Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Elena Cardone: Overcoming Trauma and Loss to Build a $5 Billion Business | E156

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Elena Cardone’s life changed the day she watched her best friend die in a house fire. That trauma sent her spiraling into a decade of drugs and alcohol, and as more friends died in the years that followed, she believed she was next. Until one night, a dream forced her to confront the truth: she wasn’t honoring her friend’s life; she was wasting her own. That moment became the turning point that set her on a path to transforming her life and building a $5 billion empire. In this episode, Elena shares how she broke free from destructive patterns and the mindset shifts that transformed her marriage, career, and financial future. Elena Cardone is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, and real estate investor who has built a $5 billion portfolio alongside her husband, Grant Cardone. She is the co-founder of Cardone Capital, Cardone Foundation, and Cardone Mortgage. In this episode, Ilana and Elena will discuss: (00:00) Introduction  (05:39) The House Fire That Changed Everything (08:52) How Your Mind Works Against You to Self-Sabotage (11:21) Moving to Hollywood and Discovering Its Dark Sides (15:56) How Trauma Almost Cost Her the Right Man (24:15) The 2008 Crisis and a Marriage Breaking Point (27:25) How a Nightly Game Built a Billion-Dollar Mindset (35:41) The Hidden Cost of Believing Money Is Evil (41:40) Why Great People Attack Your Weaknesses (46:38) Elena’s Plan to Build Global Influence (51:29) Q&A: How Do You Get Paid to Speak? Elena Cardone is an entrepreneur, former actress, podcast host, and the bestselling author of Build an Empire. She is a licensed realtor leading a 500-agent organization with eXp Realty, and has built a $5 billion portfolio alongside her husband, Grant Cardone. Elena is also the co-founder of both the Grant Cardone Foundation, which helps underserved youth understand finance and business, and Cardone Mortgage, which makes homeownership more accessible across all 50 states.  Connect with Elena: Elena’s Website: https://elenacardone.com Elena’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenacardone/ Elena’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elenacardone/  Resources Mentioned: Elena’s Book, Build an Empire: How to Have It All: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Empire-How-have-All-ebook/dp/B09RGHGQ4K  Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard: https://www.amazon.com/Dianetics-Modern-Science-Mental-Health/dp/B001EPO4Z2 Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW WAY for professionals to fast-track their careers and leap to bigger opportunities.  Check out our free training today at https://bit.ly/leap--free-training

Around four in the morning, my father came into my bedroom. Wake up, wake up. Goldie's house is on fire. That was my best friend. She lived right across the street, and my body kind of collapsed at first sight of her. I had eight more friends die. Oh, my God. It was four of them died in a car accident, an overdose, suicide.

It was just trauma after trauma after trauma. Everything that I go through, good, bad, or wrong, is what I needed to go through to become who my future self is going to be. Elena Cardone. She's a speaker, investor, and entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of the Cardone Foundation and Cardone Mortgage. Alongside her husband, Grand Cardone, she has built a real estate portfolio valued in more than $5 billion.

The people that tell you money doesn't make you happy, those people don't have money because I'm going to tell you. We can buy you time and moments and experiences. So I had to reorganize. all of this thoughts about money. Many times we see someone else's success and we think that's for them. We were not made for this.

If you really believe you're a billionaire, don't be stupid because billionaires aren't stupid and reverse engineer from that picture. You don't have to live from the past to the present and the future just because you were taught that the way it goes. What helped you eventually say, you know what, I'm done the spiraling, say, you know what, that's it?

The first thing to do is... Welcome to the Leap Academy with Ilana Golan Show. I'm so glad you're here. In the Leap Academy podcast, I get to speak to the biggest leaders of our time about their career, how they got where they are today, the challenges, the failures, and countless lessons. So lean in. This episode is going to be amazing. I'm in a mission to help millions reinvent their career and leap into their full potential, land their dream roles, fast track to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or build portfolio careers. This is what we do in our Leap Academy, programs for individuals and teams. And with this podcast, we can give this career blueprint for free

to tens of millions. So please help my mission by sharing this with every single person you know because this show has the power to change countess of lives. Deal? Okay, so let's dive in. I met Elena when she spoke on stage at a huge event called GrossCon. And I don't know if you know it, but you should. And then I joined her and I was. her husband, Grand Cardone, to a celebrity cruise, to the Bahamas for charity. It was an incredible experience. I'll talk more about it. But alongside her husband, Grand Cardone, she has built a real estate portfolio valued it more than $5 billion. Yes, B with a B. Now, for those who don't know Grand Cardone, I know some of you there are like, what are you talking about? We had him on

the podcast in episode 84. Absolutely check it out. So inspiring. But seriously, Elaine is an incredible story on its own because she keeps reinventing, designing this incredible portfolio for herself that suits her. And I wanted to listen to that because she's a bestselling author. She's a speaker.

She's an investor. She's a co-founder of Cardone Foundation, Cardone mortgage, and so much more. So get ready to such a powerful story. And also remember, end of the conversation, we select the question from our YouTube channel, Leap Academy with Ilana Golan, and I personally answer it.

And this time, we will answer, how do you get paid to speak? So stay tuned until the end. Elena, so good to see you. You too. Thank you for that fabulous introduction. Let's go. This is going to be so fun, Elena. So actually the first time I actually heard your story is actually in the cruise. And you and Grant talked about your story. And I was literally in tears because my daughter went to something similar. So what I want to do, if that's okay, is take you back in time to maybe age, I don't know, 10, 12, whatever, before the big moment.

But who was Elena as a kid, as a child? Take me there for a second. You grew up in New Orleans. Take me back in time. I felt like I had a pretty great childhood. We could play on the streets. Our parents were not concerned about us as long as we came in when the streets.

lights came on and we were in dinner every night around the table and I know that we were always concerned about money in our house but it never seemed like a real big issue. I was always a tomboy at that age 10 where girls and boys were kind of equal. Let's just say I was superior. I had to be the best at football and baseball and track and any kind of sports. And it was until around 12, that it grossly went out of proportion. And I started falling way behind the strength level and abilities physically of the boys. So that's when I was like, all right, let's go explore this girl avenue now. And then that's when I got interested in Duran Duran.

I'm aging myself and the bands and hung out with the girls and started being a preteen teenager. So I want to take you back to a serious trauma that you had to go through. I'm sorry, first of all. Ace 13, you go through something that shakes you to your core. Can you share how much you feel comfortable sharing? That experience rocked me to the core because I feel like, I mean, sure, if you analyze your whole childhood, you're like, oh, wait, you know, because we duped it out with the neighborhood kids and we punched and we hit and we threw bricks at each other. I mean, like, we were kind of crazy. But that all seemed normal back then.

So I've considered that I was normal. It all seemed normal until the wee hours of the morning, around four in the morning. My father came into my bedroom. Of course, I was sleeping and was like, wake up, wake up. Goldie's house is on fire. That was my best friend. She lived right across the street. And I was still groggy and like not thinking it was really a big deal until the next words were.

And Goldie and her. mother are still in the house. And so I bolted out of the bed and ran across the street. And it was myself and all the neighborhood men like my father and the coaches and all the guys. And we had pails of water and hoses. And that's how we were trying to put out the fire until the fire department got there. And then it was extremely traumatizing. She had bars on her windows because her father was of criminal judge. So they had, I guess, a lot of threats on their family. So they wanted that security.

So now I'm looking at this house on fire. Goldie's house is the second story. It has bars on it. The firemen when they were finally there trying to get the bars off. They can't get the bars off. They're running into the house. And it's so hot. They can't even go into the house.

They have to turn around and go right back out. So after what seemed hours, daylight, certainly, they finally were going to bring the bodies out. They call it recovering the bodies. Anyway, my father came over to help me across the street before that happened. And unfortunately, they came out with Goldie just a little too soon. And my body kind of collapsed at first sight of her. So I'm very grateful my father was holding on to me because my knees literally buckled.

I've never had a moment like that since. in my life where you just physically lose control of your physical body. It's so real and so crazy. So you're basically seeing your best friend come out and obviously there's nothing to save. You don't even want to describe it because it's as bad as you probably can imagine, but maybe even a little worse. I just didn't even know bodies looked like that. Where you're a kid. You're 13. 13. It was so traumatic for me. And then right after we're going to the hospital and they did get her breathing again on a machine, but she was brain dead.

So then hours later, they pulled the plug. So that was traumatizing. So I was the only one there with my father and the rest of the family. No other friends of the family were there. And it was just really extremely painful. And back then, there was no way to deal really with emotion. you just continue moving forward. So I bottled all that pain down and just tried to self-medicate. And at 13, started to take drugs and drink excessively and did that for the next several years as a teenager,

really for the next decade until actually I came across this book that I'm reading right now, again, called Dianetics. It's the modern science of mental health. It's by Elron Hubbard. And I really got to understand about the reactive mind, not the analytical mind, but it's the reactive mind. It's where you store all the losses, pain, trauma, physical accidents, emotions, and that reactive mind, when it gets restimulated based on certain scenarios that proxy those conditions, whatever those traumas were, it reenacts itself, it restimulates it, which causes unwanted. behaviors like excessive drinking or lashing out at people or saying things that you regret later and you're like, why did I do that? Well, it's because that reactive mind kicked in. And so when I read this book, I have it right now. Like I said, I was reading it. When I read this book, Dianetics, I really started to understand the reactive mind and doing the processes, the drills in that book.

you just get a friend and do them together, I was able to release so much charge in just a matter of hours, which other therapies never could handle or completely eliminate. It brought me so much abilities gained to be able to not have that take over my life anymore. Not just that incident,

but that incident in particular was really difficult for me to confront at that age and handle problems. operate. And before we started the show, I think I alluded to it. My daughter went through something somewhat similar, basically her best friend, the father killed the mom and the friend. And she was the last WhatsApp. We were with the police and they were trying to understand if there was witnesses and if we knew of anything. And she felt all the feelings of why did I not notice, et cetera. And she spiraled. And But I want to hear a little bit, I think a lot of our listeners would love to hear,

okay, you're spiraling and we see or either our kids or you see somebody that you know, what helped you eventually say, you know what, I'm done the spiraling, I'm going to Hollywood or whatever. Like, what helped you eventually say, you know what? That's it. That was an escape for me going to Hollywood. It was like, what can I do with myself? Because I can't walk out of my front door anymore and look at the shell of a house that still exists from three years ago and talking about being restimulated by stimulants in the environment that trigger that reactive mind. So I was like, I've got to get out of here. My friends were all dying.

Goldie was the start. But then you go into a world of drugs and heavy drugs and alcohol. And I had eight more friends die. It was four of them died in a car accident. and overdose, suicide. One was so loaded sitting on an upstairs balcony on the fourth floor and laughed and went backwards, just boom. I mean, it's like you can't even make this stuff up.

It was just trauma after trauma after trauma. And I was like, it's going to be me next or like I have to do something. I cannot do this. I had this dream one night. And the dream was Goldie came to me into the dream. And she had this talk with me. and she was like, how dare you use my death as an excuse to waste your life away? It's so horrendous that you would do that.

What would I want as your best friend? I'd want to see you happy. And instead, I have to look at you in this condition being so miserable. That's your tribute to me and my life. And that dream was very powerful. I was like, whoa. I really felt like she was talking to me through that dream. I don't know how that really works, but it was quite a moment that made me say, you know what,

I've got to start turning my life around. I have to explore options on how to deal with this pain and trauma and turn my life around and really make something of myself because the best gift I could give her is to be happy. That's what your loved ones want the most fruit. If you ask any parent, what do you want the most for your child? You want them to be happy and prosperous, proud of themselves. That's what you want. You don't want them wishing they were dead, taking drugs and alcohol to help them be dead.

I love that you share that, Elena. I know this is super hard, but many times we see someone else's success and we think that's for them. We were not made for this. This is them. Part of what I love about your sharing this is I want people to see, yes, if somebody can flip their life from drugs and alcohol and so much trauma to, the life that you get to live, I wanted to see it. I had so many issues. I was really good at memorizing, which saved me through school,

because so much of school is about memorization. It's not about application. It's not about learning in order to apply. They want you to memorize. And if you can't memorize, you're screwed. So, I mean, I actually thought I was dumb. And the school system doesn't teach you, oh, if you never go past a word,

don't understand, they would just say fill it in. Well, if you don't understand the word, I want you to know something. Everything else in the rest of the story goes blank because you have a non-comprehension. So I was going past all these misunderstood words and into non-comprehension, not understanding and then failing these tests and thinking I'm dumb because I can't comprehend. No, I just didn't have anyone saying, look up the words. And when you're a little child, obviously you can't look upwards, but you should have an adult next to you going through the words with you. Simple words. What is a deer? What is a goat? Have a picture of a deer and a goat. You think, oh, this is common knowledge. Everyone knows this. How does a three-year-old supposed to know

the difference between a goat and a deer? A goat has a this. A deer has a, you know what I'm saying? So they can start understanding these things. And that's where I really just started to self-educate myself. And just by not going past a word I don't understand ever in life, you know, I've raised my intelligence by several points. So you can raise your intelligence level. We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now, I want to check in with you. Yes, you. Are you driven, but maybe feeling stuck in stuck in your career or a fraction of who you know you could be. Do you secretly feel you should have been further

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isn't about pretending that you're good at everything. It's about knowing where you're truly gifted. So take the working genius assessment today, get 20% off with a code leap at working genius.com. That's working genius.com. You'll be glad you did. So at that point, you are in Hollywood at some point. For you, maybe it's an escape, but you are an actress,

which is not easy to do either, right? It's hard to rise above the noise. I have a lot of people on the podcast that wanted to be actresses and never made it. So first of all, you did make it. Tell me a little bit about that life and also how did you meet Grant? Because he needed to chase you really well. I had my highs and my lows as an actor, first of all. It's a very rough industry.

If you're faint of heart or you don't have a thick skin because you're going to get judged on the way you look, your height, you're acting. You will get picked apart. you've got to really know who you are and take it all with a grain of salt and look at where can I really improve that's legit. And where is someone trying to pick me apart to control me and dominate me and make me feel less than to squash me so they can control me? So you have to really understand people and understand where they're coming in at you at.

And so I didn't have that fully in when I was an actor. I feel like now I would be really armed with how to deal with people because I understand tone levels. Somebody in enthusiasm or cheerfulness has a higher responsibility, they're going to tell you the truth, but in a way that helps you and doesn't squash you. Somebody that comes in at covert, hostile or anger or grief or unexpressed resentment, you think that isn't all over Hollywood? Imagine a tone level coming at you with unexpressed resentment. You know, the types like, at the DMV to take a cliche, you know, or they just don't care,

no sympathy. They're going to hit at you harder because they want to tear you apart in order to build themselves up. It's not a fun industry to be in, especially because there's a code that you have to get in line with all the way that they think and their agreements. And if you have differing political views, religious views, gun rights views, you're going to have more of a difficult time. I've had really high-level producers totally mess with me. I didn't even realize it until way after the fact the guy was trying to date me. I didn't want to go on a date with him. I told my managers, no, he'd call me in. I would get the callbacks. I mean,

I would screen test for some of the biggest shows that you can imagine, and I would not get them. And he'd do it over and over and over and over again to try to break me down so that event, Eventually, my manager would be like, just go on a day with him, you know. But he was like, that's so wrong. Intentionally doing that to break down my confidence and to break down the confidence with my agents and managers to think she's good, but not good enough. Look, I pulled that in. I'm not saying that's going to happen to everyone.

I'm just saying it's an interesting business. Everybody talks about the fact how hard this business is and how much thick skin you need. Okay, so how did you get out of Hollywood? And what happened was Grant? So this is a really fun story. Okay. So then I only knew the arts people. I knew the musicians, the actors. I really wasn't acquainted so much with businessmen. I met Grant on a shoot. I was filming in downtown Los Angeles, and he knew the director. So he was there, not my type, barely said hello to him. But he finagels my phone number from the director and gives me a call, which to me was just the worst phone call I've ever had. I thought, I know, the guys are so arrogant as a generality, but not another rich guy

who thinks he can buy women. He was like, yeah, you know, people's lives tend to improve when they talk to me and when they hang out with me. And I want you to grab a pen and paper. And I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh, hang up with him. This is so Grant, by the way. Like, He's like doing some, you know, one of his seminars on me. I have no clue what he's trying to do. Nor am I interested. I didn't care about his little Mercedes. That to me was even more of a turnoff because I was like, oh, I have his number.

So then, yeah, for the next 13 months, he would call in twice a month every month, leave a message on my answering machine, no return phone call until finally he starts hanging out with my friends and starts showing up on the scene. And so now I'm forced to talk to him. And lo and behold, long story short, I find myself falling for this guy, which was just completely gobsmacked me because he's not my tie at all. But he does not get a no for an answer. He does not take a no for an answer. No. And he kept showing up consistently and everything I would do that would make all the other guys so sick of me by not going out with them. And whatever, he would just smile and continue to be there and no pressure.

And I was like, this guy is really interested in me, not just the punani, for lack of a better word there. I was like, there's something different about him. He just saw into my soul. He was so authentic and so real and so willing to wait until I could peel off all of that reactive mind stuff that led me to irrationalities that when here I have this incredible guy right in front of me, I have so much baggage and stuff that I can't even see it. But you strip that stuff away and all of the sudden the world looks different. You see real people and opportunities

and goodness and you don't have to have the walls up for everyone just for the bad ones. that you said that because by the way, it's amazing how many times we don't even see opportunities right in front of us, right? Most of the time, we need to be ready to even see it. That's right. But you can't see it if your reactive mind is always telling you for a survival mechanism, never depend on a man for anything. Any man that comes up, what are you going to be? I can't depend on a man. I'm going to lose my identity. I can't love anyone. I can't be heard ever again. So I'm going to make that work across the board with everyone to protect myself. And you can't live in a sane environment in a new unit of time with always operating with that false data from that reactive

mind. It has to get cleared out so that, you know what, in a new unit at time, this man does not equal all the parts of all those pains, losses, and trauma. This is not that. This is separate, you have to be able to see indifferences, not the similarities. Like A equals A, all men equal they cheat equal, stay away from all men, then I can't be married and have children and ever be happy along that line. That's so powerful. So you eventually say yes to Grant and you guys at some point get married. So we got married when I was 30. I had come a long way, baby, but for the first four years of our marriage, I was still operating with that false state of be this independent, powerful woman, never depend on a man for anything. But I'm married. So it

doesn't make sense now. Why can't I depend on a man that I married, that I'm supposed to be till death do us part? Like, this is not analytical sanity. But yet, so four years in, when we had the economic collapse and I'm deciding at this point, I'm going to get rid of the reactive mind. It's called going clear. I'm going to go clear, get rid of the reactive minds so that I can just think analytically. I did that because we were at a crucial point in our life where it was like, we have to join forces in order to survive 2008. Take me there. So it's 2008. Everything is collapsing. is there a certain day that you realize that, oh, my God, we're losing the stability and we either lean in or what is going to happen? Like, is there a certain day in mind? Yeah, there was a specific day.

It was the day Lehman collapsed. And Grant went white in the face and I'm pregnant with our first child and I said, what does this mean? And he says, it means we're going to die. And I'm like, die, you said on the first phone call, remember that people's lives get better when they hang out with me? You didn't mention anything about death. And I have an unborn child in my belly right now. I was like, you go to your room and figure this out. So he did. He went to, you know, his big office was in the room a few steps away. We weren't where we're at right now. And he came back and figured it out. He wrote the book. It was called Sell to Survive, but now it's called Sellar Be Sold.

Cellar be sold, yes. Cellar be sold. That's so good. And so he figured it out. And that's the moment where I said, you know what? I'm willing to join forces. I know we've already been married, but like really to figure out who does what in the relationship.

So we're not fighting each other as a man and a woman vying for power. But really who does what based on strengths and weaknesses for the greatest. good, where do we want to go? What is the impact that we want to make? How big do we want to go? What are my role? What areas do I get to be the boss of? What areas are you the boss of? We can advise each other, but we're the boss of those areas. You run those at 100. I'll run these at 100. Together we're 200. We're not 50-50. And I said, okay, I'm all in on my husband. And I had to really counter all the imaginary female voices that said, oh my God, you're going to be a subservient woman and support your man. And that was terrifying to me. It wasn't like it is today. You know, you go on

Instagram today and women are more willing to support their husbands, which is a nice change. But back then, it was not that way. It was before the Me Too movement, everyone was still being dependent, never depend on a man for anything. But that's what we did. And then that's when we really started to gain massive strides throughout the years. And we really were not perfect. I'm never pitching perfect. We're two very powerful strong beings. We clash.

We're tightens. But we do know how to sort out our differences and battle it out privately. And always come up with an optimum solution. And some of our greatest acts of love are helping each other reach our goals and our victories. and we have that. It fortifies us. And then we can go and smash enemies together. And that's why we're together for going on 22 years of marriage because we figured that out. Thank you. In the cruise, I vaguely remember an exercise that you actually played with Grant, at least he gives you credit for forcing him to think bigger. And he would have to like pretend to

have a certain amount in the bank and what would you do with it, right? And it was such a beautiful, powerful exercise. I don't know if you're willing to share that. I found that so profound. Oh my gosh. We called it the lotto game. I called it the lotto game. So after Lehman's collapsed and Grant, I felt was terrified. I'd never seen that before. I felt him kind of caving in his business as he knew it was over. He was going to have to reinvent himself. And so in order to pop him, out of that, we played the lotto game. It's exactly what you said. What would you do if you had a billion dollars? What would you do if you had 500 million? Whatever the number, but you always worked your way up. And so the benefit of playing that game, and I made him play it every night.

I'm not joking, for months, I'd make him play the lotto game every single night. And what that did was it just got you to expand, well, what would I do if I was a billionaire? Would you think differently? Would your actions change? Would you be upset if somebody hung up on you on the phone? No, you just pick up and make another phone call. Like, what is the beingness of a billionaire? How do you think, A, they would know about money so they're not doing dumb things with money like buying on credit what they don't have money. They're not posers. These people really understand financial wealth. They understand business. What do we have to do now in order to become that version of ourselves? But most importantly, how do I be the beingness of that now?

If we lost a deal, it wasn't as devastating because it was like, okay, well, if in five years you really are a billionaire, are you really going to be upset that you lost the $30,000 deal right now? No, you're not even going to remember. It's not going to register. So how do you really start assuming that beingness of without an arrogance, but like just a beingness of that while you're doing the action that's connecting you. from where you are now to your ideal scene. You have to be the beingness, then the doingness of the actions,

and then you get to have it. You get to have the money, the plane, the this, the that. But it's not going to happen until you're wearing the beingness and doing the doingness. And then they collide into one. Incredible. So if somebody's actually listening and they're like, forget, Lena, you're talking about a billion dollar.

I can't even like imagine that. But let's go to a million or a 10 million or 100%. million. What did they need to do? Yeah. So what you need to do is this. I'll tell you exactly how we did it. So when we did this, those ideas and concepts were very way out of the realm. We were on the verge of losing everything. We thought we were going to perhaps lose the house, everything. So we didn't have any of what we have right now. So I want you to know I was there. So the first thing that they have to do in order to have your future is mock up your future. What is it that you want in this future? Is it the 10 million? Is it the 20 million? Is it being able to have the kids homeschooled?

How do you travel? Is it first class? Is it private? What is it? I'm in a loving relationship with the family, with the this, with the that. You create the picture of what you want. And then you reverse engineer into present time. So that future is there. Okay. The future is there. The future is going to eventually catch up with you and then your future is going to be in the past. So if you're over the age of 20, your future was 20 when you were 12 and it eventually caught up with you, right? And then it's going to go in the past when you're 25. So the first thing to do is completely severed the ties from your past, boom. And I started to live from my future self. I'd never done this before. It was the greatest successful action for me. Before I had lived from my past, which was what,

connected to trauma, no money, dumbness. I tried something I failed. I bought this program. I never used it. I tried this diet. I failed. I'm a loser. I suck. And I never had the picture actually hit me. I was just, if you always go to your past, your past hasn't hit your future. You're constantly going to be going, I'm a failure, I'm a loser, that doesn't work, and you're going to be reinforcing that over and over and over. It's very hard to break that cycle. You don't have to live from the past to the present and the future just because you were taught that's the way it goes. Time is made up.

Man made up time. Man made up a calendar, the 365 days. It's all made up. Time is made up. Why can't you decide to live from the future into the now? The difference is if you really believe you're a billionaire, don't be stupid because billionaires aren't stupid and reverse engineer from that picture. How do I become a loving wife?

What do I need to learn about? What are his needs and wants? What are my needs and wants? What do I need to understand about motherhood? What courses should I take? What learning should I do? If I want to travel abroad, do I need to learn another language? If I'm going to be an entrepreneur, what do I need to be?

to know about entrepreneurialism. Who do I need to be studying? I've taken finance courses. I've learned to study people and tone levels that I've been telling you about out of a book called science or survival. You don't understand. I've done personal values and integrity. I've done communication courses, how to overcome ups and downs in life, a confidence course, a marriage course, how to rear children, how to rear happy and successful children. I've done thousands of hours of self-enhancement on myself to become the future self that I wanted to be. And when you do that and wearing the hat that you already are, now I can fail forward.

I can buy a program, started and fail, and at least I can go, you know what, that's what I needed to do to learn to become better when I went through a lawsuit or I made a bad business decision. That would have caved me in in the past. Now I was like, oh, what is the opportunity I need to learn from this to make myself bigger and to protect myself from that going forward. What didn't I look at?

What red flags did I ignore in that business endeavor? Why did I let them in? I hired them. I chose them as my business partner. That's my fault. Yes, they were jerks and they didn't do right, but I'm the one that picked them. Why did I pick them?

What did I miss? So now I can self-correct going forward. Everything that I go through, good, bad, or wrong is what I needed to go through to become who my future, is going to be and who has become. Now it's reset into a whole other level right now. And so I'm resetting doing all my future self to become my future self because my future self is going to make everything that I've already accomplished look like child's play. I love that. Oh my God. So I do want to hear what that looks like. I love this exercise, Elena. Like, thank you for sharing.

Like I think sometimes we're so worried about the situation that we forget to dream. We don't even know what a dream could look like because I think we're so in this down-kill spiral. And I think especially now when there were so many layoffs and so many businesses collapsed. And this is so important for people to hear this because you can always figure out what it is that you want to create for yourself. And what are the steps do I need in order to create not just a paycheck, but the life that I want with a paycheck. That's right.

I take an action, an action on a doingness. and sometimes the recessions are the times that I grow the most. I'm in real estate. I have a real estate team. I have 500 realtors. It was a slow market the last couple years. But I used that to what do I have to do to get ready for when the floodgates open? I'm at the forefront ready to like pick all the fruit when it's go time again.

You saw a complete shift in your life and what you created. But did you need to change your relationship? with money for yourself, for your family, for 10x ladies, right, all the different ventures that you created. How did that need to change? Because again, you did not grow with, you know, valuation of billions of dollars. So take me there for a second. I definitely had to change my opinions about money. I had an exercise that I did where I wrote all of my considerations about money. From the simple ones that you've always heard, money doesn't grow on trees, It's hard to get money.

It's hard to make money. It's hard to keep money. Grant makes all the money. That one came up to me kind of recently. Money makes you evil. All of those considerations I had to write out because that's what you're telling yourself about money. How can you have money if you think it's going to make you evil? What person is going to knowingly think that money can make you evil?

So I've had to reorient and go, money could make me more generous. It actually does grow on trees. Ironically, it comes from like a cotton bush, I believe. money doesn't make you happy. Well, no, but I'm not looking for money to make me happy. I'm looking for money to provide a service for what I need in an economic planet that we live on. But ironically, if I'm going through a bad time,

I'd rather have money than not have money. They're not have money. Oh, we agree on that. The people that tell you money doesn't make you happy, those people don't have money because I'm going to tell you. Nothing's going to make me happy to hear 10 years ago then when I got the call that my father was on his deathbed. So nothing was going to make me happy.

No amount of money is going to make me happy in that situation. But when Grant Cardone said, you can take our plane and fly home, and I was there for his last breath. And unfortunately, my sister, who had to fly commercial, didn't have that luxury.

That made me happy. That I could be there to hold his hand. That's something that money. can buy you. It can buy you time and moments and experiences. So I had to reorganize all of this thoughts about money and you know how much I love words. Have you ever cleared? Like if you really got a good dictionary and cleared the word, cleared means really understanding it to its full conceptual understanding, the word wealth. And never, never look up a word and don't look at the origin or the derivation of the word because that is the genius of the word. The word,

word wealth comes from the word well plus, you know, it has a plus sign, well plus health. Well healthy, wealthy, the word wealthy actually is at origin means you are well and you are healthy. So if you are not well, it would indicate that you are not well and you are not healthy. I don't want to be not well and not healthy. So I really got my mind around the word wealthy is actually logical sanity for myself and others, because I can help people when I am well and I am healthy. If I am not well or healthy, I can only take care of myself because I'm trying to get healthy. A not well body can't go out and help others.

It's doing everything it can to keep its own survival going. So I stopped looking at wealth as greedy. And I actually, it was grant that actually gave me that epiphany being broke, which we were, by the way, is actually greedy because you can't help anyone else financially even if you wanted to. And I was there. So there's no judgment here. It's just you asked me what it took me to change my perceptions around money in order to have money. because you're not going to be able to have what you condemn or resist or think is wrong or bad or whatever. It's so true because, again, if you keep feeding that it's evil or it's for someone else to make,

why would you even take action, right? That's right. I did that in my life. I was like, oh, well, Grant makes all the money. And then I was like, wow, I didn't even realize I was sitting there. And then, you know, I was like, wait a minute, I can do this branch at Cardone Training, technologies called 10x ladies. And then I developed all the masterminds and the 10x ladies and the 10x ladies club. And my division alone made four million and was on track to make 10 when I decided to dissolve all of that and go be a mom to my teenage girls full time and do more philanthropic work.

But the point is, is I broke even that circuitry within myself because that's all just circuitry. It's all false data. And the last thing I'll tell you, which I love, and I've said this before, but the word information is in a formation, how something is formed, a structure, right? And information. So an information is a formation of the mind. That's the derivation. A formation of the mind is information. So with the right information, knowledge is. power, well, imagine if you had the wrong information, you would have a deformation of the mind. That is the opposite of knowledge is power. That is anti-knowledge is debilitating. It's a deformation. Like you're walking through life with deformations. It's not your fault. You have wrong information.

That's so interesting. That's it. You just need the right information. So first of all, I love how both of you kind of help each other. And I think you do talk a lot about your role after marriage, right? Like, how do you actually create an ecosystem that makes everybody better versus fight each other? And I think you also talked a little bit about how he helped you a little bit, you know, pushed you, you know, when you were writing the book. Like, you both know know how to be hard on each other, but in a beautiful way, right? So suppressive people, this is something that I observed from my Hollywood days. And I observed this because I saw a lot of agents, managers, and whatnot do this to extremely beautiful and talented people. So the difference is,

is when you know your strengths and your weaknesses, right, you think someone's going to pick apart your weaknesses. My observation is, is the people that want to control you the most will attack your strengths. They'll attack your strengths because that's what gets in your head. If you thought you were beautiful or talented or a good mother or a good entrepreneur, they're going to attack that. If that's like your thing and you lead with that and you're like, I am proud of this. No one can take this away. That's where it's going to come in at, oh, well, oh, you work too much. Or you look so tired or when is enough enough? And, you know, they start attacking that work thing that you have, that work is the basis of morale, you know,

production is you feel good, you're thriving, you're taking care of your family, and now it's being chip, chip, chip, chip. Oh, you're a good mother when you're being a mother. Oh, that hits right in the heart of like the motherhood thing, you know, and they're always saying it with a smile. It's covert hostile. It's hard to detect. They're going to pick apart your strengths and they're going to feed your weaknesses. If your weaknesses is you want to drink or overindulge in alcohol or drinks or too much binge watching when you should be doing something to improve your life and career, spending time with your children. Weaknesses are endless.

They're going to be there feeding them. Oh, let's have a glass of wine or let's eat a whole box of donuts or whatever it is. You know what I'm saying? Because the more you do your weaknesses, the more you feel bad about yourself, you're broken down. So that's the thing to notice. When you say Grant and I are hard on each other, we're not hard on our strength. Grant is hard on my weaknesses.

So if I think I don't want to write the book because I told him, I can't write a book like you do. I'm not as smart as you. You know, it takes me time and I can't sit still. I come up with all my excuses. And he says, you know what? You're lazy and a coward. How dare he say that to me.

Is he attacking my strengths? No, he's attacking my weaknesses, my excuses. He went straight to the core and hit them. You're a coward. You're lazy. He's not buying into that I'm not smart enough and that I can't sit still and it takes me time and I'm not as good. You're lazy and a coward. Let's call a spade of spade.

He's not attacking my strengths. So the people you love will attack your weaknesses and it won't be pretty and it won't feel good, but they'll feed your strengths. They'll be like, you are smart. You have this. Knock it off. They'll call you a coward because they know that's what you need to prod you into going, And that's exactly what it did. I was so infuriated because I support him.

And he doesn't support me. But I went into my computer. And for a month, I was like, and I finished and wrapped up the book and threw it. It worked. And you see, but he fed my strengths. Now I was rehabilitated with that book. I was like, oh, my God, the dumb girl is not dumb. I wrote a book.

Books are for smart people. You know what I'm saying? Not for me. I mean, that made me have confidence. That built me up. You've got to be able to distinguish the people in your life that are attacking you. What are they attacking your weaknesses or your strengths? If they're attacking your weaknesses to build you up stronger,

you want to keep them around no matter how uncomfortable it is. And Grant does that all the time. You need a lot of thick skin. Not always pretty, but has definitely helped me rise to the occasion. So what do you want? What do I want? I've got to be careful here because I'm like, wait, no, I want the other thing too. But we're working on that too.

He does have a really sweet soft spot, really sweet. A lot of people don't know that side of him that is such a humanitarian and how much he loves people and why he pushes people because he doesn't want to settle. for mediocrity because he knows normal is dangerous for you. And the man just wants a better planet. So I really just have to admire him at the end of the day. You have two teens, by the way, that they're working on the business, and that's incredible to watch.

And you have some big, audacious goals as a family or as Elena. I don't know. Like, take me there a little bit. What do you know about where you're going? I hit all of the goals, you know, my future. it aligned and it was everything that I wanted the global world tour, the kids. When I mocked this up, I didn't have kids. I hadn't had a 22-year marriage.

So the future self for me is I want to have a global influence. And when I say I, I mean, as a unit, Grant Cardone and myself, to be able to have global influence to where world leaders could either come to us for advice or for assistance in whatever business. we are involved with, whether it's energy or whatever. I don't know yet. But I want to be at the world table metaphorically and have influence. So what does that look like?

That looks like it would have to be a minimum, a 10 billion, a 20, a 30, a 40, a 50 billion enterprise gets world attention. You can help people. Like look at Elon and those people. I mean, wow, right? So how do we do that? Who do we need to collaborate with? Where do we need to go in order to have some sort of hook into that global influence?

Who do I need to meet? What do I need to do for myself to be able to speak to world leaders and feel like I can be articulate or interesting and have something to talk about without getting insecure or tongue tied? What does that level of woman need to be and possess? and I just am kind of reverse engineering from there. I need to do interviews like this. I need to speak on stages.

I need to educate myself more of world issues. I need to travel more. I need to understand people and culture. I need to study. I need to learn. I need to listen. So these are all things that I'm working on and reinventing myself in order for the next iteration

because I believe the top, so to speak, needs more people with a little more sanity and a little more spirituality to help all the other people just like me and Grant were or still are, whatever you want to call that. You know, I used to always think I'm just little old me. That's what we always say. I'm just me. I'm just little old me. Essentially thinking you're a nobody, which is so wrong, I've had to overcome so much. But I want that. I want for all the other little old me's out there to come with. And with us and rise to the top and really be able to change the trajectory of this planet. Aw, I love that. This is so beautiful, Elena. Oh, my God, I probably need to, like, get you more

into Leap Academy. But this is so beautiful because, again, it is all about helping everybody see a bigger tomorrow and create a bigger impact. And I love that. So maybe last words, if you have met yourself, your younger self, what would you say to them? Oh my God. Learn how to be the best friend to yourself. I was very not kind to myself. I would have learned to been the best friend to myself, love myself, not care about with other people who really don't matter and are not going to change your life for the better. Think of you. Self-educate yourself. Stay away from the drugs, the alcohol, the party and scene. It's just a waste of time. Those are not really your friends, nobody who wants you to partake in that is interested in you really winning

and getting to a heightened level of success. And that's all I would say. That would probably be enough. If I would have just listened to just those words, stay away from drugs, alcohol, the party scene, start self-educating and self-enhancing. Who knows where I would be right now? Incredible. I love this year, Elena, so much. And I want everybody at home or wherever you are listening to this, I would listen to this again because what you're actually hearing is Elena actually, as she is reinventing herself, she literally shows you how she's future pacing and how she goes back to see what she needs to do, what she needs to learn, what are the gaps, how she becomes the best version she can be so that she can impact even bigger and do more. Like,

it's just so incredible to hear you, Elena. Thank you for coming on the show. Like, this is so fun. Oh, I've had a blast. You asked such great questions. Oh, I had such a good time. Thank you for everything you do. I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. Seriously, there was some really good tools beyond the inspiration. There's some really good tools here of how do you reinvent yourself? How do you future pace? And how do you walk backwards and see what are your gaps? What do you need to learn in order to create that future for yourself? So first of all, do share it with anybody that should aim higher, that can go bigger, that can do more. Please share this super important episode. And also, if you want to add a review, a five-star review, this actually really, really helps bring amazing guests. So make sure to download, subscribe so that we can continue bringing all these incredible, incredible guests.

Now, as you remember, every week, I look at my YouTube channel. it's Leap Academy with Zilano Golan, and I look for questions that you're submitting. So first of all, add comments with zero questions because there's a very good chance we'll pick you. Now, the next question, I couldn't quite understand like the name. I think there was like some acronyms there, but the question was how to get paid to speak. And that's such a beautiful question. Because again, if you want to create some side hustle, if you want to create some other types of cash, First of all, you could build a lot of authority through speaking. Speaking is an incredible vehicle

to spread the word, to be known, to build authority, but it can also pay you. The ranges vary, depending on your experience, depending on your authority. So it goes all the way from, I don't know, like $500 all the way to $50,000 and sometimes a lot more. So it could vary. But what I want you to do first, if you want to get paid to speak, the very first thing that you want to do is, is really understand what topics and what venues are you talking about because you need topics and venues that makes sense for paid opportunities. What I mean by this is, for example, keynotes, there's a good chance if you're a keynote speaker, an opening, a closing, et cetera,

there's a good chance that that's an actually paid opportunity. Panels are almost never a paid opportunity. Podcasts are almost never paid opportunity, et cetera. So first of all, you want to understand that the topics and the venues that you're speaking at or actually have the potential to be paid. The other thing is credibility. So the biggest risk for an event organizers is actually to bring somebody that is not good enough. The problem is not the pay. The problem is that if they brought in hundreds of people, whatever, thousand, whatever it is, right? If they brought a lot of people listening to someone that they are not good, they're not

inspiring, they're boring, they, whatever, like their story is not great or whatever it is, that's such a big flop. That is the biggest worry that they have. So your credibility needs to take that risk away. Okay, they need to feel when they check your website, they need to feel like you're going to be exactly the speaker that they need for that moment, right? Now, first of all, yes, you're going to have to have a website, a speaker's website, and there's something called Speakers Real.

They want to check your reel. They want to check. It's almost like a little trailer of you speaking on stages and people talking about how amazing this talk was and, you know, giving recommendations. On the website, they also want a list of topics and they want maybe the fee or to have a conversation with you, et cetera. So you want an organized website. If you're sending an email from like a regular Gmail or whatever, that chance of somebody actually looking at you as a serious speaker is very, very slim. Okay. So first of all, make sure that your website is that

authority that you need to have. Obviously, there's other ways if you're an influencer on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, et cetera. That is kind of your business card. That's okay. But in general, a speaker should have a legit website with the speaker, trailer, more real, as you call it, with feedback recommendations, list of topics, and maybe at least apply to get the fees. Because again, you want to have a conversation with the organizers and you want an ability to decide what is the fee based on the venue, based on the opportunity, based on how much you want this, where it is geography-wise, is it remote, do I need to fly, how long is it going to be the whole trip? So all of that is included in the fee. So once you have a conversation with someone,

you can define what that fee looks like. I'll give you an example when TechCrunch invited me to speak and to judge their pitch competition because TechCrunch has such a good brand, I actually preferred to be unpaid. Otherwise, they don't really bring in people that are paid. and it totally made sense in order to get that logo on my site, right? But on the other hand, there was a lot of examples of companies that flew me 5,000 miles away, and they needed to pay a pretty hefty sum for me to do this trip, right? So really kind of understand they're not paying you for that one hour in front of the people. They're paying you for all the experience and the impact that you will create on their audience.

They're basically paying you for the outcome of the value that you will deliver and the impact and transformation that you're going to create in the audience. So that is what they're paying for. And maybe if you're a big name, they're also going to pay because your name might draw more people into the conference. The last thing, so if you're wondering like, okay, so how do I start being paid to speak, the best way to do is understand that you need to now collect the information,

right? Collect the website, collect the speakers real, collect footage, collect videos, collect recommendations, in order to do that the best way by far is to volunteer to speak. And again, based on where your experience is, but if you volunteer to speak in different places, sometimes it's nonprofit, sometimes it's other could be your local library.

It could be a webinar. It could be bring people into your home. It really doesn't matter. But if you can volunteer and have just somebody taking some photos to have like a footage and some videos and then maybe talk to some of the people in the audience about their experience. Maybe they can even add, you know, a quote on your website.

Maybe they can add something on your LinkedIn or whatever it is. That is how you start creating your authority to be paid to speak. So I hope this helps. I'll see you next week. And again, don't forget to share, subscribe, download. And again, if you can give us a five-star review, we'll mean the world. Bye, everybody. Remember this episode.

It's not just for you and me. You never know whose life you're meant to change. sharing this episode with them. And if you love today's episode, please click the subscribe or download button for the show and give it a five-star review. This really means the world. Join me in helping tens of millions of individuals reinvent their career and leap into their full potential. Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever. The skills for success have changed. AQ, adaptability, reinventing and leaping, are today the most important skills for the future of work.

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