How to Build a Billionaire Brand with Grant Cardone: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be talking about how to build a billionaire brand. To drive these value bombs, I brought to Grant Cardone and EO Fire Studios. Grant is the CEO of Cardone Enterprises, Cardone Capital, international speaker, entrepreneur, and author of The 10X Rule. In today's foundation, we'll talk about how you can start thinking about how you can get your life 10X better than it is. The more you have, the easier your life is going to get.

0:34Bigger is better, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Grant and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Grant, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, good morning, good afternoon to the Fire Nation universe.

1:21So happy to be on the show with you again, John. You're an awesome guy. Thank you. I would say that the one thing that I think people would disagree with me on is that success should not be considered as some optional moment in life or some, okay, maybe or maybe not. I think if it's maybe you have it or maybe you don't have it, you don't get it. Like you're not going to get it if it's just an optional. Like to me, success is not like, okay, I could have a BMW or I could have a Chevrolet. Success, for you to be happy, for a person to truly be happy in life, they have to be winning in life and in business.

2:03And so if I'm going to spend eight or nine hours at my job a day, if I'm losing there, I don't know how to be happy in life. And I think a lot of people are going to say, that's bull. I don't have to have money or success. I don't have to win. I don't have to have a job. I love to be happy. I just hadn't figured that out. And I would just challenge anybody and everybody that it is impossible to be truly happy if you're not successful in life, winning in life and particularly winning with money. Like, I think it'd be very, very difficult for somebody to be happy. I mean, you could be delusional because if you're broke, because I've been broke before.

2:40Yeah. And there was no way to be happy while I was broke because I was too worried. and I was even like I was even in situations where I wasn't broke but I was just getting by in fact I was probably more fearful when I was a millionaire than when I was broke because I didn't know how to manage the money I didn't know where the next money was going I didn't know if I was going to lose what I had and I was stressed dude and it's really really when I said this on undercover billionaire you know life is because I didn't have any money in that show. I literally had no food, no water, no housing, no money, couldn't call my friends, couldn't use my name.

3:17And it broke me. I broke down in the show and I just said, man, you know, life is hard with money. It's almost impossible without it. Well, Fire Nation follows you on social media. I know a lot of my listeners do. So one thing they do know about you, Grant, is that you are a person who practices what he preaches. I mean, you live the life of happiness and you show every part of it. It's not like you're just showing one picture a day of like that fake one second of happiness in life. You're doing the stories and the videos and the chats. And I mean, you're taking people into your world. You're showing them the family, you're showing them the good, the bad, the ugly, you're showing them the whole life.

3:59But there's one thing that really just does come up over and over again is you're happy in those videos. You're happy in those pictures because you know, not every single second of every single day is sunshine and roses. But overall, what you're doing is what you are here to do. And it just really comes out. And that's why we're talking today, Fire Nation, about building a billionaire brand. So over the years, you have developed, Grant, incredibly impactful marketing strategies. I mean, I've sat back in awe and been like, what? I mean, again, he's done it again. So talk to us about a couple of those favorite impactful marketing strategies that you've developed over the years.

4:38And thank you, John, you know, just hearing you say that, that you're what, cause I don't, I don't get to hear that from people where, and I'm watching what you do. Totally. That was cool. And so I really respect what you've built and done. And so the fact that you, you know, acknowledge that I really appreciate it. Um, you know, look, when we sold out the Marlin stadium, um, 34 ,000 people and we, we, we sold that event out and everybody bought a ticket. There was 2 ,000 seats we gave away for veterans and first responders, but there was 32 ,600 seats that were purchased. Our events, we don't do, those are not free events.

5:17Those are profitable events. As you know, in that space, you can do an event for free and then sell a bunch of stuff later. I mean, we were profitable at nine o 'clock in the morning on a Friday morning when it started. Wow. And so that's very, very difficult to do. I know guys, the biggest names in the world that, you know, they have trouble filling up the room. They definitely have trouble selling seats. So that was a super cool undertaking. We did that on Super Bowl weekend. The Super Bowl was being held in Atlanta. It's the biggest event I've ever done. We did it on the same weekend as the Super Bowl, put 34 ,000 people in Miami Marlins Stadium.

5:57it's never had that many people in it joel osteen put 26 000 in it and and and uh i'm like god damn if joel can do it i can do it uh so that was cool because i told derrick gita i said look i want you to empty the field uh because there's 26 000 seats in the place i want to empty the field how many people can i put on the field and he's like probably another you know 5 000 6 000 i said good I want the whole place and the field. We're going to put the state, the, the, the events going to be out on second base. And it was my dream as a kid to be a professional baseball player. Drugs stole that dream away from me.

6:36And so at the age of 60 years old, I was able to, I mean, I didn't become a baseball player, but I was able to fill up a baseball park. one of the newest baseball parks in the world with 34 ,000 people and inspire people that weekend to do something big and something great. What I love about your story, Grant, is that we kind of came up in the same social media timeline. I mean, you were doing great things in business for decades and decades and decades, but then social media kind of became a big thing, like maybe call it 10, 15 years ago when both you and I were kind of saying like, okay, this is something that we need to pay attention to.

7:16And I remember, you know, personally spending a lot of time on social media, but then always watching you and what you're doing in social media. And I'm going to be honest at first, I'm like, man, Grant's not doing a lot of things right in the social media world, where this is at least my opinion, when you were first starting, not you're doing anything negative or wrong. I was just like, I just am using social media in a different manner than he is. And I was like, I wonder if he's going to, you know, find something that's working, that's not working for me, or if he's going to find that thing that just clicks and goes off for him.

7:49And one thing that I have just always admired about you is that you're always out there trying and learning. And if I can just put one phrase out there that you do is you put in the reps. I mean, you might not be good at something you do the first time, just like I was a terrible podcast host, the first podcast I did, the 400th podcast I did, I was like, okay, now I'm kind of starting to get there. You're just like me in that area. Like we just put in the wraps. I mean, we're not great at something. We don't get something in the beginning, but we don't care. We just were like, how do we get better?

8:21And you've done that just now tens of thousands of times over the past 10 to 15 years. And you've built up now this social media presence that is monstrous. Why is it so important to you that you've built up such an amazing social media presence over these years? I think you were there a little ahead of me and you and Lewis Howell and a bunch of you guys. How old are you, John? 42. Yeah. So you're 20 years younger than me. So man, you got so much to look forward to. I can't wait. I can't wait. God, if I had a 20, if I was 42 right now, I'd be like, oh my gosh, this is going to be crazy. But I didn't discover social until I was 51, maybe 52 years old.

9:05A guy was in my office and said, man, you need to get on Facebook. I'm like, bro, I had a YouTube channel, but we weren't really doing anything with it. The economy had just crashed. I was scared. My business had been pulverized. This guy tells me, you need to get on Facebook. I'm like, I thought to myself, F you. I don't have time for no Facebook. This is stupid. I'm trying to not go bankrupt right now. and he left my office. I remember like it happened yesterday, and I heard myself say to me, you sound like an old man, a closed-minded old man. You hear people talk about Puerto Rico like that.

9:42You hear them talk about crypto like that. I remember hearing Eminem. The first time I heard Eminem, I'm like, that's terrible. This closed-minded, immediately everything locks down against it. And that has always proved to me to be a place where I should pivot, take another look. And so when I heard myself say that, I was like, literally three minutes later, I'm like, I need to check out this Facebook thing. So I'm a very black or white kind of guy. Like I go, you know, I'm polarizing in that way, even with myself. Like I'm very, it's a lot of energy behind yes or no. And so it was like, no. And then I'm like, okay, I need to look at this.

10:23and I had no clue what I was doing. And so I just started bombing social the way I did, the way I bomb everything else in my life, right? So I'm not an assassin. I'm a bomber. I'm not good at anything I do. So I have to make up for it with 10 times the effort. That's kind of where the 10X rule came from. And then I started getting just killed probably three years into the game. People were – that's when social media conferences started popping up like the crypto conferences today. And they're popping up everywhere. And I became kind of the poster boy for what not to do, similar to what you were describing.

11:07Like I think you were being gentle and nice when you said, I don't know how this is going to turn out for Grant. Maybe he's going to discover something. But most people were not nice like that. They were like, this is a guy. Do not do what this guy does. There was articles written about me. There was conferences where they would use me as examples. Don't do this. And my staff, it really impinged on my staff. And they're like, hey, look, you know, people are saying we're doing too much. And I sat back and thought about it. And I'm like, dude, these people, these this isn't even my target audience.

11:46So if my target audience is hearing this stuff and talking about me, we need to lean into this deal. Because for me, I looked at the Internet and I'm like, how big is the Internet? You know, you can't get a ruler stick and measure it. So I'm like, what am I doing? I mean, if I did even 30 posts in a day. Back then, I just had one distribution channel was really Facebook and YouTube, maybe two. Right. I said, but if I put 10 posts on Facebook, that's like throwing a brick into the Grand Canyon. No, nobody knows it happened except the people that follow me that saw the 10 notifications. So that's the only people that were complaining.

12:30OK, and it wasn't they weren't really complaining about. they were complaining about the frequency of my content. But behind that, they were only seeing that because they didn't have many followers. Right. They weren't following enough people. So I just kept showing up in their stream. I had a good friend of mine named Howard. He's like, man, I had to quit following you on Facebook. It's just too much shit. And I said, Howard, you have my phone number. I didn't even know you were following me on Facebook. And he's like, well, isn't Facebook for friends? I said, no, man, Facebook getting for friends.

13:01Facebook is for me to connect with other people that have either an agreement or disagreement with what I'm saying. Because I never did any of these social channels to create friends. I did it to create a community and a conversation. And to me, the more I show up into that conversation or create the conversation or respond to the comments, the better chance I have. So it just so happened. I mean, I've done it different than Gary, definitely did it different than you have.

13:34But I have an audience of people that they either love me or they hate me. And the ones that love me, they'll throw down for me. And the ones that hate me, for whatever reason, they do their best to promote me unknowingly. I mean, there's one thing that I've said multiple times, and I am a believer in this, which is love me or hate me because there's no money in the middle. Like, I'm not going to play in the middle. Like that's not a place that I want to play either. And I've always resonated with your whole 10X philosophy. And I know you know this about me. Like we've had one-on-one conversations.

14:08I mean, you know, I'm an army officer back in the day. And it's like, you know, if you're going to survive a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq, like it's because you are going all in on one thing, which is survival, which is being prepared, which is, you know, killing the enemy. Like that's the only way you're going to win an environment like that. and so when I looked at the landscape you know now almost 10 years ago when I was jumping into podcasting I said well you know everybody's saying that one podcast a week is the max that you can do otherwise you're going to over feed your audience they're going to get bored you're not going to find enough audience you're not going to find enough guests you're not going to find enough this that you're going to get burned out your listeners get burned out I heard it all Grant just like you were hearing in social media but I said listen how am I going to get better as a human being as a podcaster.

14:57If I'm doing four episodes a month, 50 a year, forget about it. I'm going to wake up every flipping day and I'm going to interview somebody and it's going to be a good interview, a bad interview or whatever, but I'm going to get better. And then I did the first seven day a week podcast ever. And as I'm talking to you now, you are my 3 ,643rd interview. So guess what? I've put in the reps over time, over 10 years. And that's made all the difference in the world. I've 10X'd this. Grant? 3 ,634X. And I think that people, particularly when people were criticizing me for doing that, and even today I get criticized.

15:39I'm like, guys, I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for me first. Number two, I do it for my employees, the people in our network. The first level is my family and my employees, the people that support the team every day. I'm not doing some social posts for, to get a customer first. I'm doing it in this order. One for me, I need to do it every day to get good, to figure out my message, to be relevant, to figure out what I want to even talk about. Number, I mean, Jay Leno did a show every, every night. Every night. It goes to your story, right? Like if you're going to do a story, if you're going to do a show once a weekend, nobody's going to remember you.

16:15So then I do it for my employees. Three, I do it for my competition. I want my competition or whoever thinks I'm competition to know, Hey, if you're going to beat me, you're going to have to show up every day and probably every hour. And the fourth is if I acquire a customer because of that, well, then I'm cool. The reality is if I get through the first three, if I have my competition talking about me, if my employees remembering me, and if I feel good about myself, I'm probably going to build the discipline necessary to discover my talent along the way. Fire Nation, I have no doubt your blood is already boiling with all these value bombs that Grant's dropping.

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19:20High level, join the revolution. Grant, I want to talk about the 10X growth conference that you have coming up in here in 2022. I mean, it has cemented itself as a must attend conference. You spoke briefly about the Miami Marlins Stadium conference where you brought 32 ,000 people into a stadium and just blew the doors off and did a lot of amazing things over, by the way, Super Bowl weekend, which is absolutely fantastic. I can just tell you right now, the world is ready for the next 10X Growth Conference. And I can tell you for a random example, I actually just flew up to my alumnus Providence College literally two days ago for a top 10 basketball game.

20:05Providence is number eight in the country. Villanova was number 10. I walked into this stadium, 14 ,000 fans packed, not a mask in sight, people hugging each other, kissing each other, loving on each other. We're just so desirous of in real life, IRL baby. It's got to get back there. It's got to get back there now. Talk to us about what you have planned for this coming 10X Growth Conference. This one's going to be, it's actually a smaller event. We did right before COVID two years ago, we did 12 ,000 people at Mandalay Bay. Then last year we did 3 ,000 people. Where was that? right here in Miami.

20:47This year we're doing 3 ,400 people. It's sold out, completely sold out event. And we haven't even announced a speaker. So this has been my goal. I mean, you're speaking. That's enough for most people. Yeah. But I mean, you know, we bring this particular event. We do a lot of events every year. We do probably, you know, 45 events a year. This is the big one though. This is the Mac Daddy. We spent a tremendous amount of money on it, probably 6 million bucks on it. Beautiful light, great lights, staging, and a big list of celebrities. These are some of the most influential people on planet Earth.

21:22Over the last two years, what I would do is I would bring people in. I had a list. We had a big list of guys and gals that were coming, and then I'd drop in three or four surprise guests. Dana White came in 2020, just showed up, called me and said, hey uh can i come to your deal that's boss and then floyd mayweather showed up sunday afternoon like hey man can i come to your thing man the champ here you know the champ i'm like champ can do anything you want so literally like when they were john travolta i had john travolta as a surprise guest john was like grant i didn't i didn't see myself in any of the promo and i'm like because nobody knows you're here john he's like why would you do that you could sell more tickets if I was on the promo.

22:11You're like, I'm sold out. Bro, I don't need you to sell. I don't need you, man. This ain't grease, bro. He was a little offended. He was a little offended by that, but these guys are like, wow, man. That same year we had Usher. He was on the - So good. So anyway, this year we have not announced one speaker. I promise you on March 25th, that's the day we start. It's on a Friday morning. At 10 o 'clock in the morning, the entire planet will be on social media talking about who shows up. And it's as big as you get, bro. Like, you know, I'd love to know who your audience thinks is big as you can get.

22:53Right. But that will happen Friday. It will happen again Saturday and will happen Sunday. Now it's going to be a virtual option. Oh yeah. And then, and then it's that, that event is sold out. Tickets are 20 grand, 10 grand, 5 ,000, and it's sold out. Now, what we did was, we weren't going to do this, but I'm going to do it because I want the whole world to talk about it. We made a virtual option where people can watch from their home. If they can't watch it in real time, they'll still have it to watch later. It's$97. I think the link is grantcardone.com forward slash 97 or virtual. I'm not sure which one it is, but we then give their$97 back as a credit in our store.

23:36So you're literally paying nothing for it because I want I want I want this to be the largest virtual audience has ever watched a live conference. And I promise you, folks, like if you guys are listening right now and you're even slightly tempted to do this, if you're not completely satisfied, I'll give you this credit at my store and then I'll turn around and give you the money back to. Like, I know you're going to love it. That's how confident I am. So anyway, the conference really has turned into, John, an opportunity to create almost an art, an event that is more artistic than it is business.

24:19And that somehow erases the line between art and business. because it is my belief that, you know, below the businessman grant, the money guy grant, the real estate guy grant, beneath all that is really an artist. I think all business people, great business people, the Elons and the Steve Jobs, these guys, they're really artists and that know how to create visions and futures. And I also think that great artists sometimes need to learn more about business. And I just want to kind of erase the line between the two, because I think a great artist can become a great business person and a great business person will not be great without having really tapped into their artist.

25:03Man, I love that. I love that message that Grant just shared, Fire Nation. And I can 100 % confirm grantcardone.com slash virtual is going to get you to that page you need to go to sign up for$97. You're going to get everything that we're talking about here today when it comes to the 10X Growth Conference. You're going to get the$97 credit to his store to use. And he just gave you the 100 % satisfaction guarantee. If you don't like it, email him. You'll get the$97 back too. I mean, it's an absolute no-brainer. So Grant, what do you want to leave Fire Nation with? Let's give us one theme, one takeaway of everything we talked about here today as we're kind of heading into what's hopefully turning into a post-pandemic world.

25:53What do you want to say to our listeners? Yeah, well, I've always said all the way through COVID, I said people would go back to hugging and kissing. So that will happen. And so we are getting back to normal now. and I would just encourage everybody to like once you get back to what you think is normal maybe maybe throw that away throw that idea away and start thinking about how could you make your life 10 times better than it is how could you have 10 times the friends and not just be satisfied with the one or two that you you call in those times of need what would it be like to have 10 or 20 people that you feel that way about you know if you have four employees what would it be like to have 40?