On making million-dollar bets and why humility is overrated.
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I think that the term Karen has now morphed, maybe into something different. I think that in the beginning, when people were calling people Karen's, it was obviously very critical. It would be a Karen seemed to be a blonde, middle aged woman. She voted for Trump. She was labeled to be a racist, and it was really like a vicious sort of term. And somehow I feel like Karen has morphed into being a middle aged woman. It doesn't really matter who she voted for. I don't think it matters what her religion is anymore, because I think before Karen was Christian for some reason, I just don't think she was a Jewish woman. And I think that now Karen has morphed into a woman who likes to lodge plaints, Like if a woman is the person who's staying at hotel, I don't know, can we see another room or Hi, yeah, can I get something else on the side, or can I talk to your manager? Can I speak to a supervisor? What's your term policy? I need a nonrefundable ticket. You know, someone who's savvy, slash, annoying and wants to lodge a complaint. That's what I feel like. It's morphed into because I know that I was saying something and Paul, my fiance, said to me, Okay, would you like to lodge a complaint to Karen? So that's what Karen's become. And I want to actually talk about that because I don't know anymore who Karen is. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I never knew the definition. I know some people who don't even know what a Karen is, meaning, they don't even know the term. I've said it to a couple of people and they've said, what. So I thought it was like really popular vernacular, like a really popular term, and I think that maybe that's more on social media, but it's not so mainstream, like it's not Karen is not Felicia yet, whereas by Felicia, and I know Felicia is very out. Felicia is not cool anymore. Felicia's being totally canceled, and Karen is in. But I just don't have famous Karen is. And I can tell you one thing. If Karen were Jewish, she's Judy. Judy wants to lodge a complaint. Judy needs to talk about no oil, no sauce, steamed broccoli, Send it back, my eggs Benedict are not soft enough. My burger is not cooked properly. This just doesn't taste right. The meat is tough. I ordered medium rare, it's medium. I would like a refund. I would like to speak to your boss. Can I have your boss's name? That's Judy? So, Judy is the Jewish Karen? Okay? Why is there no male Karen? So? Who's Karen? Bill? Bill, Joe? And what Bill and Joe is like? What just like? Is a man who runs it up the flagpole, golfs and goes on phishing trips with his buddies? Is that is that Joe feels like Bill Bob? Is it Bob? Or is it Bill Bob? Bob is the new Karen? Okay, Bob is the male Karen. We have to get his profile down. I think he golfs. I think he goes on fishing trips his buddies. I think he, you know, likes to go out with his bros and his buddies. It doesn't say bros, he says buddies. I think he has a cozy for his beer. I think he has a lake house. I think he loves an excuse to go to a Vegas corporate meeting UH sales management trip. I think he loves the all you can drink, all inclusive hotel vibe at at the bar and sits in the middle of the pool and is loud and sing Sweet Caroline in karaoke. That's Bob, Eat Bob. Meet Bob has a pair of Oakley's. Meet Bob goes on a purely ski trip with his buddies, and Meet Bob has Poker night probably right, doesn't Meet Bob of Poker Night, and like Meet Bob's wife, Karen is drinking chardonnay or rose at four o'clock with the girls at the house, spilling the tea. Meet Bob has sex with his wife three point to five times a week and four point oh five times on a vacation. What do you all think? What is the audience? Think? Always right for you and subscribe And I like hearing what you have to say from reading your comments, So tell me is the male Karen Bob? This is going to be a great one. My guest Today's grand cardon New York Times best selling author, speaker, social media influencer, and realist state mogul. He is the most famous person that you've never heard of. That has so many contacts, so many connections, so successful, so charismatic, and he started from the bottom and now he has a portfolio of assets worth over two billion dollars and trains others on how to do the same. Today we talked about how to create a business built for longevity. While humility isn't a great characteristic, how to overcome fear surrounding money stemming from childhood and the broken relationship rule. His energy is contagious and I think you're going to love this episode. I really did. So. My starter is I didn't know whether to drink coffee or take a sedative because you have the most energy. So we'll see afterwards what I should have taken. So this is Grant Card, doone. Okay. He is charismatic, he is energetic, He is passionate, driven, hungry, determined, alive and doesn't stop. He is a business person. He is a real estate mogul. He is a motivational speaker. He is a husband, a parent, and he might be the most famous celebrity that you've know. He's he's the most famous celebrity you've never heard of. Okay, grand Card, don't let me let me just say Bethany. I'm a huge you know how much I love you. Okay, You're phenomenal. Everybody loves Bethany. And number two, number two things I want to say. It's just the fact that you said I'm gonna live like that is a very nice compliment. So thank you very much. Yeah, you are. It's it's electricity, it's contagious, it's motivating. It makes sense. This podcast is specifically and intentionally about started from the bottom hour here game change or you're a visionary, you're a maverick. You've done it your way. It's been non traditional. You are you know, take no prisoners, no no explaining, no complaining, no apologies, do it your way. And that's how people really can learn because there are so many different ways to the Promised Land, and you have your own trajectory, and I want to humanize you and crystallize you and sort of give people an understanding of who you actually are and how you got here. So like, I want to understand, first of all, how old are you? If you don't mind me asking, I'm sixty three. That's not true. Yeah, I was born in I Like, I was just asking. It's a throw I swear in my life after you're gonna say in your forties, your sixty three, Wow, holy sh it. Okay, so that we can go onto this placent does smoothies you eat every day later but okay, wow, okay, I'll tell you the secret offline. I'll tell you the secret one day. Sounds like it's sex, Okay, So we'll go back to that later. Um, sex or masturbation. We'll do that later. Okay. So grant they're the same thing, by the way, okay, with the person you love the most. I get it. And you do love yourself, which you should. Okay. So where did you grow up and what's your family dynamic? Your parents are upgramming your siblings. Yeah, so I grew up. I grew up in Late Charles, Louisiana refinery town. So you either were a refinery person there and you were connected to the unions and did hard labor at the factories, uh mostly the gas refineries hard labor, or you did some kind of you know, a sales job. So my dad died when I was ten years old. He had made it firmly into the middle class from poverty. Both of my parents were Italian descent. Their parents came over My mother's father was born on the ship and never had papers to live in the US, and so my grandfather my mother's side, never had papers to live in the US. So he lived a very dark life, like he was under the radar, never had an employment situation, probably never paid taxes, so everything was kind of on the sly. And then my dad's side completely opposite. They were shipbuilders from Naples, Italy. They came in settled in Madisonville, Louisiana, and so my dad had this hard that this hard labor, do it right, pay the price, work ethic. He's the first person who went to college and became a you know, life insurance salesman's stock broker, car salesman. He did all that kind of stuff. But he really got into the middle class. And at the age of fifty two, um with five kids, he died. He died from a heart failure. So that left my mom. My mom at the time was I guess she was forty eight with five kids. She had no this is back in the fifties, housewife. You know, she had never earned money herself, never held a job herself, and now she had to manage five kids. Everything was paid off, the house was paid off, the cars were paid off. The following week after my dad died, my mom was selling the house, dumping everything. I'm ten years old, twin brother were the youngest, and we're sitting there watching. I'm watching my mom going to terra when she should have been grieving because she's unloading stuff. And so this became. You know, as I look back fifty years back, this is this is what ends up making me who I am today. I bet you had or you have still have a bit of money noise. You knew what it was like to feel scared and desperate and not have it. And even if we have a lot of money, you can have noise like where you're moving things around and you've got to do that to do this, And you have a lot of real estate, You're into a lot of different things. Hey, have you ever had any debt that you didn't want and be Do you have money noise or noise in any area, either family noise or food noise or any of that stuff. Yeah. Sure. Between the age of fifteen, I was so angry that my dad died, and I was so angry I couldn't help my mom. Like I've been wanting to work since my dad died. I'm like, I want to take care of my mom. And that's been a driving force of mine. I was raised by a single mother, Like that's who I know. She and I were best friends, and I could not help her. I could not get rid of her angst. And that is that driver, that thing that you see in me, like this guy just not start. That's still in me. My mom's passed ten years ago, but she was my best friend. She took care of me. She was the one I went to first when I had a success or failure, even as an adult, but at the age of fifteen, I was so angry that I didn't have a man in my life. Part of why I created this foundation was for kids without fathers because I wanted a dad. I wanted an uncle, dan, a mentor, a coach. I wanted something. Someone dies, you feel abandoned them, like they left you. And because Chelsea Handler on this show said that when her brother died, he said to her he was coming back to Martha's vineyard. He was going away for a certain number of weeks and he was coming back. He was gonna leave her here with these people, meaning her other crazy family, and that he never came back, and she was very angry about that. Even the professional and logical, but people who experienced loss can of relate. Yeah, but it was logical for me because it took me two years to realize my dad wasn't gonna show up. I was twelve years old, and I'm like, he ain't coming back, broke. But then I started, when are my uncle's gonna help me out? If you've ever heard anybody refer to me as uncle G I told this story one time and I said, dude, I am going to be the uncle for others, for the uncle that wasn't there for me. I had three uncles and they never showed up for me, and I don't off about it. So the next person that showed up was a drug dealer, and he's like, i'll be your coach, I'll be your mentor, I'll be your daddy. And I'm like, let's go. And I went on a ten year binge with drugs. I became a drug addict between fifteen and twenty five. I was using drugs every day, overdose three times, had eighty stitches put in my head and face. Could easily be in prison right now or Dad. I had three friends that got killed. I went to treatment. Three of them died while I was in treatment, were killed, were had bullets put in their heads. So that was the life grant card owned thirty years ago. I was the black sheep of my family. Nobody trusted me. My family didn't trust me, my sisters didn't trust me. Nobody wanted anything to do with me. I was the only place I could get a job when I came out of treatment was a car dealership. And I put my life together. I quit using drugs. I didn't use any more drugs for thirty eight years and never went back to the drug thing. I left the treatment center. They said, you will definitely be back, and I'm like, why am I coming back here? I ain't coming back. And they're like, yeah, because you want to be famous and you want to write books, and you want to save the world, and you've got these ideas you're gonna be rich and famous. I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm gonna do all that ship And they're like, anybody with that attitude will always come back their treatment center. I said, bro, I'll never be back here. I still remember the guy today, Paul. Paul gave me the inspiration of my life saying you will be back here, you will be a drug addict for the rest of your life. You have a disease, I'm like, this ain't a disease. I'm gonna flip this switch. I'm gonna use all this energy and I'm gonna take this gift. The ability to like be locked in on something than to switch the addiction from disease to gift is what I've used now for thirty years. Really can propel and create everything that well. My partner and relief work is Michael Caponi. He built big houses, like big million dollar mansions in Miami. After he was a major club promoter like Ingrid Caesaris and Madonna. He dated a lot of models and he did a lot of drugs and he was very addicted. He one day switched. He never went to a meeting, he just flipped the switch. And he's been to Haiti like sixty times. We've been all over the world from the Bahamas. We've done a hundred million dollars of relief in three years. He flipped it to something else. Doesn't mean that that isn't like being addicted to aid or something else, but good. I mean, you know, what I mean, he's also spiritual. So that's a fascinating if that's been channeling. Because a person, I guess an addict has such energy and passion and drive for that, they've got to get it, They've got to have it, they have to do it. They wanted their singular focus. If you can take that sort of addiction and the singular focus on something else, it makes sense. Everybody has the ability to be hooked into something to where you lose sleep. Everybody's done it. When you fall in love, you go to this. You don't need to eat, you don't need to sleep, You just want to have sex and fall into this person's face over and over again. Bad breath is good breath, and you can't get enough of it. Please sweat on me like you like sucking into this, immersed into this universe where you forget everything else. There is nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, in our culture today, anybody that goes all in on anything is somehow labeled sick, diseased, codependent, obsessive, compulsive. I've been called O, D, D, A, C D, every every like, every little acronym qute acronym in the world. I'm like, guys, how about g I f T. That's great. Well, I know what you're lying. I mean, I understand what you're like. You know, I'm I'm not saying I'm like you, but I'm one of these people. You and I are very on it. There's no no I've got it figured it out. I'm thinking all the time processing. I may have a different style, but you know, there's a certain thing inside many of us, and when it's not channeled, it goes in the wrong places. Like even for me, it's humor, and I need a place to put the humor in the connectivity. For other people, it's just business and numbers or data. But how do you sustain You've been married for how many years? Sixty and seventeen years? Okay, now you've been totally honest and vocal where you did a clubhouse together about that. It's had its challenges. She's open about it too. So what is the good, bad, and the ugly? How do you sustain? I mean, there's no perfect relationship. That's bullshit. You know. My best friend was last night complaining about something going on in her marriage. Has been married for decades. That's an accomplishment. My other best friend has been married for decades. He's an extrovert. Like everybody's got their ships. So we're not sugarcoating anything, but I'm asking an accomplishment is being a team and being with the same partner for decades. So you've been together, you have kids. How do you make something work when you have these big, driven personalities. There's so many different elements. How do you make it work? What's some formula or some elements or ingredients. Look, I don't know if I have a formula. I know that, you know. The thing for me always is I need to work on me, not on her. You know, I don't need to work on her. You know, she's not a nail. I need to work on me. The only thing I can change is me. Like when I change me, things get better. And if she does the same thing, then good. But I can't make her do that, right, I can't. You know, she typically blames me for everything that goes wrong. You know, I am responsible for everything that happens bad, and she is somehow responsible for everything that happens good. It's just the way it is, right, So this has been difficulty in my relationship. I live in a very physical universe. For me, the universe is a lot of gravity, A lot. I think you can relate to this. There's a lot of effort required for me to be successful. Her world, she does not live in a world where there's effort. She lives in a very ethereal um. She's an actress, right, so that's our background in the arts, and and so her world is a lot lighter than mine is. Mine has a lot of gravity. You're the peacock. You're the peacock relationship. Obviously, there's only one peacock. I don't know about that. You've never heard of it. There's only one peacock with the blooming feathers taking up the energy in the room. You're sucking up the energy in the room. And she's got some of it in her own way. But she's very much takes up a lot of room in a room. I'm speaking about more effort effort. I'm in an effort ban and she is much more in a kind of a life free. Oh, I'm just gonna make this happen. I'm gonna secret it. She's gonna secret it. She's gonna make it happen energetically, and you're likelinding to make it happen. I am the law of action, and she is the law of possibility, and and she thinks she's making this ship happen. But I'm like, bro, none of this ship's happening without like jet fuel, without refueling, without pushing through, without like like it's like, my world is tough. It's just my reality. I could be completely spiritually unevolved and I'm just an idiot. But I'll tell you this. It is a version of the peacup because same thing with me. There can and should only be one person driving in that way. So you're lucky that you happen to find a partner who happens to be able to play and role in this world, your crazy world. She's beautiful, she's charismatic, she's a good your first lady or you're you're the first husband, whichever you want to say. But it can't be easy to live in this electric, energetic world. How do you find downtime? How do you find connectivity? How do you find spirituality? How do you find peace? And like avoid of just anything relaxing. We don't actually, you know, the game for us is the game, and we're both very interested in our own spiritual development individually. We don't believe in the rule is just a broken relationship. I bring fifty, you bring fifty. We've got a quarter is what you got? Like, you got broken people coming together. Two broken people don't a whole. So we work a lot on our spiritual development. Actually take time to get away from each other and from our work and go develop spiritually to understand that, you know, the things that Elaine and I have in common are a great deal more than the things we don't have in common. So anytime there's an out and this, I just say, hey, what's my grade? Like, Hey, you did this and you did this. I'm like, what is my grade right now? I failed those two things? What is my fucking grade right now? Before God, by the way, I never pitched perfect to anyone, So I never told her I was perfect. I told her I would make our lives great, And I just always go back to that thing, is our life great? Right? You know? But but look, if we spend time on the outpoints, we'll just go further down the tube, the rabbit hole. So we have to spend time on, Hey, what's working. How do we double down on that? How do we make that more successful? We got two kids now they're growing up, things change, like we have to change. Is the game changes? What are your kids like? Are they motivated? Do they care about business? Are they free spirits? Will you allow them to be free? Speak? My daughter is an artist. She's free. She's not like me in that way. She's totally could be living in Malibu in a band, you know, and I like that she's like that. I'm not looking for her to be me. So I want to know how you are with your kids. Yeah. So our kids are nine and eleven. They're both very extroverted, very social, extremely confident. But they get to do whatever they want to do. Like, they don't have to be in our business. They want to be a doctor. They can be whatever they want to do. They're not entitled to the money, they're not entitled to the company. If one of them wants to step up and run things, they can. If they don't, no problem. It's there are lots. I don't want to force anything on them, so we give them a tremendous amount of Now, your show, Undercover Billionaire talks about building a million dollar business and dainty days where you start with a hundred dollars. So I want to get an to the show but I want to talk about are you one certain that if right now you just woke up tomorrow and had nothing, Like you had the clothes on your back, you didn't have a credit card that work, You probably didn't have credit Could you right now kill it with nothing? Like starting right now? But you're not grand card doing, you're not famous like yeah, So look, this is what Discovery asked me last year or January before COVID. Nancy Daniels caused me and says, hey, would you be willing to do undercover billionaire? I said, I'd be willing to fly out to l A and talk to you about it. So I fly out to l A. I meet with Discovery. She's there. I bring a bag with me. There's a true story, so I said. So Nancy explained to me the show. She's like, we're gonna drop you off in a city. You will not know the city until you get there. We want to know if you can with a hundred dollars. You can't use your name, can't use your credit cards, cannot use your connections, you cannot call your five employees. Okay, I can't use your social media. You have to nail this. Only a boy from lake, can you can you turn it into a million dollar business in ninety days? And I looked at her. I said I could not say that. I could have said that. Listen. I reached down, I grabbed a bag. I put the bag on the table. In the bag was one million dollars in cash. I said, not only can I do it, I'll bet you one million dollars. I'll give you one million dollars and I'll buy the entire crew a new car. If I don't hit the million it's and by the way, I don't need your hundred dollars, and I'll do it in less than ninety days. You cannot do it less be famous? Now for real, Grant, what is the show? The show airs April same week? Is my show? The Big Shot with Bethany airs that same week? So okay, let's keep going. I want to hear. This is fucking sick. So this is pre COVID. Now I leave Mandalaid Bay in Las Vegas on February. The first person to ever do the show or the show has happened before. No, no, the show was done by a guy named Glenn Stearns, and Glenn didn't hit the target. Glenn's a cool dude. He did not hit the target, of course not. But there's one of the things that I told Nancy Daniels. Okay, I said, Nancy, by the way, this is what I'm gonna do. I'll bet you a million dollars. I hit the million dollar mark, but I'm not going for a million dollars. I'm gonna build a ten million dollar business in under nine dead dead. I don't know what I do. And the money is you are money. The money is now. You are money. You have that money. You made ten million dollars. The business that we build. This you found somebody, of course, but somebody somebody, I don't know anybody. They dropped me off from Pueblo, Colorado. Do you know anybody in Pueblo? No? So this is this is what I'm doing. I leave Mandalaid Bay. I was with Kevin Hart. I'm interviewed Kevin Hart, John travel to Dana White, Floyd Mayweather. We are twelve thousand person event. You've been to our events. You spoke at my thirty thousand person event. We had that event that year in Las Vegas. I literally leave Kevin Hart. I go shave my head in my penhouse, get on my plane. I put on this pair of pants right here that have on. I have to t shirts, two pairs of pants. They give me an old pair of boots. A new phone, has no contacts. They take this phone from me. Okay, we flow my plane to Lamar, Colorado. I'd drive two hours in a piece of ship. Truck is a terrible truck. You'll see the show. You'll see it. And I get to Pueblo at three o'clock in the afternoon. The sun's gonna go down in three and a half hours. I have no water and no food and no place to sleep. Okay, now watch this over ten days. I don't spend one penny in ten days. The first thing I did when I got to Pueblos I took the hundred dollars and brought it to the bank and dropped it off, opened a Welsh fargo account and got rid of the hundred dollars. And discoveries like, why are you putting this money in the bank. I'm like, because I don't need a hundred dollars. I don't need anything. I don't I don't need a dead Benjamin Franklin, you know. And so they're like, we need you to spend that money. I didn't spend that money for eight four days. I never spent did no. I eat beans and rice for days. If you made money, but you couldn't take any of the money you made, if you made it all this money, Yeah, whatever I wanted to do, I could do. You can't break the law, but anything else is on the table. I'm dying. I love this. This is amazing. Audience can actually binge the entire series on Discovery Plus because it's sitting there right now. I can watch it now. Yeah, you can watch it right now Discovery Plus. If you have six dollars. I have six dollars and I'm gonna watch it with Paul. I'm freaking out. I can't wait. This is so exciting. Wow. And the reason I did the show was because of your question. The number one question people ask me is if you weren't Grant Cardonne, if you didn't have all these people following you on social media, if you didn't have the money in the plane and all this stuff, could you make it all over again? And this show is going to prove to you you don't need money. You do need a strategy. You know, you don't need to be in your own little hometown that actually might be a benefit to you, and it doesn't take a long time. Cuban said he doesn't need the five said, I give it. If you had to start over, I give you five. That he was, I don't need the five thousand. He said, the same thing. It's so interesting. This is why the show is interesting because some of the questions I asked people who have done it in very different ways, compelling ways interesting. Don't get dressed up in a three piece suits in a cubicle like whatever it is I'm saying. I'm talking to charismatic, interesting people and they all say similar things that are so crazy. Like so he was like, I don't need your money, Like I would take the five thousand. He's like, I don't need the money. I would go, I would get a job because the money is not what it's about, is what you're saying. It's not about the money. I always say, it's never about the money, but it's ultimately about that. And you know it's about the money. So you know you've done a lot of reality shows. You know a lot of that is not reality. This I can promise you I was there for the entire time. I never got any help. This was not produced. Everything that happened happened. I lost two to multimillion dollar deals because I got discovered. Because part of the deal is if I get discovered. Okayd all right. So Mark Cuban is the person who said that I'm one of the great branders of all time, and I'm telling you you would give me a run for my money. I mean, there's something we should do together. I don't know what it is. It I told you I want to produce a show with you. Yet let's go. Let's go, girl, Come on. So now I understand why you're the top crowdfunder in the world, raising five hundred million dollars in equity. So now it's all making a lot of sense. You have a hunger and a drive. So do you think it's really what you saw in your father and just the lack thereof in your mother or do you think it's inside Do you think it's just inside of you? Just baby, I was born this way, like auga says, and look, I might not be right on this, but I think that everybody has the potential to do something much greater than they're doing. I know, since I was a little boy, I had this like, I know I can be somebody. You felt it, yeah, And I think if everybody was honest, if you weren't so tired to this idea that humility is such a great characteristic, which I'm not sure that it is. If you look up the word in the dictionary, it's not a very appealing word to be humble is not like, it's not something you would want your kids to be if you look the word up in the dictionary and just didn't assume what it meant. But I think, quietly secret everybody thinks they have something in them the special. And I just happened to be one of those people that keeps telling people I know, dude, I know, I know I'm supposed to be somebody special. I know I'm supposed to do something significant and important, and and I have just held that. I think if my dad was here today, because he did really well by us, but I think he would look today and say, hey, I went for the middle class and he got the middle class. And now, based on how things turned out that my mom was having an unload stuff the next week, he would not feel like he actually set our family upright. I have certain goals, but and I'm taking this thing into the end zone. I can feel it, I know it. This business of mine, I've doubled down. I've gone back to the tables. I've split my aces. I already made a lot of money and was on the cover of Forbes, but I decided not for the money, for the game, for all of it. But then you get into it and you're like, all right, the money's a label for it, you know, the philanthropy is a good thing that you can do to give back. It all kind of becomes these these sort of goal posts, and yeah, the end zone is my all those set your goals high, you know, if the impossible as possible. But do you believe as a percentage of luck? What what percentage are you lucky? What percentage are you smart? Well, I'm not a lucky guy, So I'm not lucky on the tables. I'm not lucky with the races. That's not been my deal. If anybody at the table is gonna lose, I'm probably gonna get the worst hand I've I've sat there with where the fucking cards were So with me, I'm like, God, damn, how do I keep getting a fourteen? I don't know, Maybe it's a mental thing. But it's why I love real estate, because real estates to me, is like a no brainer thing by the same kind of assets over and over. I have to have the cash flow and time. Time becomes my friend. So as long as I have enough time, I know if I can sit at that deck long enough. In a real estate deal, it's just when do I make a triple or a quadruple. So your favorite business is real estate of all your businesses, sounds like you're passionate about it. Well, my favorite. My favorite business is helping people because it's just that thing pays in so many ways. So I love doing those conferences. But the real estate is the thing that will outlive me. I mean, both of them are gonna live longer than me. The real estate could live a hundred years after me and take care of the investors and our family and our charities. Our charities are set up to be paid fifty years after I'm dead. Every month like clock work out of cash flow. But you know the books and the programs and the webinars and Cardon University I've helped, you know, I can't go anywhere today where some young kid twenty two years old man, uncle, gee, what's going on? Man? You change my life? So you know that stuff feels really good too. So is there a number? Like, for me, being totally transparent, the number just represents what the thing is, you know. But the Skinny Girl brand, which is a hundred million dollar brand, which for me is a you know, a big deal, and it's still sort of new, and I only have a couple of people working you know with me in my infrastructure. It's just like three or four people. So I'm proud of that. You know, no debt. I own a hundred percent of it, all of that. So the goal is to take that and all the brands to be like, you know, a billion dollar brand or of several hundred million dollar brands. So that's a goal. Like, that's sort of that's the end zone. Doesn't mean I'm leaving. It just means it's a nice major thing to sort of work towards. And with the philanthropy, we did three unti million dollars, I'd like to take that getting too. Three UNTI million dollars and three years getting two billion dollars doesn't sound that far if we I mean, because now once you do it, it becomes exponentially once you get on the board. Once you have a hundred million dollar business, you can have five hundred million dollar business in a second. So what is your goal post? You know, what's the point of all this? What do you guys want when you look at a lane and do you have the same goals? Do you say we're gonna do this and then what happens? Okay? I would love to take card own capital to forty four the number not five. Four is my lucky number. Well, I started. My first goal in real estate was to own twenty units. We have nine thousand. That was my first target was twenty units. I wanted to make ten thousand dollars a free cash flow. Okay, that was like okay, if I can get there, I'm done. My first deal with thirty eight units, it was twice what my whole goal was. So then, as you know, once you start winning races, you're like ship man like not only that, if you're going to do it, like if you're going to open up a restaurant. Of course, it's not easy to say to someone who only has the money to open up a small restaurant. But I was speaking to Mark Packer, who owns all the marquees and the tows and all that. And when we were sitting in this restaurant, dirty French, I said, this would have been a great space, and he said I was offered the space. But if I'm gonna open something, I might as well open something big that can generate a revenue. Because it's gonna take the same amount of time and effort to do a tiny restaurant and the same amount of aggravation and liability than to do a big restaurant. So what you're saying is it's gonna be the same thing for me if I do a relief effort, and it's it was just as hard to get a hundred pairs of rain boots for Texas as it is now to do fifty million dollars in Ppe. So why not just go all the way, same energy, same effort. It might not even be harder to go bigger. It might actually be harder to go smaller than it is to go bigger. I know. I remember, for twenty years I built a business is big enough to take care of our family and not big enough to take care of other people's families, And that business was harder to operate than the company I had today. Running a business with three people was harder than running a business with five. I believe you. The small management of people is a suck. It sucks you. Yeah, I agree, And there's no big payoff. Okay. And this is the problem with the middle class. The middle class is the most overlooked, punished, and oppressed group of people on planet Earth. It's not people in poverty. They get attention every day that things aren't fair. Everybody knows that. And the super rich they never have a problem. Things go bad, it gets better for him. But the people in the middle that are just getting by. They got two cars, they got a nice little house. They're worried all the time. By the way, you can tell their word, because they're saving money for retirement that may never happen. They may not even live to that day. They're saving money in the banks, and the banks pay them nothing. I mean, the whole thing, the big scam in America is the middle class is someplace of freedom when the truth is is just enough until it not. And that's where my mom and dad lived. That's how I grew up. I grew up in this constant fear of my mother. She's constantly clipping coupons, looking for the best deal, buying a used car when we should have bought a new car, you know, moving homes because she was worried about the maintenance. So that kind of built my whole, like, Hey, I don't want to own a home. I want to own three units. I'll rent where I live and own where other people rent from me, and I'll buy my dumb watch out of not earned income. But right, So, who are your three best friends? My three best friends? Man? Do I have three best friends? I don't know. You have one best friend? Uh No, probably a lot of friends were not a best friend. That's very interesting. What if somebody's going with your wife that's serious and you're upset about it and you want to talk about it, who do you call? I would never talk to anyone about my wife. I would go handle myself. I wouldn't call you and say, oh my god, me and Elena hadn't had sex in three weeks, or hey, me and Elena I had to fight. I don't need your opinion about me and Lena that. I would never involve a third party in one of our different problems. Trusting people, No, I don't trust people with I would not give that issue to you. I don't think it's fair to you. I don't think it's fair to Elena. I need to go handle myself. I would go handle myself with my church and say, hey, I got some issues here. But do you go to Elena to tell her like the thing that happens, the exciting thing that happens, the deal that happens that the show you got the show? Did you call her first? When I was doing Undercover Billionaire? I mean, I watched the first two minutes of Glenn Stearns doing that show, and I'm I called Elena because Discovery said, hey, just go watch the first episode. I watched seconds. I call that we're doing this show, and it was we doing We're doing this show. But that doesn't sound collaborative, But it is collaborative because we know different people are in charge of different things in the household. I like that. So you're it's where the fish are, the fish were there, You're we're going. The team is moving. There's not two decision makers on certain things like finances. There's one decision maker. Interesting, there's one core her back, there's one coach. There's one guy running that play. If she's kicking the field goal. I'm not kicking and I have no opinion about anything. If she's running X, she runs X, and we were lane or wrong or lane or right. So you're rabbit Craft, she's Belichick, and you're just like not, you're do any different things. But yeah, that's right. There's never two cooks. And that's a good note forever on at home, by the way, that because everyone wants to be so collaborative and that might not work. Okay, I like that because what that does is that adds time and it adds doubt. If I got a call in, hey, do you think I should buy this deal? Well, man, if I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be buying the deal. How long did that take to build up? Did you start that way? Or that's an evolution? Like is that from the beginning? No, No, we got married in two thousand four, two thousand and eight. We had to get our ship together because two thousand and eight, like the honeymoon was off. Now the band aid been pulled, and we were just in this honeymoon stage of being married and weren't really taking life seriously until the global economic collapse, where it's like Okay, who's running what she quld be in an interest In two thousand eight, She's like, okay, I throw in the towel on the active thing. I'm on board with you. You have a better chance of taking us to the finish line than I do. That's changing now, right. I like that? Like Jesse, It'sler said that everyone This is another iteration of the show is the relationship aspect, you know, always focus on the dynamic because it doesn't matter about the other ship if you can't hold your relationship together. So one of the things he was saying was that they check in with each other and they could make an appointment for like how are you what's going on with you today? Not like how is your day? But I mean like are you good? Are we good? Like they check in with each other, and that he lets her be her and fly and she lets him be him. So I like, I'm learning a lot through all these shows about business and different ways but also relationships and yours. Isn't definitely right or wrong. It's just one method for the toolbox, and checking in could be another method. You might use that from now on, Like I might use that from now and but I might use your method. I like the toolbox of relationships. Yeah. Yeah, And you might ask me three years from now, I might say, how all that ship I told you the other day with ridiculous? It was stupid by the way. I've changed my mom many times in my career, and I think it's important that people look back and say, Okay, I don't do that anymore. Exactly, you're checking in with the relationship and what's working, things don't work. Yeah. I agree with you on that. You grow out of a house, you grow out of certain techniques, grow out of food you're reading, grow out of health, health things, you're doing workouts. So you do all these motivational conferences, largest business conference in the world, thousands of people worldwide. They're massive. I've been there. I went there. I spoke in front of forty people people at the Marlin Stadium. I didn't know where I was. But I walk out and there's a car and like fireworks and explosions. I'm like, where the fund am I? So it's a world and I want to do something with you because there's these worlds and people don't know about that. Like you're just uncovering, you're walking, You're like, there's the people at the Marlin Stadium Super Bowl weekend, like what is going on? So obviously you have a massive reach. You have speak to motivators all the time. Who are the top three speakers that you've had or seen or experience, like people that are just electric and really motivating. Kevin Hart was phenomenal. It was so easy because I'm very much a stand up guy. Everything is for me? Is what's it called when you do stand up improv? Yes? So that conversation was extremely easy with me. Here's a guy that's a black comedian. Everybody knows who Kevin Hard is, you know, and he probably wants to be more businessman. I'm a businessman that probably wants to be a comedian, you know. So, but the thing that we had in common was this personal comfort with making mistakes and just you know, just ripping with an audience. Um. I literally like like the thing that probably that I'm most scared of it. I would love to do improv at a comedy store about money. Guess what, No one knows this, No one, My best friends don't know this. Okay, I am going up into a comedy club in New York City and doing stand up. So for many people. That's as crazy as you shaving your head and going to pay. Well, I'm standing up in front of the audience that doesn't know I'm coming. The club doesn't even know it's me, and they keep saying, we've had Jerry Seinfeld shop here Kevin Hart unannounced, which is a lot of people's phones. But who is this person? So I'm not Kevin Harden. I'm not Jerry Seinfeld. But it's going to be a shock, and I'm doing it. I keep looking at Paul, I'm looking doing this and so what I did? How long were you doing? As long as I want? I mean at minimum five minutes, but I might do ten minutes. I mean, I'm just gonna wing it, but I'm not winging have something to say, but I'm not. I'm not gonna psyched out. And you can text Kevin Hart because this was an idea I had and I've documented it all, meaning just I've written it down. I emailed and texted and received from every single one of them, which is shocking. You know, in business, if you asked ten people for money for PHILANTHROPI or to do something for you or whatever, you're gonna get like I can't or don't or write it forward to my book. I can. I will. Every single person I'm gonna tell you the names responded to me with passion and good advice and takeaway. Kevin Neil and Ellen Degenerous, Chris Rock, Whitney Hummings, Kathy Griffin called me for a half hour shell Boto bridget evert like major legit comics. But Kevin Nalen wrote me a one page email. You know, Chris Rock gave me a whole blurb, like I just wanted three tips, three tips on doing stand up for the first time or any time, and so ask Kevin Hart. Because they were all different, and like the show, they all like had commonalities but then dissimilarities. You could pick, like you could listen to Grant cardone and listen to how he does business to take two things or one thing. So I'm finding these threads in the show and it's fascinating. Good luck, good luck, because five minutes can feel like like sixty minutes if it's not going well. So why would you keep thinking about I'm just gonna get up and do it, you know, but I'm taking it seriously, you know, I'm not just winging and like, oh, funny. They know that. What's interesting about it is that what I recognized in speaking to all of them is it's an art form and it's a craft. So they're passionate about it. And the fact that I'm not asking them like help me be fun me. I'm not asking them. I didn't ask them for jokes. I want to know about the art form. So they gave different advice, whether it was breathed just breathed, which is like okay, or like Chris Rock said, know the first and the last thing you're gonna say the middles of flow, you know, like so great? Yeah, so all right, I want to just hear your life mantra and then let you go because you're very busy. You know, my life mantra is success is your duty. That is my battle cry. It's not an option. Everybody can have it. You know. Everybody needs it. Your charities need it, your community needs it, and the people that are watching you need it. People are watching everyone, and if you're winning, there watching, and if you're losing, their watching, and if you're just getting by, everybody knows it. So I mean, you know, I just want to make a difference. That's why we do these big conferences like they do make a difference. You ask me my three top speakers, so Kevin, I love being with Kevin. Let me see who else. I mean, I've had so many great like unbelievable. I had Don. People said our last conference it was phenomenon. Don is the seventh wealthiest Black American, and I just loved it. He's a banker guy, So we go from a comedian to a banker, right. And I'm trying. What I'm trying to do in those conferences is I'm really trying to erase the line between entertainment and business, because I don't think there should be a line there. And then the third most craziest speaker I've ever met is a chick name stop. I wasn't fishing grow Okay, well that was I wasn't fishing at all. I've only done it a couple of times. We've had you twice. Man. That's I will tell you this is a truth. Success and success comes in many different shapes and places. And I will tell you that I've done this podcast now many times. I think we've aired probably thirty episodes, and in unexpected places. I had a great conversation with Dana White who you know, I had a great conversation with Sandy Hagar. You'd think, I mean, I had a great conversation with Hillary Clinton, but it wasn't like you know, the same is that this was. I think this was my best podcast because it was alive, it was electric, it was funny, it was unexpected, it was humanizing. This conversation represents why I'm doing this and I value your time. And I just for the record, I think you were excellent. Like I I'm like a Ted You're the best. You're a Ted X today, Swear to god ten X. Come on. It's because every time I'm with you, I'm better. It was wonderful, so fun Okay, bye, thank you so much. So that was amazing and interesting and unexpected and alive, and I knew we'd have a great conversation. But this podcast is about bringing to light people who are undeniably successful in anyone's opinion, like, no matter what they are, started from the bottom. Now they're here, they have created something, they have something to share. This is a toolbox for success in relationships, in business and human dynamics and the human condition and the human behavior. And you know, these people are unexpected. But I choose. There's no scientific process here. I'm laying in bed at night and I think to myself, I want to have Grand Cardona, or I'm watching the Steve Madden the Shoot Mogul documentary and I text him, I want to have you my podcast or someone interesting and entertainment or the automobile industry or apparel like it's just about what's going to give you the tools and the wisdom and the insight for your own success. So this podcast is by far my favorite media platform and my favorite project I work on. It's just authentic and true to me and the stories I want to hear and the takeaway for all of you in life and in business. So I'm so grateful. That was wonderful and it was a perfect example of the unexpected. Thank you all for listening. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe, and we will be talking again soon. Yeah. Just Be is hosted and executive produced by me Bethany Frankel. Just Be as a production of Be Real Productions and I Heart Radio. Our managing producer is Fiona Smith and our producer is Stephanie Stender. Our EP is Morgan Levoy. To catch more moments from the show, follow us on Instagram at just be with Bethany