I've been terrified about money most of my career. So I would make money and I would hoard it. I would take any. Like, I've always lived on very little money. Like, I don't have a big. I'm not driving Lambos and Ferraris. I was in a Lambo yesterday, so I might be driving one. But, but, but. Because they're so sexy, right? But, but, but I know that I don't want to spend 250 grand on a liability, you know? I'd rather use somebody's $250,000 car and get rid of it. This house. We rent this house. I come here, I use it. We leave. I'll never come back to this house. I know. For sure. Never ever. Okay? The next time I come here, it's gonna be a different house. I get to use all these things. Like, you know, sharing.

It's like the sharing economy. It's. Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah, that's, that's the game. The game is not to own stuff. The game is to use stuff. Right? Even people. Now, I know, I know people are gonna hear that and say, oh, did he, did he just say use people? Yeah, I did. Dude, they should use you and you should use them. Me and Scott are using each other right now and to the degree that we both win in a bigger way.

Good.

Okay. But we're both losing something too. That whole win, win thing. Dude, there's always a loser. You're losing time right now. I'm losing time. I'm losing part of my Friday. You're losing part of your Friday. We both are willing to lose in order to win. Right? So people need to rethink about saving. Saving money. Kios, retirement plans. Why are you guys stashing money in a retirement plan when you hadn't even grown your business yet? See, I don't want a retirement plan, dude. I want a freaking business that freaking takes care of me. So. So. And people are stat like, we don't have a kio at my, my company. Because I don't. I think they're. I think they're freaking criminal. You know? I know. They were created for Wall Street. They weren't created for you. They were created. Some guys on Wall street, those. These guys are brilliant.

Yeah.

They're like, how do we get all the money? These are the conversations they have. They're sitting around, they're having drinks. How do we get all the money? Probably smoking some reefer. How do we get all the money? They're not thinking about. Dude, they're not thinking about selling you a product. Yeah, oh, hey, what we should do, we should get our boys on in Washington to create a little thing where we give them a little benefit if they give us all their dough. And then, and then somebody else had too many drinks and they're like, and make sure they give it to us for 30 years too. I mean, they just start masterminding, bro. And they're like, wow, think we could do that? $3 trillion are sitting in kios right now. It's ignored money. This is money that has been abandoned and ignored that you can't even get access to. And by the way, if you wanted to, you'd be like, I'm going to get fined if I do that. I'm going to tell you, everybody should get that money. Who's got my money? Some of that money's sitting on Wall street right now, ignored. So I'd go get that money and then figure out what can I do to put it to use.

What, what are the keys as, as.

An individual to becoming like a money magnet? You hear that term, you know that you, you, you operated a certain vibration and there's something about you about all that stuff.

It sounds good. Yeah. You know, I mean, the secret, you know, think it and you will it and da, da. And dude.

But are there characteristics of people that you see that just tend to be great?

Making the people that I know, I want to get rich, okay? All these billionaire guys, they don't say they want to get rich, but trust me, if you get close to them and you start asking them, oh, no, I'm, you know, I've loved what I've done. Yeah. Fuck yeah, you loved it. Dude, you made freakin $7 billion. Yeah, you make $7 billion doing something you're gonna be, you're gonna be in love. Like the more money I make in a deal, the more I love the deal.

Is that true?

Right? Because, because, because it takes all the pain away. Right? See, most of us never make enough money to where it never alleviates the pain. So all these people did something they didn't want to do. Everybody is doing something they don't want to do. Most people just don't do enough of the stuff they don't want to do that will actually pay you. So I think the magic is, I think that we're all right. Don't worry about it. I think the magic is like.

To do what your parents told you not to do. Talk about money. We were all taught, don't talk about money.

The guys that are talking about it, like those guys at Wall street, dude, they talk about it every day. They talk about it, they laugh about it, they have jokes about it. They freaking have drinks over it every day. They're like, dude, what can we do to get all the freaking money? And by the way, that doesn't make those guys greedy. It makes them focused. Okay, if you were playing for. If you were playing in the NBA, the NFL, if you were a boxer, if you were Conor McGregor, do you want all the belts? Okay, why is it all right in sports but not in money? Right? So. So I want the belt. I want to be a champion. I want to win, I want to be rich. Just add that to the mantra.

I got to tell you this story. You just reminded me of something. So my 7 year old, Lexi is the best person I know at making money. She is amazing. So I'm gonna give you a story. So we go. We go to Disneyland. Last summer, we're at Disneyland, she walks in and she finds twenty dollar bill. So really cool.

She's like, dad, look at this, look at this.

We go into the park, she finds another couple of bucks on the ground. We go into this ride. I'll never forget it. Big Thunder Mountain. We love this ride. So we're on this ride and she reaches into the back pocket. I'm sitting next to her, she reaches the back pocket, she pulls out a whole bunch of money. And so I start laughing and I go, lexi.

Because she's like this all the time. I said, lexi, how are you so good at making money?

And she looked at me, she goes.

Dad, it's just what I look for.

Exactly.

Right?

For right? She. She sees it. So, like, this happens, like if you've ever bought a car, then all of a sudden you start seeing it everywhere, right? Or you. You know, it's just. My daughter sees Shopkins everywhere, right? Like. Like my wife Elena sees Chanel everywhere. I see apartments everywhere I go, I see apartments everywhere. I cannot. I drive down there. Oh, there's the duplex, there's a quad, there's the eight. Okay. I wonder what they paid for that. I see them everywhere. So it's like, what is. What are you looking for, Right? Are you looking for drama?

Yeah.

Are you looking for. For a crisis? Are you looking for bad news? Are you looking for sickness? Who's got my money, man?

I was with a venture capitalist last week up in San Francisco, and he said to me, he asked me a question. He said, do you think in success, if you were to take success. And part of the formula was intention and what you focus on. And part of it was hard work. He said, what percent is intention? And I said, 99. And he said, you're absolutely wrong. He said that 1% leakage, you know, that lack of focus and that 1% where he said that's where all the excuses, the fear, all that stuff. He's like, you got to be locked in to what it is you want before you go for it, you know.

I think intention is like everything. Yeah, it is like. Like I tell my team all the time. We did an event last year, our first live event ever. We'd never done one before, and I'd been telling them I wanted to do one for a while. And basically what we had been using social. I'd been using social so much and writing articles at Medium and Entrepreneur and wherever. Right. I've been writing so many articles and do so much stream, I'm like, look, we basically deprived the public of a live event. So I said, let's do a live event. And they kept putting it off. And it was December and we had too much going on. I'm like, hey, you know what I've heard? I've heard we've had too much going on long enough. We're doing the event. Okay. In fact, we're not only going to do the event, this was on December 23rd. We're going to do it and deliver it. I'm picking a date. Yeah. In 77 days from idea to the end of the event. Okay. And there's 22,500 people showed up, 10,000 people showed up online. Everybody paid.

The.

The event was a super success. Our budget was. We were focused on 500 people.

Wow.

So that really was about intention. We knew nothing. We didn't know how to do it. And so it goes to talk about the power of intention, but, you know, the people.

Right. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they fail to get started at things because they think they need to have everything, all the resources, everything before they jump in. Right. And so there's that difference between, you know, having resources and being resourceful.

Yeah. I just always say, commit first, figure the rest out later. Yeah, commit first. If you look back over your life, I mean, I know for in mind, like when. When I see something and I say, hey.

And it feels right, like. Like those have been the best things I've ever done in my life. Adding time to those decisions just adds fear, second doubt, you know, when I move with complete intention, even if I don't know what I'm doing, you know, I tend to get where I'M going faster, even though I might make mistakes along the way.

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the what Now Audio Experience. If you need more help with your business, please be sure to visit the what NOW Academy at www.wharnow.academy. we have an incredible community of entrepreneurs and experts that are absolutely committed to seeing you win there. You'll learn what to do now and what's coming next to build a great business. Also, be sure to connect with me on social media at Scott Duffy Media across all channels, or visit my website@www.scottduffy.com. again, thank you so much for joining. Have an amazing day.