“Don’t F* With Me!” Grant Cardone Breaks Silence on Controversy, Lawsuits, & Selling Real Estate

23:55You would go in your, you know, your, whatever you are. You're a dentist. I'm going to handle your LinkedIn. Oh, we got that handle. I'm going to handle your Instagram. I'm going to handle your TikTok. I'm going to handle your YouTube. I'm going to handle your sharts. I'm going to handle your long content. I'm going to get you podcasts. How much is that going to cost me? 83, 8 ,000 bucks a month. I'll handle all of it. I'll handle your responses, your comments. I'll make sure everything's linked up back to your website. Well,$8 ,000. You can't hire an employee in this country for$8 ,000 a month.

24:30And even if you did, you'd have to train them. You don't have to train me. I start today. Your close ratio is probably going to be 40%. You're going to call on 10 clients and you're going to get four of them to sign up. If you're good at sales. Well, if your pitch is good. What's the one thing people get wrong about sales? Everything. Where do they? Dude, first of all, it's terrible. It's nasty. You know, nobody gets training. You're not encouraged to do it. And what's the biggest mistake people make when they're selling someone something? Well, God. I mean, we could talk about this for three hours.

25:07What's the main thing that you see people doing? Because I remember when I was watching The Wolf of Wall Street, he's like, you just got to shut up when you make the pitch and don't keep talking. Yeah, not really. Is that true? Not really. I mean, I don't think it's that simple, right? So if I shut up and he shuts up, now what happens? Everybody shut up. I mean, you're deep into the deal now. Like you're not in sales now. You're in the negotiations and a close at that point. So the first mistake would be the target. You know, this goes back to money. The problem with most salespeople is the target's so low that you're not going to go through what it takes.

25:42It's what you just said, dude. You said, oh, I could do that if I had a need to. But most people don't actually have a need to because their understanding of money and life is so messed up. Like they think, oh, I'm going to make$8 ,000. $8 ,000 is a lot of money. I said$8 ,000 times 10 clients. And you're going to find out that's not a lot of money. You're just going to find out that life is going to throw more problems at you that cost money. So you can go to$80 ,000 a client if you want to. You're going to find out it's no money. You're going to find out no matter how much money you make or don't make, you're going to end up with a problem managing money, funding things.

26:20So the sales guy comes in. He's like, I'm going to make four grand a month. For four grand a month, you're not going to go through the amount of rejection you were talking about. For four grand a month, you're going to say, I'm going to get a job that pays me four grand and I'll work for somebody else. I'm not going to go through all this rejection. So why don't you say real estate? Because I feel like seven years ago, seven years ago, I feel like you would have said, all right, we're going to scrounge up some money together, buy a multifamily. I would have never said that. No? Never. Never in my career would have said that.

26:46I'd say, if you want to make money, you go out there and hustle somebody right now. I'll go back to your window washing. Who was doing the window washing? I did. Yeah, dude. That's a great business. Okay? Because I get money today. So that's why the HVAC and the plumber, electrician, all those guys are going to just crush. The electrician is going to be making$350 ,000 a year here in the next two or three years. So just got to be good at the pitch. and he could make three and a half million if he could scale his business and tell a story and call on clients. But the money's going to come from a person.

27:18You still got to go call on people. Like, this is the big problem with the sales game. Okay. This is the problem with people that start a business. Most people start a business for the wrong reasons. They start a business because either they got left, let go from their last job, or they hate the guy they work for. And they come up with this calculation that says, like they're Einstein and says, I, rather than being abused by grant. I'm going to go do what I learned at Grant's place and go work for myself. And now I work for myself. And they're going to find out now that they still don't have the skills to make any money.

27:50And now they hate the client, the environment, and probably even don't like themselves. The average CEO in this country, a solopreneur, makes$30 ,000 less working for themselves else than they would in the same position working for somebody else. There is something mentally different though for doing something when you're doing something for yourself that is freeing. Like I'd much rather make less money and know that I have full control over my schedule than make more and work for someone else. Yeah. All right. That's you though. I think not everyone would agree with that actually. I don't, I don't, you know, I don't care who I'm look, I work for somebody else every day.

28:29I'm working for you guys today. I'm working for Jared. I'm working for my partner, Brandon. And I do a deal with Blackstone. I'm working for them. You know, I get a loan from Wells Fargo. I'm working for them. I'm working for everybody. I can pretend to be working for myself, but I'm always on somebody else's schedule. What are you seeing right now happening in the real estate market? Well, it's just, you know, there's a lot. A lot's going on. And we've got a bunch of debt. Single family? Single family is not going to—let's just start there, okay? Yeah. Very difficult to sell a house today. The only people selling homes, new homes are selling for less than existing homes are.

29:07And the reason that is is because the new homes are subsidizing the rate. They're buying the rate down from six and a half down to five and a half or even lower. They're subsidizing down payments. And Bill down the street that wants to sell his house, the guy that wants to sell his house here can't do that. Or he doesn't think he can. So the sellers aren't creative enough to offer financing, so they just lower their price. And they can't get the price low enough to actually bring the buyers in. Now, mortgage rates look like they want to fall off the ledge right here. Yeah, they just dropped below six.

29:38Yeah. So they're below six. I think they go down to four. I think they're going to just collapse here in the next six months. What do you think that's going to - And if that happens, then the housing market will be real estate agents will start making money again. Brokers will start making money again. Mortgage brokers. So does that mean then you are bullish long-term for single family homes? No. But if mortgage rates drop, don't you think that all of a sudden then affordability comes back and that the buyer could now pay what the seller wants? Yeah, I think what happens in the beginning, contrary, is I think that if rates fall off the cliff, if they would come down really fast, which is what Trump wants.

30:17And the first thing that would happen is prices would come down, not go up. If rates dropped, I think what happens, now most people don't agree with this, I think the supply is going to go so high. So many people are going to be like, okay, now's the time to sell our house. The supply is going to increase so much that everybody's going to be like, I'll drop my price right now because I want to move into that other house. Oh, to then secure another low interest loan? Yeah, exactly. They're trying to move to something. Right now, look, for a sale to take place, there has to be motivation on both parties.

30:52So for me to compromise my price, I got to want to go do something else. And right now there's no urgency to compromise my price because I have no place to go. The moment I have some place to go, then I compromise my expectation for what I want for my house because I want to go to this other place so bad. And that doesn't exist in the system right now. You got to have supply. You got to have a lot of supply. You got to have tremendous demand. And you also have to have urgency by both parties to say, I'm ready to roll right now because I get a low rate, not a low price. By the way, I'd rather a low rate than a low price.

31:25all day long. This is what Trump wants, by the way. He doesn't want to destroy the equity in the housing. There's about$38 trillion equity sitting in homes, and he doesn't want to destroy that. He could. He doesn't want to do that because that would hurt your parents. It would hurt anybody that owns a home. What he wants to do is drop the rate, maintain the equity, and have people be able to afford a home. Now, being an entrepreneur doesn't have to mean that you do everything yourself. Most successful business owners are really good at handing off tasks to other people, But the hardest part is knowing which ones to hand off first.

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32:59That is UPWORK.com, Upwork.com. There's also a link down below in the description. You can just click it right there. Thank you so much to Upwork for sponsoring this episode. This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just wrapped up a trip. We were in Austin for a few days. We filmed episodes with Togi, Chris Camillo, and Caleb Hammer. And honestly, every time we're on the road, we're staying at homes on Airbnb. It's just become the default. And here's the thing most people don't think about. When you're the one traveling, your place back home is just sitting there empty, and that's a real missed opportunity.

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34:01I actually listed a spare room in my house on Airbnb, and I was genuinely so surprised how easy it was to set up, how seamless the entire process was, and it actually made me some pretty good money. I would actually recommend this to anyone out there that wants to make a little extra cash on the side. It's honestly phenomenal. If you're thinking about hosting but want some help getting started, find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. So what do you think is the best way to make money in real estate in 2026? Or is it just waiting? Well, it's not the single family home. If you forced me though into the single family home and said, look, you grant, how would you make money in single family homes?

34:35Well, I would pick three or four cities. Miami would be one of them. And I'd say, I'd go, I'd probably go do as much as I hate this concept. But you're saying short term, you just want to make some money. I'd go flip old 80s homes in Miami in certain locations in five or six different pockets. You need a place where there's old inventory. There's old 80s, eight-foot ceilings, old kitchens, and you'd go in, rehab them, and pick up 15 or 20 ,000 a unit. But the problem is you need some money to do that. You're not going to need a mortgage. You need some money to flip that house, and you need guts.

35:09And now you're back in the sales game. Now you got to buy it. You got to try to steal the house. You're calling on 100 people to get one or two deals. not a hundred people to get 40 deals. So that's why the AI thing and the social media thing would be such much greater return than me trying to get you to sell me your house that you just bought. Those would still be active ways to make money though. Like you're spending your time making money. What about passive income? Like if you're going to deploy your capital in any asset, would real estate be the optimal asset class or what would be? I didn't know I had any money.

35:44I didn't know I had any money. I thought I was broke. Well, let's just say someone's out there. They're working a job that they, went to college for, they're making 75, 80K a year and they don't want to change career paths and they have this disposable income that they want to invest somewhere. Yeah. I mean, that's a different play. So you're describing me when I was 29 years old, I'm making, I'm making 80 grand a year. I have 30 ,000 left over. I do that two years in a row. I do it three years in a row. I got$90 ,000. I'm not overspending. I live like him, very frugal. He watches every$12 that he every$1 every 10 cents.

36:20And so I'm banking money over here. I don't know what to do with it. And then I started buying real estate. So I started using that real estate to leverage. I would go buy, but it wouldn't be a single family home. It would be at least four units. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac today have a 5 % program where you can buy four units. It's limited to the four units and a million, I think it's a million 390. 5 % down. So on a million dollar four unit complex, You could put 50 grand down. On 200 grand, you could put$10 ,000 down, and you'd get four units of cash flow. But you're not getting rich, dude. You basically took$5 ,000.

36:59You have four units. You're the manager. You got to go collect$6 ,000 a month, four times$1 ,500. You're going to have to fix a place, garden the place, collect the checks, evict people, look at lease notices, qualify people. like fix the plumbing. So that ain't passive, bro. What would you recommend to someone who has maybe 30 or 40K in money that they can invest somewhere? They're able to save a little bit of money at the end of every month. Where should they deploy that? Well, I'd say invest it with me, but it's not enough money. You can't say that. That's the one thing. It's not enough money, so I don't need to say it.

37:35Where would they be putting that money? I would do what I just said. I would do the four unit deal and suffer and go do 10 up. I'd do four units. I'd take$5 ,000. I'd buy four units, and then I'd go do a second one and a third one. If I could do them on the same block, I would do them on the same block. Now, what are you buying now? Four units. It was built in 1970. It's old. Four units. That's all they built back in the 70s. They were building four units. In the 80s, they're like, hey, let's build eight units. And then they built eights. And then they'd say, let's build 16. So you'll see them by age.

38:10Today, they're only building 350 units. So you'll see these big complexes going vertical. But that's what I would do. Now, is it fast money? No, it's just a little bit of drip. Your 30 grand is going to earn them maybe$3 ,000 a year. So you traded 30 grand for$3 ,000 of income. And most people won't do that. They're like, I want my 30 grand. Your 30 grand is going to be worth$3 ,000 here in the next 10 years. They're just going to keep printing money. So you need to convert your cash, the 30K, into something more valuable. In this case, it was, let's say, $150 ,000 of real estate. $30 ,000 leverage, 20 % down.

38:51I bought a$150 ,000 property. The value of that property is going to go up as a print money, but it's just a drip. You're only earning$3 ,000 a month. You're earning$250 a month. You're like, this is not a deal. I traded$30 ,000 for$250 a month. I would do that trade, but most people watching this are going to say,$250 is nothing. So they won't do it. but you would never say just$250 because you're a miser. $250, if you save that over 30 years invested in a 7 % return, that's over a million dollars. Yeah, so 12 bucks matters to him, right? Yeah, there you go, exactly. So that's why he's going to Korea for the, he got the insurance.

39:30So what do you think is the biggest risk to housing prices over the next few years? Yeah, I think the biggest risk is that, you know, the baby boomer dies. Don't they then pass off their wealth? Yeah, they're going to pass it off. They're going to pass it. The three of us, we're brothers. And our parents die. The last parent dies. And their home is in Shreveport, Louisiana. And we get the notice. You live in LA. You live in Las Vegas. And I live in Miami. Oh my God, he died. Okay, we go in. We see the wheel. You guys get to split the house. He has no other assets. Do you want to move to Shreveport and live in the house?

40:05I will not. Do you want to live in the house? No, I wouldn't. Largest flying roaches in the world live in Shreveport. How do you know that? Because I lived in Louisiana. Okay. You know, I dated a girl there. So, and she came with roaches, by the way. It was worth it. Oh, my gosh. But, oh, my gosh. And we're going to be like, dude, what's the house worth? Okay. We haven't even buried our father yet. And we're like, what's the house worth? Somebody says, maybe 200. Okay. The housing market sucks right now. So, we're going to list it. And one of you guys is going to get, you know, like, I got time.

40:41No problem, guys. Whenever it sells, I'm fine. And then you guys are like, sell it. Drop the price. We're going to have a phone call a month later. Hey, guys, drop the price. You and me are going to be like, just drop the price, right? To you, it's found money. We have no emotional connection or attachment to the house. We're not living in it. It's getting degraded. Kitchen's old. The ceilings are bad. The real estate agent that got the listings now going to tell you, oh, my God, you need to paint it. You need to take all the furniture out. We need to reset it up. We need to refurnish it. All that's going to cost money.

41:12Guys, it's going to be$6 ,000 to do that. The three of us need to each come up with two grand. And you're like, hey, fuck it. Sell the fucking house. Just sell it. That's my biggest concern is that you're going to have tens of millions of people all dying in a period of 12 months. Okay, we've got 10 ,000 baby boomers dropping out of the workforce every day. Then you're going to have them dropping like flies, all hitting in their 80s, their 90s, dropping, just dying. Or they don't die. they go to senior housing or they go to dementia. I can't remember myself who I am. I don't remember any of the great things I've done in life.

41:44I don't remember any of the interviews we did together. Grant Cardone forgot that he's Grant Cardone, right? And Bruce Willis. Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible, dude. But it could happen to me or you or our parents. And so nobody cares about the house anymore. That guts single family homes. The other part that concerns me is the guys that your age don't really want this responsibility that you have, this acre here. So you got 75 million baby boomers that have no interest in housing. They're dying off. They're not going to buy a new house. They have zero. They're going to spend less money here in the last 25 years of their life than they spent at any other period in their life.

42:27They're not spenders. They're not travelers. They're not going to fix the house. They're not going to Costco or Home Depot to, you know, put on a new look. They're not buying new furniture. They don't need it. They don't want any changes. So you got that third that's dying out and you got the bottom third entering in that doesn't really want to own that home. What's the flip side to that? Is there a bullish case where maybe AI makes things so deflationary, interest rates go low, everyone, like what's the flip side to that? Man, I don't see it. I don't see it. So you think everyone at some point is probably going to live in a big multifamily?

43:02I do. I do. Because that's all that they could afford? Or is that just - No, I think because they're going to, it's a more desirable, you only get most of the population is in top 20 cities. You know, 80 % of America lives east of the Mississippi River. Only 20 % lives on this side of the world, of the United States. Top 20 cities control most of the population. So we don't have a shortage of housing in this country. There's no shortage. It's just a lie. That's a complete lie. There's, I think there's 11 or 12 % of the single family housing supply is abandoned homes. or empty. There absolutely is no housing shortage.

43:38There's another 12 % of multifamily that is vacant right now today, maybe higher than that. We got multifamily with the highest occupancy that I've seen in probably 20 years. So you have probably somewhere between four and a half million single family homes and maybe five million multifamily that are vacant right now somebody could move into. So like Trump sent somebody to my office three and a half weeks ago and said, what would you do? I said, I would give an incentive to all the vacancy in this country to occupy that house. If you have a vacant home, nobody's living in it, give some kind of tax incentive.

44:18You move somebody into that house, set them up to own that house, and you'll pay no taxes on the income. It It would help the people that own those homes, fulfill those homes. And it would help the new guy that doesn't have a home that wants home. You don't need to build homes to solve that problem. What should the role of government be in housing? Well, I think, you know, they're not fulfilling that. One is the interest rates need to be affordable. And they're not. We should have the lowest interest rates in the world. We have the dominant currency on planet Earth. We should have the lowest interest rates so that people can afford a mortgage.

44:55and they would fabricate it. It would be completely synthetic, made-up money, backed by the U.S. government. Lowest mortgages in the world, right here in America. You know, 3 % that works. And how would you justify the United States being the country that offers the lowest? Is that just because of sheer productivity? We're so productive that we can afford to? Yeah, we're productive. We, you know, why not? Why not? We're going to go spend a trillion dollars on this freaking nonsense in Iran. So why not? Why not have our people living in a house? You know, if they want a house, by the way, I don't even think that solves the problem though.

45:34What do you think is the... I don't think that because I think a lot of you guys are going to be like, I don't want a house. I don't want to own a house. I don't, I want it. Like the complexes we're buying today comes with a$4 million swimming pool, a million dollars of amenities,$250 ,000 gym. It comes with a Whole Foods right across the street, a Trader Joe's two blocks away. I can walk downstairs and go get, you know, clean eating anytime I want. Like, that's what people want. They don't want to drive 40 minutes to get to their Whole Foods. And so I think, do some people want a home? Maybe.

46:07Yeah, you want to raise kids there? I would argue more people would want a house than live in a condo. Maybe. But I think if you talk to some of the guys that I talked to that work for me in Miami, First of all, you can rent for 50 % today of what it costs for a mortgage. That is true. Just the mortgage. Yeah. Not the PMI, not the taxes, property taxes, not the insurance on top of that, just the mortgage itself. If the mortgage is$4 ,000, you can rent something comparable, not a house, maybe even a house for$2 ,000 in Miami. In Vegas, same thing in Vegas. Okay. So I got one of my guys, Ryan, I think his rent's$8 ,000 a month.

46:49the place is worth$4 million. Okay? The HOA fees and the property taxes are more than$8 ,000 a month. So the guy's got$4 million of dead money plus the HOA fees, plus the property taxes, plus the insurance. Ryan pays no insurance, no HOA. He doesn't have dead money. He can leave anytime he wants. Why would the owner agree to rent at those terms? Because he doesn't want to be empty. But why can't he just sell it? Why does the guy charter his jet? Why not just sell it? sell it. He can't sell it. Well, then it's not worth four. What do you think it's worth? You're right. But he's like, I don't want to lose money.

47:26He's like, he's got four in it. It's just that you don't have any buyers right now. If you had lower interest rates, somebody would buy that asset. You know what I was really surprised about? I didn't realize this, is that when you have a primary residence and you sell it for a profit, you pay capital gains, you get the exemption. First$250 or$500 for couples. But what I didn't realize is that when you sell at a loss, you cannot take a capital loss. That's right. Which is crazy. It's crazy, dude. That if you lose money, because I see sellers here that are millions of dollars in the red on a property that they paid at the top of the market in 2021, it's worth$3 million less.

48:03They can't take a write-off off. That's right. They just, after-tax money, it's gone. See, like - It's crazy to me. These rules, the rules that extend to investment purchases should be extended to single-family homes. So Trump sent Bernie Marino into my office and said, hey, Grant, I'm down in Miami. I want to know, do you have any ideas about how to really get housing going, accelerate housing? I said, yeah, here's the number one thing you should do. Like you guys, when I walked in, first question I asked, did you accelerate the depreciation on this place? They should pass on accelerated depreciation.

48:32I get it on every property. Every property I buy, if we paid a million dollars or 10 million or 100 million, I'm going to probably write off under the bonus depreciation, accelerate 27 years of depreciation on a home to year one. So I'm going to probably get like a$40 million. 40 cents of every dollar will be written off the day I buy it. That should be extended to single family homes. So you paid a million three for this place, 40 to 50 % of it would be accelerated day one. You'd be able to write off$500 ,000 today. But how would that not just like increase the price of housing well it would well it would accelerate people would start buying that would absolutely increase the price of housing i think what you want your house to go up in value you want jack does what jack is trying to say is for the average person to saying hey i just want to buy a place now these laws pass yeah and they're like oh crap well now it's just increased it's already in place for me all it's doing is it's already been approved by congress I get this every year.

49:33This is why I don't pay any taxes. My tax bill last year was zero. Why? Because we buy an asset, we write it down. Blackstone buys an asset, writes it down. Starwood buys an asset, writes it down. All the major insurance companies, New York Life, MetLife. New York Life and MetLife own$200 billion of real estate in this country. Nobody ever talks about them because they're insurance companies and they stay out in the news. You came in here and bought this place and you didn't get the write-off. Why don't you get the write-off? Well, I can. Well on this one you can't well If it's your single family home you can't I do not live here.

50:05No, okay good So because it's a investment property You should be able to write this off But the single family home the guy across the street should also be able to write his off When when he buys it and accelerate it this year, you know what that would do to this country he would pay He would get a four hundred thousand dollar tax write-off this year. Imagine he makes that four hundred thousand. We talked about earlier okay he's that insurance agent that i ragged on okay he gets a four hundred thousand dollar write-off against his earned income this year his tax bill is zero he pays no federal taxes would that be good for las vegas absolutely a hundred percent because now he's got 200 grand to spend that he wouldn't have had uh had he had that tax bill see i always felt that the mortgage interest deduction should be raised 100 to a million and a half it should be raised to five And then I also think that the capital gains exclusion - The capital gains should be raised to 5 million.

50:59It should be 10X or maybe not have one at all. Here's what's crazy. No limit. When the capital gains exclusion for single family homes was passed, it was the late 90s. Yeah. The average home back then,$400 ,000 to$500 ,000. The high end, by the way. And that was the exclusion. Yeah, yeah. Now it's closer in some major cities to a million dollars. Yeah, that's right. But the exclusion stays the exact same. That's right. It's never been adjusted for inflation. Yeah. They should increase that. Yeah. So like the interest, okay? When I pay, I have debt on, this is why people hate me or don't like me.

51:29This is my criticism. I have debt on$2.2 billion of real estate. So the moment I say$2.2 billion, they're like, oh, he's bragging. I'm just using it as an example. My interest on$2.2 billion, which I don't pay for, by the way. My tenants pay for. I mean, it's funded in the project, right? 100 % of that 2.2 billion times, let's say 5%, whatever,$110 million of interest is deductible every year. You can't deduct more than about$42 ,000. Shouldn't be there. Should be no limitation. It's an American product, American house, bought in America. You should be able to deduct 100 % of the interest. Two, the capital gains, okay?

52:13You bought this place for$1.3 million. You sell it$3 million. You make$1 million. four. You shouldn't be like, why should you pay taxes on that million four when I don't? Why? Why pay capital gains? What's the government got to do with the ownership of your own car? Okay. If you bought that shirt and sold the shirt for more money because people think you're famous, okay, you know, whatever, right? And you bought it for 80 bucks and you sell it for 300, you don't pay capital gains. Your bicycle, your motorcycle, your car, nothing has capital gains accept a house and he shouldn't and that's what trump's open to by the way for all your trump haters they they like the idea of trying some of this stuff he he pitched the accelerated depreciation two mondays after i told them about it he pitched it at davos and i heard that he's going to be signing an executive order uh to present to congress this year so did he literally talk to his cabinet or whoever and say, hey, look, we need to.

53:12No, that's not it. Like, like, and then, so we're going to send someone over to Grant Cardone's office to get some ideas of what to. How does it work? He doesn't talk to his cabinet. He's like, Bernie, you going down to Miami? Get down there. Talk to some people down there. I got friends down there. That's it. So we'll just send someone down. He'll, he'll just. I mean, it's, you know, it's not that Trump just rolls like there's no cabinet. Trust me. It could have been done at Mar-a-Lago. And I want to get this housing thing. Guys, bring me some ideas. It'll be like this. Bring me ideas. Anything.

53:47Anything works. I want housing to explode in this country without destroying the equity. Okay? I want rates down. I mean, he's been pounding the table about rates. He did the 50-year mortgage. He offered a 50-year. I think the 50-year backfired. Yeah. If it was, you agree with that? Yeah, it didn't make any mathematical sense to me. Dude, if you're going to do 50 years, do 100. No, but just beyond a certain point, there's nothing. There's so much diminishing returns. It costs you more. It was$100 or something. It's like, no, just to go to 100 years, bro. It really expanded. 100 years would get way more backlash, though.

54:17Not maybe. That would make it way worse. But if you got to sell it, you still got to sell it. You're only going to keep the house eight years anyway. Look, if a 30-year mortgage doesn't make sense, a 15 doesn't make sense, a 30 doesn't make sense, a 50 and 100 don't make sense. Just make it so that you could write off the full amount of interest. Don't buy a house. That's it. Don't buy a house. It's a terrible investment. It should come with a warning, like a black box label. This is not an investment. This is a pure liability. When is it an investment? It's never an investment. It can never be an investment by a single family.

54:43This is not a house. What we're doing right here, right now, some guy's going to be driving his car down the street saying, that's a house. This is not a house. This is pretending to be a house that is now commercial business producing income for the sheer sake of producing income. Single family home does not produce income. It is not an investment. It should not be on your personal financial statement. What about your house in Malibu that you purchased? I was at the house yesterday. I met with the administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldin. Do they still want you to tear down the house? Yeah. Yeah.

55:20They want me to tear it down. If I spend$1 more than 50 % of the assessed value of the house, not the land, If I spend$1 more than the assessed value to clean it up, to get rid of all the smoke damage out of the floors, the walls, the H-pack, replace the kitchen, the rooms that were burnt, the roofing, blah, blah, blah. If I spend more than, I think the number is like$2.5 million, half of$5 million. If I spend$1 more, they want me to tear down the entire structure. Who is tracking how much money you spend on the house? Who knows? The permit process. anything I spend. Yeah, but if a contractor says, hey, listen, we'll do this job for half the price, and hey, maybe, you know, we work out a deal.

56:10You shout me out and we're good. Yeah, but I mean, right now, they're watching everything I do. So this is a FEMA rule. A FEMA rule. FEMA came in on the coastlines. By the way, the coastline of California is treated exactly as the coastline of Louisiana. So it said, and these rules, these FEMA rules were put in after the storms in New York. So New York, remember the big floods there four or five years ago. FEMA came and said, emergency, federal emergency will pay to replace your house. But if your house, if you spend more than 50 % of the value of the house, it was a smart rule for floods. If you spend more than 50%, if it's a complete tear down because of the floods, then you need to rebuild that house so that it's above the floodplain in case of another flood, because the federal government doesn't want to keep fixing flood damage.

57:01but Malibu doesn't have a flood problem okay the state of California has never been under the threat of a flood after the fires fires and floods aren't the same thing as your viewer knows but clearly FEMA doesn't understand if I fix more than 50 percent of the value of my house because of the fires they want me to destroy 38 pillars that are 36 inch wide concrete going 30 feet deep into the granite bedrock. They want me to pull all that infrastructure out. They want me to take 26 inches. I have 8 ,000 square feet, 23 inches of concrete poured underneath my house as a platform that prevented this house from being burnt to the ground.

57:42They want me to pull all that infrastructure up and rebuild a new house if I spend$1 more. When a house has never been violated by floods. Do you regret buying the house? Yes, of course. You'd like to buy. I regret buying my house in Golden Beach. Why did you buy the house in Malibu? Because it just seems it goes against, like, buying a house for yourself and California. Nah, the California wasn't. We bought that house six or seven years ago, so they hadn't. I was going to go live there, you know, four or five months of the year, not pay income taxes. But I wouldn't go there and buy today. Now, that being said, that coastline, 18 homes next to me were burnt to the ground.

58:21The next house, there's me right here, 18 homes in between me. next house is built to concrete. Everything in between is built to timber. I don't burn, he don't burn. Okay. Then there's Larry Ellison, Larry's son, like billions, billionaire at a row. Okay. On this side of the house, on the east side, there's 80 homes burnt to the ground. All those homes are going to become 14 and 15,$20 million homes. This side's going to become 50 and 60,$70 million homes. Now, did you see that they're turning some of those lots into low-income housing? Not there. On the beach? No, it was just... No, no, it's impossible.

58:57Just today? Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. They're doing Section 8 next to you. Yeah, no, it's impossible. Now, when those houses burn around you... Those should be vertical buildings. Those should be vertical buildings like they're in Miami. I should not. This is for all the haters out there. My home that's 10 ,000 square feet should not... One family should not be allowed to live in that house. That house should be a vertical house of 50 different families. Traffic would be an issue there. Traffic's already an issue. And? Not as bad as it would be if you had 50 residents per structure. You think traffic's a problem in the Gossett Strip?

59:39They're going to fix it. It's going to be unbelievable there. But when properties burn around you and you have the only house left, does that make your house more valuable? Yeah, I think it makes, I mean... Or less valuable because there's nothing around it. No, it's, the view's good now. The view's perfect. I mean, realistically, there's nothing that's going to be built there for a long time. Look, my neighbor, my next door neighbor, Jay Stein and his wife. Okay. Jay had$3 million worth of insurance. His home was worth$14 million. Mine's worth$40 or$50. Yeah. So I'm sitting next to him. He's half the lot.

1:00:11He's worth$15. Let's say he's worth$20, whatever. He loses his house. There's no house there. He only had$3 million worth of insurance. Yeah. So he's out. he's at, he lost whatever he lost. He's got to rebuild now. On top of that, he's got to rebuild. So he's got to rebuild. Let's say it cost him 10 to rebuild. Now he's got 13 in it. No, he's got 10, seven. He's got seven less the insurance. Yeah.

1:00:37Now, his house is probably worth 20. It's going to go up because it's brand new. But he's got to sell it to somebody that can only get$3 million worth of insurance on it. So who's that going to be? And I'm rich. Rich guy's going to walk in. I'll pay you. And I'm only going to visit three or four times a year. All those homes, by the way. None of those are real property owners there. Except for the lady two doors down that's been there since she's 85. She's effed because she can't fix it. She didn't have enough insurance. She's not going to be able to spend the money. it's going to take our seven years to rebuild.

1:01:08So it was a terrible investment. My home in Golden Beach was a terrible investment. This was a terrible investment. But it didn't, none of it, at some point you can do stupid stuff. Now, as soon as you go from working solo to hiring even a small team, you realize how much more complicated running a business gets. Payroll isn't just sending money. There are taxes, forms, deadlines, compliance, issues behind every paycheck. This is the stuff you can't really afford to get wrong, which is why we've partnered with Gusto. Gusto is an online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere.

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1:03:57Again, it's shopify.com slash ICH, shopify.com slash ICH. The link is also down below in the description. Thanks so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. So what is your investing strategy then for this year? Well, I'm in big transition as I was telling you. So, I mean, we're still buying real estate. So I only bought one deal last year. It was the worst year we've had to buy real estate. It was a big deal. $230 million real estate with$100 million of Bitcoin. But it's the only deal I did. We're extremely disciplined. So we want to add real estate. We want to add real estate and Bitcoin, this real estate Bitcoin hybrid.

1:04:39We want to continue to build that out. We think it's a financial vehicle that will disrupt the reed industry. We're going to move into the wealth business and create a mini Blackstone or Merrill Lynch to democratize to the mass affluent and provide insurance, banking. Is that like a family office style? Yes, multifamily office. Okay. So for the masses. So we're basically, we're already doing the consulting. We have about 15 ,000 customers. We're consulting in their companies, plumbing, HVAC, dentists, chiropractors, small businesses where we're going in, helping them scale their businesses, taking care of their operations, looking at their 401 plans, their insurance plans, they're starting to consolidate all that.

1:05:26That's going to be a monster business. And what was the logic behind adding Bitcoin to real estate funds? Yeah, so I've been tinkering with Bitcoin for about, well, since 2011. I came to this town to do a gig for this group that was a business that, they only had Bitcoin. And they wanted me to come in and speak. And I said, yeah, I'll come speak. And they said, we can only pay you in Bitcoin. I'm like, I don't know what that is. long story short, they gave me 115 Bitcoin. I still have those today. And I got introduced to Bitcoin and I still own those Bitcoin today. They're worth 70 times 115, whatever that number is, 8 million, 8.4 million.

1:06:03It's been worth 126 times 115. And I started getting introduced to this technological money and bought a little bit when it was 16, bought some more at 30, watched it go back to$15 ,000, watched it go back to$60 ,000. I've been playing with it. So last year, and this is what I said earlier, real estate's a heavy, very, very heavy. You cannot, I can't take my$5 billion and say, be more today. I can't take the rents and magically say, raise rents. I can't magically lower expenses on a property. It's very, it's a heavy. It's like a railroad, right? You can't just move it. So I can't move the value.

1:06:46So I'm always looking for ways to increase the value of the real estate. I could paint it. I could put a new roof on it. I could have a new pool. I could build a new theater. I could change the name. I could bring in new furniture, but all that stuff costs money. And now I was like, or I could add Bitcoin. Costs money to add to Bitcoin, but I'm going to fuse the two together. So we started playing with models uh january of 25 we found a 70 85 million dollar property that we bought for 72 and rather than just taking the 72 and a cheaper piece of real estate i filled up the difference with bitcoin does it worry does it worry if bitcoin drops let's just say another like 50 percent and then It's already dropped 50%.

1:07:35Another 50%. We bought 2 ,000 Bitcoin last year, and our average price is probably 92, somewhere between 88 and 92. So I'm underwater on the Bitcoin now, and it doesn't bother me at all because we tied it to a long-term asset. Now, if I believed Bitcoin was going to zero, I would have never done any of this. So you're just saying the difference in what you think the market price is of the property that you bought and then what you actually paid for it, you put that delta in Bitcoin. The discount delta. You could take discounts your whole life. Discounts don't turn into more value. Okay? You bought a car.

1:08:14Car was$90 ,000. You bought it for$80 ,000. You still have the same car, just cheaper. You're not going to sell it for more money because you got a discount. It's still going to be worth whatever it's worth. It could be worth more or less. The discount's a discount. It's something you do one time. So rather than me buying the real estate cheaper. I bought an exceptional piece of real estate out of bankruptcy, by the way. We stole this piece of real estate. It was the last one we did. We've been elevating these. We did five of them last year. The first one was, I think it was$88 million total,$72 million of real estate,$15 million of Bitcoin.

1:08:49So about$87 to$88 million. So we have the two. We put them together in LLC. We fuse them together. The investors are now owning both of these, not one of these. Still cash flows. And we add Bitcoin from the cash flow every month. Every month, we cashflow about 250 a month there, 250 ,000. And we add Bitcoin. We've added Bitcoin at 90. We've added Bitcoin at 82. We've added Bitcoin this month at 66 or 62, okay? So we keep adding Bitcoin. Now we fuse these together to build vehicles, a bunch of these together. So our goal last year was to do 10 of them. We did five. Because I couldn't find the right real estate.

1:09:25Because I have to be, let's say this real estate, the last deal we did was three, it was worth 350 and we paid 230. stole the real estate. So what I did was I paid this much for the real estate and I stacked the rest with Bitcoin. $100 million purchase, largest real estate Bitcoin deal ever done on the planet. $230 for the real estate,$100 million in Bitcoin, about 1 ,075 pieces. Put them in an LLC and the three of us invested in it. I paid for it. And then I called you guys up and said, hey, you want to invest in this deal? What is it? $230 million of real estate that would take$350 to build it today.

1:10:04We'll take$350 to build it. We could sell all these off, the units off as condos today for a million to each times 366. That's probably a$200 million score. And we still own our Bitcoin. But we want to fuse them together because I want to take this product. I want to take this public to the public markets and compete against the REITs. So I compete against REITs, Real Estate Investment Trust, the Starwoods, the Blackstones, the Avalons, the Camdens, they own most of these large complexes. When you're driving around town, you'll see these names. They own them. They're REITs. They were created in 1965.

1:10:37That rule's 60 years old. Those rules have not changed for 60 years. And one of those rules is you must distribute 90 % of your cash to your investors because it was a tax-advantaged structure that hasn't changed in 65 years. There's 190 REITs. They control$4.3 trillion of real estate. They control most of the commercial real estate in the country, and they're underperforming. Okay. They were built for one purpose, and that purpose, 65 years, his age, no changes. Bunch of old white guys, they push all their cash out so they have no more cash to reinvest in their businesses. Tech companies do not push all their cash out.

1:11:19They pay a dividend about this big, just enough to say they pay a dividend, and they keep the rest of their cash to acquire companies. REITs don't work like that. They're broken. So I am building something that competes against the REITs because the REITs can never come in and have Bitcoin. We think we take this real estate asset that would normally do 12 % a year or 15, that's a good real estate deal, to 25 and 30 % a year by combining the two together. So what are some of the main reasons you're bullish on Bitcoin? Well, I believe in the technology of money. I believe the technology, if I knew nothing, I'd be like, we're not going to a gold, we're not going back to gold.

1:11:55Gold failed. If gold didn't fail, we wouldn't be trading in paper. So then do you think that the U.S. will adopt Bitcoin? I don't know. As a Bitcoin-backed dollar? What are the main bull cases that you have for Bitcoin? Well, there's a number of things. I think that the technology, I think I underestimated that the internet will one day send video, or that the three of us would sit around and then you guys would clip a video and then other people would clip a video and then we'd end up with 30 different pieces of video that would live into the future forever. without a movie production studio.

1:12:26I never imagined that would ever happen. And I think that we're not imagining what's going to happen with the blockchain and with Bitcoin. I think mortgages in the future will be tied to Bitcoins. That a Bitcoin on a single family home residence, rather than buying PMI insurance, which is garbage product worth nothing to the mortgage holder, the insurance insuring the mortgage against the guy that gave the mortgage to make sure it gets paid. That 200 bucks or 400 bucks a month you're paying, that would be a much better investment for all parties if that was$400 of Bitcoin in the future, because it'll be a store value that will increase as we print more paper.

1:13:08For sure, and that's a possibility, but I'm curious in terms of what your bull case is right now for Bitcoin, like what integration do you see with Bitcoin where it makes sense that that will actually be the future? Because that's like, that's sort of like a speculative, of like, you know, if this, then that, but there is no like, like evidence at the current moment of Bitcoin sort of doing that. Yeah. A store value is good enough for me. That's fine with me. I don't, I don't need, I invest in real estate because I believe it's a store value and it retards against inflation and the printing of money.

1:13:43Property values go up if you print more money concrete costs labor costs everything goes up so i i'm trying to convert i'm trying to convert a piece of paper fiat paper into something more um that is resistant and will become more valuable in the future i wouldn't invest in nvidia it's not what i do i don't buy i don't trade paper for paper i'm not going to trade a piece of fiat for another fiat run by other companies okay the third part of the bull case for me is with bitcoin i don't have a chairman. I don't have any competition. I don't have employees there. I have no payroll. I have no plumbing, no roofs, no HVAC, no property taxes.

1:14:24I have pure technology. So the basis of the future of it is the technology of money. I don't think we go back to gold. I'm 68 years old this month. I've never bought a piece of gold, never had anybody offer me gold or silver for that fact for any of our products. I have had people offer us Bitcoin for the last 13 years for our products and services. Why do you think gold has gone up so much then? Well, because I think people are scared right now. I think people see the U.S. dollars getting banged. You know, they're worried about the U.S. government printing money. I think that there's a bunch of geopolitical issues going on with China trying to make plays against us.

1:14:58But why isn't that money flowing into Bitcoin? Because I'm about 7 % Bitcoin right now through just a normal Bitcoin ETF, 7 % of my portfolio. Yeah. And one of the narratives that I see right now is that Bitcoin is failing in the sense that gold is now the store of value. It seems as though people are putting their money elsewhere and that we're printing more money. Bitcoin's going down and prices are rising. Bitcoin is going down. We see global turmoil. Bitcoin is going down. Store wealth. People have moved to gold. Bitcoin is going down. part of me thinks how much of that is the narrative has changed on bitcoin versus are people just putting their money elsewhere yeah just flows baby boomer scared where are they going to go to they've been they've been for 60 years they've been pounding gold gold gold gold it's 5 000 years old man so somebody said it's going to take uh 20 years for bitcoin to be as a market cap to be worth more than gold i'm like if bitcoin in 32 years has a greater market capped in gold.

1:16:00That's a 5 ,000-year-old product. So just new people coming in. How much gold do you have? A few ounces. Yeah. So you don't have 7 % of your portfolio. No. No. It's nothing. So I have no gold. I have more ammunition than I have gold. So look, it's a gamble. It's a bit of a gamble. It's a bit of a lottery ticket with the real estate. If the Bitcoin goes to zero and find out the whole thing was a big scam, I still have my real estate, still have my cash flow. But if Bitcoin goes to a million dollars. Is the Bitcoin fund being, is it fine right now? Or like, how is the - So how is it fantastic? Well, how would I ever be in trouble if I paid cash for everything?

1:16:48So I paid cash for the real estate, closed the deal, paid cash for the Bitcoin. we paid cash for 2 000 bitcoin last year i paid cash for the real estate then we put a loan on the real estate for 140 so i owe 90 million dollars on the real estate and nothing on the bitcoin so put the put the numbers together i have 230 million dollars of real estate hunt today we have 80 million dollars worth of bitcoin it's not worth 100 so then how are you making money personally on this deal? Well, I don't make any money until we either sell the deal. Look, I don't make money on a deal until we call a promote.

1:17:28So until I sell a deal,

1:17:34I don't make any money. So all these guys on the internet, it's like Grant Cardone's management fees. We're a 1 % fee going in. I get 1 % when we buy the deal. Cardone Capital does. When we sell the deal, we get 1%. Okay. Explain this to me. Okay. When I buy a$230 million deal, I get a 1 % fee,$2.3 million. Okay. And is that paid to you directly or is - No, it's paid to Cardone Capital. Okay. I don't even get a salary from Cardone Capital, but whatever. It flows through to me. I get money. At some point, I'm going to get money. Okay. We have a 1 % fee when we exit the asset. So we exit the asset for$500 million.

1:18:07I'm going to get another$5 million. I have 35 employees over there. Okay. Our fees are less than Blackstone's. So nobody can say my fees are too much. But that's it? It's just, those are the only fees that are involved? No, no. I'm telling you the rest of it. On this particular deal, all deals are different. On this particular deal, we're giving an 8 % preferred to the investor and a 50-50 split. So I can make a load of money on this deal. If this deal makes$500 million, I'll make after I pay 8 % times 6. Let's say I pay 8 % a year. Let's say the deal doesn't cash flow enough. I didn't pay any distributions.

1:18:44I owe the investors 8%. Let's go 10 years, so it's easy. Times 10. I owe 80 % of all the first proceeds back to the investors. They're a preferred investor. They get the first 80%, and then we chop it up 50-50. If it only does 8 % a year, okay? By the way, it did better than Treasuries. It matched the S &P 500. if you took them all, not just the top seven, they would get the entire eight and I made nothing in that deal. I bought it. I found it. I bought it. I paid for it. I managed it. I busted my ass. I'm the one responsible for distributions, et cetera. And I made nothing. Now, if it does 40 % though, a year, which I think it does, then I'm going to make 40 times 10 years, 400%, less the 80.

1:19:39We're going to chop up 320. I'm going to make 160 % and I had no money in the deal. I'll get rich in that deal. But that's not what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to get rich. I'm going to put 10 or 15 or 20 of these together. I'm going to put the whole bucket together, and I'm going to bring it to Wall Street and take it public. And that should happen this year. And that's how I get rich. And I don't really get rich in that. We're just going to raise a bunch of money from the street, become a piece of paper. Cardone Capital will become an investment vehicle. We might take our education company and add it.

1:20:08We might take the consulting company and add it. we might take 10x health systems and add it have a conglomerate of cardone companies bring them to the public market turn into a piece of paper raise billions of dollars and then i get i get to become another version of myself and so and so then i'll have to quit doing podcasts talking about 400 grand it's not a lot of money then it'll be 50 million dollars not a lot of money what yeah on on the i'm curious still on the fee side of things because i'm still not completely understanding so from the perspective of the investor the person that's like investing with you yeah those are the only fees that they're exposed to is like, okay, if I want to put in a million dollars into your fund, this is like the real estate and Bitcoin fund.

1:20:44Then immediately I will lose$10 ,000 to do that. And then I put 990. Why would you lose 10 ,000? Well, it's the cost of, it's the asset management fee. So, okay, sure. That's bad, bad word. Like, let me just say. You're not losing 10 ,000. $1 million goes into that deal. Sure. 990 ,000 does not go in that deal. 100 % of the money becomes an investment in that deal. Your position is$1 million. It is not 990. Okay, so the position is - But when you run money through IRAs, it's going to get your million dollars is not a million dollars. They're taking their fee off of that. Probably a point and a half to 2%.

1:21:16Sure, but whenever they - So you put money into Blackstone. Yeah. You put a million dollars into Blackstone. Your million dollars didn't get invested. They took their fee right there. Okay. If you go into a private offering today, let's say you got a chance to go into, I don't know, SpaceX or ABTC or that's Eric's company. Yeah. They're going to take their fee off - It would be through a fund that lets you invest into the private company. Yeah, and it's going to be a million dollars. They're going to squeeze off$35 ,000 or$75 ,000 plus some legal. In Cardone Capital,$1 million. When you put$1 million in, in this case, on that deal, we raised$100 million.

1:21:52What did we raise? $100 million plus$190 million. $190 million is invested. We owe$190 back. I get a fee, 1 % going in. Again, the property has to be able to support the asset. This is not a makeup startup. This is not a company that doesn't have earnings. This is a real estate asset that day one, we have cash flow. I'm not building something, right? I'm not building the microphone saying, we got a great idea for a microphone company. I need your money to build out microphones to then go sell them. Okay, this isn't a startup, dude. I'm buying a piece of an asset that is cash flow positive day one.

1:22:35I mean, on this particular deal, this was in bankruptcy with Blackstone. Blackstone was the lender. Blackstone in the state of Florida, the lender cannot take over the property without bringing it to the courts and allowing the marketplace to decide. Okay. Blackstone wanted this asset. Trust me. They wanted it bad. Okay. I went to the courts and said, I knew the asset. It was in my backyard. We'd been tracking this asset for probably three years. I knew it was in trouble. The guy's been building it for 17. Like these things don't, you know, they probably been thinking about taking over Iran for two or three years.

1:23:13It wasn't over a weekend. They decided, okay, this is our move. So I've been working on this asset for a long time. So when I saw it, finally, it's going to be in problems. I went to the owner and went to Blackstone. Couldn't get any support from the lender. They don't want to help me. They want it. okay the the the debt they gave him was a setup to get it back from the seller from the owner i went to the owner and i went to the bankruptcy courts i went to the bankruptcy courts is that i'm putting a stocking horse in it's my right as a miami florida florida resident to use what's called a stocking horse negotiation tactic where i'm gonna set the bid on the asset i bid 228 million.

1:23:56Here's a check for 20 million. I'm risking my money. There's no investors involved at this point. I'm putting all the due diligence, all the energy, all the risk into this thing. I'm going to buy this asset for 228 million was our first offer. We ended up at 235. I'll give you$20 million check right now, cash it, deposit it into an escrow account, and I will close 10 days after you award the deal to me with all cash, no due diligence. So now they have to say public announcement. They have to accept it. Public announcement, Grant Cardone, put a stalking horse in there. They have to tell the marketplace now.

1:24:37You guys have until, I think this case, it was May 15th to bid. They sent it out. 14 institutions showed up. All of them are big boys. It's a quarter of a billion dollars. Okay. So who's going to come? It ain't going to be Johnny. And, and it's, you know,$400 ,000 income. Yeah. So, so, so he comes in, they come, the institutions come in, all the big builders, the big players, the Stephen Ross is like tremendous amounts of super money, way bigger money than me. I'm competing with giants. They come in and say, yeah, dude, we can do the 228. No problem. Hmm. that$20 million today, yeah, we got to go to a committee for that.

1:25:22If they're a big institution or a big REIT, you can't just swing in, slinging like I do. I'm a little guy, dude. The only advantage I have in the marketplace is swag. It's speed. You know, like, it's a little bit of overconfidence. That's my damn, this is my gear. My gear is, I can do this deal. I don't know if I can do the deal. I don't even know if I can raise the money for the deal. So what do most people get wrong about the way your business works? They don't ask me like you guys did. They do YouTube videos without asking me. Well, that's the main thing is like... Nobody that has any negative comments about Cardone Capital or what I'm doing has ever interviewed me.

1:26:06Do you allow them to reach out to you? That if they wanted to discuss and ask, is there an open channel? Well, you guys have reached out to me. I've never not responded. So what we'll typically do, just so the viewer has an idea, if someone wants to come on the podcast, so for example, this was a very, very last - Have I ever said, you guys can't ask me about anything? No. No, you've been fully transparent about everything, which is really great. Yeah. Because some people are not. But for you, yeah, you were just, you walked in - Have I ever asked for, hey guys, let's talk about what we're going to talk about first?

1:26:38No, no, no. You didn't ask for a brief - And I will say, from our last episode too, you didn't ask us to cut anything. Yeah. There was not a single thing where you're like, hey. Do people actually ask you to do that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would never. Look, I did it. Use it. The point is to the viewers, like, dude, you're going to make mistakes. Now, should I say that? I don't know. There's nobody. Nobody regulates what I say online. Nobody's allowed in my office to delete anything. We used to have that. People would be like, you can't say that. We were raising money. We didn't know. 12 years ago, we started raising, or 11 years ago, we started raising money.

1:27:12and my office was petrohied because the SEC is like watching everything. Okay, so the thing that we do here on the Ice Coffee Hour is if we have someone on the podcast, what we will naturally do is look up like, okay, what are the main controversies with this person? What are the main things? Yeah, that's where you get your juice from. Well, that's just what we should be asking questions about. You don't want to tune into an Ice Coffee Hour podcast and it just be like a lukewarm thing. Like we're going to do our best no matter what you may think. We truly will be doing our best for every single episode to touch on all of the topics that you want.

1:27:39Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. We'll put like 20 hours of research in every single podcast. We did on this one because we found out yesterday we were filming it today, which we were very lucky to know that you're in town to make it happen. Yeah, but I've done, I've probably done at least 100 hours of research on Grant. Of course, yeah, we're already very familiar with you. And so in doing this research in the time that we had, like the main controversies surrounding you would just be mostly around the fee schedule for your Cardone capital. People don't quite understand it. And I still like don't even understand it.

1:28:05Well, goddamn, what don't you understand, bro? Like, what's your IQ? My IQ? Oh, gosh. 70? No, I'm kidding. I mean, goddamn. It's 1%. Let me go over it again. It's fucking simple. 1 % times whatever was raised when we buy it. What did the mortgage broker charge me? 1%, probably a half to 1%. What did the broker charge? A half to 1%. What did the state charge me? All those become fees on that deal. Okay? There's a lot of fees. Not just me, other institutions, other people involved. in the transaction, title, escrow, et cetera, okay? Legal, legal is probably on that deal was probably$100 ,000. That gets added to that deal.

1:28:48Now, we're all invested in that deal. I am, you are. The three of us split the deal three ways. We all have the same fees. We're sharing in that. I, in addition to whatever upside, I get a 1 % fee that you didn't get when I bought the deal. I found it. I funded it. I negotiated it. I went through all the bullshit, okay? And by the way, you're going to hold me responsible for whether it works or not. When we sell the asset, in that case, we bought that$230 million. Let's say we sell that asset for$100 million more than we paid for it, just for simple math. I think we will, by the way. It's worth$100 million more to build it today.

1:29:26It would cost at least$130 million more to build it. I just happen to find a great deal and get it. If it made$100, I get a 1 % fee when we sell it. out of the hundred profit before we do our split. And is there no potential for fees between the two bookends? If I refinance it, let's say seven years goes by and I take the refinancing fee, it's 140. And all of a sudden the asset's worth 500 million and I can borrow another hundred, I get a 1 % fee when we return your equity. It's called a refinancing. So that would be the only fee that's - 1 % to buy it, 1 % to sell it, and a 1 % refinance fee.

1:30:07What about the claim of like you can sell Bitcoin? And by the way, you want me, you want, hold on, I'll do that. Okay. We're not even talking about the Bitcoin yet, okay? We're just talking about the real estate, okay? Because again, you want the guy that's your partner, you want me to make money. Because if I'm making money, you're making money, okay? So when we refinance it seven years from now, that's our goal. One of our goals in this project is I would refinance the asset. We put$100 million to buy it for round numbers. Just the real estate. Forget the Bitcoin. We also raised$100 million for the Bitcoin.

1:30:40So we'll leave that aside for now. So a year from now, I'm like, hey, guys, I got great news. What? I refinanced the project. For me to refinance, that means it had to go up in value. For me to refinance it, pay off the old mortgage, get a new one bigger, and then return everybody's money. Here's your$33 million. Here's your$33 million. And I get my$33 million. Okay. By the way, I get a little one point and I'm going to get anything above that hundred that I return to you. I get a split on guys. I didn't just do a hundred. Here's your third. Here's your third. Here's my third. I got another hundred and you're like, God damn, bro.

1:31:16Did you sell the Bitcoin? No, bro. We still own the Bitcoin. Okay. I get half the Bitcoin. I'm sorry. Half the upside of that hundred. I'm going to get, I'm going to give you guys 50 million to split and I get 50 million. You got all your money back plus 25 million, 25 million, and I got 50, okay? Because on this deal, it's an 80, it's an 8 % preferred and a 50-50 split. That means if it took seven years, you earned 8 % a year while you waited to get back your 100 and another 25 million. And you're like, Grant, did you sell the property? No, bro, we still own it. Well, Grant, what's my membership in it?

1:31:58One-third, one-third, one-third. I didn't dilute you. I returned all your money. I made money. You made money. You got your cash flow. You got your 8%. And not like Blackstone, not like the institutions in the REITs, they would pay you your$100 back, say bye-bye, and they would own that asset. We still own the asset. We did that twice last year. Twice last year, I returned 47 % on one deal, fund one. we returned 100 % of all the money invested to our investors. It annualized nine years at 47 % a year. Fund one. Fund two, it was 27%. This is after all the fees, all the splits, all the promotes.

1:32:37See, this is what these guys that do videos that are clickbaiting me, they never actually get into the numbers. This is great. This is why we like to ask the questions and why a lot of people believe when they come on the podcast that it's not in their best interest to let us ask whatever questions we want to ask, but that's not true. It's always in the best interest to be transparent, okay? Now, we're not going to change the minds of those out there that want to clickbait my name. I'm not trying to change your mind. Dude, I love you guys, by the way, all you punks. I love you guys. I understand.

1:33:08Keep playing the game. Clickbait my shit. Say whatever you want. Use the thumbnail. Don't make accusations that aren't true when you know they're not true because if you have anything, I will come after you. But I'm telling those guys right now, do your thing, dude. Do your thing. Just don't go into defamation because the moment you move into defamation and own something, if you own any property, I'm going to come get it from you. And if you don't own anything, play your game because I'm not going to sue anybody that doesn't own anything because there's nothing to get. Why don't you make videos directly addressing those people?

1:33:41Too busy posting fake AI. I just imagine the ROI would be - I had an investor the other day call and said, man, I'm really concerned about this one guy that's doing videos and you should go and respond to him. I'm like, bro, I, you know, the firemen don't stop for every barking dog on their way to a fire. It's rule number one of the internet, man, is you can't respond to everybody. And once you start doing that, then everyone else is like, oh, he's going to respond. Yeah. That's just not true though. Oh, no. I would agree. You could say it's a barking dog, but what if it's another house on fire on your way to a house on fire?

1:34:14No, it's a dog, dude. I'm just saying, I do think that like, This is actually not a barking dog. This is fleas on a barking dog. That's fair. So you got to pick what... Look, the last time I was here, I was also involved in a$100 million defamation suit that was very public with John Leisure that was the CEO of T-Mobile. Very big and very nasty and very noisy. So why would I do that? I initiated that and then leave this other thing alone. It's a business strategy. this is what trump's so good at what was the outcome of the t-mobile lawsuit well i can't say what it was just you know we we everybody's good now okay so and you're happy you're happy with the out it was i'm very happy with it i'm thrilled so um you know okay very very happy look i don't start anything that i'm not going to finish and i don't start anything that i'm not going to win And it's very important that if you're going to walk into a battle, you need to come out of that battle.

1:35:22You don't want to battle forever. And coming out a winner is really important. So don't start some shit you can't finish. And where there's not a positive outcome. And hopefully a positive outcome for everybody, not just my side. The perfect scenario would be I win, they win, we all win. And, but I can't get into the exact settlement of the numbers and all that just because we're both sworn to confidentiality. So one thing that's heavily debated online is people can't figure out your net worth, which I am sure you probably are very amused by. You see all these articles. Oh, it is speculating he's worth 400 million.

1:36:00It's speculating he's worth 1.6 million. Like, why do you think people have no idea what you're worth? Because I'm private. Because I'm a private individual. So I'm not publicly held. So Forbes is never going to list my, I mean, unless I went public. If I went public tomorrow, I'd be on a Forbes list. What do you have to lose by going public with that information? Well, I mean public. As a publicly traded company. I know, I know, but I'm saying by disclosing that, I should say. Well, because Forbes is not going to go do an audit at their expense of my privately held companies and their value. Like the people that are talking about my network, they'd have to know what 10XL systems were.

1:36:36They'd have to know what my position is in 10XL systems. And then they'd have to know what Cardone Ventures is worth. Then they'd have to know the income, the gross revenues of my Cardone education, the Cardone training technologies, the education portal and our net profits. Then they'd have to know what Cardone capital the investment vehicle is worth because it's worth more money than probably the other three. Because it continues to raise money, long-term sticky money for long periods of time. It's the most valuable of all the companies. probably second yeah first and then 10x health system 10x health system is going to be worth probably four billion dollars but and then the fifth company would be my holdings and all the real estate so now who's going to go do an audit on all those things fair enough yeah why why do i need to do it i know what the net worth is and by the way i know the net worth is a it is a complete vanity number okay it's it's too low the internet is lower than it is but the vanity it's a vanity number if i told you right now it's 1.7 billion three hundred and eight thousand dollars and 929 bucks today it's a vanity number none of it's none of it's even spendable because it's all tied up in it's all illiquid assets could you answer this are you a billionaire 100%.

1:38:00No, I can't tell you 100 % that I am because it's more than that. So you're asking the wrong question. How much more? Is that the right question? The over-under. It's over. If I could liquidate the assets. But I can't. So it's like, again, we're back to vanity numbers. Like, what's the purpose? It's more than I ever dreamed it would be. It's the lifestyle. And it's less than it should be. and it's less than it will be. So we just heard someone say that if you have$100 million, you could basically do 95 % of the stuff that a billionaire could do. Is that true? That's not true. I mean, I've had both of them and you can't.

1:38:40What do you get at a billion? There's things I can't do, dude. There's things that I cannot do. What can't you do? I can't go buy a yacht tomorrow. I know the boat I want. I can't buy what I want. What do you want? I want a 375-foot bed ship. How much will that cost? It costs probably$400 million. Why not? And another$40 million a year. Why not just lease the thing? Because I want it to be mine. I want it to be mine exactly the way I want. I mean, I could, dude. I've done three summers like that. That's cool. But I mean, it's something I want, right? Why do you want to go to Korea? It was a good deal for points.

1:39:17Yeah, I know. But that's the only reason it was. I haven't been, but you know. Yeah, I know. But at some point, the deal doesn't matter. or it's what you, there's some things I just want, right? And it doesn't mean it makes sense. I mean - How much do you have to be worth to be able to buy a$400 million yacht? Yeah, it's a good question. You know, you need, you need, you need 400 million because you want to pay cash for it. And then you need to be able to say, hey, is there a way to write that 400 million off? Because I would put it in the charter and I'd probably use it 10 weeks of the year and chart it the rest of the time.

1:39:56because I want that big spank in the beginning. If I can get that, and I'm not sure I can. Some people believe I can. Some people think no. And then you got to figure out, okay, how do I make sense of$40 million, $3.3 million of negative cash flow a year?

1:40:16And you didn't earn any money on the$400 million, because this boat's going to zero. All boats go to zero. Planes go to zero. Everything goes to zero. Now, I think there's a world that we live in right now where we're going to go from 3 ,000 billionaires to probably 9 ,000 or 10 ,000 billionaires. And those guys are going to walk around the planet with an economic footprint that is so massive. They're all going to want boats. They don't want a charter. They're like, bro, I want my boat with my toys, with my name on the pillows. You're talking about immense amounts of money. A trillion dollars just hit Miami.

1:40:54Mark, Ellison, Griffin, both Google boys. Like the list goes on and on. A trillion dollars hit Miami in the last five or six weeks. Trillion dollar footprint. Like that's, that trillion dollars will be, those guys will be worth$2 trillion here in the next five or 10 years or less. Because their money is just going to just explode. So I think you need, I don't know, dude, I can't make sense of it. I just taught myself out of the boat. Why did you talk yourself out of it? Because it's so impossible. it's like i'm never going to be worth enough money i'm going to say that's probably 10 billion to come because i think is it that level you just have to be able to write a check and not pay attention to it and not have it bother you because as soon as you run the numbers you lost the 10 billion needs to earn at least five or six hundred million a year that's how these guys are doing they're like okay i'm going to pay it back every month i'll pay i can pay it off like so you know you need a lot of money dude you need a lot of liquid assets that are that are rolling and arguing.

1:41:52How badly do you want it, though? Because what I wonder— You talked me out of it pretty quick. Yeah, that was fascinating. You just talked me out of the whole thing. What I wonder is, like, if this requires you to grind away for five more years of your life to be able to then afford— This doesn't require grind. This is when you have to give up— You're trading time and energy resources and stuff like that. This is when you have to trade the grind for a play. I can't be Grant Cardone, the grinder, and get that boat. I have to be Grant Cardone, smart, public markets. Everybody that owns these boats is public.

1:42:24Every one of them. They're all public. There's no not public. They're all public. The Fratigas, all of them, dude. Facebook, Jeff, they all own these big boats, dude. Why? They leveraged paper. They turned an idea into a company. Company became a piece of paper. Paper became explosive to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of owners. That value goes up as they continue to report good news. and that's the achievement. You know, now you're hanging out with a bunch of guys that you have something in common with. You have the best and worst thing they've ever done. Buy a boat. Aside from buying a boat, is there any other thing that you want to spend a bunch of money on?

1:43:04For example, that watch. Oh my God, the watch is crazy. No, I hate this watch. Why? Are you serious? I hate this watch. Then why do you wear it? Because it went with my jacket, so I brought it on this trip. What? Yeah, I hate this watch. What do you not like about it? Because it was a terrible investment. How much fun was it? I bought three Richards, and I hate all, I knew when I did it, you know, there's some things that you spend money on. You're like, I'm never spending money on that. Like, it's just kind of a moral thing. I knew this was stupid. I knew the timing was wrong. That market was hot.

1:43:32I'm like, it's going to pull back. Why did you do it? I wanted to watch, dude. How stupid can you go? Well, you know, there's a song written called cashflow and it has my voice in the song and the, in the song, it says, how stupid can you go? You can go as stupid as your cash flow. This is a stupid investment. But I paid for it out of passive income. How much did you pay for that watch? I forget. You don't even want to know. No, not really. It's probably worth more than it was then. But do you not like the watch because it went down in value? No, no, no. I don't like it because it represents...

1:44:08This is a crazy watch. Could I see it? It represents... You just throw it? Dude. It represents... You're not supposed to throw it. It represents... It's a house, dude. It is. It's just toxic. How much is that watch, Graham? It's got to be$400,$500. Yeah, I was going to say maybe like$300 low end. It could be$500. They have so many models of Richards. But I owned another one, a black one, that was a million-dollar watch. It's a big watch. And it was stolen from me. Did you have insurance on that? Off my arm, no. I didn't have insurance. But look, this is a total hype deal, okay? Like there's no gold, no, you know, this is junk.

1:44:46Yeah, but it's the engineering and the precision of the launch that people look at. I don't think so. I think it's a terrible investment. It's not even moving. Yes, it is. Oh, it is moving. Sorry. Yeah. I don't know how to read it. It's not even moving. There's too much stuff going on in the face. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, but it represents to me a bad choice, a poor choice. You know, it's not me. This is not what I would do. Now, there's a paddock I own, a green paddock. Oh, I've seen that one. That was the one you were talking about. watch i don't regret buying that watch yeah that's one one of 25 in the world it'll be worth i'll give it to my kids i'm not giving this to my kids like 20 years from now nobody is going to want this this richard the one i'd sell it i probably should yeah it's a great idea i have i have two boxes of watches i wouldn't buy any of them again what would you say is your worst investment of all time the worst investment of all time would have been i bought lehman brothers for a dollar and it went to zero.

1:45:40So you made an infinite loss. I lost$1 million. Not infinite. Oh, I thought you said you bought it for$1. I bought it for$1. I bought a million dollars. I got it at$1 and it went to zero. I lost a million dollars. What was the best investment you've ever made? One of the best for me or for my investors? For you. I bought a, well. Like the largest net worth gain. The best investments I've ever made were the companies that we have. Because I bootstrapped everything. 10X Health System, we paid a million and a half for that company. It's probably worth, today it's probably worth$4 billion. We paid a million dollars out of future revenue and we own 99 % of the company.

1:46:26So that was a great deal. But it hadn't seen fruition yet. I bought a piece of real estate in Florida. I put$15 million down. I sold a house, pulled money out of a business, and crashed retirement accounts to buy this one piece of property. I paid$58 million for the property. I put a$43 million loan, put$15 million down. That piece of property's worth, with 15 in it, is worth$250. And it cash flowed every month, every year for 13 years. I've refinanced it three times I've taken 15 back Plus another 55 million back Plus I just got 60 million back So I've taken out all my money Plus 130 million Still own it And it still cash flows That's probably the best deal ever This will be the kid Do you still own it all?

1:47:22The thing that I give my kids Yeah You own it all personally? I own 91 % of that S-O My brother and my sister own some of it But I'll probably pass that on to my kids If my kids are listening If they're nice to me Always How much do you spend per month personally? Not much. I don't spend a lot of money. What do you think you spend per month? Like$50 ,000,$100 ,000 a month? Yeah, maybe. You don't know if it's like, you have no idea how much money you're spending per month. Well, I mean, I could figure it out pretty quick right now. I don't have a mortgage on the house. Like what's on the Amex statements?

1:47:54Oh, that's, most of that's going to be run through the company. So it's all business. This trip I'm on is a business trip. so I have a secret meeting tomorrow here in town that I can't talk about you'll know about it on the 13th of this month it's funny I asked about it you wouldn't even tell me it'll be all over the media on the 13th I didn't know what it is but it's a secret meeting that I'm sworn to he bought the hard rock

1:48:17that's something I wish I could do I would love to own one of these big places but I'll leave that to I could see you as a casino owner like Steve Wynn how much you spend per month Oh, yeah. So what do I spend? Like your wife, your kids. Well, I mean, I get notices. $27,$42,$52. You get notices for that still? Everyone. My kids' credit cards are tied to my phone. And what do you look at? Just the dollar amount or what they spend the money on? I hit my wife yesterday. I said, who the hell keeps hitting this goddamn account for$127,$65? Who was it? She's like, oh, I'm buying Sabrina some clothes for this event she's going to do.

1:48:53I said, okay, okay. It's approved. And what? Like yesterday, Elena hits me. hey, I got a bid to clean the deck up on the house. I got one bid at$8 ,000, another bid at$12 ,000. I want to go with the$8 ,000. Is it approved? I'm like, yeah, it's approved. But I even said, hey, don't do the stain. It doesn't need to be stained. That's funny. Just sand it. She's like, it's more money to sand it. I've already done it. I said, I don't think they can stain it right. She's like, oh yeah, they can. I said, okay, it's approved. So I don't know. What dollar amount do they need to run it by you before spending the money?

1:49:29it depends on who it is and what department. Like the ad budgets that Jared runs? No, this is you personally. This is personal stuff. Oh. They're supposed to run everything by me. You know? So even like parking. Nah, nah. They listen, valets. Parking dogs. No. And you don't give them like a certain budget per month that they can or can't spend? Who are you talking about? Like your family. Like the personal expenditures. No, no, no. I didn't understand that. My wife has her own money. So she has her money and my kids have their money. So my kid's like, hey, I need some money for, dude, you got money.

1:50:09Dude, don't call me. Kids never call me for money. They call their mom. That's why I keep seeing these credit card things because the mom always does. They will never call me for money because they know I'm going to say, you got your own money. And how are your kids making their own money? Because they invest, you know, they had a salary to work for the company. I thought we talked about this last time. The kids have a salary. They have a responsibility. They haven't gotten their salary this year. And if they're watching, they haven't done what they contracted to do, so they won't get their salary.

1:50:37Would you ever fire your kids if they're not doing a good job? Sure, 100%. Would you hire them back or no? No, no, no. Like a one-shot, yeah. Dude, I had a text message that went out today. Hey, both of the kids are not performing their duties. Don't pay them this year. So. Are you worried about violating some labor law?

1:51:24But then they have to pay tax on it. That's right. So it's a way that you can, you can, like, in my case, what I do is I pay them. I pay them one fee a year. I think, I think the number's 50 grand, 50 grand a year they get. Now I could give the 15 year old a$50 ,000 check, but it wouldn't be a responsible thing for me to do. So how do I control that? I take the 50 grand. I say, this is, you were paid 50 grand better for them to pay taxes than me. Yeah. Yeah. And then I take the 50 grand and I diverted to Cardone Capital. So they become an investor in my project. Do they want to? I get a 50. I get a 1 % on that.

1:52:03One point when they buy them. By the way, at one point, my kid and my wife, and by the way, you'd pay the same one point. You're saying everybody's - Do they get the same doctor? In the case of the last deal, they would. They're all invested in that deal, by the way. Every one of my family members are invested in that deal. My brother and my sister invest in those deals and my kids. And I want pointed on the way in and on the way out. Okay. So watch what happens now. That money then goes to Cardone Capital. And if it pays cash flow, then that's what they live off of. So let's say they invested 50 grand in that project and it paid 5 % a year.

1:52:39They're only going to get 5%, 2 ,500. 2 ,500. What is that? $200 a month. So how much can they spend a month? How stupid can you go? You can go as stupid as your cash flow. So they could spend$200 a month off that one investment. Now, Sabrina's got like$8 ,000 a month coming in because she's invested in every project. So she could spend eight grand a month. She's 16 years old, done with high school. She gets$8 ,000 every single month. Papa, I want a Cartier Pantier. I'm like, buy it yourself. You got your own money. And she does? I know what she's got. I know what her net worth is. And she's like, nah, I don't want it that bad.

1:53:22You buy it for me. When do you think she's going to be a millionaire?

1:53:28Well, she already hit it. Yeah. Well, she's getting$8 ,000 a month, so$100 ,000 a year. Which is 10 % I'm saying. There was a deal that I can't talk about. There was a private deal that I can't talk about. But she, as part of this transaction and negotiations, earned a million dollars. wow earned one million dollars one million dollars in one deal she was 14 years old what did she do with them i can't talk about it more than that but it was i've mentioned it already in the interview today i'll give you that hint okay and but i can't go into the details of how what she did she did i mean it's nothing nothing weird i mean it's but it was something brilliant did that change her mentality when it comes well yeah because Because the next year, last year, she owed$400 ,000 in taxes.

1:54:18I said, but you understand, you have a million dollars. You can only use$600. She took the$600 and immediately invested it. And I said, she's like, why don't I invest a whole million? I said, because you got a$400 ,000 tax bill next year. It's actually going to be$380 ,000. She doesn't have the tax write-offs. Why wouldn't you have her get something where she gets bonus depreciation on that and then because she needs, in that case, she just couldn't get enough to get it. And she's not a professional. she's not uh uh she doesn't she doesn't fall under 469 that the 469 that would be the first thing i do is get her to qualify real estate yeah you're probably right yeah we didn't do that so you know um and wow what kind of car did you end up getting we got her a tesla okay model which one uh why what's the entry level that's what i that's what you got picked up yeah yeah it's a great car Yeah.

1:55:10Yeah. I did that really to support Elon. Do you talk with Elon? No, I never have. Do you talk with Trump? I have. Have or do? I have and do. Yeah, they did the interview. So you, yeah, but like. Yeah, yeah. But when I, sure. But like, does that mean that, you know, you could shoot him a text and he'll like. I could. What's the last conversation you guys had? Christmas Day. What did you say? Or what did he say? Just tell him he's doing a great job. My wife was like, why are you calling Trump on the president? You called him? Yeah, on Christmas Day. I said, because probably nobody else will. That's true.

1:55:46If he's getting one phone call that day, you know, his phone's not going to be blown up. And what did you just say? Merry Christmas? Like, hope you're having a great day? Yeah. He says, wait till you see what I do this year. That's hilarious. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Who do you go to for advice? uh man look i study a lot you know like um i don't really go to anybody and say what would you do i mean i my friend bob duggan that's taken a number of companies public i've asked him for advice i've sat down with michael saylor probably five or six times about our real estate bitcoin hybrid so i've gotten a lot of input from from um from him i've met last year we met with eight banks i don't think it's the kind of advice you're talking about who do i go to for like mentoring or whatever.

1:56:33But most of what I do now is I'm reaching outside of my own network to say, hey, I need to go find out what does the people at Bank of America know? Jeffrey Horowitz created, is probably responsible for every REIT that was created in this country. It's$4 trillion. If I could get 5%, like that's what I'm like, how do I get 5 % of a$4 trillion market? That'd be$200 billion. Now I can buy anything I want. I could have two boats, dude. I could have one over there and one over here. Shit. Because now it doesn't matter. But so I'll go meet with Jeff. I'm trying to get access to those kind of guys to say, hey, guys, look, what's broken?

1:57:15How do I fit in here? So we met with eight banks last year. They gave me tremendous, a bunch of great feedback about what I could do to really scale up. What's your best piece of non-financial advice? You know, value your family. Like, play as a team. You know, there's times where I forgot that we were a team. Like, if I could go back and fix stuff, like, I mean, like, Elena's been so beneficial to me, the kids. I used to say, man, I don't regret waiting, but some ways I wish I'd have done it earlier with the kids and the wife. I wasn't ready, though, so it doesn't matter. because I wasn't ready to have a wife and I wasn't ready to have kids.

1:57:54But that team, man, solidifying that team and honoring that team and knowing your team and, you know, that is the most valuable thing. And the other thing is the money really... Look, I can think back of times in my life where there were happier, funner times than just the big... Just the life. You know, the creep up the other the piece of advice I would give people when you're on the grind up dude love it because one day you're not going to have that and you're going to miss it it is so painful it's so nasty and but if you can live through it and get through it you're going to look back on that time and say that was the richest part of my life was the richest part of my life was on the grind up when it was 18 hour days getting up at 4 o 'clock in the morning scared terrified not sure what Feet hurt.

1:58:55You know, those times were so rich that you can't buy it with watches and cars and planes. But no matter how many times I say that, it's still f***ing painful. Yeah. And it's not fun. And most people don't get through it. But if you get through it, you're going to look back and say, like somebody asked me, would you rather win a billion dollars or earn a billion dollars? And I'd be like, dude, I'd rather earn a billion because the first one's not, you can't do the first one again. you can do the second one again see it's easier to earn a billion dollars than it is to win it at what period of time in your life were you most motivated well i would say that if you asked me that the last time i was here i would say probably when i was 35 or 40 and then but the last time i felt that was when i did a five-day fast about two months ago.

1:59:50And I felt like I was 28 years old again on the fourth day. I was so motivated, dude. Like, I felt like I was, I was all of a sudden this electrical unit that was just popping off. How long did it take for that to kick in? It was on the fourth day. Why do you think that happened? I did a three-day fast. Three weeks later, I did a five-day fast. I did a three-day fast. You do look like you've lost a little weight. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I'm probably just cutting up a little bit. So I did a three-day fast My sister called me and said, hey, I think I have cancer. They want me to come back in.

2:00:22They found a spot on my lung. I said, okay, good. When are you going back in? She's like, in two weeks. I said, no, good. Okay, I'll get you to the MD Anderson in two weeks. I said, well, what we're going to do, it was on a Friday. What we're going to do right now is we're going to start a fast. And I said, you're going to do a 72-hour fast, and you're going to freaking just, she's like, what do you mean we're going to do it? I said, I'm going to do it with you. I'm in Miami. You're in Houston. I'll do it with you. and we're going to do it. We're going to do a 72-hour fast. She's like, how do you know it's going to work?

2:00:50I said, fuck, I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know shit. I just know this. If you starve your body, the cancer has nothing to live off of. You fucking give a shot, man. I've seen some bullshit on the internet. They say fasting might work. It costs nothing. Let's try it. Do I need to go to doctors? I'm your doctor right now. We're going to fucking do this. Let's go. Call me Dr. G, okay? So anyway, she agreed to the fast. I'm like, maybe I'll just lie to her and not do the fast. And I'm like, I got to do the fast now that I said I would do the fast. But I had 800 people in town Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

2:01:24And I'm like, I got to fast and speak to these people and go to their lunch and VIP. Anyway, I did it. So if you ever want to fast, just stay busy because it's really easy if you're busy in front of a lot of people. But I had to produce on my feet for 20, like eight hours a day, every day while fasting. And it was easy. And I felt great. Three weeks later went by. My wife, my wife, my sister, by the way, didn't have cancer. She was cleared. Three and a half weeks later, I said, okay, I got to try a five-day fast and see what happens on the fourth and fifth day. And the fourth day was like, it was like a thousand X.

2:01:58Are you working out fasted? Yeah. I did coffee and tea and water. No supplements. None of our supplements. Is that like a common response to fasting for that long? like what was that what was the hardest day uh probably the hardest thing it's a bit of a mind fuck right you're like i'm gonna stop eating and you're like oh damn i want a donut like almost instantly you're like i want something to eat first it's a weird it's a weird mental trip the second day is a little hard um because the body's craving food if you just deny it then it's going to go consume whatever's left in a body. The third and fourth day were like piece of cake.

2:02:42On the fifth day, though, the fifth day, I didn't actually finish 100, what is it? Five times 24 is what? 120? On the fifth day, my body was like, hey, we want food now. I was getting signals from my body in about 110 hours. There's no upside from here. There's no benefit of going another 10 hours. Just do your thing. What was the first meal you had? What did I eat? ribs. People are like, oh, don't go in heavy. I'm like, what do you think people did a hundred years ago? You go five days, you had to fast because there was no food. It's in the middle of winter. There's nothing to kill. People fast all the time.

2:03:21You finally get a kill. What are you, oh, we can't eat. That's a little heavy. Had to fucking do some broth. That's so fucking stupid. Eat. Everybody eat like a feast. So. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, when it comes to family i have to say the big takeaway from our last podcast was how good of a relationship you have with your children yeah i want that relationship if i have a daughter yeah i want what you have with sabrina yeah thank you like because i just saw the way she looked at you yeah and the way you treated her and saw her and wanted to like push her out of her comfort zone i really admired that yeah thank you yeah it's uh like if you took everything away from me you know it'd be the kids, man.

2:04:04Like, even more than my, you know, I don't want my wife to hear this, but, because we, I wouldn't have the kids without the wife. My wife's been a great choice for me, but the kids, man, there's nothing richer. How do you do, how do you raise good kids like that? Well, you know, it's always like, okay, is this going to always work? You know, I'll keep waiting for the other foot to fall off, you know, the shoe to fall off. Okay, maybe they're going to turn on me you know they're 16 and 14 now so you know i invest time with them man i spend a lot of time with i've changed my whole schedule i have never not taken their phone call if they called in right now i take the call um i bring them to meetings with me i create stuff with them um you know i only had 10 years with my dad and i had i'll bet you i didn't have 10 days out of 10 years and I just you know like I'm gonna I'm gonna spend time with these kids that's why we homeschooled them we didn't homeschool them because we thought it was good for them we thought it was good for me really 100 % like I could see them in the morning I'm not gonna drive we were driving to school I'm doing the drive to school that's not quality time you know they're 6 and 8 years old you're missing the best the best moments of the life you're driving them to school to what?

2:05:23to go to prison And then I got to go pick them up on their schedule. And then we went to the school and I said, I want to take my kids out of school for three months. You can't do that. I said, what do you mean I can't do that? How about this? How about I just take them out forever? We took them home and started homeschooling. And so when I leave in the morning, they're there. When I come home, they're there. Or I say, hey, go to work with me. So right now they're working on two programs, but anytime they're home in Miami, they're going to be in the office with me, making calls, listening to calls.

2:05:53what values do you try they've been in they've been in they've been i had a guy named johnny that's worked for me for years sabrina no scarlet was sitting there johnny came in i said johnny i need this this and this done he's like starts giving me some bullshit and i'm like hey what the fuck are you talking about i forgot she was there i said i'll fucking smoke your ass right now get you the fuck out of here you've been here i don't want any backlash and she's watching all this and then she watches me go back and say johnny man i might have overreacted there and He's like, no, you didn't. It was right.

2:06:23I was acting like a dick. I said, you fucking ain't right you were. Never do that again. And Scarlett got to see all that. And she got to see me go back and talk to him. And she got to see him come back and say he was wrong. You know, Sabrina was in one of these very, very big negotiations, big, massive deal. She got to watch all the parts of it. People are getting emotional. People are accusing people. Sabrina and Scarlett were both in Bank of America, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs meetings where we were talking about taking the company's public. They're in these meetings, listening to all these extremely intelligent people.

2:07:01And their job is this. Your job is to take notes. They both have to take notes. They're just sitting there. The bankers at the end are like, what did you guys write about? And I said, you write down everything you don't understand, you write it. Anything you don't understand, you write it down, the word, and we'll go back and look them up later. Wow. So that's, you know, I invest a lot of time with them, man. And in some ways, it's overpowered me being a better husband because I've thrown myself so much into being a parent that, you know, like there's sometimes there's not enough left over to say, I need to be spending that same time on my marriage and with my wife and honoring her and spending time with her and including her.

2:07:46so it's got a little bit of a trick, you know? Yeah. Do you think that your kids are happier this way? Or do you think that there's a part of them that like a part of a child, he always goes there. What? I don't know, dude. How do I know? How do I know which way they'd be? You could ask, you could ask them. I don't enjoy it. And they're happy. But they have nothing to compare it to. So look, they, they, they lost a lot of stuff by being homeschooled. They're not, they're not part of the soccer team. They're not cheerleaders. They're not part of the, the, the, the club, whatever clubs they're doing today.

2:08:20So they don't, they don't get all that. Do you think it's worth it to let them explore some of those things just to have that experience?

2:08:29I mean, you know, they're 16 and 14, like they're exploring stuff. They, they, they, they, you know, they're, I know their kids, their friends, thank you. I know their friends are all talking about whatever 14 year olds talk about. you know sabrina's dating so i know what i was doing when i was 15 yeah what's that like dude it's like okay bro you just gotta you just gotta like understand she don't grow up but i growing up so you gotta wish for her to grow up you know like i don't i always say i don't want to get older yeah yeah grant you actually want to get older because if you don't get older you die So my kids got to grow up.

2:09:08They got to grow through it. Do you do background checks on the, like if she's gone on a date? Put a PI on the guy she's going out with? Seriously, I think it's, right? You think it's smart, right? Yeah. If I were you, I probably would be doing a lot of research. Would you have NDAs? Yes. Of course. Sounds like something you'd date with someone. Would you do a background check? Would you do a financial check on the family members? Probably not a financial. What, you would think that maybe they put the guy up to dating your daughter so that they could get some money or something? Everybody wants to date my daughter.

2:09:38So you're kidding? Like, you know. Maybe not the financial check, but I do like a criminal background. You should. You're just not. So what if they checked every box but they came back as broke? Yeah. Well, you can be with them, dude. You're not. Those kids aren't getting any money. Like, why would. I would tell my kids, look, why are you with a guy that can't produce? Well, it's a kid. My kids produce. So who's paying for fucking lunch? Who's paying for lunch? Who's paying for lunch? Let me ask you that. So you'd be livid if your daughter went out with a guy and she paid for lunch? Over and over again?

2:10:17100%. If it becomes a... I'm like, hey, guys, like, who's paying for lunch? I ain't paying for it. All right, totally everybody I'm not paying for it. So you got$8 ,000 a month. Scarlett's got maybe$3 ,000 or$4 ,000 a month. Okay, you guys are going to deplete your funds here. you're with a kid that can never pay you're you're with a kid that can't be in exchange he's not gonna even feel good about this shit he's gonna feel like your little bitch here in a little bit he's gonna resent you okay you you never want to have that much power in a relationship where you're paying for everything so when when we go to lunch sometimes my kids pay i'm like you guys pay for lunch how much is it i don't know it's your fucking bill it ain't mine it sounds like having kids was a good financial decision for you well you get the one percent you get the money Back into the fun.

2:10:59But why should my kids, like every time a bill comes, when I'm with my kids, okay, I'm like, you want to pay for it or you want me to pay for it? Okay, good. I'm going to pay for it. I'll pay for this one. But you tell me how much we should tip the waiter. Well, how much should I tip? I don't know. How good was he? Wasn't very good at all. Good, put zero. And you give it to the waiter. I wanted to tip the guy. By the way, tell him I wanted to tip him, but you didn't because you thought the service sucked. in all those exchanges, however they turn out, she's learning something. You know, Scarlett, on the other hand, is like, I want to give them 20%.

2:11:35I said, do you want to give everybody 20 %? Because it's my money. Let it be your money. Let's see how much you want to give. And then they're like, shit. See, they learn. They don't learn by me telling them. You know what's interesting is I asked you if you'd be okay if your wife made more money than you. And you're like, well, good luck, basically. And you're raising a daughter that will likely end up making a lot of money. She's already made millions. And so - 100%. In the dating marketplace, if she will realistically be the breadwinner in whatever relationship she ends up getting into, correct or false?

2:12:09Maybe not. I mean, no, no. Statistically, she will be. She could marry up. Yeah. And she should, by the way, if she's watching this, both of them, I would highly recommend they both marry up. And would she then give up on, like, to be a mother, give up on all of her business ventures, is the stuff she's doing with you in order to then be a mother? That's up to her, you know? It depends on the deadbeat she's with, you know? How hard is it to like the guy that your daughter's going on a date with? Not hard. Okay. Not hard. He's a likable enough guy, you know? But, you know, the question now is, like, whose name?

2:12:49I've always had this conversation with him. Oh, interesting. Whose name are you going to keep? I really would appreciate if you guys would keep my name on the brand here and not Sabrina Cardone Jefferson, Sabrina Cardone, period. Like no, don't add a name. And should he take Cardone? Good for me. Fuck it. Why not? More branding. Now, now, now, and by the way, I don't want to put you guys in a bad situation. You got, you got to have a prenup. Okay. I didn't do one. I don't have a prenup. Do you wish you did? Yeah. Yeah, it was a mistake. And I'll tell you why in a second. These guys will not be giving money if they don't have a prenup.

2:13:33So you guys can not have a prenup, but you're not going to get any of my money. You will be excluded from the wheel if you don't have a prenup. So that takes the pressure off of them to do it. Now, why do I regret not getting a prenup? First of all, I trusted Elena explicitly. She's not a gold digger. She says she is, but that she doesn't mean it like that. She means she wants the best out of everything and she wants us to do well. And she knows that I'm ambitious and I want to do well, but she wasn't with me for the money. In fact, the money turned her off. She thought it, it meant she was going to lose some power because I had money and I wasn't rich.

2:14:09I mean, I was, I was doing all right, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't super rich. and so I'm just like, yeah, we'll figure it out later. That's the problem with the prenup. Okay. You either get an agreement or you leave it where there's no agreement. You understand? So when you don't have a prenup, the beautiful thing about a prenup is you now agree it's not about money. And as time goes on later, as people have problems and difficulties, there's this thing hanging over you like, shit, we're going to have to figure out whether this is about money or not. And now we got to negotiate something.

2:14:44This should have already been negotiated. I love how like transparent you are with these things. Or at least like the fact that you have unique opinions outside of the Overton window that you've just came to on your own, maybe with some exposure to different information and stuff, but you just have your own very unique - What is Overton? What does that term mean? Like Overton window? Yeah, what does that mean? It's a term for the stuff that's within the Overton window is the stuff that's more socially acceptable opinions to hold. think of group think that most people have these views well it's not that it's it's what is socially or socially acceptable or not socially acceptable opinions or beliefs to have so it's not even group think it's just what is okay yeah yeah yeah so like you have opinions that are outside of the overton window is what i would say and and you just are totally look and it's in your own unique way and they seem to serve you pretty well i'm not saying i'm right about any of this i'm right for me up to this point and the point where I'm like, okay, that wasn't right anymore.

2:15:43Like I used to buy value add real estate. We don't buy that anymore. You know, it's not what I want, right? It's not the asset class I want, but it doesn't, it was, you know, I bought one unit to start with. I wouldn't do that again. It was stupid. It was ridiculous. It's not necessary. I bought a single, I bought a single family home, but I was like, people like, he doesn't take his own advice. I was rich. It was stupid. The watch was stupid. See, this is the problem with the watch and the rolls, the Cullinans. I got rid of all those cars. I regret every$400 ,000 car I bought. Because now my wife loved the cars.

2:16:20She loved those. My partner, Brandon Dawson and Natalie, they love that shit. I don't like it. I don't like the way I feel when I roll up. so i don't know if it's a shame thing or lack of self-worth or i don't like the message it sends to the marketplace like i forgot i had this watch on until you brought it up and now i'm like oh the audience needs to watch some young guy out there is gonna be like i gotta give me a richard you know no you don't dude don't get a richard no good to rolly you don't need either one i'm they're they're meaningless but you know what i'm saying like sometimes I feel like it's such a long example.

2:16:58But do you feel like people need to go through that to learn that lesson and buy the things and get the houses and the cars and the watches? No, you don't have to. I mean, you have to if you're an idiot. But if you're a wise person, you would learn by somebody else's mistakes. Anybody can learn from their own mistakes. Like all these people say, oh, I learned more from my losses. No, you should learn from somebody else's losses, not from your own. You know, a wise person would learn. you went down this path he went down that path his path didn't work yours did i should follow you not him but people don't do that i gotta do it my own way and they go off on a third so what what things can you buy them that have the most value that you think spend money in these ways this is on your health i mean yeah any investment in yourself is a good investment church time time, community time.

2:17:51Like the five years I got out of a treatment center for drug addiction, I spent every single day. I don't think I missed a day for five years, helping other people get off drugs. That time will always come back to me. Always. Because I can tap into that anytime I want to know. I can help people, real people like people that are hurting so um anything any events the seminars uh going to podcasts watching i probably do i probably watch i'll watch every all-in podcast those are great they're interviewing people yeah that none of us have access to you know that that is so deflationary that i get to listen to the giants of the planet as many times i want by the way because i can listen to it one time second time a third time a fourth i'm gonna pick up so much stuff like i'll do i'll do one of those every day while i'm working out and it starts turning shit on you know i started like i started becoming this i feel bigger after i listen to them like fuck look what these guys are doing man and they're talking about shit i don't even know i like i have to look words up and tokenization and the blockchain and you know ai generation and like i don't even know what they're talking about yeah humanoids like yeah what is a humanoid i was I was telling him watch Chris Camillo's podcast.

2:19:06Yeah. He was saying the same stuff as Chris Camillo, but humanoid robots. I think everybody has a robot. You know, the Tesla proves that to me. So people are worried about it replacing plumbers. I'm like, it's not replacing plumbers for 20 or 30 years, if ever. But Elon, I don't think it's three years. He's going to give me a robot. I'm going to overpay for it. But I'm going to have a security guard at my house. My wife loves having this. We had full-time security for years when we were doing our live events. And we had a reason to have them. I will have a, I don't know if it's humanoid, but there will be a robot providing security at my house.

2:19:5124-7, 365, and probably going to be able to do some other chores. You know, that's a no-brainer. Everybody could have them. Armed security. yeah I think it's gonna come to that that's a no brainer what if your daughter wanted to marry a robot dude that's wild would you be okay with that no what if he was a good guy I don't no can't do a robot I just think eventually the robots are gonna get so good they're gonna be indistinguishable from people and they will have whatever personality matches what you are looking for in a partner Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. You got too much free time on your hands.

2:20:37This is, Gary Vee believes that people are going to have relationships with robots and AI. It's only a matter of time. They're going to be marrying robots. Yeah. So you wouldn't improve on that? No. Okay. No. Because, you know, the spiritual, I mean, is the robot spiritual? I don't, it doesn't seem like it. All I got to say is thank you so much for your openness. No, yeah, you got it. You got it. You got it. Tune in to the 13th. It's a local thing that's going to happen here in Las Vegas on the 13th. It'll be announced on 13th, 14th. Deal. I'm looking forward to it. So that's the secret thing.

2:21:09Okay. And it'll kind of surprise you what it is. It's out of the box of anything we talked about. Well, this was a blast. Thank you so much for letting us know that you're going to be in town. And 100%, we'll revisit this in a year or two. We'll do another episode three. Guys, let us know what you thought of the episode. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Yeah. And also, I just want to say a big thank you to the members. We're now posting membership videos for you guys. We're taking phone calls from members. So if you want to call in, they could call in. We're going to answer their questions.

2:21:40We're getting really interesting questions. One guy is dating two girls and has to figure out which one he wants to date exclusively. Just had a robot to figure it out. A third. So with that said, make sure to join. I really appreciate it. We'll link to your information down below. Thank you for your openness, transparency, everything. Thank you. Also, guys, you can listen to us on audio only. We're on everything from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, you name it, we're on it. Check it out. The link is down below in the description as well. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really hope you enjoyed the episode.

2:22:09And we have some phenomenal news as a cherry on top. We have a banger episode coming out this next Sunday. Even better, but that episode is ready to watch right now. Early access with no ads, no cuts for channel members. So feel free to join and you'll be able to watch the episode right now. Here's a quick sneak peek. Turn on the lights! So what was the final amount that you won in Beast Games 2? $5 ,106 ,000. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. What would you criticize about Beast Games? The truth is, what I won won't end up in my pocket.

2:22:57Thank you.

2:23:32Thank you.

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