BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 108: Building a $350 Million Real Estate Empire Using the 10X Rule with Grant Cardone

Episode Date: February 5, 2015

Prepare to laugh, groan, and be inspired. On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we sit down with bestselling author, TV pundit, and massively-successful real estate investor Grant Cardone. In one of the most motivating, humorous, inspiring — and inappropriate — podcasts of all 108 shows, you’ll be captivated by Grant’s candor and viewpoints on everything from getting a college education to investing in liberal cities to his definition of success. You’ll also learn how Grant has used the principles outlined in his book, The 10X Rule, to grow his real estate portfolio to a value of $350,000,000. Yes, that’s $350 MILLION dollars. You are going to love this one. In This Episode We Cover: Grant’s apology to the BiggerPockets Audience… Why Grant has NEVER written a business plan Why Grant chooses to put his money into real estate How Grant analyzes properties to make sure he always makes money Grant’s morning and evening routine to keep him motivated How Grant finds deals in today’s market Why Grant doesn’t advise investing in single family homes The easiest property type today to get a loan on Why Grant invests in democrat/liberal areas The truth about getting picked on, talked about, and made fun of The brilliant method Grant used to get a 1000+ unit property although he was outbid by 38 different people The unique definition of success to Grant Why aren’t more people doing real estate? How YOU can become a part owner in Grant’s business And SO much more. Links from the Show: The Top 5 Business Books that Changed My Life in 2014 Hendricks and Partners – Apartment research website Books Mentioned in this Show The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone Sell or Be Sold by Grant Cardone The ABCs of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy The 10X Day Planner The Secret by Rhonda Byrne Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino The Problems of Work by L. Ron Hubbard Tweetable Topics: “People are settling for their reality rather than working to their full potential.” (Tweet This!) “While you are writing your business plan, I’m in the marketplace building customers.” (Tweet This!) “Success is my duty, my responsibility, and my obligation.” (Tweet This!) “I buy existing properties that are already producing revenue- and then I do my magic with them.” (Tweet This!) “Focus on what you want, every day.” (Tweet This!) “Real estate is definitely a timing thing.” (Tweet This!) “I don’t believe in diversification…Find the right vehicle and go all-in.” (Tweet This!) “If you don’t know you made money on the day you bought it, that was a bad deal.” (Tweet This!) “Whatever you are criticizing, it’s your problem not their problem.” (Tweet This!) “If people don’t know who you are, you aren’t buying their property.” (Tweet This!) “Every time I get money, I go broke again because I shove it into this real estate thing.” (Tweet This!) “We are a renter-nation.” (Tweet This!) “If you could get half the US population to hate you – you could be the President.” (Tweet This!) “Success is the difference between my reality and my potential.” (Tweet This!) “I’m not interested in ‘happy.’ I’m interested in ‘meaning.'” (Tweet This!) “You’re going to have problems, what kind of problems do you want? I want big problems.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Grant Grant’s Website Grant’s Real Estate Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 108. You guys have been unbelievable. The best podcasts I've ever been on in my whole life, you guys are masters of the podcast universe. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited. fit it from bigger pockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. Host to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host. Mr. Brandon Turner, what is going on? Brandon. Dude, I am pumped. I am pumped. Dude, I am also pumped.

All right, for those people who don't know why, we just got done recording today's interview with our guests today. We will introduce in a second. And it is incredible, incredible. Fabulous show. Fabulous probably. I mean, we've done 107 previous shows with fantastic people, but I've never left an interview feeling as motivated, as excited, as just jazzed up. And this one, this one takes the cake. I mean, there's motivation, there's education, there's more motivation. There's comedy like you wouldn't believe. This is our first rated R podcast, by the way.

We'll have some bleeps in there, but if you got kids in the car, you may want to, you know, I don't know, hear moths. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And besides the fact, this guy probably has more real estate than all of our guests we've had previous combined. I'm guessing, like, may not a number of units, but value of real estate. And if not, he will. Yeah. Crazy stories. So you guys are going to love this.

Before we get into the show, I just want to say something. This is extremely important. And yes, we're going to force you to sit and listen to this entire show. It's not a forcing. This thing is absolutely insane. But you guys, at the end of the show, Grant is going to make a proposal for a job offer that can change your life. It's going to make a millionaire out of somebody, a multi-millionaire out of somebody. So you have to listen to the show.

If you are in real estate involved in this business and see big things of yourself, pay very close attention, A, to the show, and B to what we get to towards the end of this thing. because this is an opportunity of a lifetime. We've never had this on our show before and may not ever again. And you heard me, and you'll hear me pretty much quit the podcast and quit bigger pockets. Yeah. Yep. Yep. This did happen.

This did happen. All right, guys, Grant Cardone is an entrepreneur, TV pundit, New York Times best selling author. He's a speaker and a real estate investor. Grant's book, The 10X rule, was recently featured on Brandon. post of the top five business books that changed my life. And frankly, Brandon does not shut up about this book. Seriously, he just talks and talks and talks. 24-7. Oh my God, he doesn't shut up. All right. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy

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and start investing in just minutes. carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. Well, we decided we had to bring Grant onto the show to tell us more. So with that, why don't we do this? Grant, welcome to the show, my friend.

It's good to have you here. Thanks for having me. And, dude, Brandon's got it right. You got to read the 10x rule because it takes whatever is unbelievable in you and turns it into a freaking obsession. I'm a freaking obsession. obsession. I don't need 10x. If I went 10x more, I'd be crazy. Now, it'd be good, man. You'd be, you'd be 10 times bigger and then 10 times bigger again. This is an important message that

people need to get because people are settling for their reality rather than work into their potential. Awesome. Awesome. And we're going to totally get into that. We're very excited about it. No, we into it now, doll. We into it. We all in. We're licking the bone, man. All right. All right. All right. Well, let's start with you. People don't know who you are. Who are you? Like, what's your background? How'd you become who you are today? You wrote all these books. You got all this cool stuff happening. What's your story? Well, first of all, I want to apologize to anyone and everyone that doesn't know who I am because that's my fault. That's my fault. I haven't done a good job of marketing myself. And I apologize to you. It won't happen again. My name's Grant Cardone. I grew up in late Charles, Louisiana from a lower middle class family. My dad worked real hard. Died when I was 10 years old. I'm a there's there was five kids my mom brought me up she didn't have an education never held a job

so she was basically for for most of my you know teenage years she was trying to manage a little bit of life insurance money to get three boys and my two sisters through school and into college so everything everything that we were brought up on was like you know a lack and a scarcity and fear and don't use what you have conserve everything It was just scratching get by kind of like and be grateful that you're in the middle class, okay? Because we weren't poor. We weren't without.

We had food and clothes and we had a used car to get to school in, which was, you know, a thousand times more than some people on this planet have, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to waste anything. So that's kind of how it was brought up. And one day when I was 16 years old, I'm like, I told my mom, I'm like, enough of this shit. I cannot even live like, it's the first time I curse. at my mom. I will not, I will not grow up and be like this. You know, I refuse to grow up and worry about every time I walked out of my bedroom, I remember the bedroom I lived in on 10th Street

in Lake Charles, Louisiana, I walk out. And my mom from the kitchen would say, turn those lights out. My dad did the same thing. All growing up. And I do it to my kids. And it's like everything was about safe rather than create. And I don't know what click for me, when I was 15 or 16 years old, it was actually I was 16 years old. And I'm like, when I grow up, I'm going to be rich. I'm going to get rich. So I don't have to worry about turning the lights off. You know, because to me it was just a constant fear.

And it was a contraction. It was this pressure to be small. And now I look up 30 years later. And I'm like, wow, look at what's happening to the middle class. So many of it's brought up like that. And so many people in this country suffering barely can get by. So anyway, you know, it's funny about that. Like, I actually leave the lights on in my house almost every night.

My wife always gives me a hard time about it. And that is exactly why I do it, though, because I was raised with that scarcity, turn every light off. And now I'm like, I don't need to turn my light. Like, I can afford the extra $20 on my power bill or whatever, you know, by having the light. Yeah, dude, let me tell you, $20, $20 is your problem. You've got bigger problems than the $20 bucks. Yep, yep, absolutely.

And, but, you know, it's part of that culture, right? I mean, we all grew up with that culture, you know, it was, you know, the upbringing from the 60s, the 70s, and so on. And it's born and bred in us. And it's great. I mean, I know, you know, I was, I came from, you know, fairly well to do, not not upper class, but upper middle. And even then, it was, it was kind of the same thing.

So I think it was part of the times. Yeah. But you said, you know what? I'm 16, 17. I'm going to, I'm going to change. I'm going to be rich. What'd you do? How'd you, how'd you go about making it happen?

Well, I stayed broke for nine more years. It took a little while to click. I went to college. I got to, you know, college because my parents thought college was in part, and so many people still do today. And so I went to college and did the deal. I didn't want to go to college. I was there five years.

I borrowed money from the government. I got an accounting degree. I didn't want. I learned, went to classes. I didn't really want to be in. And, you know, I get out of college. And then there was 24% unemployment in the little town that I worked in, which was a refinery, it was an oil game.

and refinery town, which basically was a union town. And if you wanted a good job, it paid $15 an hour, then you went to work at the unions. I didn't want to do that. I got a college education, can't get a job in the degree I went to college for. I owe the government money, and the only job I could get was a sales job. And so it was either take the sales job or get unemployment. And I actually hated the idea of being in sales so much. I went for the unemployment money.

Oh. And, and, you know, so you did a, you did a piece I saw in your real. You did a piece I think was on Fox where you're talking about the education system. And I know you're a big fan of a need for reform. I'm guessing you probably are one, kind of like a Peter Thiel, who's who's all about, you know, college today's value is gone down dramatically. I'd be really interested to hear kind of your thoughts on, you know, education. because listen, our audience are entrepreneurs. These are folks who go and they make things happen with or without schooling.

And so, yeah, again, I'm curious. I mean, look, I got an accounting degree. It was one of the better business degrees you could get when I was going to college. And I didn't want to get just a business degree. So I'm like, I'm going to get an accounting degree. And I own four businesses. We do almost $100 million a year in sales here. I've never even written a business plan.

Wow. So all I know is how to produce revenue. I'm just a revenue. I'm like produce revenue. Expand, grow, grow revenue, you know. I've built a software business. I didn't know anything about software. You build a piece of software. You got to sell it.

Somebody's got to sell the software. It doesn't matter how good it. There's probably better software, but you still got to sell it. So Mark Cuban says, the first thing that everybody needs to learn when, if they want to start their own business is how to sell the product or the service. or the service or the concept or raised money, one of the four. So I have, I don't think much of college. I think college is basically a big business.

I don't think it's for most people. I think a very, very small percentage of people should go to college. I think people actually use college as a way to avoid going to work and confronting the reality of life. I see that with every one of my like peers, you know, like going through college. Yeah, I went to college and I got a history degree. And now I'm using it for what? To do a podcast. Yeah, to do a podcast.

with Grant Cardone. Hey, maybe it worked. Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't care. You could have told me it doesn't matter to me that he's got a degree or not. I hire people every day in my company. I could care less what your degree was. I could care less what your grades were.

I could care less what you study. What can you do for me today and what can you do for me tomorrow? Hey, Grant, what do you say to those guys who say that you need to have the business plan? Because, you know, that's a big thing, right? You got to have the plan. You got to map it out. you say you got to sell you got to be able to to market and produce what do you tell I think I think I think everybody's business plan is it's a great idea if it gives you comfort

it's kind of like a condom you know most people take it off you know if they go you know I mean really come on but but yeah you can you can you get it you can you get a business plan if you want if you want to you know pay $800 to build one if you want to go spend time and energy getting a business plan, 90% of the stuff that's going to happen to you will not be in that business plan. The storm that New York got hit with last night, not in the business plan. ISIS, not in the business plan. Destruption of technologies, not in the business plan. It's just you cannot think about everything that's in the business plan.

So while you're writing your business plan, I'm going out into the marketplace and I'm building customers, whether it's in real estate or whether I'm selling a book. The first book I wrote was called Sell or Be Sold. I didn't know anything about writing a book. A book was never in my original business plan. I actually wanted to write books since I was like seven or eight years old because I thought I wrote well. My dad did calligraphy. My dad thought writing was a big deal.

I don't know. Somehow that got stuck in it. I didn't write a book for 40 years. My first book, my first book, Sell or Be Sold. I wrote in three hours. Wow. Yeah, I didn't even know you were supposed to get the book edited. I just went straight to print.

I couldn't get a publisher to pick it up because it was 2009. Nobody was buying books. Wrote the book, put spines on it, figured out, just found out, hey, put cover on it, go with it and do it. And then now I've got to figure out how to sell a book. That's awesome. Well, we sold thousands of copies of this book in 2009 when the world was coming to an end and people started writing me saying, man, I love that book. It's the best book I've ever read on sales, blah, blah, blah. But you got misspelled words everywhere.

with it. I'm like, really? And then one guy sent me a spreadsheet of every misspelled word, every run-on sentence, every semicolon in the wrong place. And then I called him and said, man, thank you so much for doing that. But I'm like, dude, it's a best selling book, Sam. It's not a best written. I never said it was the best written. So, so I think the business plan can be important. I mean, to give you some kind of idea, but look, it's all going to change anyway. Yeah. It's really funny on the book because, you know, we, we kind of had a similar philosophy. we actually launched a publishing company two years ago through bigger pockets. We're like, you know, why don't we just write a book?

Let's put something out. We don't have a publisher. We'll self-publish this thing. We got a distribution channel, which is our platform. Let's see what we can do. We wrote a book. We sold thousands and thousands of copies, you know, in the first year. And Brandon actually just put out a book, what, three, four months ago.

We're selling thousands of copies of that. And, yeah, it's, you know what? In the world of business, at least what we've discovered is, sometimes you've got to just jump in and make things happen and, you know, it's either going to work or not. You got to hustle. You got to grind. You got to work it out. And that's kind of my philosophy. And I love that. Yeah. And as long as you're not going to quit, it's going to, if you just don't quit, I mean, that's what I would tell everybody. You know, if you just don't quit, as hard as that is,

you're going to figure out how to get to the other side. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, I know you wanted to talk about 10x. So, Brandon, I mean, this is a book you say is pretty good. good. Maybe we should. I don't know. Is it good? I mean, it is good. Actually, I listened to the audible book of it on my road trip last couple months ago, down to California. It was amazing. It's 10 times better than anything else you've ever listened to a red. Ten times better. Did you read the audible book? Was that you? Grant? Yeah, oh, definitely. I would not, I would not. There's no way I would give my material to anybody else to deliver. See, I, so when we came on our book,

I debated back and forth, should I do it or not? Then I heard you read yours and I was like, oh, I can read mine. So I read half of it. It was terrible quality audio. And so I dropped it and I hired some guy to do it. I kind of regret that now. Maybe going back, I'm a natural doing myself. We hired somebody to my first New York Times bestseller was if you're not first or last. Wiley convinced me to have this guy read it. And when I heard it, I said, no, you got to take it off every shelf, everywhere in the world.

I'll pay, remove it. It's horrible. And then I went and sat and read it. What happens is I write a book and then four to six months later, I go read it. I sit here in a studio like this and read it. and it becomes double the book because now I'm aware you guys have written books so you'll understand this you don't you know when you put that last chapter last page in a book you don't know for another three or four months all the chapters you left out and all the stories you could have

added and all the examples and then you get questions from people so that's when I go back in the 10x rule the one you have on audio is probably double or triple the content of the book oh wow because I just start ripping off on it that's cool and I've had enough time with it to understand what I missed. I actually thought that when I was reading it. I thought, I wonder if he's like, you know, expanding on stuff as he reads. I mean, it makes sense. I know people that have read the book and then they get on the audio program or the download, the MP3 download, and they're like, that wasn't even in the book. That's awesome. Nice. Well, so maybe you can kind of start at the beginning of 10x. I mean, what is, what is 10x rule? What is the 10x rule? Well, the 10x rule

It's in the order of books that I wrote. I wrote a book called Sellar Be Sold in 2009. The economy was falling apart. The president of the bank now became a salesperson. If you owned a company in 2009, when Lehman collapsed, the next day, you were salesperson. You were no longer chief operating officer, CFO, treasury. If you couldn't produce revenue in the next three months, you were out of a job. So that book was really not, it's not a sales book.

It's not about how to sell something. it's about why your dreams and your future is depending upon selling and what that is and what it means to be a salesperson, not just a sales professional. So the second book I wrote was called Closed of Survival Guide. That was a book about how to negotiate. And in that book, that was six months after I wrote the first book, 2010, I think. And I was saying, look, the world will no longer give you what you're worth.

It will only give you what you negotiate and what you can make sense of. So that book was about how to get a deal done. That's different than selling. The third book was called, if you're not first, your last, how to keep a pipeline full. And the fourth book was the 10x rule, which was basically, look, if you're not to sell and you're not to negotiate, you know how to follow up.

But if you don't take any action and you don't take the right orders of magnitude of actions, you're going to stay small. These books were written for me to solve the problems I was facing at the time, which was in 2012, I realized I had been selling to too small of verticals. I had been communicating to verticals. You guys didn't know who I was. That's a problem. Okay?

So when I came on and you said, hey, Grant, tell me, the fact that I got to tell people who I am is what the 10x rule is. Yeah. Yeah. Seven billion people need to know your name, your brand, your company. So if you look at the most successful people, the Cubans, the Jack Welch's, the Steve. you know, the jobs. We know them. Jesus Christ, I know their name, okay?

And 10x rule is about, look, you have to become omnipresent. You have to get everybody to know you. You can no longer, we're no longer in a world where you target market. Everybody needs to know you, even if you're not in that market. Gotcha. So is that what you mean when, you know, in the book, there was a quote that I know Brandon mentioned, it success is your duty, obligation, and responsibility. Is that kind of what you're talking about here?

Well, that's a little, that's more of a, why is like, why are you going to do this? Like I'm heavily invested in real estate, as you guys might know, and, you know, I mean, that wasn't my first business. That was my third business, but I thought that real estate, I thought real estate provided me with a financial success that the other companies could not. Because I believe that real estate, particularly the kind of real estate I invest in, is indestructible. No technology will ever destroy or disrupt what I do, which is multifamily apartments. No economy, no inflationary, no deflationary.

There's nothing that will happen that will disrupt my real estate holdings. Yeah. And so that ties into success is my duty. It is my duty and my obligation and my responsibility to provide that kind of success for my family and for my dreams and my name. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting.

That's one of these things that, you know, we're in this real estate investing space. and bigger pockets. I started out of a need to help myself with my own personal real estate investing. And it's funny, you know, I get a lot of people who say, hey, Josh, you know, when the economy was bad, what was going on with bigger pockets? You know, how did you guys survive? And when things are thriving, how are you guys doing? I'm like, real estate is always going to go well if you know what you're doing. If you're smart, if you get in at the right time, if you know how to evaluate a property, buy it at the right price, you really can't do wrong. At least. over long-term. And so that's that's exactly right. And hearing, well, I mean, look, I got, I got,

I got at least 11 buddies that wouldn't, would disagree with you, okay? Because they busted out in 2009 and 2010. Sure. But what did they pay for their properties? How well, they were over, they were over leveraged. They were over leveraged. They bought product that people didn't actually need. Right. It was all on the come. It was all, you know, I mean, what you're describing for me is income properties. When I buy something, it's producing income from day one. one, whether I don't need to wave some magic wand. I don't need to fix something. I don't build anything. I buy existing properties that are already producing revenue. Then I do my little magic to them. So you don't, you don't focus on appreciation whatsoever. It's all about just income from the

get go and just kind of go forward. My performance is going to say that it will never be worth more money. It will be. Right. And that I don't manage better. It's going to assume every worst case scenario, is out of the 10x rule. Yep. And that regardless, I'm still going to make money every month. Yep. I love it. I love it.

Yeah. Yeah, I read, I was at Ken McElroy's book, the ABCs of real estate investing way back in the day. And he's a multifamily investor as well. And just got completely consumed by the idea of apartments. So I bought a 24 unit a few years ago. Love the thing. And what, I mean, my plan is to do what you're doing.

And you mentioned in the 10x, actually. So my goal was always 100 units. I said, I want to get 100 units. That was my goal. And then you said something about you wanted, I think you said 500 units and then you 10x that you're like I want 5,000 units or something like you know totally changed the way I thought about it well I was uh actually I wrote in my book I have this daytimeer called the 10x day planner because and the 10x planters basically it has my goals in it in the morning and at

night I write my goals in a morning and I've been doing this for 30 years so you know I write my goals down twice a day for 30 years I mean that's a lot of a lot of a lot of focus on goals another guy writes them down once a year, you know, out of sight, out of mind. Like, if you're not paying attention to what you want, you're not going to get it. You're just going to get something else. So for at least, for at least, I don't know, maybe six years, I wrote down, I own 500 units in Southern California. I didn't even live in California. I don't even know why I would write in this. I was not to Texas. I own 500 units in Southern California. I'd never even been to Southern California. I wanted to live there one day. I own a home in La Hohue.

California. I just wrote this stuff constantly for maybe three, four, five, six years. Every day, every morning, every night. And the next thing you know, I had, I bought 500 units in San Diego, California. I had a house in La Jolla, California. This isn't like the law, what's it called the law of attraction? Yeah, yeah. This is not that, okay? This is not the secret. This is a freaking, this is not a secret. You don't want the secret. You want the answer. And the answer is focused on what you want every day. And I was writing this down every day. That's where I'm The first deal I ever bought was 38 units, but it took me five years to buy my first deal. While I was writing my goals down, every weekend, I was living in Houston, Texas at the time.

Every weekend, I'd spend Saturday and Sunday shopping real estate. I've never read a book on real estate, never read one book. I got a book back here. I just have never read it, how to build a real estate empire. Nice. I'm like, shit, I ain't got to read the book. I wrote it. I'm living it.

I own $350 million. for the real estate today. So my, my, my, my accountant just gave it to me like, you're, you just hit 350. So, um, that's, that's, why, why not 3.5 billion men? I mean, I'm working, I'm working on him, bro. I'm working on it. All right. Dude, I'm disappointed in me. Report back to me next week and let's, let's see where you're, I'm disappointed in me. You know, you being disappointed in me. That doesn't mean anything. I'm disappointed in me. Because I know, I know it's, I know it's out there. Yeah. And so, uh, the first, uh, I, I used to write it down in Houston. I own 500 units, you know, and they all cash flow 12%. And then the next thing,

I didn't buy anything in Houston because I didn't have enough money. Didn't mean I didn't have money. It mean I didn't have enough money to pull the trigger. And that's really important to know because most people will not pull the trigger when they don't have enough money put away. Yeah. So I needed to accumulate more money to have the courage to say, I'm willing to put this at risk. And so when I, and so I missed this whole opportunity in Houston, but the whole time while I was studying looking at deals, looking at performance, meeting agents, learning what NOI is and what rental income is and what an expense is and what the expenses should be, what a market looks like, you know, then the next thing, you know, I was in San Diego and I bought my first deal.

Nice. Nice. And why did you, why did you pick that particular deal? It was San Diego versus Houston. and, you know, what was kind of the... Yeah, I think I had enough... I think I had enough looking in a market to start having a sense of a market. There's an intuition that can only be built over the experience of looking and observing. And I knew when I left Houston,

had I bought everything that I looked at in Houston, I would have made money. Yeah. Everything. Literally, it was going through this bad market in Houston at the time. And look, real estate is definitely a timing thing. so you don't want to be in the same market forever. I mean, I'll take that back here in a second,

but it was in this trough, and it was this bad news, and it was after the savings and loan collapse, and I was just too scared, and I didn't have enough money, but looking back, I could have bought anything and everything that I looked at, almost everything, and I would have made money. So when I was in San Diego, I told myself, if I'm ever in that kind of market again, I'll buy.

This was right after the saving loan. Nobody was buying anything. Everybody was leaving California. It was 25 years ago. And I told my friend Dale, we were driving through downtown San Diego. I'm like, dude, this is it. It's happening. And then I started looking for property.

I found these 38 units. It was my first deal was, what was that deal? $1.9 million. I put $350,000 down, shoved all in. I don't believe in diversification. I think diversification is a dumb thing to do. Find the right vehicle and go all in. And then bought that deal.

And then I bought that deal. And then 30 days later, I bought my second deal. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Now, are you, that first deal, you put cash down, how are you financing most of these deals now? I mean, you're doing big properties. The same way I did them now, I mean, I won't even look at 38 units anymore. I'm like, I ain't doing it. Piker, piker. Come on. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, that leaves an opportunity for a lot of people out there to look at 38 units. And you should be looking at, I would just tell everybody, leave single family residents of a home alone.

I don't know if y'all invest in that, but I don't like it. I've had bad luck with single family. And if you can figure out how to do 40 units, then you can figure out how to do 12. And if you can figure out how to do 12, you can figure out how to do 20. So your issues are going to be a down payment, but it's easier to get a loan on a multifamily than any other piece of real estate in the world today. Multi-family is the easiest, most desirable, in vogue, bank-friendly debt you can get, including where you live.

That's great. So your question was what? Why that one? How did you finance it? I mean, like, do you use partners as well? And do you use or just? No, I haven't used partners. I use a bank.

I just go to a bank and say, I want to buy this deal. Today I use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but I'm using my own equity. And I'm using traditional financing. Fascinating. So you're using Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, like the big government, you know, sort of government. What do you call them? They have a name. Yeah, quasi-government organizations.

I call them my partners. I call them my partners. You know, so like I just locked on $50 million, whether Fannie debt, Freddie Mac debt, actually, at 3.8% on 50 million. Wow. For 10 years, it's a 30-year am, 30-year amortized, 10 years, I'm sorry, not 10 years. It's based on the 10-year treasury. Okay. It's 3.8% interest only for five of the 30 years.

Wow. Man, I got to get me some of that. it's like I mean the money's so cheap right now yeah so really quick on these on the the the properties you're buying obviously you're buying larger properties where where are you finding them how are you learning about them is that just through the agents that you've you speak to or yeah I mean people people know me is people know me as a closer you know like uh I found a deal I mean there's a long story here so so let me let me just back up a second so I buy 500 units in San Diego. Now, that goes back to that goal setting thing, because if you don't

have something driving your destination, I go buy 500 units in San Diego, that market explodes. We were literally raising rent sometimes $100 a month. Just like, wow, wow. And everybody's like, oh, we're doing so good. I'm like, dude, those units can be raise the rent. Just raise the rent. And they're like, we need to do something. I'm like, you don't need to do anything. Just raise the rent. The marketplace is causing, this was a compressed market. So I always, look for typically I'm looking for markets. So a couple of little tricks. I'm looking for markets where they don't allow building where permits to build costs more than the building. At that time in San Diego, it would cost $26,000 to permit one unit. Wow. I was buying the units. I was buying the

units for 70,000. Wow. So to go build a new one, it would cost $26,000 for a piece of paper and you hadn't even put a nail or stud up in a piece of cement. Yeah. So I'm looking for, and typically I'm looking for a democratic voting environments. Interesting. The more liberals, the better. Interesting. Why is that?

Because they don't like to build. Ah. They want to restrict everything, you know? They get their panties in a wad over everything. They want to protect everything and everything the way it is. and that makes it very expensive. Look at cities like New York. You're talking about rent controls and stuff like that coming in as well.

San Francisco, Los Angeles, all these very heavy, and now I'm not talking politics. Yeah, I'm talking business. But where there's heavy, heavy concentration of liberals. Yeah. Okay. You're going to see extremely high rents. If they would just pay attention to their own bullshit. So, so.

We just lost that for our audience. That's all, Gary. That's all right. Okay. That's all right. That's right. It's seven billion people on this planet. So, I mean, if you guys are interested in making money, you've got to pay attention to those kind of things. Also, I'm looking typically, I'm not always interested in high growth areas either. So if a deal is a value ad deal where I know I'm, I should know that day that I bought it, that I made money.

I know everybody's heard that. If you don't know that you made money the day you bought it, that was a bad deal. Interesting. You should know that day, hey, I'm. made money today. Yep. Yeah. And, you know, and whatever that is, like, you're going to go in there and do something and prove it, but you should be making cash flow on your deal from day one, but you should know going forward, you made money. You see some value in that deal.

And that's going to take more than a book. That's going to take you putting feet on the ground, learning a town, learning a little market. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they picked the wrong market. Rent to retirement flips that model. They help investors buy turnkey new construction homes, often 10% below market value in top rental markets across the country. Their local teams handle the build, the property management, and the details, so you don't have to. In some cases, investors even receive 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, and there are interest rates as low as 3.75%.

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You know, kind of ties in with the 10X stuff. I mean, it does. You mentioned when Josh made the joke about losing half our audience, she said, it's okay, there's seven billion people. You know, that philosophy right there, I just love that philosophy, right? Of like, there's always more people. There's always more success. I think you mentioned that in the book that, you know, there's always another, like,

there's always more opportunity out there. Can you maybe talk on that for a minute? I mean, like, that kind of philosophy. You know, I'm 56 years old, so I'm not, you know, it took me a little while to understand this, but I'm not in high school run a popularity. already contest anymore. So you want to criticize me? You want to hate me. You think I'm arrogant. You think I'm conceded. You think I'm a bragger. You think whatever. Whatever.

That's more about, I know today this. When people criticize me or you, it's more about them than it is about you. Absolutely. It's never really about the target. It's really about the person that's delivering the message. Yeah. You know, like somebody will be like, I have a nice car. I have a really nice car. And people are like, well, why does he need to drive that? Dude, that's about you. That's not about me. I'm going to buy a plane this year, okay? Nobody needs a plane, dude. Nobody needs a plane is stupid.

I'm going to buy a nine passenger jet, okay, that's got six feet ahead room, that I can walk down the aisle. And there's only going to be me most of the time, maybe another person on that jet. Okay, stupid. It burns 250 gallons of gas a freaking hour, okay? It's stupid, man. It's so stupid. And somebody's going to be like, what's wrong with that guy?

That guy, dude, that says more about you than it does about me, okay? Yeah. Okay. If you want to come to Denver and, you know, we go for a spin, I'll come hang out. Yeah, you got it. So all I'm saying is, you know, I used to make fun of all that stuff until one day a guy told me, he's like, hey, man, whatever you criticize, whatever you're criticizing, you got a problem with.

It's your problem, not their problem. Yeah. So, and typically it's stuff I don't understand. And so back to your point about the 10x thing, look, if people, if people, if, People don't know who you are. You're not buying their property from them. If nobody has ever heard of you, me and you go into a deal, you got a billion dollars, and I only have whatever I have.

You're a Saudi prince. And you got freaking money coming out of both ears and every orifice. And you could pay cash for everything in the town. Right. If I know them, did you not get in the deal? I don't care how much money you have. In multifamily real estate, and the kind of real estate I buy, it's will you close the deal?

Yep. Not how much money you have. I had a deal. I was in Los Angeles, California. This is right with the 10x rule. I was in Los Angeles, California. I'm running my other three companies. So what I do is I take these three companies,

and every penny I get, every free nickel I have, goes into this fourth company called the real estate. Every time I get money, I go broke again because I just shove it all into this real estate thing. So I have this one company that I know is indestructible. There's no app or technology, Steve Jobs, or future technology, Google or whatever, can ever replace where people have to live. We're a renter nation forever.

Yep. Yeah. So anybody who doesn't understand that, we will never go back to homeownership at 50 and 60 percent levels like we did before the crash. Although they're trying to go there, man. They're going to try, they're going to push it. But people don't want it this time. They're like, people that are 25 years old, like, dude, I don't want to freaking live in the same city for the rest of my life like mom and dad did. I want to get out an adventure.

Maybe I don't even want to live in the United States anymore. might want to go to freaking India or Saudi. Who knows? So this multifamily thing won't be destroyed. So I take these three companies that will probably be destroyed in my lifetime, that I've made a ton of money off up. Okay? And I take all that money and I park it over here. So I'm always broke running these three. So I'm having to hustle every day to get new money and then I shove it in over here. This multifamily, I'm in LA and I find out about these thousand, it's 1100 units in Stewart, Florida that are for sale. It's a portfolio. this guy owned it, he died. In his wheel, it said when he dies, he has to dump this property,

this 1100 units. There's 38 bidders. This happened 24 months ago, since this is fairly current. There's 38 bidders. All 38 parties have money. All of them have done multifamily, and all 37 of the 38 are known by the broker. I'm the only one the broker doesn't know. Interesting. I have no chance to get in this deal. Right. Okay. Why? He doesn't know me.

Now, how the deal in real estate, which is not in any book that I've seen, okay, you got to first make yourself known to this guy. How do you make yourself known? I used an electronic of video LOI to present my offer. Nice. Never heard that. That's a great idea. Love that. And we've been talking about this, by the way, like yesterday, Brandon and I were riffing on this.

Yeah. Because I just put an offer on a house. We wrote a letter. My wife and I, we wrote a letter, put a picture of our. yourself and our family because we figure, you know what, that's the one way we can get ourselves to know. I didn't even think to do a video. Brilliant. This was a video. Okay. Now, this goes to a board of trustees. There's six guys sitting on this board embedded in the video as a link that sends me back a message every time it gets clicked. Nice. So I don't, I also know how many times they've

looked at the video. Yep. That's awesome. Now, the broker on the deal, the broker on the deal that's responsible for the deal. All he cares about is what? Close and close. Because that's when he gets his commission. Price is less imparting to him. 38 guys look at this deal. 38 are bidding this deal up. In multifamily today, you don't just get to make an offer and get a deal. There's a whole vetting process, 38 guys, best in final offers,

make it down to the last five. Then it's a race to push the four the five, push the fifth guy up. I mean, they're trying to max dollars out in multifamily. It's extremely competitive. it, particularly these big portfolios. So I send out an LOI to a guy that's done billions of dollars of real estate. Now, these are very sophisticated people.

The guy calls me and says, man, I've never seen a video LOI in my freaking life. So I'm the guy that's going to buy your property, dog. You want to spy? You want to see how real I am? See, because the video, I became real to him. Now I'm on the phone with him. I said, look, man, I'm flying in tomorrow morning. I'm going to be in at 6.30 in the morning.

Will you pick me up? He's like, what do you mean? I said, found out about the property. I'm taking a red eye. I'm flying in. Can you pick me up tomorrow? Sure, man. I got on a plane, did a red eye that night. Now, it wouldn't have mattered to me. I would have done a red eye no matter what to show him how serious I was about seeing this deal. I've used the video and the red eye three different times to buy properties. The red eye, the red eye shows people that you're willing to suffer to get a deal. People like to see people that suffer. Okay. I bought that property, but I was the lowest bidder and won the deal. Nice. Okay. One the deal. Now, this is a, this is a $58 million deal. This is a big deal. Okay. This is not,

this isn't, this isn't for kids. I'm just saying, I'm just saying everybody involved. These are, they, they watch my video 18 times. Wow. Six guys watched it 18 times. That means they watch it over and over, passing around their buddies. What are they doing when they're watching it? talking about you talking about Grant Cardone who is this cat man so the point of that is this you've got you got to get people to know you and you have to be willing to get people to criticize you you have to even be willing to get people to hate on you a bit like we don't do business like this man who do you think you are you got to be willing to go there if you could get half the country

to hate you just imagine how valuable this is if you could get and we're not taught this in school if you could get half the people in the United States to hate you you could be the president Yep. Yep. Brilliant. Brilliant. So what are you going to do? You get this private jet. You're going to still take the red eye or you know, you got, it's not going to work. Then it's going to be different. Then it's going to be different. I'm flying in tomorrow morning, man. How about I pick you up on the way in? Nice. And, hey, that's the only reason I have the jet. You know, the jet, the reason I have the jet is to go influence people, pick them up to give to give a value ad in a transaction that he can't get some other place. It's not for me to fly. around by myself, it's for me to pick that broker up and say, hey, man, I want to pick you and your family up and go off this weekend and maybe get an end. Yeah. Hey, Grant, what does success mean to you, man?

You talk about it a lot in the book. What is it? Well, for me, it means, you know, that's a great question. I love that question, actually. It's a layup. It's like you just lob that one up for me down. Make it easy, man. Make it easy.

I'm going to hit it out of the park, man. So, so I was doing a presentation for a group in Salt Lake City last week. And I'm like, look, dude, don't even worry about it. Okay, I'm going to hit a home run. The question is, will it be a grand slam? Okay. So, and some of you're watching this right now, you're like, man, a guy's so cocky. Look, you need to get some freaking cocky on.

You need to get some swag on. You need to get so confident that you walk in a room and everybody sees you freaking beaming. And whether some people like it or not, most of the time people are walking in the room, nobody even knows you there. Nothing happened. You need to walk in a room and own it because you're getting looked over right now. And that's what I said earlier about, look, the marketplace is not going to pay you what you worth.

It's going to underpay you most of your career. And if you freaking shine, one day it'll overpay you. But it's never going to pay you what you work. So success for me is the difference between it's not money, it's not a car, it's not how much net worth is. Success for me is the difference between my reality, where I'm at now and my potential to go to another place. I like that. I like that. I'll tweet that later. So what I'm looking for is my potential all the time. I'm driven to my potential when other people are comparing their situation to what they have and where they're at. I just read that I just read that the other day. And I don't remember what book it was. But yeah, they said a lot, most people compare their success to the next person over rather than compare it to what your potential is. And I thought it was terrific. They're making sense of their position or situation in life. And we were taught that. You know, your mom said,

there's people starving in India. You know, I'm like, Mom, you don't even know where Andy is, okay? I mean, I don't know why we're talking about India all of a sudden, but, you know, you should never compare yourself to another person because they're not paying your bills and they don't have your dreams. Yep. Gotcha. Gotcha.

All right. So I give you a softball. I want to give you kind of another softball here. Goal setting. Most people recommend setting goals that are attainable, right? Yeah. And, you know, you don't preach that. Not just on, you know, the whole 10x is about, you know, going out there.

why do we not want to go for attainable goals? Why do we want to set these 10x, you know, semi- unattainable goals? You know, I heard Ted Turner, Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, you know, his dad told him, do you all know this story? Nope. Well, maybe. I don't. He said, never set a goal that you can attain.

I heard that. I heard Ted Turner say that. I was like, dude, that is so right. Wow, what was I thinking this whole time? That was stupid. Yeah, yeah. And then his dad killed himself after that. Because he couldn't reach any of his goals or what?

No, no, no, because he's, I mean, I'm not laughing at the loss of Mr. Tarter. Yeah, yeah, you are. You were laughing. You were laughing. So, so what happened was he was telling his son, look, man, if you set goals that are attainable, you're going to be depressed. And if you look around, you're going to see most people are just, what are they doing? What are they doing every day? Are you living to your potential? I mean, come on, really? This was what you were supposed to do? You know, anybody in my family, anywhere in my lineage, I could go back to Sicily, where. my family was, you know, started, or at least that's what they tell me. And my great, great, great grandfathers would say, my God, son, you've done well, good.

But what does that mean? It's not, it's not, it's not, that's not my potential. If the great people stopped on potential, God would have stopped on butterflies and mountaintops and, and blue skies. Interesting. Why stop, man? Why stop? See, a lot of people get confused, I think, because they're like, oh, man, that guy keeps going

for more he's greedy. I'm not greedy. I'm trying to fulfill my potential. And I think my potential is a spiritual issue. It's got nothing to do with money. Okay. I want to create a billion dollar real estate portfolio. I can't spend the money I have now. Yeah. I just think that it's within my potential to do this. I've never raised money. I've never created a reet. I've never created a fund. I know a lot of guys that aren't as bright as me and don't work as hard have done all those things. And I know guys that do multifamily that they don't have any money invested. I have all my money invested. And so it's available. So why not, why not try to fulfill my potential? That's awesome. I love it. I love it. Yeah, you know, I, I don't know, I get a lot of, I get questions from people who are like, hey, Josh, you know, when are you going to be

happy? When's it going to be big enough? When is what you're doing? And the funny thing is I can actually never answer that question because I don't know. And maybe it's a gamesmanship. Maybe it's just something innate and born inside you. But for me, it's like, I don't want to stop because I find it fun. It's a challenge to keep going, keep growing, keep building. And, Josh, I think the answer is not the problem. It's the question this problematic. It's like, dude, I'm telling you I want to build a billion dollar real estate portfolio and you're talking about me being happy. I'm not even interested in being happy. Why are you so freaking hell bent on being happy? I don't want to be happy. How do you know, how do you know happy's even on my

freaking gold chart. Okay. When I write, when I, when I draw out my shit, happy ain't part of a recipe, okay? I ain't interested in a tweet that one. Okay. You know what? Here's to your happy shit.

That's to your happy shit. Middle finger to your happy. I see everybody running around. Dude, if you want to be happy, go write a song with Farrell or whatever his cat's name is and where his little happy. For real, right? Dude, I'm not interested in happy, okay? I'm interested in meaning.

I'm interested in my duty. I'm interested in obligation. I'm interested in being the biggest donor at my church. I'm interested in impacting my community. I'm interested in helping tens of thousands of people. You're going to work trying to be happy. I don't care about it. So you see what I'm saying?

I would never ask you, what about happy, Josh? Josh, why don't you lay down on this sofa and let's find out why you're so fucked up, Josh. Wow, are we going to cuddle too or what? We might. We might. See, there's nothing wrong with you, dude. You know, there's more people need to be freaking grinding and struggling and pushing to really fulfill their, because I think that's when people are happy. I'm happiest when I'm productive. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's awesome. That's awesome, man. All right. So you're one of the busier dudes out there. You know, you're rocking it. You're on TV. You got shows. You're coming up with programming, real estate, five books. Three. I can't even list your whole portfolio, man. You got a whole lot of crap going on. What, you know, what is, how do you start your day? You know, I know you got the goals in there and I know you end it with the goals. No, I mean, I got routines. You know, I try to work out every morning. I try to spend time with my kids every morning. The first thing I get up early, I do the, the, the early shift with the kids.

Before I had kids, I didn't have that. When I had kids, I changed my shift up so I could spend an extra, you know, 30 or 45 minutes with the kids in the morning. Just meet me time, daddy time with the kids because, you know, I'm a good father, but I'm not a good mother. I let her do the mother stuff. I do the, I get to influence the kids. Like Sabrina, my five-year-old, I'm like, baby, look, you count to 10, learn how to count to 100. Once you get the 100 thing down, then you start skipping. Yep, yep.

She's like, what do you mean, skipping? I'm like, you don't, you don't need to do 100 and one. Okay, you go 100 straight to a million. Nice. Okay, don't let those teachers. Don't let those teachers teach you all that whole, that whole step shit. Okay, you go, you go one to 100, get to 100, then you go one million. Then you go 100 million.

Nice. Because I learned how to count too many numbers. So I don't, I don't know, guys, I, you know, I wake up in the morning. I try to get to work on time, you know. I have a sales meeting every day with my staff. What are we doing? Where are we going? Who are we?

And then I put as much stuff as I can on my calendar so that I don't have free space because I, you know, free space is a problem for me. Nice. What happens? You just start new companies, write new books when you got free space. All right. Most of the time I'm involved in stuff. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Nice. I'm starting a company right now. I have freaking no clue. I'm so far. I'm in such. deep water right now. I have no clue what I'm doing. Now, is that good or is that bad? Does that worry you? Or is that, you know, is that a beautiful thing when people start to kind of bring you into projects? I think it's a beautiful thing, man. Yeah, yeah. Nice. I like it. I like the play, you know, I like,

I like the, I like the action. Yeah. So of all the stuff you've done, right? I mean, you've done. Again, yeah, we didn't talk about you had this show, Turnaround Kings. You know, an unbelievable human being. You're a crazy mofo, man. You are a crazy dude. So, like, what, you know, and I'm not going to ask what makes you happy, but like, you know, is there one thing of all this stuff that you do that excites you the most? What gets you, what gets you the most juiced up, the most pumped? Is it just everything? Is it just Grant Cardone, the man? Or is there something in particular? I wouldn't do this, you know, if I was just money motivated, all I would do is buy real estate. Yeah, okay. So if my accountant said to me, why do you even bother with the books? I mean, you know how many books you got to sell for $350 million with real estate? I got a lot of books, dude. I got 3,200 units that pay on average just under $1,100 a unit. And I own them.

It's not a reed. I own the profits. Okay. So why am I writing a book? I mean, come on. You know, why? Because when Brandon says, dude, I listen to your 10x rule and it changed my life, that's what I live for right there. I love to help people.

Yeah. I mean, I truly, I write for entrepreneur.com. I don't get paid to write for entrepreneur.com. It takes time to write an article. Okay. I wrote an article last year for entrepreneur.com. It was the number one article at their site. They have 14 million users.

Mark Cuban writes there. Richard Branson writes out. Start next week. I write there. Oh, good. I'm taking you on. And Grant, I will be the most popular article. Oh, tell you.

Okay. All right. I will be. I hope so, man. I hope so. So, you know, when somebody writes me from Thailand or from Jordan, a guy came to work for us from Jordan, and he's like, dude, I just want to work here and learn from you. And I mean, that's not money and that's not happy. That's meaning. It's a meaningful life at that point. That's beautiful. I love it. It's a beautiful thing, I mean, you know, it's cool because we get a lot of

that with what we do. I mean, we got like a group from our website in South Korea, man. I'm going to be, Brandon was on with those guys a couple of months ago. I'm going to be on the air with those guys. I mean, we get letters all the time from people, how we're changing their lives, teaching them about real estate. And I wanted to ask you because you're this guy who's got this success mindset. Why do you think more people aren't doing this real estate thing? When Brandon and I talk a lot about real estate, we kind of talk about this funnel, right?

People start with personal finance. Hey, I'm going to buy stocks. I'm going to buy bonds. And then, you know, as they get more sophisticated, they kind of come into this funnel. And at the very, very, very, very end of the funnel is real estate. And it kills me because it's not as hard as everybody makes it out to be the major media, the major press, you know, all the business press, you know, it's an also ran, you know, nobody gets a cap up real estate.

And it's just like, which is great. It creates opportunity for guys like you, but and less competition. But still, you know, why do you think that is? Well, I think, I think the end of the, the, the Wall Street. who has the ear of the politician, who is really a lawyer. You know, why do you have 401 and Kios? You know, why do you have a law that says if you invest in this 401, we'll match it and you won't pay taxes on that.

So it traps money for Wall Street. It traps. It traps your money. It takes your money that was yours and now becomes somebody else's to control. So why don't more people do real estate? estate, I don't know. If you look at the richest people on the planet, sooner or later, you got to have real estate. Yep. Yeah. Now, the question is, what kind of real estate do you want? You know, and then I'm like, hey, I buy a multifamily. First question, everybody, yeah, do people call you? Do you play toilets?

Yeah, people call me. People call me. And, you know, people called me yesterday and said, hey, 19 checks are coming your way. Yeah, nice. Like, that's good. That's good. You know, people, people don't call me. Look, I had two people. I had a phone call from a, from a guy in Tucson. I bought 2,200. departments in Tucson. I don't own those anymore. I've been in five states, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina. Now I'm in Savannah and Mobile, Alabama. I bought 2,200 units, three days. I went to Tucson. First time I ever went there, bought. Tucson was not on anybody's radar. It was nobody's list. You can buy a list from like Hendricks and partners, and they'll give you the status of every apartment market in the

country. So I'm studying these and Tucson's not on anybody's radar. Well, good. I don't want to compete with people. So I want to go places where it's not on people's radar. So I go there. I buy 2,200 units. I owned them 39 months, sold the whole portfolio. But in the meantime, one day I get a phone call. Grant, we found, we found two bodies in the back of a car. What do you mean in the back? They make and they freaking kiss and leave them alone, man. They're in the trunk. I said they in the trunk. It's not my car. I don't have a car in Tucson. Why are you telling me this? They're dead. Okay. Were they tenants? Did they pay on time? I mean, no, they're not tenets. Well, good. Get them removed, dude. Welcome to planet Earth. Ooh, cold-hearted, man.

Bad things happen to people all the time, man. I mean, every day. Like, like, you guys are waking up and surprise there's a storm in the northeast or that somebody behead another human being you're on planet earth they've been killing people on this planet for freaking 2,000 years 2,000 years ago if you said you were a Christian they'd lop off your head man pow boom really so everybody's all shocked and freaked out about bad things bad things happen a lot okay doesn't mean I'm not supposed to to go about my life you know and yeah yeah all right that that was too that was That was a little real for y'all. I was just trying to figure how do you transition out of that?

But the point of that is, you know, when you talk about real estate, people are like, I don't want people call me about the plumbing. Yep, yep. I hear that all the time. So what are you going to do? You're going to call about your own plumbing? What kind of problems do you want? See, I want some big problems because you're going to have problems. What kind of problems do you want?

I want some big, giant, juicy problems, not some little problems. Yep. I love that. Problems mean you're doing big things. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. All right, man. So you don't know how to get out of this. I got this. Don't worry about me, man. Just settle down. Let me handle this. All right. I got this. All right. So we got people listening from all over. Lots of people in their car. We got people running. We got people listening to doing all sorts of stuff. For somebody who's sitting around listening, who's struggling to get out there and actually make something happen in their life. And that's just probably. the vast majority of this planet, seven billion people, right? I mean, what do these guys need to do? How do I flip the switch?

What do I need to do if I'm stuck in this rut and get my brain changed to step it up, take action, and make should happen? Yeah, you know, every time I'm down, I mean, there's three times when I do this one thing. When I wake up, when I go to sleep, and when I'm disappointed. Okay. When I'm disappointed, discouraged, and it happens. Look, I'm disappointed, I'm discouraged. I just lost a deal.

I just lost a deal yesterday. What I do is I write down my goals. Where do I want to go? Where do I want to be? What is possible for me? Not what did I just lose or what happened to me or how bad is my situation? Where do I want to go? So if I could just keep my, you know, the old saying about success is the journey, not the

destination, I think that's complete bullshit. You know, I'm not interested in the journey. Dude, I'm interested in the destination. Quit paying attention to the journey, okay? There's flat tires, there's chlamydia. There's all kinds of shit that's going to happen to you, man. Bad things happen on the journey. Keep your attention on the destination.

Where are you going? Not where are you at, you know? Windshells are like six feet wide. In the rearview mirror, you're still thinking about the chlamydia thing. I'm just, I'm just reading to see what the house. Did you have chlamydia? You caught chlamydia as a kid. didn't you. You got it. I don't know what's going to come out of your mouth next.

What's her name? What was her name? She's verbal diarrhea over here. Let's see. What's his name? I did, I did live in L.A. for a while. So you were just experimenting. It's all right. So, so, so look, you know, that's, that's, you, we're laughing about it. But the truth is, people should experiment with business. Yeah. And opportunities. And so the thing that intrigues me is, what is my position? potential. I'll go back to that. When I'm disappointed, I try not not to focus on that thing that happened to me and look at, hey, where do I want to go from here? You know, what's in front of me? And so if I could just keep, if you could just keep your attention on that, I think you'll find

yourself a little more excited about going out into the world and taking a chance. That's great. Yeah. That's great. Fantastic. Grant, what are your goals? I mean, like, you write down, do you have any goals you want to share with us? Like, where are you headed? Oh, I'm a lot. A billion dollars is a real estate, right? I want a billion dollars with a multifamily cash flowing positive real estate. That's it. Yeah, right.

Now, I can change it. I can change it. Remember this, Josh, you remember that, you know, it originally it was 500 units. Actually, the first goal was 20 units. It was 20 units. And then the first deal I bought was 38. So as soon as I bought the 38, I'm like, dude, that was stupid. All I had to do was change what I was focused on.

So it's a billion dollars for the real estate. I'd like to write books that sell in the 10 million copies. I'd like all my books to be translated. You know, I'm starting to think now about my legacy. Like, you know, when I'm 85, when I die, like, you know, is there going to be Grant Cardone schools or Grant Cardone certifications? Could I be involved in colleges around the world? I would love for my sales material and my negotiating strategies to be involved in schools.

Those kind of things. Much bigger kind of like, you know. Great. Nice. I love it. That's awesome, man. And, you know, if people say, hey, dude, that cat was an authentic guy. I mean, I like that word, you know, that if people see me as arrogant, it's just because

it's really, I'm not really that. I'm just really, you're in touch with somebody that's actually willing to tell you what's going on for me. Most people have a filter. And if you've got the balls to go out and talk to the universe without a filter, then that's who you are. And, you know, that's beautiful thing, man. It really is.

It's hard. It's scary to do that. It is, dude. And it takes a lot of guts and a lot of authenticity. And you got to know who you are about to do that. And you said something before we came on today. Your question was, is there anything that's off? Would you say, what was the word you used?

I don't know what word I used. I just said, is there anything you don't want us to talk about? Yeah, yeah. Anything you don't want to talk about. What did I say? Off limit? I don't know what you said. You said if it's on your...

You said, if you said I'm an open podcast. If you tell the IRS, you'll tell us. I said, dude, look, if I'll tell the IRS, I'll tell us. tell you. You know, the IRS sitting my friends. I don't know anybody at the air. I'm under three audits right now, you know? So I'm like, look, if I'm going to tell the IRS about my finances, it's like, we were brought up not to talk about money. I'm like, what do you mean? You tell the IRS what you make, but you won't tell me. It's stupid. So I'm not bragging. I told the IRS, they know what I made. Yeah. Great. That's awesome. That's great, man. All right. We're going to wrap this

this thing up now. We got a couple more quick questions. He doesn't want to go. I could tell. I know. He likes us. Look, as soon as I'm done with you, I got something else. to do, man. All right. I'm going to hit you with our world famous famous for. So first question is, what is your favorite real estate book? He said he never read a real estate book, so you got to change it up.

Well, do you have a favorite real estate book? No, I've never read a book on real estate. So I can't answer that question. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Business book.

Is there a business book that you say, you know, this thing is amazing. And what is it and why? I read a book when I was 15 years old called, I don't even, I think it was called OPM. That was a great book. I read Napoleon Hill's book, Thinking Grow Rich. That was an unbelievable book. Greatest salesman in the world, unbelievable book. I read a book called The Problems to Work,

why people have problems at work, unbelievable book for me to handle the work. Because look, work is, you know, a big portion of your life is going to be spent at work. Yeah. That's great. Awesome. All right.

Outside of all this empire, that is Grant Cardone, you know, which sounds like it's, It's a lot of your world, of course, and you got your kids. What do you do for fun? What hobbies other than work? I know work is a hobby for you. I can tell, which is awesome. Totally.

What do I do for? I love the game of golf. I haven't played in a while, but I love that game. I love backgammon. Like anytime anybody wants to play a game of backgammon, I'm good. As long as you know how to use the cube in the middle. I never play it. And as long as we're going to gamble.

Okay. Nice. You know, I like games of chance. I typically like to see that, you know, there's a potential for me. me to lose it something. I like that. I love to smoke cigars. I love to smoke Cuban cigars. Your whole audience is welcome to my home here in Miami Beach and we can sit up and have a Cuban surrog. I'm taking you up on that someday, Grant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. Last question for me. What do you believe sets apart people who succeed from those who

give up, fail, or never get started? Just action, man. Just some compelling thrust to do something. You know, if you can just find the thrust and maybe undo whatever governor was put on you by education, parents, family members, friends, society, the media. If you can undo the governor and get rid of the brakes, get rid of the rearview mirrors, and just freaking put your foot on the accelerator and just go as fast as possible in one direction, something good's going to happen to you. That's cool. That's cool. Balls to the wall. I guess that's called. There you go.

It's a little different thing, but. All right, man. So you got a website, right, grant cardone.com. Where else can people find you, connect with you? Anything you want to, you know, if you can't,

if you can't find Grant Cardone, you're not going to buy any real estate because you just freaking, you got this serious. I'm on Twitter, Grant Cardone, Facebook, Grant Cardone, YouTube, Grant Cardone. Cardone acquisitions,

if you want to know what I'm doing in real estate. estate. I'm actually going to start raising money here in the future. So I'm looking to doing something with crowdfunding and real estate. Cool. Right on. Yeah, guys want to help me. Also, I'm looking for a real estate analyst, probably two of them, to help me go out and buy properties. I'm going to go from 3,000 units to 10,000 in the next three years. So I'm looking for two real estate analysts. If you ever worked for Marcus and Milichap or CBRE and you're a second tier young guy or gal, you know, working for a broker, getting paid a little tiny piece and you want to get on the

ownership side, send a video, 60-second video to careers at Cardone acquisitions.com. I'll put you in, you'll have an opportunity to earn a position to be an owner in my real estate company. Oh, that's awesome. That's great, man. Great, great, great. I'm going to go from 3,000, 3,000 to 10,000 units. You'll be paid on the NOI, net operating.

income. You'll be paid on the increase in NOI, new NOI that comes on, and you'll be paid when we disposed to something as well as a salary. I'm telling you're going to learn real estate from the inside. Hey, Josh, I'm quitting bigger pockets right now. I'll see you later. Dude, you should, dude. I'm telling you, this is, get the hell out of your way. Somebody is somebody is going to come work for me and make millions and millions of dollars. That's great. Well, hopefully if any, NAR listeners, like, don't jump on this opportunity. You guys are out of your mind. So do it. You could actually make more money working for the right guy in that environment with the right pay plan, the right incentives than you could going out on your own and buying real estate.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Awesome. Grant, it has been great, man. And you guys are the best. Let me finish this. Okay.

You guys have been unbelievable. The best podcasts I've ever been on in my whole life. Okay. You guys are masters of the podcast universe. Thank you. That's the nicest thing everyone's ever said about it. That really is. I really didn't like us.

The only podcast that you've been on or what? No. Okay. All right, good. Well, Grant, this was a lot of fun. We definitely would love to have you back someday in the future, talk about, you know, like all that. So we'll get in touch and that's awesome. Good, man.

Good. And you guys be great. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Grant. All right. All right.

Take care. Bye. All right, guys. I mean, I don't know. What can I say about that? The best podcast? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't even know how to close when somebody pays us that honor and says that about.

us, particularly somebody of Grant's stature. So I just, I just want to say thank you again to Grant. I mean, fabulous, fabulous time. It was fantastic. I will say pick up his book, 10X. If you guys have not read 10x, read 10x, biggerpockets.com slash the number 10x and you'll get to the Amazon page where you can buy it. It's really an incredibly life-changing book. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Other than that, you know, as you've heard, just, you know, getting out there and making things happen. That's the key, guys. You know, write those goals down, dream big and execute. And that's what we're doing here every day on bigger pockets. And that's why we do the show because we want you to see what you too could be doing. And this was the perfect example of that.

And we're going to wish Grant huge success. And we're looking forward to Grant coming back when he's done that billion dollar portfolio when he's got it because I have absolutely no doubt that he'll get there. And I hope we can get a BP person to take that position or two at his company. Oh, yeah. Yeah, let us know if you get that job. Well, let us know if you apply. I mean, just give us a heads up on that. Otherwise, thanks for being a part of our world.

If you're not already a member of Bigger Pockets, jump in. This is an amazing place for real estate investors, get involved, participate, and make things happen. With that, let's get out of here. I'm Josh Dorkin. That's Brandon Turner. Signed enough. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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