Latest / Harder Than Life / You’re Not Broke, You’re Just Playing the Wrong Game

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You’re Not Broke, You’re Just Playing the Wrong Game · Harder Than Life

• 0:00
  You built one of the biggest real estate portfolios in America, and now you're betting heavy on Bitcoin. We bought this monster, beautiful trophy real estate. It's the largest real estate Bitcoin project ever done on planet Earth, and it's done without institutions. We've done 45 projects straight to individual investors. There's no broker fees, no middlemen.
• 0:20
  No fidelity. We're basically democratizing a financial instrument without the banks. Love it. So we're disrupting the financial system, which has basically had its thumb on America for 200 years. The single dumbest thing that people do with their money is to keep it in cash. The dumbest thing people do is they don't make enough money.
• 0:39
  You gotta earn more money. I don't think people should invest first. I think they should earn first. I'm a very judgmental person. So like people that don't make enough money, I judge them as like, it's not that you're inferior. It's that you have your priorities screwed up. The more success you get, the more problems you have. Maybe, maybe really it's just different problems rather than what's the gas cost in my car? What's the gas cost in my plane? The problems aren't going away for any of this. At the end of the day, it's not about the watches and the money and the vacations. It's about like, do I feel good about what I'm doing?
• 1:09
  My ups and downs are not crashes and car wrecks, you know, going to jail. Now they're like, nah, I didn't hit my target. The biggest threat to AI is going to eliminate all excuses. Everybody's gonna have access to the same data. You will have zero excuses.
• 1:27
  I'm Kelly Siegel, and this is Harder Than Life, a podcast about self-love, self-awareness, business, and health. We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple, practical advice you can start using today. Let's get living. Welcome back to the Harder Life Podcast. Today, we have a real treat for you. Grant Cardone is a private equity fund manager, real estate investor, and CEO of Cardone Capital and Cardone Training Technologies, Inc.
• 1:53
  He owns and operates more than seven privately held companies and oversees a multifamily real estate portfolio valued at over $5 billion. Yeah, that's with a B. Recognized as one of the top crowdfunders in the world, Grant has raised more than $1.63 billion in equity via social media.
• 2:12
  A New York Times bestselling author, if you're not first, you're last, and the 10X rule. He's also the driving force behind the 10X global movement. With over 35 years of business experience, Grant is a global leader in sales training, entrepreneurship, and wealth building, reaching millions through his platforms, events, and philanthropic work. Thanks for being here, my new friend. Hey, thank you so much. I remember when I couldn't get an introduction to anything, not too long ago, by the way.
• 2:42
  The entire time I was reading that, I'm thinking, holy cow, this dude is awesome. So thanks for being here. We're going to have a good time. We're going to talk about a lot of things. But what's really on my mind is I happened to look at my portfolio yesterday of Bitcoin. Yeah. And we're going to talk heavy on Bitcoin. You built one of the biggest real estate portfolios in America, and now you're betting heavy on Bitcoin. What do you know that 99% of the people don't? And why is ignoring it going to make them broke? Yeah.
• 3:11
  Well, one thing is like, I am a skeptic about everything, by the way. I'm a skeptic about saving money, investing money, the stock market. I am a very skeptical person. That doesn't make me right. I'm just telling you, it's either a liability for me or an asset or maybe at times both. I was given Bitcoin. My introduction to Bitcoin was I was given 115 pieces. Yeah. In 2012, it was 500 bucks.
• 3:39
  There was a group that wanted to hire me to speak in Las Vegas to their sales team. And they called and said, hey, we want Grant to speak. We see he's in Vegas anyway. We don't have any money. We can't pay him money, but we can pay him this thing called Bitcoin. The president of the company said, absolutely not. The COO said no. Like they asked twice. And the third time I heard about it.
• 4:04
  And I said, guys, I'm already in town anyway. Just say yes. Like, it wouldn't have mattered, dude. It could have been like, we have a piece of art we're gonna trade grant. Or it could have been Ethereum or Ripple. I said, yes, do it. I'm in town anyway and I wanna help people. And if these people think enough of me to have me at their event, let's do it. So we took it, I said yes to it. That was the first thing. Even though I didn't understand it, which I highly recommend people. Like if you don't have to pay for it, say yes to it. It's not herpes.
• 4:35
  You can always get rid of it, right? And the second thing I did right was I didn't get rid of it. I accepted it like a gift. And I said, okay, let me learn about this thing I don't know about. And then over the last 12 years, I started slowly adding Bitcoin. I watched it do its little thing, its volatility. And then about three years ago, I started using some of the cash flow of our real estate to purchase Bitcoin.
• 5:04
  A year and a half ago, I was in a debate room on Spaces where the debate was real estate, Bitcoin, or stock. I was on the, they had me on the real estate piece. And I came away from that argument. Why debate? Why not have all three of them? So I went and met with Mike Saylor in January. In five months, we created five different funds that have been fully subscribed, and
• 5:29
  where they're real estate and Bitcoin combined. We're combining the best of two worlds, an old world asset that cash flows and depreciates and has great tax write-offs with Bitcoin. We're fusing the two together, merging them into an organization or LLC.
• 5:45
  allowing people to invest in that. So we get cash flow, write offs, we get appreciation from the Bitcoin and the rent from the real estate. We're buying best in class real estate combined with best in class money. Why would our listeners, if they ignore this, why are they gonna be left behind?
• 6:00
  You're going to be left behind because money's being, I don't have one, $1 on me. I don't have any cash on me today because I'm like, I'm converting all my cash to assets, to real assets that are limited in quantity. So this idea that, you know, you're, you're going to save, save your money in my lifetime. Money's lost 91% of its value. If you saw this as a stock graph, you would never, ever save it.
• 6:22
  When you leave it at Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Merrill Lynch or wherever you're leaving your money, you're not saving it. It's being destroyed on a daily basis. So there's no such thing as saving. People need to rethink what they know about money. Nobody needs to take my advice. I'm just saying if you just simply numbers don't lie. So if you merely people lie, but but numbers don't lie. The middle class in America is not today the middle class of 1980s.
• 6:49
  or 1970. They're a suffering group of people. It's the largest, most oppressive group of people in this country. They don't have enough money income. They don't have enough money to pay their bills. They don't have enough money for savings. They don't have enough money for emergencies. Their retirement accounts are 401 IRAs. All that is going to disappoint
• 7:07
  hundreds of millions of people. So people need to start relooking at how else could I invest where I don't lose my money and it grows and it outpaces inflation. And I think that's where they'd be left out if they don't take advantage of some of the things you're sharing with people. The single dumbest thing that people do with their money is to keep it in cash. Is that what you're saying? 100%. The dumbest thing people do is they don't make enough money. You got to earn more money. You got to earn more money. I don't think people should invest first. I think they
• 7:37
  Like, just go get some fiat. The second thing they're going to do is what they do with the fiat. Okay. Like, what are you going to do with it now that you have it? Like, a lot of people know how to get it. They don't know how to keep it. And you can't keep it in a bank. When you keep it, the bank doesn't even keep it, as you know. Yep. You know, you drop off 100 grand at Wells Fargo, that money's being redistributed to people like myself before the day ends. Right.
• 8:00
  The money's gonna be lent to me. It's not kept at the bank. You know, it's ironic. I didn't get, I got my first Bitcoin gifted to me too, but it wasn't a hundred and, did you say 115 or 150? 115. 115, yeah, it wasn't, I got 10 and it was my, one of my coworkers just, hey, we're gonna need this. I own an IT cybersecurity firm. And he's like, we're gonna need this one day. And I kept them. It's like looking at him going, wow. We got him at 400 bucks.
• 8:26
  So it's, but you know, that's at 115. Have you sold any of them or at all? No, no. We've never sold any. We, we, we accumulate it. We probably have 2000 Bitcoin now across our real estate portfolio. So let's keep going down that Bitcoin. You start off skeptic. You get, you gave it, you, we got given to you. What did you do the 30 days after you realized you're onto something with this Bitcoin?
• 8:50
  Well, it took me more than 30 days, right? So I've just been watching it since 12. So I've been studying it kind of as a spectator, as a skeptic, then more of as a spectator, like what's really going on here? Then you start thinking about, okay, I know money's being destroyed. I hate the stock market. Whoa. I hate it. It makes no sense to me. The whole thing is bizarre. I feel like I'm in a casino every time I look at it.
• 9:18
  You know, when you have 500 stocks on the S&P 500 and 493 of them, you know, are losers. Seven of them are winners. Seven of them are carrying the entire 500. And they replace companies, as you know. If the company's not doing well, they'll just take it out of the top 500 and replace it with a company that's doing well. So I've never enjoyed the stock market. I like real things that I can touch, real things that are limited in quantity, real things that are scarce that I know can't be easily reproduced.
• 9:47
  So trophy real estate and Bitcoin combined, both those things have those attributes. Let's play devil's advocate. Let's reach into your skeptic a little bit. So if Bitcoin crashed 40% tomorrow, walk us through exactly what happens in your portfolio the next day, the next month, and the next year. Well, my real estate can't fold 40% because it's rental income real estate in great locations. So if there's basically, this is what the real estate looks like.
• 10:15
  It looks like this blue line down here, like we just bought this. We made this acquisition of 12 deals. We have a billion dollars worth of real estate. That's a blue line. That's how it'll grow. And we add Bitcoin to that. That's the orange line. We'll add the Bitcoin. The Bitcoin is going to do its volatility. The Bitcoin, the orange could blow through the blue line. I still have my blue line.
• 10:36
  I still have my real estate. You're hedging the bet with each one. We fuse both of them together. That's beautiful. So this has never been done. It's never been done at scale. But there's going to be a big deal here. I'm going to literally change the way people invest in real estate. It's not a concept. We have 12 deals done with a billion dollars of real estate and a couple hundred million dollars of Bitcoin. By the end of the year...
• 10:59
  I'm going to try to make that a billion dollars of real estate and a billion dollars of Bitcoin sitting in the same fund and taking it public. Okay. You keep saying do both, but I'm going to, again, keep going down that path of devil's advocate. What's riskier, owning zero Bitcoin or zero real estate? Well, you know, my real estate's paying for my Bitcoin. But if the average, Joe, the average listener to this right now, which one should they be looking at? I know you say both and they can invest with you to do both.
• 11:28
  But if they're doing it small time on their own, which one should they be looking at? Well, you can't really do real estate small. Like if you're going to go do real estate, if you're not going to scale a real estate portfolio, just leave it alone. Otherwise, you're going to become a manager. And I'm not suggesting people do anything with me. They can or they can't, whatever they want to do. I'm not shilling my product. But if you're going to go buy two units, leave real estate alone. It's going to beat the shit out of you.
• 11:55
  It's just not worth it. You're going to be picking up checks, handling evictions, bed bugs, termites and toilets. And like, it's a pain in the ass. But if you could scale and have yourself a couple of hundred units and in a great location over time, those units every 10 years rents a double in this country. And as the rent goes up, the value of the property pops. And so those rents could be going up simply because we just keep printing money.
• 12:20
  That could be the potential. Now, if I was a young guy, 25, 28 years old, and I only had 500 bucks, what would I do with it? I wouldn't invest in either one of them. I would invest in myself to make myself better to figure out how to go pick up 5,000. And I'd keep investing in myself until I became somebody that people wanted to give money to.
• 12:40
  Using the 10X rule, Grant, how would you start with one or two? You said don't start with one or two, but you've got to start somewhere. How would you take it from one or two properties and get it to the $100 that you- Yeah, I would start with 32 units. I'd find 32 units that are $200 too low.
• 12:58
  meaning they're rented below market. Let's say the rent should be 1400 and they're only 12. I'd find 32. If you multiply 32 times 200 times 12 divided by the cap rate, that's a million, 1 million, $280,000 of profit. Boom. You just heard it.
• 13:13
  first on a hundred and a light pocket. That is actually brilliant. So settle the debate for me. And Grant, you're going to meet my girlfriend on the cruise. It's a debate that we have. And it was something you said. And I'm like, see, he said it. That home ownership is a bad investment. And I broke it down for she is now I will tell you she is a real estate broker. So she's going to be a pro real estate. And I said, you this I've run it all the numbers every single time. I don't see how owning a home a good investment at all.
• 13:41
  I mean, she's got to defend the dog food she's selling, right? But she doesn't have to eat it. What real estate brokers and agents should do is they should be buying the real estate, not selling it. You guys should be owning it. Like you're out there selling something that you should be buying.
• 13:57
  But if you can't buy it in scale, don't do it. A single family home is not an investment. It is. I mean, you could call it an investment, but that doesn't make it an investment. You can call it a bus, but it doesn't make it a bus. You can call a boy a girl, but it's still not a girl. A house is a place to live. End of story.
• 14:16
  And I don't know where along the way personal financial planners said that this was an asset because it's not anywhere considered an asset. How do you suppose the Florida property taxes? That would be very interesting, number one. Number two is that's what I think that they meant by the American dream. It's if you can get.
• 14:37
  to retirement age, if you've followed the American dream and you own your home and you don't have, that's why I think it's a sucker's bet owning a house because you got to pay taxes on something you've already paid for. The whole concept is that you don't- You're paying taxes and you hadn't even sold it.
• 14:54
  It's unrealized capital gains is what it is. And I don't know why Americans, man, we used to fight over a 1% T-tax. Now the American people, they just call it something different and the American people take it. This is how a house works. Okay. Yep. That's what I wanted to ask you. Thank you. There's 7% on the mortgage. Okay. Seven. It's not one year. It's 30 years.
• 15:19
  So this is how the math works. And look, numbers just don't lie. Seven times 30, that's 210% you have to make on that house. You'd have to make 210 to pay the interest back to Bank of America. There's 2%, maybe a little less than that, times 30%.
• 15:36
  That's 60%. That's for property taxes. I might be high depending on where you live. It's 1%, probably 1% for maintenance times 30. That's 30%. That's 210, that's 300% right there. And I haven't furnished the place. HOA fees in Miami, you're moving down here. HOA fees could be anywhere from 500 bucks a month.
• 16:01
  I got a place, I'm looking at it right now out of my window. It's $9,000 a month for the HOA, the Homeowners Association fees. Nine grand a month. I'll never get that money back. Okay? So HOA fees or whatever they are. Let's see. What else do I have? I know I have- Upkeep. Upkeep. Well, upkeep, of course, you're going to have that probably in the rental too. So we're going to keep that out of it. But we have PMI. PMI is one of the most-
• 16:28
  terrible prostitute i never understood it to be honest with you we're going to charge you more to the people that are the higher risk
• 16:35
  Well, we can't afford a loan. We're going to give you a loan under 20% down. And we're going to bang you with a point and a quarter or a point and a half to insure your loan. Now, this is what should happen. This one and a half, what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should do is they should convert this PMI to Bitcoin. It would change the payments by about $100 a month. The guy could still afford it. If you can afford this home, you can afford the home.
• 17:00
  They would basically pay in one and a quarter on $400,000 loan. It's going to be $600 a month. No, it's not going to be that much. $60 a month. Because this piece of paper is worth nothing to the owner. There's going to be 45%.
• 17:14
  All these are things you can't get away from. Now, you could pay cash for the asset, the asset, but then you just pay $400,000 for a house that you could have bought $400,000 worth of Bitcoin, or you could have bought $400,000 worth of rental income property. You're paying to live someplace. A home should be treated like a plane, jail, or a hospital. Get in and get out. Rent where you live.
• 17:39
  Okay. Rent where you live and have all your money invested in something that pays you back or that can appreciate faster than your value in the marketplace. Oh man, you guys are getting a masterclass. Grant, I can't wait to get around you more because you're actually changing my ideas. I'm coming down in two weeks. We're going to be looking at houses. I may just rent and it's going to drive my girl nuts. You can rent. Let me just say this, Kelly, you can rent in this city right now, Miami, New York,
• 18:06
  Boston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, like all the major cities you can rent. And I know for sure in Miami, you will rent, you will pay half of what the guy that owns the property is paying. Wow. Wow.
• 18:19
  There's nobody that owns a single family home in Miami or Fort Lauderdale that makes money on that home. They're losing money on a monthly basis. Wow. Let's talk about that $230 million Boca deal that you just did. What did you see in that property that everyone missed? Well, no, no. Everybody saw what I saw. They just didn't get control of it the way I did. So you're saying act fast. He who hesitates masturbates. Yeah, exactly. Well, what I did on that deal, that deal went to bankruptcy.
• 18:48
  The project's been in place for 17 years. I don't know if you have the images of it. We'll flash it up on the teaser. We don't have it right now. Because it is absolutely magnificent, man. This is 366 units, Boca Raton, best location in all of Boca. And that's one of the things that we pride ourselves on buying. We bought best location asset.
• 19:11
  First, first location. And then the asset quality second. This is best in class asset, best location, surrounded by $40 million homes. We bought 366 units for $235 million. It was going to bankruptcy. So what I did was I went to the courts and filed what's called a stalking horse contract. Really? And a stalking horse, basically, I made an offer. I said, look, I'll pay $230 million for the asset.
• 19:41
  I'm putting $20 million down. I'll close 10 days later with all cash. Okay. And the stocking horse basically suggests to the courts that they accept your stocking horse, that if anybody else comes in, they have to match my bid and my terms. That means they'd have to put $20 million to be part of the auction and they'd have to close 10 days later with all cash. So we basically excluded the marketplace.
• 20:10
  From being able to participate. And we're awarded the deal on July 12th, July 12th, closed on like literally 10 days later. And we're going to add $100 million of Bitcoin to that transaction. Stalking horse. That is crazy. I never even heard of that. That's great. Yeah, yeah. After 30 years, you learn tricks. Tricks of the trade, you know. I tell my daughter, she's 16 all the time. I was like, man, I've made every mistake in the world. It's not that I'm smarter. I'm wiser because I've screwed it all up. Just listen to us.
• 20:39
  Yeah. Yeah. Well, I saw that on Instagram. Like, I don't know more than you. I've just made more mistakes than you have. Absolutely. And thank God we weren't around when we didn't have cell phones back when we were kids. I would be in jail for sure.
• 20:54
  What would you rather own? The perfect $500 million property or 10 $50 million good enough deals and why? Yeah, I'd probably rather own 10 $50 million deals that just in your example, okay? Yeah. Because one $500 million deal has fewer buyers. When you exit, a deal can be too big to where you can like, can get to where only a handful of people can buy. You want a bigger audience, right?
• 21:20
  And so like we go after really big deals because we know there's going to be fewer buyers. Makes sense. Jesus. You're getting a masterclass today. Thanks, Grant. I mean, the better thing is to have $10, $50 million deals and a half a billion dollar deal.
• 21:35
  We're not being greedy or nothing, but I like, you know what I like about it? That little devious smile you just gave says all about you. You're not a good poker player. I know how you are. Yeah. My first deal was $3,000 down, Kelly, on a, uh, the house was $78,000. I put three grand down.
• 21:53
  I financed $75,000. I didn't think the bank was going to give me a loan. I closed the deal like I was going to move in. I never moved in. I rented it to Jana, this girl I knew. She rented it. I made $200 a month on Jana and got other services. She had a sister that was hot. There we go. So, dude, I put $3,000 down. I was making $2,400 a year on that rental. I'm like, I'm going to get rich doing this.
• 22:17
  Like $3,000, I'm going to get my money back. In 14 months, I'll have my down payment back. And that was my first deal. My second deal, I deal with no money down. My third deal, I quit doing the single families. And my third deal was 48 units. Wow. And I was off to the races. How did you raise $1.6 billion from 20,000 investors? Like what's the single phrase or story that closes that many deals? I'm buying the asset.
• 22:44
  I'm doing this whether you come in or not. I'm going direct to investors. I don't use banks. I don't use institutions. I don't take a knee or kiss the ring. And if you want to come, if you want to invest with me, invest with me. You have no say so. My family is going to buy this asset regardless. And if you want 1% of it or 2% of it or 4% or 5%, grab it. You'll have no say so. You got to believe in me and you got to believe in the asset and believe the story.
• 23:10
  And then we let people that wanted to do it to be limited partners to come in. That's the abundance mindset, people. Abundance. It's not coming from fear or scarcity. He's just, here it is. Take it. That's a confidence that's been here, done that. And I love everything about that. What's the one business decision that instantly 10x your income? And why didn't you do it sooner?
• 23:33
  Well, man, there's a lot of those, bro. There's like, my story's long. I've been running the game for 42 years since I was 25 years old. I cleaned up out of a treatment center. The first 10X for me, bro, was cleaning up. I didn't put any questions in that, but that's what changed my life, Grant. I just, one day, I was in Key West, Florida.
• 23:55
  sipping on whiskey new year's 2019 i just said what's life like without this and i just did 90 days and then i loved it and i took another 90 days and in six months into it i'm like i was fourth of july and i'm looking around all my buddies and i'm like all right i'm gonna drink and then i went no i'm not
• 24:14
  And I haven't touched it since. Six and a half years later, my life is, everything has gotten better. So you went there. So I wasn't really going to ask, but I want to hear about it. Yeah, drugs, drugs were a problem for me. I was introduced to drugs when I was 15 years old.
• 24:29
  And by the time I was 16, I was a daily drug user. Anything, anything and everything. I was like, it was like this good kid just fell off the charts. I would spend nine and a half years on drugs every day and finally beat it when I was 25. That was the first cleanup. That was the first real 10x. Okay. I went from being a deadbeat, lost my reputation to, okay, I'm going to get my shit together. Okay.
• 24:53
  And I'm going to become a business person. I'm going to learn business. And I'm going to give back to the community for the next five years from 25 to 30. All I did every day was work on my business or improve myself or three, help somebody else. That was all I did every day.
• 25:09
  Thank you for going there, brother. That's... Yeah. Guys, if you guys are having even one or two drinks, I mean, you can look at any of the studies. Huberman has it. It just ain't winning. Drinking drugs. And even if it's cannabis, guys, it's... He told you that's... Bet on yourself. And I'm living proof. Six and a half years, I've doubled everything in my life. And...
• 25:30
  Everything has gotten better and smoother. No chaos, nothing. I'm going to go on a cruise with Grant and his beautiful wife, and we'll see how we start doing business together. But talk about that. What was the turning point? Like, it sounds like you might have hit rock bottom. What happened there?
• 25:45
  lot of rock bottom program any when people say i hit rock bottom i'm like how many though like there's boom i think i hit rock bottom and then they're like oh no i can go lower than that that's that's the problem with rock bottoms they have they have lower levels look i tried to quit every day for for for 10 years and and then one day i quit and it worked oh man i don't even know why i was a loser bro like i was this this is why i'm so hard on other people
• 26:12
  You know, I'm like, I tell people the way it is. Keep going on that because I have the same problem and I didn't realize that those two are good. Like once you've been able to say no to that and you've overcome that, I think you can do anything. Yeah. Like it's hard. Like yesterday was a first, once a year, I feel like having a drink and I don't, but yesterday was one of those days.
• 26:32
  Just, man, life is like this, Grant, for me, and I'm sure it's like that for you. It's ups and downs and ups and downs. The beauty part about the downs is you know an up is coming. But I feel like I've been in a couple a year down, but my down is anybody but you would trade their downs for mine. I don't really have problems, but I feel like I do.
• 26:53
  Yeah. I love hearing that, man. Yeah. They're just different, right? They're different. You know, I hear people say, oh, rich people, rich people aren't happy. I'm like, I know poor people that aren't happy. Successful people have more problems. You know, the more success you get, the more problems you have. Maybe, maybe really it's just different problems.
• 27:11
  You know, it's like rather than what's the gas cost in my car, what's the gas cost in my plane? It's just a different problem. I mean, it's the problems aren't going away for any of this. At the end of the day, it's not about the watches and the money and the vacations. And it's about like, do I feel good about what I'm doing? That's my up and down. My ups and downs are not crashes and car wrecks, you know, going to jail.
• 27:36
  Now they're like, nah, I didn't hit my target. And I'm disappointed. Or I don't have enough time for me to grow the business and handle my kids. There's just different issues, man. But it's all issues. Yeah, we all have them. You know what I love? For me, it's looking in the mirror. And I can see myself right now. It's being proud of who I am and having peace in my heart. And that comes with...
• 28:00
  your partner that you surround that you're with and you you have elena and you've been married for over 20 years yeah what's harder to scale the marriage or a company oh definitely the definitely the marriage dude did i read right brother that you called her for a year straight before she'd go out with you yeah like two weeks ago i was like why did you do that i'm
• 28:24
  Um, but you know, this week it's like, okay, I got the best partner in the world. And, um, yeah, I called her 26 times over 13 months without a return phone call. But guys, you just gave you the cheat code. Consistency, consistency, consistency. That stubbornness pays off guys. And, uh, without being, but you can't be a, you can't be a, you know, if you don't have a good attitude about it, you can't call them and say, why aren't you calling me back? Like, that's going to blow the deal. You got to be light. Yeah.
• 28:55
  You need to be humorous if you're trying to get the chick. You guys that are young out there, you shouldn't even be chasing pussy right now. You got nothing to offer them. You should become the best version of yourself right now. You should get your money right. If I was a woman, I would never go out with a guy that didn't have his money right. You don't have your money right. You don't have your credit right. You don't have your direction right. You don't have your ethics right. Women should not go out with you.
• 29:20
  You cannot take care of anyone. You can't take care of yourself. How are you going to take care of her? And women really ought to make that a criteria. Standards. We heard it first. Grant Cardone, ladies, raise your standards. He's telling you. And that's what Elena made him do until she went out with him. But eventually she did. And here you are 20 years later, just beautiful. What? Is there a disagreement you and she had that actually made your business stronger?
• 29:46
  Yeah, she's always pushing me, man. It's not just me pushing me. She's like, dude, I remember she came to me. You need to be a billionaire. I'm like, what are you talking about? How'd that feel? I was so pissed off about it. I was so angry. I was so angry.
• 30:03
  And I'm like, you don't even know what you're talking about, Elena. Like, you don't know where I'm at right now. You don't know where we're at. You don't, like, I just dumped all this blame on her, right? And all she was trying to do was, like, she believed in me. I don't think either one of us actually knew what a billionaire was or is or what it takes. Yeah.
• 30:25
  But she put it there. She started thinking about what, but what if you could be, and then you planted the seed and then I get agitated. This is, this is the story of the pearl, the oyster and the pebble making the pearl or the cold. It becomes gold. It gets pressure over long periods of time. It gets agitated. Yeah.
• 30:50
  And the next thing you know is you build a oyster. This was not long ago, actually. This was probably 2015, less than 10 years ago. And she put it there. She inspired it.
• 31:01
  And the next thing you know, bro, like, you know, we get there. Fellas, it's a cheat code, man. The woman you pick will make or break you. I learned that the hard way. I was drinking and doing drugs and I was meeting. I always just say, Grant, you'll love this. I was a drunken whore and all I would track was drunken whores. And no wonder I couldn't get my business to grow. Right. And then the moment I got rid of that and then now I have a really someone who adds value and boom, boom, boom. Here we go. Yeah. Good for you, man.
• 31:30
  And look, even when you pick the right partner, even when you pick the perfect partner, it's still going to be work. It's less work than chasing a wrong partner every night. Yes, it is. It keeps you calm and peaceful in your heart and on the mission. So what I've been hearing a lot of is the noise versus signal.
• 31:48
  And that's a lot of noise. The right woman is all signal. Yeah. The other problem with it is like when I was chasing, you know, the poon tank, like, dude, you spend a lot of creativity that could be put in your business. Oh, another gem. Yeah. There's a lot, a lot of energy. There's a lot of wasted energy on chasing the skirt.
• 32:11
  And being in the right place, looking the right way, telling the stories, like you're going to meet them. You're always paying, by the way. There's no payday here. Now, you young guys, the smart hack for the young guys would be go chase a rich one. Go find a 50- or 60-year-old billionaire woman and tag that thing and service it.
• 32:37
  And get in line. Oh, man. This is better than I imagined. Thank you. I mean, you're just the freaking singer. I want to talk for a minute about your daughters. If your daughters could only learn one lesson about money and one lesson about love, what would those lessons be?
• 32:55
  I think the one lesson that would pertain to both of those is communication. If you can communicate, you can have anything you want, including love and money. This is the thing we've stressed with our kids more than anything is the ability for them to communicate with other people, their friends.
• 33:12
  People older than them. My kids are around a lot of older people most of the time. We homeschool our kids and they travel with us in our work. You know, the ability to communicate, to look at somebody in the eyes, shake their hand, be present, duplicate what's being said, be respectful. That's beautiful. I teach my daughter all the time to just that plus, and I don't let her do one word answers. I hate it. One word answers are not allowed.
• 33:38
  Yeah. How was school? Fine. No, we use full sentences in this family. And I have sit down breakfast and dinner with my daughter every day. So we facilitate the communication. My big thing is for her is over and over is self-love. Everything that you require in life, you can supply yourself.
• 33:57
  And I don't want her out trying to, trying to depend on that from anybody other than herself. And that's what we preach here. When was the last time you felt doubt and what got you back on the offense? Yesterday? You tell. Yeah, no, we're, we're, we're, we're, I'm moving into a genre right now that I've never done before. So we're trying to make something happen in a couple of spaces that I haven't done. I'm always experimenting and curious about other things. So,
• 34:28
  This requires me to get around some extremely intelligent people. They tend to make really, really smart people tend to add complexities that are not necessary and that overcomplicate everything. And so I'm in a scene where I don't have any real experience, but I do know that I see things that all the complications. Human beings have a tendency to act to.
• 34:54
  add complexities in order to add value. Lawyers, accountants, financial people, investment bankers, they complicate things in order to say, I'm valuable to you. The people that work at your company do this. I remember I used to ask my mom, I said, mom, how do you make that beans and rice? And she's like, oh, that's complicated. And it was her way of holding on to that thing she could do so well. Dude, I'm in doubt all the time, bro. I don't think it ever goes away.
• 35:22
  That's crazy to me. You're you're 66, 67. Wow. Yeah, you look amazing. I know you're here all the time. What what are some of your non-negotiables? Something that you just it's just an absolute no for you.
• 35:38
  What's your standard? Drugs. Definitely drugs are a no, no, no. Out ethics, degenerates, people that people can say yes to everything. People that live beyond their means, driving a car you can't afford, live in some place you can't afford. Your priorities are mixed up. Like, and I'm a very judgmental person. So like people that don't make enough money, I judge them as like,
• 36:01
  It's not that you're inferior. It's that you have your priorities screwed up. I got to get around you, brother. And dude, that's fine with me, by the way. If somebody doesn't want money, it doesn't affect me anyway, but I'm not doing anything with you. If the two of us go to dinner and I'm the only one with money, that means I got to pay every time. And by the way, the problem is not me paying every time. The problem is you're going to hate my guts for paying every time. Sooner or later, you're going to hate me, dude. That is funny. Because you're going to feel like the exchange is out.
• 36:29
  You're not going to feel good about being. Nobody does. Everybody wants to contribute the same amount. Actually, I believe human beings want to be the most contributive. They want to be like, no, I got this. And because it gives you a sense of like, I'm taking care of the people around me.
• 36:47
  But if you're the only one taking care, you end up with a position of superiority over everybody else, spoken or unspoken, whether it's identified or not. And then those other people are going to feel worse about themselves. So those are some of the things, you know, I try to work out every day. Every day I try to get a workout in. What about sleep? How does sleep look for you? Eight hours. You get eight hours.
• 37:08
  Yeah, I try to. I try to get eight. Yeah, I'm at seven. I can't sleep a minute over seven hours. It drives me crazy. But I'm coming in that 50, and things are just, everything is changing up. Yeah. Yeah, I love naps.
• 37:21
  You know, I love a good 20 minute nap, man. Making me feel better about myself. Thank you. Cause I took one yesterday, 15 minutes. I'm in some sort of transition right now. That's got me, my mind cut. So we're working on this massive AI project right now where I'm trying to bring AI to the masses. I think there's something about growing up.
• 37:39
  so unsafe that I'm trying to make everybody else safe. So everything I do, I just pay it forward. And I'm working on an easy platform that I'm going to just roll out to everybody and say, guys, everyone's afraid of AI or they don't know where the next step is. I got it. And I do have it. It's crazy. We didn't even talk about AI. How are you leveraging AI today to make decisions faster and better? One thing we're doing is we're taking a company public right now.
• 38:07
  And I've never done that before. And man, I can go deep search on Grok or chat and I can have a list of bankers, the people there, different ways to monetization. I can get so much data so fast there. The biggest threat to me in the AI space is not to jobs. The biggest threat, you'll love this. The biggest threat to AI is,
• 38:36
  It is going to eliminate all excuses. Yep. I love it, bro. There will be no group of people that are able to say, I didn't have access. Black, Brown, white, male, female, young, old bro. Like there will be no group that can wave a flag and say, I don't have access to the same data. Everybody's going to have access to the same data. You will have zero excuses. By the way, it will cost you nothing. It'll be delivered in your language. Okay.
• 39:06
  at light speed, for free, and the only reason you don't have it is because you don't want to go get it. So excuses are gone. I love that. That's the single most... People are worried about their... I saw a Microsoft exec can say 30% or 30 million jobs are going to be gone. But it's like before the internet. There's...
• 39:26
  the, the, or I see 1940, six out of 10 jobs that exist today didn't exist in 1940. That's all that's happened. It's going to, it's going to displace, but replace, it's going to enhance. That's right. I do things in minutes that used to take me hours. Yeah. And, and so my platform that we're going to be rolling out gives you all of the platforms together in one pane of glass.
• 39:50
  I don't know how we figured it out, but we like took Ford, GM and Chrysler and got them working together. So you can then move between the Grok
• 39:59
  chat GPT and all of the LLMs simultaneously. And I can build workflows to pull from any one of them. Oh, that's beautiful. I'm going to get, I'll give you, uh, get you access to it. You'll love it. It'll help you guys. Yeah. I use it every day. So we're going to do a this or that. And then, and then a couple of quick lightning questions. I'm probably, I got to come to that fricking. I got to get around you more. My girlfriend will love Elena. And there's so much to learn from you guys. I just, I'm,
• 40:24
  I want to learn. So quick lightning, this or that. And I think I know the answer to this one's business question. 10 loyal $1 million investors or 1,000 loyal 10K investors? The million. Private anniversary getaway or joint business launch with Elena? Nah, probably getaway. Yeah, that's beautiful. I got enough business to stick to.
• 40:47
  8% cap rate in a rough market or 4% in a booming market. 4%. 1,000 Bitcoin or 1 billion in multifamily over the next 10 years. 1,000 Bitcoin, that's a billion dollars, right?
• 41:01
  Yep. A billion dollars in multifamily or a billion dollars in Bitcoin? Yeah. I'd take the Bitcoin today. Right. What do you think it's going to get to? I mean, I think Bitcoin will be, in what period of time? You know, that's a good question. Let's just say in the next 10 years. It'll be, it could be $5 million. $5 million. That's the first I've heard. I heard a million. Oh, no. I think it'll be a million by 2030. Yeah.
• 41:23
  Wow. Yeah. All right. These are going to be fun little fill in the blank ones. And they're quick and easy. And this has been a blast. I hope everybody has learned. I mean, we've touched on everything from relationships, drinking, drugs, Bitcoin, fatherhood, working out, keeping yourself young. We've got it all. So I hope everybody's enjoying it. So fill in the blank. If you don't blank in the next 12 months, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. You don't learn how to love your work.
• 41:53
  How does one learn how to love? That's one of those like self-love. It's not subjective. It's very objective. How does one do that? How do you learn to love? People should quit looking for love in their work and they should learn how to love their work. Work is the greatest. I think one of the greatest gifts God has given us is the ability to sweep a floor.
• 42:17
  Or to take the trash out. Because it's a simple hack to making you feel better immediately. Like, take your trash out and you will feel better immediately. Vacuum your floor, make your bed, clean your kitchen. No matter what it is, by the way, this works on everybody. Finish any task and you will feel better than you felt before you did the task. Nobody ever has a workout and feels bad about it. Ever. Ever.
• 42:45
  You have hit so many one-liners. You're my people. I'm so glad that Val introduced us. You know what I've been thinking about lately? Is that I'm a black sheep in this world. And that I look at life weird. And every single thing. And I'm not man crushing on you, man. Every single thing that you've said, I agree with. We're like-minded, man. That's all. I think most people are good. But I think a lot of people are lazy. And I don't like that.
• 43:14
  I tend to think that people aren't lazy, that they've been made to be lazy, and people around them are allowing them to be lazy. Let's go on tour and freaking kick them in their pants. Yeah, yeah, because if you get around the right people, you won't be lazy. It's an environment, cultural thing. You get around some people that are rocking, you're going to be like, hey, if you want to be part of them, you know you have to rock with them. That's great.
• 43:38
  If tomorrow was your last Instagram post, what's the one message you'd leave for the world? You can do anything, but you can't do everything. Oh, keep going. Because that's the other thing I've been saying in my mind. Saying no, then no more. Yeah.
• 43:56
  Yeah. Walk us through, walk us through that. You got to pick a couple of things and make them work. Like people call me every day. Hey man, why don't you add this? And why don't you do this? I'm like, I can't do that right now. Like what I'm doing right now. I know, I know I'm going to win this race. That I'm in right now. I have a car. I'm committed to it. So I say no to all these opportunities every day.
• 44:17
  Because I got, you know, I got seven vehicles I'm racing already. So. Well, I really appreciate you saying yes to this. This has been massively good for me. And would you like to wrap it up with any final thoughts? And you know what? How do people get? I know that you're laissez-faire laid back with it. How can people invest and find out more about these public investments that you have?
• 44:41
  Yeah, look, if you go to CardoneCapital.com, you'll see the deal we're doing right now. There's a prospectus there. Basically, we bought this monster, beautiful trophy real estate. It's a massive deal. It's the largest real estate Bitcoin project ever done on planet Earth. And it's done without institutions.
• 45:02
  I didn't go to Blackstone and say fund the project. I actually bought it from Blackstone and put this together. We've done 45 projects straight to individual investors. There's no broker fees.
• 45:16
  No middlemen, no Fidelity, no Schwab, none of the trillion dollar companies are involved. I'm so proud of this because we're basically democratizing a vehicle, a financial instrument without the banks. Love it. So we're disrupting the financial system, which has basically had its thumb on America for 200 years.
• 45:37
  So anybody wants to get involved in that, it's going to be a spectacular investment. And we're probably going to take those vehicles public toward the end of this year. As I get to know you more, we didn't talk anything about conspiracy theories. You said two there, the banks and the institutions in Blackstone, which could lead us down a whole rabbit hole of theories. I'll get to know you better. We'll have you back on. And when you do your next book, any plans for another book? And we talk about it every once in a while. It's not what I want to do right now, though.
• 46:06
  We started the conversation off with the cruise. This is for the Cardone Foundation. It's all for donations. So tell about the cruise, and I promise that when we get off here, we will get online and we'll book ours. Yeah, November, what is the date? I think it's the first week of November. No, I think it's the second week. 14th through the 16th, I think. Yeah, okay. You fly into Fort Lauderdale. We rented the entire Ritz-Carlton yacht.
• 46:31
  I call it a Lima. We rented it last year. It's fantastic. I think there's 200 cabins. We took all of them, the whole boats, Cardone and 10X. All the money raised there is for our foundation to help kids that don't have dads.
• 46:47
  And for four days, all we do is play in the sun, eat together, breakfast, lunch, dinner, workout together, entertainment at night. I bring a bunch of my celebrity influencer friends. Sabrina will be there. Rock star Sabrina will be there. And some of her friends. So we just have a blast, dude. It's a real late. You're in shorts in the day and swimsuits.
• 47:17
  My kind of party. And it's my 50th birthday. So let's rock. Dude, we'll celebrate your birthday 100%. I love it, man. Grant, thanks for bringing the fire. Thanks for being genuine, authentic. And I know my listeners got value from today. And please share this episode. Drop us a review and go take massive action today. And until next week, be harder than life.
• 47:41
  Please rate and share this podcast. I'm active on all social platforms and love to hear from my Segal supporters. Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity. Visit TrustNTM.com for more info. Until next week, be harder than life.