Lessons - From Drug Addict to $4 Billion Real Estate Empire | Grant Cardone - 10X Founder

In this lessons episode, uncover how persistence and strategic focus drive exponential growth, discover why doubling down on what works accelerate success, understand the mindset behind the 10X rule and its call for massive action, and explore why avoiding mediocrity and embracing bold moves separates winners from the middle class. One thing that I want to highlight is you've built all these things like even like the training real estate conferences, you've built them over a period of time but like there's obviously it's been purposeful to an extent. I'm assuming but I'm sure there's also some like oh shit this really works we should double down on that. So what's your process and you know what what you've built out under like the card-owned capital empire and then like what's what's next like you know how do you decide what you want to go into. Yeah so I'll give you an example it's a great question okay like there's one division I'm not going to mention what it is you know but that we have started three or four times now and every time it's failed. I know that it's going to be probably one of the most successful things I do I just cannot figure it out. I haven't figured out I just can't get everybody and duplicate what what what I have figured out in my mind so we just have not figured out how to scale it yet so again I started it have scrapped it I think four times now and just recently scrapped an entire department around it but I'm going to go back and do it I know I'm going to do it and I live off the saying that like I heard once forget who told me to say look if you don't quit you can't fail and there there there does come a time where you got to quit but maybe it doesn't mean quit maybe it just means slide over a little bit but I quit on one thing I mean quitting drugs was a good thing for me right it just it didn't have a benefit and a big enough benefit and so yeah what we do double down though or we look at what things what what things work and I think a lot of companies I know I didn't scale the way I should have because too often I was doing either the same thing over and over and not getting bigger like today when we find something that works we're like okay how do we 10x that the 10x rule change my life people talk about they talk about online about the 10x rule is a book that I wrote it was the third book I wrote and and people like that book is a game changer that books one of the best you know best books they've ever written and it's on it's on the most top 10 most inspirational books in the world but that that book was written for me I was trying to figure out a 50 years old how do I scale how do I actually go from in 2008 I think I had 300 apartments well I had 160 apartments when I was 35 so 35 years old I had 160 apartments when I was 50 years old I only had about 180 apart like I didn't have maybe 230 or something it wasn't that much more from 2008 till 2020 I went from 160 units or I guess I had what maybe 230 units at the time I'm at 7,700 I have more I have four times more vacancies three times more vacancies than I owned 12 years ago because I learned how to scale this 10x thing was about how do I take double down now don't just double down how do I take something that's working and don't do something new take something that's working I think about Jeff Bezos right now because I'm like he he went from hey I'm gonna I'm gonna go from selling books books on Amazon to selling everything on Amazon scale yeah so how do you do that you you you you study statistics and you double down when you're winning so notice I scratch I in that conversation I scrapped one business four times because I can't make it work but that doesn't mean we didn't keep scaling the things that did and it also doesn't mean I won't go back and figure that other thing at the right time it's a good it's a good attitude and I think it's that's why it's it's a winning attitude when you when you can focus on what's actually working and obviously it's you know like listen it'd be stupid not to say it works look at what you built out but and get rid of the ego get rid of that like right now in 2020 here we are in April right we have this kovita thing happen and we have massive unemployment worldwide literally a worldwide recession if not a depression about to information right now this isn't at the time for me to go try something new this is the time for me to double down on what's working how to help people right now how do I scale card on university how do I help customers I need to actually contract a second so that I could pull the forces back and prepare for another assault yeah you can't just go run out like a lot of people think 10x is oh all the time you're 10x sometimes 10x means I got to contract again get rid of some stuff so I can double down or 10x on the things that are working so I can move again and set up that other company that I want to to for instance the real estate I can't go expand my real estate portfolio in this environment today not because I don't want to but because the markets have seized up and I need a second I need a second for things to relieve themselves to in order to go back and go from 7000 units to 14000 units love it's a smart mentality to just like level yourself off even purposefully like you're leveling yourself off purposely can you can you can you can you walk through the 10x rule like I know you sort of touch on points but like just high level just because some people may not know like you're known as the 10x guy but what is the 10x rule at its core yeah well the 10x rule first about the 10x rule is not an idea it's a way of life and and people that go 10x are massive action people and and the premise of the book is there's four levels of action there's see you don't do anything you retreat you do average or you go 10x now the first three the first three we everybody knows somebody it does nothing that you call them lazy actually it's impossible to do nothing but but just for conversation we'll say a person does nothing we know that's not going to work going retreating if you retreat your entire lifetime it's going to be very painful retreating by the way is actually takes more energy than just normal activity just the guys that get up every day and go to work every day going backwards making a decision to do something not doing it is it's very painful a lot of wear and tear going backwards the third the third one is the most damaging the ball three which is normal levels of activity the acceptable the average the the middle class the norm because you get lost these people get lost they work every day they show up every day they dig ditches every day they do a good job every day they're loyal every day but they never get rewarded ever number three is the story of my whole life that that's where I operated the most of my life normal levels of activity maybe just above normal just enough to shine a little bit but dude I never went for it and and and so the 10x rule is like okay how do I really take some risk here how do I really put myself out there so the middle class of America is basically laid up on number three being convinced to go to number two and then end up with basically they'll end up with number one and how do you suggest somebody takes that move from three to four yeah so what you would do is you need to understand that number three is the biggest disaster that we have it's where all wealth is created on the backs of number three the the wealthy the wealthy and this will happen again will come out of this this virus thing people will go back to consuming again and they'll go back to debt they'll go back to borrowing money to buy things they don't even need to impress people they don't even know because they're unsure about who they are and where they're going and so the the the middle the middle of the the spine of America the spine the middle class of India when it develops the middle class of China will fund the wealthy and because they do the normal things the wealthy do not do normal things they do completely you know they do they don't they don't they don't save money the wealthy people don't save money they invest money wealthy people don't spend time or manage time they they they take money this useless they know it's useless and they buy again a thousand employees and then everybody's like well you know that guy never works he hired 1,000 people to do work this is an old story by the way you can go back to the king-tut okay I mean it's it's it's it's not a new story it's like how do you get wealthy well you commit to massive action how do you do massive action you only have 40 hours a week or 80 or a hundred Elon Musk says hey man 100 hours he works a hundred hours a week he's he does the video about the hundred hours he's like look if I do a hundred and you do 40 I went he's a smart dude too by the way real smart guy but he's nobody without the risk without the big thing and without the massive action and why do you think why do you think that everybody has so much trouble understanding this concept that they just have to amplify themselves why are they stuck in this is it is it education is it the way anxiety culture what yeah yeah society culture education uh you've been taught you've been taught to be seen and not hurt thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one