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Grant Cardone: Why Most People Aren’t Willing To Succeed

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In this episode we bring on Grant Cardone to give you a real look at what it means to be successful and what it really takes to get there. He shares the exact shifts you have to make in order to 10x your life. We share why you should ignore most people’s advice, how to push yourself to a new level, and why learning isn’t enough to get to the highest levels.

Grant Cardone is the CEO of Cardone Capital, an international speaker, entrepreneur and author of The 10X Rule as well as two dozen best-selling business programs. Named the #1 marketer to watch by Forbes Magazine, Cardone founded The 10X Movement & The 10X Growth Conference, which has grown into the world’s largest business & entrepreneur conference. He has been featured on countless media outlets across the globe.

  • What was the inflection point that really changed your life and career?

  • How do you go from the fantasy of being successful to actually being successful?

  • How do you go from success to mega success? How do you go from making good money to

  • Operating out of his house, not spending money on advertising - how did he go from 3mm to 30mm?

  • It wasn’t one time, it was 1000 small moments that lead to Grant’s greatness and his rise in fame

  • The FIRST thing to change was Grant’s mindset - “I have to be a big boy now”

  • He was being held back by other peoples’ thinking - small thinkers, people who were playing small ball

  • "You can fake a lambo but you can’t a jet."

  • STOP listening to people who are mid level successful and have successful small businesses. If you want to be a real player you can’t get advice from little players. You can’t be a whale and act like krill.

  • Start managing other people’s money - leverage other peoples’ capital to get into a bigger game

  • How to raise 20bn in 72 hours.

  • Change the questions you ask yourself. You have to keep changing and leveling up the questions you’re asking yourself.

  • Don’t get comfortable in any one lane, understand business as a whole.

  • You have to take NEW RISKS all the time. You have to reach out and meet new people.

  • Share the stage with other people - collaborating with other people lifted Grant’s brand up and took him to another level - 10x is a movement it’s not just about Grant.

  • Coca Cola and Netflix lose huge amounts of money in order to be successful.

  • How do you start filtering good advice and bad advice when you're trying to 10x?

  • You have to compromise something to really take it to the next level. If we wanted to really take ourselves to the next level we have to get uncomfortable and do what it takes.

  • People have to KNOW you before they can trust you. You have to get yourself out there.

  • Money moves to familiarity, especially in times of crisis.

  • “The aha never turns into money” Whats money is aha + do do. You have to turn ahas into ACTION.

  • Grant spent years on the mistaken idea that the best product would win. Then he spent years thinking that people needed to trust him. That as a mistake too - then he had to shift to getting people to KNOW you.

  • How do you get known?

    • Start with WHO do you want to know you?

    • How can you distribute content to them at the lowest possible cost? You can either spend money or you can spend energy. It’s a lot cheaper just to spend money on paid ads.

  • How do you stand out? #1 thing is FREQUENCY. It’s not about how unique your content is. People have to trust you.

  • Likes don’t matter. You have to build of following of REAL people. Do you want to build an army?

  • You have to be the brightest star in the room, otherwise you’re gonna get overlooked.

  • Never give up on an ad campaign, keep working it until the offer makes sense to people. Flip what you’re offering, change the offer, try something new. If you give up on the promotion of an idea, that idea will never find it’s way into society.

  • Just cause its a good idea doesn’t mean it’s gonna make money, and just cause it makes sense doesn’t mean it’s gonna make money.

  • “If you’re gonna take a whipping take it quick” Don’t get stuck in the loss. Run another play. Keep going.

  • Allocating time across multiple businesses

    • Which one has the biggest pay day

    • Which one is closest to the goal line

    • You can’t manage everything. Be a good quarterback, plug in where you are good and where you can add value.

  • If there’s 3 people in your company you will never figure out what kind of business person you really are. That’s when you really get to meet yourself - when you 10x your company. It will be UNBELIEVABLE.

  • How can you find out how big you are playing small? It’s impossible.

  • There is no courage without fear.

  • You have to get reps in. If you don’t step into fear you will get smaller. You have to confront and push through your fear.

  • #1 Most Important Rule is PROMOTE YOURSELF.

  • What’s wrong with most people’s relationship with money?

    • The Middle class rules don’t work anymore.

  • Study people who’ve mastered the circulation of money.

  • Multiplying money is very different than saving money.

  • Homework: Don’t save any money. Don’t have any money in your checking or savings account. Clean out your retirement account. Start spending your money.

  • An entrepreneur, by definition, puts time and money at risk in order to have more time and money. People save money because they’re playing it safe.

  • Homework #2: Get around people that PUSH YOU. You can’t like your coach. You need someone who will bump you and push you to do more. You don’t need someone to walk along side of you. You can’t get greater without pressure.

  • You always achieve more with somebody else than you would by yourself.

  • Stay in RISKY and DANGEROUS environments all the time.

  • Get involved with people that are PUSHING THEMSELVES.

  • Homework #3: Make commitments to things that pull you forward.

  • People are built to create and to contribute.

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[00:00:11] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than 4 million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we bring on Grant Cardone to give you a real look at what it means to be successful and what it really takes to get there. He shares the exact shifts you have to make in order to 10X your life. We uncover why you should ignore most people’s advice. How to push yourself to a new level beyond what you even think is possible, why learning isn’t enough to get to the highest levels and much more.

Welcome back to another business-focused episode of the Science of Success. Everything we teach on the show can be applied to achieving success in your business life. Now we’re going to show you how to do that along with some interviews of the world’s top business experts. These business episodes air every other Tuesday along with your regularly scheduled Science of Success content. Enjoy this business-focused interview.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we’ve put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our email list. We have some amazing content on their along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time for What Matters Most in Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That successpodcast.com, or if you're on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word “smarter”. That's S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44222.

In our previous episode, we shared lessons from the world of high stakes poker. What’s it like to bet a million dollars on the turn of a card? What can we learn about making better decisions and dealing with tough emotions under those extreme circumstances? We shared a powerful strategy for managing your emotions in a crisis, showed you how to make tough decisions like a professional poker star and much more with our previous guest, Alec Torelli. If you want to make the best decisions for your life even under the toughest possible circumstances, listen to our previous interview.

Now, for our interview with grant. Please note, this episode contains profanity.

[00:02:42] MB: Today, we have another epic guest on the show, Grant Cardone. Grant is the CEO of Cardone Capital, an international speaker, entrepreneur and author of The 10X Rule as well as two dozen bestselling business programs. Named the number one marketer to watch by Forbes Magazine, he has founded the 10X Movement and the 10X Growth Conference, which is one of the world’s largest business and entrepreneur conference. He’s been featured in countless media outlets across the globe.

Grant, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:03:09] GC: Man! I appreciate you having me. I hope there is a science to the success.

[00:03:13] MB: That’s what we’re trying to find out.

[00:03:14] GC: I’ve been looking for it my whole damn life.

[00:03:17] MB: That’s awesome. Let’s dig into that a little bit. I’d love to figure out at least in your experience, Grant. Obviously, you’re tremendously successful. What was the or was there – I know you had a really interesting upbringing in childhood and a lot of traumatic and challenging pieces of that, but what was one of the biggest inflection points in your business career? What was the moment that you went from being an average Joe to somebody who you’re like, “Wow! This rocket ship is really taking off. I’m really going to achieve success on a level that most people never do,” or that maybe even you didn’t think was possible.

[00:03:48] GC: Yeah. The 10X rule, man. The 10X rule was a game changer. I’ve been in this space of trying to discover the science, seriously, ever since I was 10 years old, but I made it a profession when I was 25. 25 years old, I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to learn how to do business.” I learned how to do sales when I was 25. At 30 I learned a little more about how to sell stuff, because I had my own business then. I was selling stuff door-to-door. But I didn’t really learned the business game. I didn’t know I was really going to really, really be somebody. I always thought maybe I could be. I think we all had these fantasies, right?

When I was a kid I thought maybe I’d be a rock and roll star, and then in my teen years I thought I was going to be a baseball player. Then around 20 I said, “Maybe I’m going to be a drug pin.” I’m going to be the next The Godfather of some kind of – I felt maybe I was going to end up in the crime business, because I didn’t know what I was going to do for a living. I was literally lost for like 10 years.

But when I finally became a legitimate businessman in my 30s, and from 30 to about 45 years old, I was making good money. I mean, I was doing in comparison to the other people around me, I was definitely successful, but I knew that I had another level in me. It took me 2008 when the thing changed. Everything changed for me between 2008 and 2010, I wrote the 10X rule in 2010. When I wrote that book, I wrote it for me. I never thought I’d sell one copy of that book.

I was trying to figure out the science of my next level. What would it take for me to scale my business like the big boys? Prior to that I was making – I don’t know, three million bucks a year, which is a great deal. Less than 4% of all business in America make a million dollars. Very few people ever learn how to make a million dollars, and I was doing 3, but I wasn’t doing 30. I wasn’t spending on advertising, and I was still operating out of my house, and I had maybe half of an employee. I was contract laboring people. I was kind of like a broken vehicle that was getting patched up and bundled all the time. I looked good by the time I got to the destination, but I knew when I got in the car, dude, everything was kind of like just being held together. I had to do everything.

In 2008 when the economy fell apart, when we had this what I would call a depression, not a recession. This global, massive contraction. When the tide went out, then we found out, “Okay, what is Grant really made of? What kind of business is this really?” Anybody that had too much debt at that time or not enough cash, not enough assets, not enough customers, if you weren’t known in probably at least 10 different industries, you got ripped apart.

The last 8 or 9 years has really been the creation of Grant. This is a long answer to a very simple question you’re asking. When was it? It wasn’t one time. It has been a thousand times. I went from having $7 million in the bank to almost $1.5 billion worth of real estate in the last 10 years. I went from 3 employees to almost 500 employees. From spending no money in advertising to spending a million dollars a month in advertising.

The first change was this, like my mind changed, “Hey! I got to be a big boy now.” I had been negatively impacted by other success people’s thinking. Meaning, the guy that made a couple of million dollars from his house, from the entrepreneurs, from the – Well, what are they called? The solopreneurs. We have words being used today every day that weren’t even being used 20 years ago. Solopreneur, entrepreneur, self-employer, influencer. Just because you can influence, don’t mean you can cash a check.

[00:07:34] MB: That’s very true.

[00:07:36] GC: That’s why I say that thing about you can fake a Lambo, but you can’t fake a jet.

[00:07:41] MB: I like that.

[00:07:41] GC: Anybody can lease a car. You can even charter a jet. You can even take a photo in front of a jet, but you can’t fake put your name on the jet. For me, the science of success is really about what did Coca-Cola do? What did Warren Buffett do? What is Elon Musk doing? What did Alexander the Great do? Not what did Bobby do on Instagram to get 700 likes?

[00:08:07] MB: Yeah. That’s such good advice, and looking at studying the greatest achievers of all time, the Alexander the Greats, the Caesars, Rockefeller, etc. I mean, you could see the bookshelf behind me where I have all of those biographies sitting there. I’m curious, I want to dig in to more this transition point, and I love the piece of advice that you had that it wasn’t one thing. It was a thousand small things. What were some of the other things? You talked about shifting your mindset. What else enabled you to go from a successful small businessman to a world-shaping mogul?

[00:08:39] GC: I quit listening to small successful businessmen and women. I quit getting advice from, no offense, punks, and I felt like a punk, dude. I felt like, “Oh! I’m a businessman. But you walk into a room, you go to New York City. You’re making 3 or 4 million bucks a year and you think you’re the shit. You got a couple of cars paid for. You got a house. You belong to a country club.

I walked into a meeting with Goldman Sacks with a billionaire. At that time I was probably worth – I don’t know, 80 million bucks. Dude, they didn’t pay attention to me. I was not even there. I could have walked in with a hard on and no pants. They wouldn’t even recognize that I was there. I could have opened an account that day with 80 million with Goldman Sachs. They still wouldn’t have paid attention to me. I was no one.

When I walked into the Goldman Sachs building and saw their elevators, their elevator, one elevator was bigger than my office. I was like, “What the fuck have I been thinking, man? What have I been thinking?”

Now, at that time I owned a bunch of real estate, but I refused, I refused to manage other people’s money. I’m like, “What am I thinking? Everybody, all my uncles, my brother, all these people, all these little players – My account, my lawyer said, “Don’t manage other people’s money. Don’t take other people’s money Don’t let other people invest with you. It’s a problem.” All these other people.

Then I walked in the Goldman Sachs’ building, I’m like, “How did they build this place?” They raised other people’s money. They had people working in that building that made more money working for Goldman Sachs than I made working for myself. I’m like, “What the fuck have I been thinking?” This is a thousand – I’m getting beat. I feel like I’m in Singapore, I’m getting cracked in the back with a – What is that? A cane? A cane. I’m getting beat, man. I’m like, “Whoa!”

Blackstone this week, I think it was last week actually now, they raised $20 billion in 72 hours. One thing has to happen and you’re like, “I want to be a real player.” If you want to be a real player, you cannot get advice from little players. You can’t be a whale and act like a krill. Yeah, you can show up like a little clown fish, but you got to remember, you can’t leave anemone because somebody is going to eat your ass up.

I was telling the guy in the interview the other day, “Bro, you got to change the questions you’re asking yourself.” If you start in sales and you want to get great at sales. Okay, good. Get great at sales, but at some point you got to start asking questions about business, not sales. You got to elevate the game. You got to start getting uncomfortable with other shots.

For the business person, the businessman, the businesswoman, for a person to go from an idea to be an CEO really running a company, you got to keep changing the questions you ask yourself and not get comfortable in any one lane. That means you’re always taking new risks. I’m having to take new risks all the time. I’m having to reach out and meet new people. I’m having to be in new interviews, ask new questions.

[00:11:36] MB: Yeah, that’s great. There’re a number of really good insights from that. One of the things that seems like it was a breakthrough for you is this idea of starting to manage other people’s money or leveraging other people’s capital so that you could play in a bigger game. How did you begin implementing that into your life? You’re sitting there in the elevator, as you say, “Oh my God! I have to start leveraging other people’s capital.” How did you start to put that into motion?

[00:12:00] GC: Well, that was one company, okay? It wasn’t about other people’s money. It was the realization like, “What was I thinking?” Why am I worried about raising money from other people when I know I have a great investment vehicle?” I know it’s better than Goldman Sachs, this shit paper. They’ll sell anything to anybody. They’ll take a billion dollars from you and let it sit in a bank account and pay you nothing, like whatever.

I know I’m putting people in these beautiful real estate deals, but I won’t put anybody in it, because I got this one piece of data that was given to me by another buy that said, “Leave other people’s money alone, man. Don’t get too big. Fly under the radar.” That was just one little business, okay?

There was another business, my seminar business. My seminar business, I was told early on, “Hey, you need to be the main guy on stage.” That was bad data. When I started collaborating with other speakers bringing other people, it was no longer Grant on stage. It became the 10X movement.

I’ve worked with Tim Story, Tim Grover, Steve Harvey, Snoop Doog, Little John, John Maxwell. We got Scooter Braun coming to my next gig. I mean, I’ve had unbelievable names. When you collaborate with other people, it lifts your brand up. But I was told by people in the speaking space, the coaches, the gurus, these guys that operate a business from home part-time and tell people how to have a full-time business and grow their business. I was told by them, man, “Hold the stage yourself. Don’t share the stage.” Again, it’s just bad advice. You got to collaborate. You got to go wide.

I look at Coca-Cola, or Google, or Facebook, or Netflix. Look at the money they’re willing to lose in order to get to be a dominant power in their space. The average million dollar company does not want to lose money. They’re terrified to lose money. The average entrepreneur is unwilling to even invest money in time to grow their business. That’s why so many of the office from home, it might why you’re running your podcast from the house. It’s cheap, dude.

[00:14:07] MB: That’s fair.

[00:14:08] GC: The reality is, look, for you to get sponsors, for you to become a 10 million a year podcast, you’re going to have to get a studio. You’re going to have to get advertisers. You’re going to have to have bumpers. You’re going to have to sell a part of your soul. But everybody’s got to comprise something to get bigger and a lot of people don’t want to compromise. They want to just stay where they’re at.

[00:14:29] MB: That’s really interesting.

[00:14:35] MB: Hiring the right person takes time, time that you often don’t have. But you shouldn’t let a time crunch get in the way of finding the right candidates for your business. That’s why LinkedIn is the best place to post your job. In fact, I was on LinkedIn jobs this morning looking for candidates to fill a key role in one of my businesses.

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[00:15:55] MB: You brought up a really good point, which is there’s a lot of bad advice. You brought up a number of good points, but this idea that there’s a lot of bad advice or limiting advice from people who are maybe at the middle tiers of success, how do you filter out, how did you know this is bad advice versus this is good advice. I should listen to this person. I should ignore what this other person is telling me.

[00:16:14] GC: I’m careful about who I study. Then when I read, when I find somebody I’m like, “Okay, I like this person. I want to study them. I don’t just take data from them without taking a look at the data. Howard Schultz is famous for saying one of the things that he believes in is don’t advertise. He’s a multibillionaire. Took an idea called Starbucks. It’s a word-recognized brand today. One of the most valuable brands in the world. He says, “Do not advertise.” I saw this this morning and I’m like, “Howard says, “Yeah, I’ve seen that before.” What does that really mean when Howard Schultz says don’t advertise? Does that mean I should not advertise?

I’m like, “Wait a minute. He doesn’t money on advertising, but –” And I think he does spend money on advertising. But he buys the best locations in New York City to put his stores on. In Miami, the best locations possible. Houston, Texas, best locations possible. Tokyo, Japan. Best locations. He will pay more money for lease to make sure he gets traffic he needs. That is a form of advertising. In fact, it’s cheaper for me to buy some space on Facebook than it is for me buy 5th Avenue and 43rd Street. He is advertising. Okay?

Also, number two, for him to become the president of the United States, which he dropped out of, he would have to advertise, and he didn’t, so he had to drop out. Just because the guy is super successful, just because he has a piece of a data doesn’t mean you want to just drink it, eat it without first studying it. Because if I study the Googles, or the Facebook, or the Netflixes, or the Coca-Clolas, or the Superbowl. Do you want to advertise? If you’re Lays potato chips, you need to advertise. If you’re Nike, you better advertise. If you’re a small entrepreneur, you need to get the whole world to know, you must advertise. This is a mistake I made for 20 years. Not marketing, not advertising. Holding on to money, because I was a little player. Holding my money. I don’t want to spend it. The reality is if nobody knows me, they can never trust me.

[00:18:21] MB: Yeah, that’s fascinating. So what was the inflection point where you realized that you need to start making yourself more well-known? That you need to start advertising? That you need to start deploying your capital instead of hoarding it?

[00:18:32] GC: I can only be in one place at one time, right? I’m talking to you right now. Hopefully this gets out to millions of people. When the economy crashed in 2008, I knew this was not about the economy. It was about me. No one knew Grant Cardone. When things go to shit, whatever leftover money there is always goes where it knows. Money does not go to strange places when it becomes scarce. It goes to familiar places.

Money moves to familiarity. It moves to where I’m comfortable. What’s comfortable? Something I see every day. That’s why people go home every day, it’s comfortable. That’s why people say, “No place like home,” because it’s so familiar, man.

Where does money go? Money goes home. Money always goes home. Money goes to where it’s most familiar, and no one knew me. One industry knew me well, and when that industry got cut in half, there was 20,000 auto dealers in America. They all knew me. They got cut in half down to about 9,000. They didn’t have any money. So that one industry, I was to put it upon one industry. That’s when I knew what Warren Buffett meant about never depend on one flow of anything.

That’s when I got busy saying, “I got to create –” Number one, I got to get more people to know who I am. This is where the mind clicks. I’m giving you practical now. Not just aha. Because the aha never turns into money. You guys watching, “Oh, man! That was great.” That’s never money ever. Ahas are never ever money for me. What’s money for me is, “Aha! Do-do.” For me that meant, “Okay. I got to get everybody.” I made a list of industries; chiropractor, medical, dentist, cosmetic surgeons, plumbers, roofers, real estate agents, real estate brokers. I need to get every one of these professions to know who I am. Financial advisors, brokers, bankers. I need to get them all to know me.

This was 10 or 12 years ago. This was pre-podcasters. The word influencer wasn’t even around yet. Now we have all that. If somebody is listening to this right now, what are you going to do? You got to give people that have influence to know who you are. It is not important who I know it is, but it’s not as important as who knows me. Because if I can get people, if I can get strangers to recognize my name or my face or seem somewhat familiar, that is the next level to saying, “Okay. Now I can start sharing ideas and concepts and products and possibly becoming profitable.”

[00:21:03] MB: Yeah. It’s the classic know, like, trust cycle and you’re basically saying that when you advertise, when you become somebody who’s really well-known, that you’re accelerating that cycle and elevating yourself to a higher paying field where you have tons more opportunities.

[00:21:18] GC: Yeah. What I did for 25 years is I just tried to get people to trust me. The first thing I did was I thought – Actually, I made a different mistake and that I thought, “If people just saw how good my product was, I’d be good.” I spent years with this idea that I have the best product, and that was going to do it. That was a mistake.” Then I’m like, “Okay. Now I need to get people to trust me.” That was actually a mistake too. I need to get people to know me, because if they don’t know me in an industry, my product doesn’t matter and they’ll never trust me.

We all see signs of best product getting beat all the time. Just because you have the best product does not mean you’re going to get the most business. You have to get known. You’re right, get known. What did you say? Known, liked and trusted?

[00:22:02] MB: Yeah. Know, like, trust. You have to know somebody in order for you to like them, and you have to like somebody in order for you to trust them.

[00:22:08] GC: Yeah, that’s probably right. I didn’t know those last two. But that probably makes sense. I’ve spent the last 8 years. I didn’t have an Instagram account 8 years ago. Nobody did. I didn’t have a Facebook account. Facebook had just come out. I started a YouTube account I think 11 years ago. I didn’t know how to do a YouTube video. I didn’t have a subscriber to any of these channels. I didn’t have a Twitter account.

Those were all distribution channels, right? Hey, how do I get known? Make a list. Who do I want to know me? Three; how can I distribute content to those at the lowest possible cost? Because at that time, I didn’t have any money. I’m either going to spend money on that distribution channel or I’m going to spend organic energy. They’re very similar, by the way. It’s a lot cheaper just to spend money. We probably spend a million dollars a month in monetary exchange for ads today. Money, we trade a million dollars in amount in advertising. But I’ll bet you, I’ll spend another 10 times that in energy.

[00:23:05] MB: How do you stand out when you’re creating all these content? There’s so much noise now on social media. Obviously, you have a platform now that helps you standout. But when you were just getting started or for somebody who is just getting started, what advice would you have for them to be able to stand out amongst all of that noise?

[00:23:22] GC: Frequency. Number one, be frequent. You got to be frequent. It’s not how you unique your content is in the beginning. People have to trust that you’re going to be there. In the beginning, there actually had to be a little shock that you keep showing up. Why is this guy doing this Facebook life thing? He’s only got three people there. It’s hard, man. It’s a grueling deal. It’s much easier to go hire a manager, an agent or just spend money on advertising. This is a grueling grind down. Nobody talking about how much of a grind it is, because a lot of people are just buying. They’re buying bullshit likes. I’m glad the likes are going to away. It’s going to destroy people, man. It’s going to kill them. These guys on Instagram, they got to get their likes. It’s going to crush them, because it doesn’t mean anything.

You’re going to build a real following of people, and Instagram and Facebook, this is a not a new thing. This is the way it was 100 years ago. You got to build a following. You want to build an army? If you’re going to take over some part of the world, a thousand years ago, you needed an army. People need to know that you’re serious and they need to know that you’re a threat. Because if they don’t know you’re a threat dude, they’re not going to take you serious and you’ll only pull that off a couple of times.

People are trying to roll around by themselves, and you’re wondering why people aren’t taking you serious. Because you’re competing with them wrong, man. Lebron can roll by himself. He shows up, everybody watches them. You’re lost in the crowd. Nobody sees you. You can’t even see yourself anymore. Everybody is got to become Lebron. You got to become a star.

I look up in the sky at night, man. My eyes always go to the brightest star in the sky, and that’s not going to change. It’s going to change because of your race, your color, religion, your prayers. You got to be the brightest star in the room, otherwise you’re going to get overlooked.

Brightest star also – What comes with the brightest start is when everybody is looking at you, they’re also seeing either you don’t meet their expectations, “Oh, he ain’t that bright. I thought that star was bigger than that.” When you get that much attention, what comes with it is not all admiration. Then a person really meets themselves. When you start getting more the likes, you get dislikes, and you get people ignoring you, and you get people just using you, and want to steal from you, and scavenge you, and click bait you, and bully you. Look, nothing’s changed from the days of junior high school. It’s pretty much the same thing.

[00:25:56] MB: This is a little bit of a subject change, but in the same vein, when you’re – Whether it’s investing at a media campaign or even beyond that, how do you think about when you should double down in something and keep going and soldier through versus when you need to cut your loses?

[00:26:10] GC: On an ad campaign?

[00:26:12] MB: Yeah, and maybe beyond that when you’re starting a company, when you’re working on a project.

[00:26:17] GC: Yeah. Well, those are two different questions for me. One is on the ad campaign. You should never give up on the ad campaign. You need to shift whatever the offer is. You need to keep working that ad until the offer makes sense to people. Sometimes it’s just flipping it, right? Instead of selling the seat, you’re giving the seat away and they’re joining a membership, or, “Hey, here’s the seat. You get the membership.” Sometimes you just got to flip it. But if you give up on the promotion of any idea, the idea will never find its way into society.

Now, if you have an idea that’s terrible, that’s the other part of this question. Just because it’s a good idea, it doesn’t mean it’s going to make money. Just because it makes sense, it doesn’t mean it’s going to make money. Why would a guy like me compete with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, fidelity? You’re going to take those guys on, man, you better be ready to go and you better have a product that has some kind of like unique advantage. If you find out it does, then you’re right. Then there’s a point where you got to bail.

If you told me you had an idea about an app, the moment you say app, I’m closing my mind. I’m not even interested. They cost too much to build. They cost 10 times that to get anybody to know about them. It will cost you 100 times more to get them to remember that they even downloaded your app to use it. It’s just a bad idea. If you can’t give somebody the app, even if you give them the app and it has money on the app that they can take, you’re going to probably not make the business work. Some ideas are just terrible, because there’s so much competition in the marketplace.

Do you remember the Apple Newton by any chance? It was about this big. It’s probably before your time.

[00:27:57] MB: Yeah, I don’t remember it.

[00:27:57] GC: If you Google the Apple Newton and Bill Gates or Microsoft, the Apple Newton was the first iPhone and Bill Gates – Steve Jobs was running out of money. He went to Bill Gates and said, “Look,” and they were furious competitors. Really didn’t like each other. Steve knew he needed Bill’s help. He says, “I need money.” Bill agreed to give them money. They had to bury the apple, the Newton.

I had a product depended upon the Newton. It was a company. I probably never even talked about this before until today. I knew when that deal happened, I had to get rid of the company. They were going to bury the Newton, build it and run it around, and four days I got rid of my company. I took my whipping and moved on.

So if you’re going to take a whipping, take it quick. Move on and what you want to do now is you want to take all that energy now that you don’t have, you don’t have to direct. You need to know that you’re going full steam ahead, but all that energy that you had pushing on that, in this case, the Newton, I had to shift all that energy on to these other projects. Because what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to get stuck in the loss, man.

If you watch the NFL, or ball club, they run a play, it doesn’t work. They don’t go crying on the sidelines. They run another play. You just don’t want to keep running bad plays though. You got to advance the ball at some point.

[00:29:13] MB: Obviously, you talk a lot about taking massive action, going all-in, being fully committed. How do you think about – I don’t know exactly. You have what? 6 or 7, maybe more than that companies now. How do you think about committing time to each of those and obviously you’re not running each of them fulltime. How do you allocate your effort across all of those and how do you think about doing that with multiple businesses?

[00:29:35] GC: Which ones had the biggest payday and which one is closest to the goal line. Most of what I’m doing is kind of emergency managing, kind of like a grenade. I pull the pin. We have a project. I got 60 days and this thing is going to blow up all over everybody’s face. I’m handling things on timelines. This podcast, today’s podcast, it pops up. It showed this morning. I walked in my office, like, “You got a podcast at 1:00,” as a way you’re telling me right now. I thought you wanted your schedule? I do, but I don’t need – At 9:00 in the morning, I don’t need to know what’s happening at 1:00. Okay?

From 9 to 12 today, I just hammered issues that can advance things. Things that are below my pay grade. Somebody else needs to handle it, or things that are above my pay grade. There are legal issues. That’s above my pay grade. Have $600 dollar an hour person handle that. Have the accounting department handle that IRS thing.

The plane. The plane we flew in last night from New York, I don’t know anything about the plane. I just know where I sit on it. But I’m not taking care of it today. The pilots are. They sit up front and act like they’re flying the plane. I sit in the back knowing I own the plane. You got to know your place, dude. What are you doing? What are you doing? You can’t manage everything. It’s kind of like Tom Brady. What is Tom Brady doing? Tom is not playing defense. Tom is playing full-on offense. Tom does what Tom does. Tom puts points on the board.

My job at my company is to put points on the board. I’m not the video guy. I don’t shoot the video. I don’t edit the video, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say, “Hey, that video sucks, dude. Add this footage. Flip this. Put this here. Put that there. Open with that scene back with me walking on to the plane. Dude, what will be perfect for this. Cut it down.” Then we play with stuff like that.

Look. You’re not going to figure any of that out if you’re a one-man show. If there’re three men in your shop, you’re never going to find out what kind of business person you are. Get 30 people, 10X rule, man. You got 30 people, get 300. You got 300, get 3,000. Then you’re going to find out what kind of leader you are. That is when people get to actually meet themselves. This is not a bad thing. This is going to be a fucking unbelievable thing.

When you go from three people to 300, you’re going to be like, “Damn! I am a businessman. I’m a real legit dude. I can do this.” But people will never find that out, because they’re running too small. How could you find out how big you are playing small? It’s impossible. Nobody knows that a million dollars is no money until they have a million dollars. The only people that think of million dollar is a lot of money is the people that don’t have a million dollars. Just go around the streets, bro. You got out on the streets. Where are you today?

[00:32:17] MB: Nashville, Tennessee.

[00:32:18] GC: Yeah, go to Nashville. You go out on the streets and say, “Who thinks that million dollars is a lot of money?” Every person that raises their hand will not have a million dollars.

[00:32:26] MB: Yeah, I totally get what you’re saying.

[00:32:28] GC: You don’t know what you don’t know man, and people don’t even have any clue about how big they could be, because every day they’re playing so small. You could be the next Howard Stern, bro, but you’ll have to leave your house.

[00:32:42] MB: Yeah, that’s great advice.

[00:32:44] GC: You won’t know it, and the world won’t know that you’re the next Howard Stern until you leave. Mark Zuckerberg, he had to leave his campus room. He did not want to go to Silicon Valley. He had to leave to become Facebook, what Facebook is today.

[00:33:01] MB: The most epic and life-changing thing that we’ve ever done at the Science of Success is about to happen. We’re launching a live in-person intensive just for you. This will be an intimate two-day deep dive in-person with me where we will go over all the biggest lessons and greatest life-changing insights that I’ve personally pulled from years of interviewing the world’s top experts on the Science of Success and show you exactly how to specifically apply them towards exponentially achieving the goals that you have for your own life and business. You’ll learn how to influence anyone, 10X your productivity, overcome procrastination and overwhelm and so much more.

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[00:34:41] MB: Why do you think people get stuck playing small ball when they could be so much bigger?

[00:34:45] GC: Because they got small balls. How do you get big balls, dude? You got to practice. You got to start swinging your balls around. You got to –

[00:34:57] MB: Take risks.

[00:34:58] GC: How do you build biceps, dude? How do you build calves?

[00:35:02] MB: Get reps.

[00:35:03] GC: You got to work them. I’ve always had small calves my whole life, and the only way I can get some muscles – I can get them popping out. I just got to go in there and push them. But you see, what people do is people work the easiest muscle they got. They can get biceps, they work their biceps. My wife, she does abs. She can get abs instantly. I’m like, “Look, you need to work those.” I’ve been working those my whole life, man. They’re easy. They pop easy. But people don’t pay attention to stuff that takes little work. They go for the easy thing.

The person ends up calling themselves an introvert. They’re not an introvert. You didn’t stop running your mouth at Thanksgiving dinner. The whole time the introvert said they going to talk the whole damn time. It’s like you didn’t talk to anybody in fucking three months. You will shut up when you’re around your favorite sister. Who’s the only one that listens to your bullshit? But you get out in an audience where nobody knows you and then you’re like, “Oh, I’m an introvert.” No you’re not. You’re an excuse maker. You’re uncomfortable and you’re not willing to move through your discomfort. You got small calves and you don’t want to work them.

How do you build it, dude? You build courage by being courageous, and courage means take action in spite a personal horn. I’m at risk. I am afraid. It is not courageous if you’re not afraid. There is no courage without fear of being present.

[00:36:20] MB: Yeah. That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, which is everything you want is on the other side of fear.

[00:36:27] GC: Yeah, you don’t want to run man, and it’s real by the way. Your fear is real. It’s real. You can’t tell me it’s not real to walk up somebody you want to do business with and tell them to fuck off. I just give you some weird, crazy, thing to do. Go up to Connor McGregor and punch him. You tell me that fear is not real. Walk up to some stranger and push them for no reason. You’ll be terrified, dude. Tell me it’s not real fear. You’re having a real, like, “Wait a minute, I’m having something real here.” Make a cold call to somebody and ask them – You try to get a million dollars from. It feels real. I know all these cool things people say, but I know this, if you don’t do the fear, you’re going to get smaller as a result to not doing it. That’s real too. You have to confront your fear. You have to just push through it. You got to push through it. Maybe something good comes out of it.

At the very least, at least you’re going to find out, “Wow! I hit Connor. He hit me back. He broke my nose.” That could be what your breakthrough moment right there, because you will get so much free press.

[00:37:34] MB: Yeah, that’s interesting. Always thinking about the PR.

[00:37:38] GC: Oh, man! Promote first. Number one most important thing people should be doing today is promote themselves.

[00:37:42] MB: This is a subject change, but something you touched on earlier as well, what do you think is wrong with most people’s relationship with money?

[00:37:50] GC: They don’t have any.

[00:37:53] MB: But why?

[00:37:54] GC: It's because of our upbringing. You can’t take 311 million people, throw them into a place called America. Free to do whatever the fuck you want. Money everywhere. Just look around. Just go outside. Have money everywhere, man. I’m looking at your bookshelf. I’m like, “God damn! $25, $25, $25, $25, $25, $25, $25.” This guy wants to buy a book. I don’t see my book on your shelf.

[00:38:20] MB: There’s a lot of books you can’t see there, Grant.

[00:38:22] GC: Is any of my books up there?

[00:38:23] MB: Yeah, I got 10X Rule.

[00:38:24] GC: Let me see. Where is it, man? Where is it? Pull it down. I don’t believe you.

[00:38:28] MB: I got to go dig it out, man. We’re going to run out of time.

[00:38:31] GC: I’ll wait.

[00:38:31] MB: It might take me two or three minutes, dude. I have a whole stack of books over here.

[00:38:35] GC: See? You forgot about me.

[00:38:37] MB: I would never forget about you, Grant.

[00:38:39] GC: I’m buried in there in all that other stuff. You got the 4-Hour Work Week.

[00:38:43] MB: I do have the 4-Hour Work Week as well.

[00:38:45] GC: You see? Which one are you going to with? The 10X rule or the 4-Hour Work Week? Because they’re complete contradictions.

[00:38:50] MB: You’re inspiring me with this 10X talk, dude. I got to get out of my house.

[00:38:55] GC: Yeah, dude. I don’t want to work four hours a week. I want to work four hours every minute.

[00:38:59] MB: I like that.

[00:39:00] GC: Back to the money thing. The money this is a big thing for – Everybody needs to handle this money issue. There’s a huge, huge problem in the world. We hear about this financial inequality every day on TV. I think 1% of the people in America are about to have the entire net worth of the middle class. 1% of America is going to be – Literally, have more net worth than the entire middle class of America. Why is that? Is it income inequality or is it information inequality?

I think people have the wrong data. People are operating off the middle class rules. Go to college, get a job, save your money, buy a house, plan for retirement.

[00:39:45] MB: Small ball.

[00:39:46] GC: Small balls. One is always smaller, by the way. That’s a problem when they’re both small. You have mostly male audience, right?

[00:39:53] MB: Majority male, but we have a lot of female listeners for sure.

[00:39:56] GC: Okay. The women know what I mean by small balls. No courage, man. All talk. All hat. No horse. You wear the boots, dude. You got the big cowboy belt. That’s it. That’s where the whole thing is right there. Guys got a big watch, no money in the bank. He’s at the club balling like a baller, renting a Lambo on the ride home. No. Probably just rented one on the way over there. He owns part of the club with the other 200 guys that each put in 10 grand. It’s just a lot of pretend going on, man, rather than like, – Hey, look. I’m saying that because I have done some of that and I played smaller. I call them business that were doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and I’m consulting them on how they can make more money. They were spending more money in advertising than I was making in a year.

[00:40:46] MB: That’s crazy.

[00:40:47] GC: A little bit of a paradox. I felt that every time I went and did it too. They were hiring me to come in and get their people to think different. But every time I did it, I felt like, “Wait a minute. They just paid me,” which it looked like a lot of money. It was like – I don’t know, 10,000 bucks an hour or something. To me I was like, “I was so proud of it.” They’re spending 10,000 every hour on advertising.

Who’s thinking small here? I thought 10,00 grand for an hour of work to work was a lot of money. They were spending that every day on advertising. They bought me one time. They bought the ads, literally, every hour, every day of the week, 30 days in a month every day of the year.

See, you got to start like, “Who am I getting my advice from? My mom? My dad? If you want money, man, the only place you can get money from, if you want to change the way you think about money, you have to study only people that have mastered money. Not people that have mastered avoiding debt. Not people that have mastered saving money. People that have mastered the circulation of money. Some of the names you mentioned earlier. I don’t want to save money. I was taught how to save money. I’m great at saving money. I needed to learn how do I get money to multiply? How do I have buildings with my name on it? Why does Donald Trump not ever talk about the house he lives in?

His house is a building on 7th Avenue. He lives in the top of the 7th Avenue building called Trump Tower. Now he lives in the White House. He doesn’t know either one – He has zero interest in where he lives, okay? He wants to be in places where he can drive control revenue. Donald Trump might be a bad example, because so many people hate his guts. But let’s choose Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett never talks about his $38,000 house. One house he’s bought his whole life.

He’s investing money in companies. Most Americans, the biggest investment they make in their life is to buy a house. Most entrepreneurs have more equity in their homes than they do their business. I know business owners that have more equity in their house, put more money down in their house than they do their advertising budget. Spent more money on furniture and paint and roofs and appliances than they do their staff or their furniture. Small balls.

[00:43:13] MB: Fair enough.

[00:43:14] GC: Small balls, until, “Oh! I could put my name on it. It’s 202 2nd Avenue. I live there. Me and my dog.” I know some people, entrepreneurs, they got a bigger budget to feed their Labrador than they do their staff.

[00:43:33] MB: Yeah. The part about – I didn’t actually know that stat about how entrepreneurs have more equity in their houses then they do in their companies in average. That’s mind-blowing and such a great point about the difference between having a mindset of multiplying money versus having a scarcity-based mindset of trying to save money or reduce debt.

[00:43:56] GC: Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:57] MB: So for somebody who is listening to this conversation that wants to level up, they want to take risk, they want a 10X, they want to take massive action, what would be one action step, one challenge that you would have for them? One thing for them to do. You said earlier, “Ahas don’t turn into money.” For somebody who’s listening to this interview, what can they do to start taking action implement something we’ve talked about?

[00:44:20] GC: Oh man! There’d be a lot of things you could do right now. One, how much money do you have in your savings account? Get rid all of it. Don’t save any money. Don’t have any money in your checking account or your savings account. Retirement account, take it all out. Start spending your money. “Well, what else can I do, Grant?”

What people are doing, they went into a business to build a business and now what they’re doing is saving cash. It’s like you got to shift everything, man. By definition, an entrepreneur, someone that puts time and money at risk in order to have more time and money. Organizes a business, taking on more than ordinary amounts of risk in order to grow that business.

All of a sudden, you got a business and now what you’re doing is you’re saving your money. The first thing I would do is you have any money, I would look at why are you saving money? People save money because they’re playing it safe. Now somebody watching this is going to be like, “Well, don’t I need an emergency fund?” Maybe. Maybe you do. I don’t know. Maybe you do need an emergency fund. What you need to do is build your damn business so it will take care of you in emergencies.

[00:45:21] MB: Built cash flows so that you have recurring income stream.

[00:45:25] GC: Yeah, exactly. Cash flows. Spend money so you can have money in time. That’s one thing. If you don’t want to do that thing, or even if you do do that thing, you got to get around to people that are going to push you. If you don’t like this interview right now, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “I cannot stand this guy.” Dude, then I’m your guy. You can’t like your coach. Okay? I’m not a therapist. I’m not Dr. Phil. He lost his show. You need somebody that will bump you. You need somebody that will push you up, okay? You don’t need a guy to walk along side of you. If you’re going to get greater, it will not be without pressure. If you’re going to achieve something beyond what you’re already achieved, you will not do it by yourself and you will always achieve more with somebody else than you would by yourself. So you need to get a game. You need to get some gangsters around you. You need to stay in very dangerous environments all the time. Join me at the 10X Growth Conference. Join my mentor program. Get involved with people that are pushing, pushing, note telling you to push, but are pushing themselves. What do we have for companies over here? 50 little ventures? What do we have?

We got 7 million companies. We got 15 or 17 little venture going on around here. They all take money. They all take money. They all take time. They all take risk. It’s like, “I’m doing that right now. I don’t spend all my time talking on stage.” We’re trying to learn how to grow.

One, get rid of your reserves. Two, get around somebody that will push you. Three, you need to make commitments to things that pull you forward. On my calendar, if you saw my calendar for the next three months, I have all these events pulling me. I want to sleep in, but I have an obligation. That obligation pulls me. I’m not having anything push me. I’m being pulled forward.

[00:47:19] MB: Great advice. Really, really insightful. I have a quick question. I’m just curious. Is there ever a point where – I mean, you’re obviously tremendously successful. Is there ever a point where you would get burnt out or say, “I don’t want to keep pushing myself so hard. I want to sit back and enjoy things,” or is it the pushing and the growing that you – Is it the process itself that really motivates you?

[00:47:41] GC: Every time I’ve wanted to go sit on the sidelines, something bad happen to me. Probably not. Every time I’m like, “I’m good now. I’m going to chill out. Every time I do that – People are built to create and to contribute, and I’m doing this today. I’m not being paid to do this today. My life does not change because of this podcast today. I’m not doing any business with you right now. I still don’t believe you even have one of my books back there.

[00:48:06] MB: You’re hurting my feelings, Grant.

[00:48:08] GC: You don’t have a statue of me back there. You got a statue of Buddha. He ain’t never done nothing for you. Every time I’ve gone into that, every I’ve done that, I end up like, “Okay. What’s wrong?

When I’m producing and creating, producing and creating and contributing and giving back, my day goes by faster. I just got a 10X alert, amber alert. That’s smart, man.

[00:48:31] MB: It’s time to 10X.

[00:48:32] GC: 10X, man. 10X. February 20th, 02-20-2020. I’m doing the most talked about entrepreneur conference on planet earth. 10,000 people will gather from around the world for the biggest 10X party on the planet. 3 days. We register the 4th day. So the first day is the registration, and then three days, there’s a party on the 20th, which is freaking unbelievable numbers, 02-20-2020. There’s a registration part. It’s going to be insane. Then on day 21, 22 and 23, three days talking about revenue, 10X-ing your revenue and your sales. Day 2, 10X marketing. Getting the whole world to know who you are. Day three, how to create the 10X ideal life so that you never burn out. Living a life of purpose and power and prosperity.

[00:49:27] MB: Grant, where can people find out about that conference, find out about you and everything that you’re doing online?

[00:49:33] GC: 10xgrowthcon.com.

[00:49:36] MB: All right. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Grant. Fantastic conversation. Some really insightful and potentially controversial points, but I really enjoyed everything that you said, and it was certainly motivational and inspirational for me.

[00:49:48] GC: Matt, you’re the man, dude, but you need somewhere edit in some kind of proof that you actually have the 10X Rule.

[00:49:54] MB: Okay. I’ll send your team a video of me holding the 10X Rule.

[00:49:58] GC: Okay. Awesome.

[00:49:59] MB: For listeners who are curious about whether or not I actually have a copy of Grant’s book, The 10X Rule, check out the show notes for a special video reveal. They’re available at successpodcast.com, and you can find them right on the homepage.

[00:50:13] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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