Grant Cardone on If You’re Not Going to Fight For It You’re Not Going to Have It and Going from Being a Drug Addict to Becoming the $300 Million Dollar Man

Audio Transcription

What would you say to someone who says, “I don’t have time to get the stuff done?”

Well, then you’ll never have money.

The guest we have on today’s show lost his father from a heart attack when he was just 10 years old and spent the next 15 years of his life confused, lost, and fogged in a world of drugs while searching for his purpose and place in this world, before building a $350 million real estate empire. Today’s guest is the New York Times bestselling author of The 10X Rule. He’s also a man who’s earned over $40 million from social media in just the past 12 months. Our guest today has been featured on Fox Business, The School of Greatness by Lewis Howes and countless media outlets.

This prolific entrepreneur has interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk, Shark Tank’s Daymond John and Steve Harvey, and countless other super successful entrepreneurs while also sharing the stage with Tony Robbins, Sylvester Stallone, and other super-successful entrepreneurs. Today’s guest is also not a big fan of the person, The Wolf of Wall Street movie is based upon, Jordan Belfort.

He’s a  criminal. He’s a convicted criminal that didn’t pay back the people he ripped off, turned on his own people to reduce his time. He’s a criminal, ripped off a bunch of people, admits that he ripped off a bunch of people, never paid the people back and ratted out his boys.

If you are looking for the no nonsense, tough love show taught to you and brought to you by super successful entrepreneurs, today’s show is for you. Today’s interview with Grant Cardone is a game-changing event for so many of you out there, and I cannot wait for you to hear it. On today’s show, he shares with you while you must learn to love what you don’t like. Again, he shares with you why you must learn to love what you don’t like. All this and much, much more during our exclusive interview with Grant Cardone.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive Nation. On today’s show, we have an incredible guest, a person that I don’t even understand why he agreed to do this interview. It’s probably because there’s a half a million of you out there listening to the show. It is Grant Cardone on the phone. Sir, how are you.

Dude, that’s why I agreed to it because one, you’ve got a lot of energy. I like your energy, and number two, and you got a big following.

Well, okay, let’s get into the good stuff here. You have had massive success as an author, check, investor, check, sales trainer, check. Where did it all start for you? Walk us through where it started.

You know, it started, like this has just been an accumulation of years of work, so it didn’t start with a plan. There was no like, oh, I’m going to be … I mean, I remember when I was a kid. I was like, I want to write books one day. I was maybe six years old. Because my dad was doing calligraphy and so I just think that I’m like, “Oh, that’s cool to be a writer,” you know? My dad was a stockbroker, so I watched my dad take care of the family. That was the first and foremost thing every day. He wasn’t trying to get rich to be a show-off. He was just trying to take care of his family so that definitely molded me. He was a hard worker. That molded me. He died when I was 10. That definitely had an effect on me. Big one. Then I kind of wandered around for the next 15 years, got lost because of not having a dad. That’s definitely affected my path in wanting to help people. Then here I am today, dude, like on your show. Who would have known?

Well, I have to ask you this because I lost my dad three years ago to Lou Gehrig’s disease. I’m 39 so I lost him when I was a 36-year-old guy. How did your dad pass? I mean, what happened?

Oh, he had a heart problem. There’s a joke about heart conditions. My dad died of a heart attack. A guy told me once, it’s like, “Everybody dies of a heart attack, man.” My dad had a 10-year heart condition and it was before they had perfected transplants. He was in intensive care 21 days. The day they were letting him out, he died. I was 10. He was in Houston, I was in Lake Charles where we lived. It was very, very traumatic for the family. I remember mowing the grass in Lake Charles, Louisiana, like a week after my dad died, thinking, this can’t be true. This has got to be a dream.

I’m going to wake up and find out my dad’s still alive. I’m praying for it, the whole deal. I’m going through denial, you know? Then it was probably, I mean, to be honest with you, I got stuck in that loss. I didn’t have a way to handle the loss, at 10, and nobody around me really … We weren’t emotionally intelligent enough to know how to handle it. I was probably 45 before I handled that. I was in grief for like 35 years.

I think that’s a great place to start because so many of our listeners, we have all gone through adversity. I used to stutter as a kid. I couldn’t even talk until I was 13. Now I do a podcast. Your father passed and you dealt with that. When did you feel like you were finally gaining traction with your career, where you’re finally getting some sort of proof that you were, in fact, getting ahead?

Well man, there are so many places along the way that helped with that. Look, I went to a treatment center for drug addiction when I was 25. I was beat up bad. I was physically beat up, spiritually beat up. I was bankrupt in every way possible. There was one tiny little idea that I was going to be somebody, but I was using drugs every day, so I was just a loser, total, 99% loser. There was this little spark left. A guy got me into a treatment center. I got off the drugs for 28 days, came back and I threw all that negative energy into a career, into becoming a salesperson. I didn’t know anything about sales. I didn’t like sales. The first victory for me was getting off the drugs. The second victory was learning how to be good at something I didn’t like doing, which was a sales job.

What was it? Were you selling cars? What was your [crosstalk 00:07:42]?

Yeah, I was in the automobile industry.

That’s beautiful. Okay, now, so I traveled to San Jose, it was about six years ago. I went out there and there was a business called Mike Counsil Plumbing based in San Jose, and in the Silicone Valley area. Your posters are everywhere in there, bro. Mike Counsil Plumbing, you should shout them out on social media at some point. They love you. They drink your Kool-aid. They’re into it. [crosstalk 00:08:03] They’ve had success as a result of it. If everybody Google searches, Mike Counsil Plumbing, you’ll find that the company based in San Jose, and they put the posters everywhere, they drink the Kool-aid, they implement the systems.

Can you share with us about how Cardone Training Technologies goes into a company like that and fixes their sales culture, because they swear up and down that you have changed the game for them?

Yeah. Well, we’ve done that for thousands of companies. It’s an interesting story because the very thing that at 25, literally saved my life, was the thing that I hated the most, I think it’s really important, even today, 30 years later, every time I see something I don’t like, I’m reminded, hey bro, don’t frown on everything you don’t like because sometimes what you don’t like is what you need to lean into.

Mm. You’re saying you got to lean into the thing that you don’t like. In your case it was sales. Is that what it was? Sales, you didn’t like sales?

Yeah. I hated it. I had been in like four or five sales jobs before this. It was terrible. I hated it. I hated people. I hated talking to people. I hated trying to tell a story. I felt like I had to be subservient and suck up to the buyer. I hated the idea of rejection.

Okay. I want to ask you this. For somebody out there who says, “Grant, I want to be successful. Clay, I’ve seen you’ve started several multimillion dollar companies. They’re doing well. I’ve seen the success of Grant. I’ve seen the success of you guys,” because I see this all the time. They say, “I want to be successful, but I just am afraid of sales.” What would you say to somebody who says, “I want to be successful. I’m just so afraid of sales?”

Well, you’re never going to be successful.

Yep, there it is.

There’s no company in the history of the world that ever made it without sales. It is the number one most important thing of a company. It is the first line of defense on every profit and loss statement. I’ve had the fortune of working with thousands and thousands of companies, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. When you fix the top line, you fix everything.

True.

Middle-class America is trying to fix the bottom line by lowering their expenses. You can only lower your expenses so much.

Truth.

The thing that people should be putting attention on, the company that you mentioned earlier … I’ve worked with some of the biggest companies in the world. I’m talking about the biggest, the top five. When they bring me in, they want to fix one thing. We want another billion dollars worth of sales, a billion, not a million. These are multi-billion dollar companies. They don’t want to grow a little bit. They want to capture the market-

They don’t want to grow a little bit. They want to capture market share. I think you asked me, how did I go from hating something to build an a business around it. It’s an interesting phenomenon. I don’t know what to tell people except, man, if you frowned on … I’ll give you another example, Facebook. The first time I saw Facebook, I thought it was a complete waste of time. I said, “This is stupid. Social media is ridiculous.” It was that same kind of, that frowned upon, “I don’t need this” same kind of kind of energy that I had around the sales thing. And when I had that experience, the self-awareness of this rejection of this idea, of social media, I reminded myself, “Hey, remember how you felt about the sales thing? Turned out pretty good for you.”

So you’ve turned the thing that you don’t like into a great weapon for you.

Yeah, yeah.

[Remarkable 00:12:00].

Yeah, today I’m probably … The first time I saw social media, I thought it was a complete waste of time. I’m probably one of the top three earners on social media today in the world.

Do you ever talk about how much money you actually earn on social media? Is that a taboo subject?

No, it’s not taboo. We’ll probably earn 40 million bucks this year. No, it’s not taboo. We’ll probably earn 40 million bucks this year, but here’s what people don’t know. I 300 million for Cardone Capital, without going to family funds or high network individuals or banks. We crowdfunded 300 million in 25 months.

And that is more than $7. For you out there, that’s more than seven, for anybody out there doing math.

That’s one-third of a billion in cash.

I want to ask you this question here, because in your book, 10X, you boldly encourage readers to assume control over everything.

Yeah.

I’m going to give an example to the listeners out there. Years ago, I got hired by a Maytag store in [inaudible 00:13:09] where sales were terrible. They said, “Can you fix it?” I said, “Yes. What we’re going to do is put out a big tent in front of your store every single Saturday. It’s right over there by the mall in . Put out the big tent, we’ll put the tent out. We’re going to say, explosive sales or big discounts or great value, whatever. We’re going to put that up, put out inflatables and we’re going to draw a crowd and people are going to drive by and buy more crap. It’s going to happen. We’re going to give cookies to first-time customers and we’re going to ask for Google reviews until our heads explode.” And we did it and it worked, but there was so much pushback of people going, “You mean we’ve got to take all of the appliances and take them outside every week and put the tent out and we got to put the inflatables and we got to post on social media about it and we got to get Google reviews and give people a free cookie? It’s so much work.” Can you help fix a listener out there who wants to blame the economy, racism, sexism, poverty, they want to blame their current circumstances for their current reality. Talk to them about assuming control of everything.

Yeah. Well, look, if you want to blame somebody else, you’ll always have somebody easily to blame: Trump, Pelosi, Pelosi and Trump. It’s endless. You will always have someone else to blame. It’s an endless list. And it looks like it’s real, but nothing’s going to change or improve until you say, “Hey, this got nothing to do with anybody but me.” People blame time, the number one source of all problems is time and the second one is money. “I don’t have time and I don’t have money.” And the reason people don’t have time and money, and I know this because I used to not have time and money. When I started to invest in time and money, I ended up with time and money. The very things that you want the most, you got to use them to have them. Energy, you got to use energy to have energy. And I just don’t blame anything anymore. I’m like, “I’m responsible.” Even if I’m not responsible, I’m responsible. You know what I’m saying?

Yeah, you have to own it and I think this is powerful for the listeners because my partner, Dr. Zoellner, owns a sleep center. He also owns the largest optometry clinic in Oklahoma, the largest auto auction in Oklahoma. He also owns a bank called Regent Bank. And at his businesses, where he does very, very well, one of the things that we run into a lot is people on the outside will reach out for mentorship and coaching and you tell them what to do and they go, “I want to get it done, Grant Cardone, but that would have take me more than 40 hours and I usually take a lunch for one hour a day, so you really only have 35 hours a week, and my doctors told me I need to sleep at least nine hours a day and I really like Netflix and The Masked Voice, that’s a great show. It’s The Voice, but he was wearing a mask. I got to do that. And then, I got to take my kids to soccer. And then I got to go,” and people said they don’t have time. What would you say to someone who says, “I don’t have time to get the stuff done?”

Well then you’ll have money. You’re just going to be a victim for the rest of your life. Get used to it.

Get used to it now. Okay, now-

Get a t-shirt, “I’m a quitter.  I’m a little baby. I’m a crybaby. I’m a victim of planet Earth.”

Oh … Now, I have a Christmas gift for you, Grant Cardone. Are you ready for the Christmas gift? Are you ready?

Oh, man, I can’t wait.

Okay. Let me cue it up real quick. This is my Christmas gift. This is a little Wham, Last Christmas, I start off with, it’s rude to give someone a gift without using up holiday music to get in the mojo. I’ve got three guests here on the show who are fans of yours, who’ve read your book, who believe in the Grant Cardone dream here. The first one, his name is Clint Howard and Clint Howard, Clint owns a business called Tulsa Fitness Systems. He’s a client of mine and he reads your stuff. Clint Howard, say hello to Grant Cardone.

Hey Grant, how you’re doing, buddy?

Clint, hey, man, how’s it going, brother? You winning?

I’m winning, sir. I’m a huge fan of yours too, so I love what you’re doing out there.

He’s been self-employed for two decades. He’s doing really well. What question do you have for Mr. Grant Cardone? As his Christmas gift, he gets to answer questions from real people who really do like him.

All right, buddy. I love all your quotes. One of my favorite things that you said was, “I need some new haters. My old ones are starting to like me.”

Yeah.

You speak a lot. I follow you on social media about haters and one thing you said was about, just keep spreading love and I think you said something about just get to the top of the food chain, but can you speak on just haters and how that can affect people and what you do when you have people coming after you?

Yeah. If they’re trying to help you, these people, haters are so ignorant that they don’t understand that the energy they’re using to hate on you, they should be using to promote themselves, but instead they’re promoting the people they hate. They’re the dumbest people on planet Earth. And anybody that ever here has ever hated on something else, the moment you start hating, you become dumb dumb. Hate is just the dumbest energy. It takes tremendous amount of energy, it doesn’t produce anything positive and it typically grows the target of your hate.

There are times, there are things that I will publicly hate on just because I’m trying to make a point that thing is bad, like drugs. Drugs, I hate drugs because drugs just aren’t good for you, so as a person that has a lot of people listening to what I’m saying, I just want to stand up and say, “Hey, drugs aren’t going to help you. They’re not going to make you faster, brighter, smarter or more confident. It’s just not going to happen.” But people that are hating on one another, competition or somebody that you think is a threat, that’s never going to help you, it’s only going to help them.

Yeah.

And the second thing I would say to you is that the haters are always quitters.

Oh, true.

You’re never going to have somebody that hates on Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh, man, Alcoholics Anonymous sucks. He got him a drinking problem. The guy that hates work, it’s because he doesn’t work. I hate money, he quit on money.

Grant, I have a question for you here.

Yeah.

Could you handle another Christmas gift?

Yeah, I can, man. I love it, particularly people if are winning.

Okay. Let me cue this up here, I’ve got to get ready. This is your second gift. I know that you speak publicly and a lot of people tend to cheer for you at your speaking events and we have an office staff here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There’s about 75 or a hundred people in our building, actual employees and they have jobs, that kind of thing and I rounded them all up and I thought we’d have them cheer for you on the count of three. So, three, two, one, and …

There you go. That’s some love from Tulsa. I don’t know if you can hear that on the microphone there, Grant Cardone.

Man, that’s beautiful.

Oh, they love you man. They love you in Tulsa, on and on.

And they go on and on, too, that’s amazing.

Yeah, they’re really feeling it here. Oh, man. Nevermind, there appears to be some looters. Maybe these aren’t my employees at all. All right. All right, they’re big fans here in Tulsa. So that’s Christmas gift number two. Now, Christmas gift number three, Jordan Roberts, I’ve worked with his business for a long time, called Master Machine, a great company. They make parts that are actually used by Tesla. They make parts that are used by Tesla and they also own An Elephant In The Room, men’s grooming lounge franchise, one of our franchises. Jordan, what question do you have for Mr. Grant Cardone, sir?

Hey Grant Cardone. How’s it going?

Good, sir.

Hey, you have a notable quotable that says, “A good attitude costs nothing but a bad attitude costs everything. With being an extremely busy guy, can you speak about the type of people that you choose to surround yourself with, that you choose to put in your circle and why you do that?

Yeah, I think it’s a great, I love that quote, by the way. A good attitude costs you nothing. People always think that it takes money to make money, but it doesn’t. The things that cost nothing are the things that actually make and define a person. Courage and commitment and creativity, those things don’t cost anything, so a good attitude doesn’t cost anything, a bad one will cost you everything and I’m going to flip your question a little bit because the first thing people need to know how to do is how to get rid of the people with the bad attitudes. Everybody wants to add but if you add and don’t subtract, you got to get rid of the bad to get the good. A lot of companies can’t hire great people, they even say that, “I can’t get good people.” I say, “Dude, because you keep bad people.”

Somebody is saying right now, they’re saying, “But what about unemployment?” Let’s talk about that because if someone doesn’t do a good job, I fire them. I know you fire them. When they say, “But what about unemployment?” They say it like that too, “What about employment?” What would you say?

Well, what about it? I don’t know what you’re saying, what about it? Shit, everybody wants-

I mean, I don’t know what you’re saying [inaudible 00:22:03] Everybody that wants a job’s working. There’s probably too many people working right now.

I agree. The unemployment rate should be higher.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should say it like this. There’s probably too many people with jobs not working.

I agree with that. Let’s say that we fired… Let’s talk about difficult family. Let’s say you got a crazy uncle, crazy cousin, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, whatever. How do you fire crazy family? Or, do you recommend firing crazy family? Do you let them just come over and make Cardone Enterprises crazy?

No. How do I fire him?

Yeah, what would you do?

Publicly.

Oh, amen.

I’d make sure everybody sees it.

Oh, preach it please. Preach the good news. This is good.

You never want to waste a good firing. You want to make it a public event. It needs to be an execution in the square.

Amen. Preach it. This is good, because this is not hyperbole. You really do this, and I really do this. I love firing idiots. Keep telling us more. This is so hot.

Yeah, yeah, no. You got to let people know, “Hey, look. This is a great place to work and we’re going to keep it great.”

I love this.

We’re not going to have tents in our neighborhood.

Oh, this is good. You’re on fire right now. This, right here, that is the knowledge bombs that our listeners need. Now, I have a rapid-fire section here, where a lot of times, I like to ask a great guest like you a bunch of questions real fast, okay? I’m at five question in three minutes, okay? Rapid-fire, here we go. Machine gun style. Question number one, in your book, you talk about obsession is not a disease, it’s a gift. People always tell me, “Clay, you’re so anal. You’re so focused. You’re so…” Yes, that’s why I’m successful. Obsession is not a disease, it’s a gift. Break it down.

Yeah, you have to be obsessed to be successful. There’s never been a case… If you mention one person’s name that we all know that you say, “Lay up, name, super-successful,” promise you he was obsessed.

Right. Okay, next question for you. This is rapid-fire question. What about life balance? Why care about life balance? [inaudible 00:24:03] life balance.

It doesn’t exist. Go look for a black hole.

Yes. Okay. You are on fire. I love this. I knew it was going to be good. I didn’t know it’d be this good though. Okay. You said gold is in the followup. Gold is in the followup. You’ve written that in your books, “Gold is in the followup.” What do you mean?

Yeah, look, if you’re just trying to sell a pen, right? You’re like, “Oh, I got to say the right thing to sell this one pen,” you (beep) thief. Follow people up. If you’re committed, you got a good company, you got a good business, you got a good product, don’t try to just sell everything the first time. If 15% of the people buy from you the first time they meet you, the other 85% are going to buy from somebody, sometime, somehow, some way. Good credit, bad credit, everybody buys.

Okay, next question for you. Daily habits. How do you organize the first four hours of your day?

First thing I do is I wake up. I make a big habit of waking up. Then, I go take a leak. Then, what I do is I write my goals down. First three things I do every day.

What time do you wake up?

I try to beat the sun up.

Now, what about this? One of our listeners wanted me to ask you about Jordan Belfort. Your opinions of Jordan Belfort.

He’s a piece of garbage.

There it is. Final question, and then I have one more gift for you. What is a principle that you want to teach all of our listeners right now, or an action step you want them all to take that’s something you go, “This is what you need to do now. If you’re going to do one thing today, do this one thing.”

10X your life.

Can you repeat that?

10X your life.

10X your life?

Think bigger about everything. You got a million dollar’s worth of problem, get 10 million dollar’s worth of problems.

10X your life. Okay. Now, we have Nace Roberts, who is the brother of Jordan Roberts. These are the guys who own Master Machine, and they make the tools for Tesla.

The Robert brothers.

That’s right. Let’s go with Nace. Nace is in the place. What question do you have for Mr. Grant Cardone’s face?

Hey, Grant. We read your book and we just love it. It really is just a season in our life where we’re just trying to follow the systems of the 10X. My question for you is when somebody’s just being stubborn and they don’t want to do the 10X, and they start implementing the 10X rule, when would you encourage them that they would start seeing the results?

You should see them immediately. I talk about this in The 10X Rule. What’ll happen is you’ll have new problems immediately, right? What I’m trying to do in The 10X Rule is change my problems. Most people have the same problems over and over. If you look at your life over the last three to five years, you’re going to see the same… If you sit down and write down the recurring problems, same boring problems over and over. I don’t mind new problems, dude. I don’t want the old ones. I want to repeat my successes and not repeat my failures. What I’m trying to do is get new problems. In 2008, the only people that benefited from debt were the people that had the most debt. If you had a little bit of debt, they called it.

That’s true.

If you had a lot of debt, they helped you.

By the way, for anybody out there who’s not read Donald Trump’s book, Think Big and Kick Ass, the one he co-wrote, he didn’t write the whole thing, but he talked about, when he was on the verge of bankruptcy, he decided to get deeper into debt so they couldn’t foreclose, because if he had too much debt, the banks wouldn’t know how to run his hotels. It’s a thing where if you have a little bit of debt, it’s worse than having a lot of debt. I just want to make sure our listeners know, this is taught quite… It’s very Trumptastic.

I have a question for you here. What do you do, Grant… My final two questions for you, what do you do when you’re encountering an entrepreneur that has hired you to coach them and they make excuses, or when you have an employee that makes excuses? What do you do?

Well, people know, around me, that ain’t going to go any place. It’s going to get halfway out of their mouth, and they’re going to go try to capture the words before they hit my ears.

You wrote in your book, “Success is your duty,” in the 10X book. Success is your duty. Let’s end the show there. Tell us-

Look, if you’re not going to make it a duty, a responsibility, an obligation, you’re not going to have it. Okay? The greatest things in life, your health, love for your family, protecting your kids, your finances, the things that… taking care of your church, your name, your brand, protecting yourself. If you’re not going to fight for it, you’re not going to have it. You can pray all you want. God is not going to deliver things to people if they’re not willing to fight for it and protect it and keep it. Success is my duty. It is my duty and my obligation to go out and be successful in the world. If everybody was doing that, everybody would… The whole planet would be better off. We wouldn’t even have time for wars and bullshit. I wouldn’t have time to stop at the CBD store.

I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I was going to smoke some weed today, but you know what? Shit, I’m busy, man. I’m busy going to get me some success.”

You mentioned it, so I would like to… I guess I have one more question for you. Pot. There’s a lot of people who say, “I have anxiety. When I make sales calls, I have anxiety, so I smoke pot.” Talk to me. What’s your overall world view on people that smoke pot?

The way to get rid of the anxiety is to make that sales call.

Right. [inaudible 00:29:40] That is some good stuff. I tell you what, Grant Cardone-

I tell you right now, Snoop Dogg was in my last conference, right?

Right.

Snoop’s in the back seat. He’s all (beep), and he says, “Hey man, don’t shoot them pyrotechnics that you got here.” We had a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of pyros on the stage. There was 35,000 people at this event. That’s 35,000. The entire Marlin’s Stadium. More people in the Marlin’s Stadium on Super Bowl Weekend than had ever been in that stadium ever.

True.

And, I did it on Super Bowl Weekend for three days. Snoop says, “Hey, man, don’t shoot that pyro off. It freaks me out.” I’m like, “You fire up all day long, and you still got anxieties?” It just goes to show you that cannabis don’t get rid of the anxieties.

Well, if you’re out there today, and you are not… If you weren’t aware of who Grant Cardone was, if you don’t know, now you know. Grant Cardone, thank you for being on the show.

Well, you the man. Appreciate you, man.

Hey, take care, brother.

Hey, thanks for having all those guests too. That was cool.

Awesome. Yeah, they wanted to interrogate you, so I wanted to see if we could make it happen.

Thank you, brother.

And now, without any further ado-

Three, two, one, boom.