Why Grant Cardone Sued Me After I Became His #1 Sales Rep - Jordan Stupar Breaks Silence

I just want to continue being a savage. That's really like my game. When I walk in, I want like the air to change. My enemy is time, dude. I lost three years of my life. I'm three years behind you, bro. I hate losing. I've always hated losing. I hate losing more than I like winning. I've never really shared this publicly before.

I get a phone call from Grant. That's where he said, "If I see you start up a business, I'm going to sue you." Grant didn't sue me. God sued me. Yeah. He takes off his sunglasses, looks at me, he's like, "Bro, you made $452,000 last year. If you change anything, you're a [ __ ] idiot." And I'm just literally standing there like, "How is that his answer?" I open this fortune cookie and it just says, "You will soon make a decision that will test your strength." Stack of pages like this big, like [ __ ] brick. Boom. Right into my chest. They all drop to the ground. And he says, "You've been served."

[Music] Welcome to another episode of The Rise of Entrepreneur. Today on our show, we have a very special guest. Someone who doesn't just talk about sales, but he bled for it. This man has been knocking on doors since a very young age who went from not making a lot of money and building a sales empire. He is the inventor of cash cards. He's uh Jordan Tupar who is here with us and going to share a lot of great wisdom. So I'm excited for it. Jordan, thank you so much for being here man.

Thanks for being here actually and coming out to Wisconsin to do this. I appreciate it Jordan. You know, one thing I always do, especially when, you know, our guests open their home for us, I want to say thank you for allowing us to use your, you know, amazing looking studio. This feels like I am on, you know, what is it the show? 60 Minutes. Yeah. This is what it feels like. So, I appreciate the, you know, the effort that you put into your studio, the things that you done to set this up. So, thank you so much.

Yeah, man. Thanks for swinging by. Absolutely. So, Jordan, um, you know, we've been wanting to do this for quite some time. You know, I know you since 2016.

Mhm. Okay. And in 2016, you were not a business owner yet. Okay. You were working in sales. You were one of the top top, you know, executives in a company making a lot of money. And I remember coming to you and I was just starting to build my business. And I'm like, tell me the secret of sales. And I still have a video. I'll show you that at the end. And you told me what the secret of sales was. and you're like, "It's all about relationships. It's all about getting to know people, wanting to help people." And from 2016 now being in 2025, I can tell one thing. What you said, you backed it up. It's all about relationships. I see you constantly going out there shaking hands, making deals, helping people, flying out, you know, doing everything you can to make the world a better place by bringing better sales techniques. So, I want to say thank you for contin

I appreciate you for recognizing that because absolutely in this world of sales and improvement in general. There isn't a lot of people that really believe that relationships are the key to more success.

Right. Right. We know there's a lot of people that say they're a sales trainer, but they don't have a sales team. They say that, hey, we are number one this, we're number one that, but they never pick up the phone themselves. Y your story is completely different. And that's why I said you bled for it. You've been at the bottom and you climb all the way to the top.

Twice. Exactly. Now, before we get into the sales talk, I want to take you back to your childhood. Okay. Tell me who was Jordan Tupar in, you know, when you were a young boy, six, seven, eight years old. What's going through your mind? Who do you want to be? What type of household you grow up in?

I mean, when I was six, seven, whatever, adolescent boy, all I could think about, all I ever wanted to do was play soccer. Oh, wow. Um, I was too short to play basketball. I learned that pretty quickly. Yep. Never really big enough to play like football. And so, soccer was kind of my thing. And I was, you know, always, my mom always called me Mr. Busy. I think I have like 80 de. And so I've always been struggling in the classroom and all I ever wanted to do get onto a soccer field, kick a ball around. That really honestly carried a lot of my goals uh well into high school where all I wanted to do is, you know, play internationally or play here in America as a professional soccer player uh cuz I loved the game and honestly probably could have had a shot. I made the Olympic development program here in Wisconsin.

Interesting. But my parents didn't really want to travel that much to help develop my soccer career. So once I kind of saw the writing on the wall on my soccer career, I also was coming of age and wanted girls attention. So in high school, I saw like two dudes with acoustic guitars. Yeah. Underneath a tree and I just saw this pack of girls and I was like in order to get girls attention I just I have to learn that thing. So, I kind of started phasing out of, you know, sports and soccer. And that's when I picked up a guitar. I got heavily into music and replaced my activity on the soccer field with being in my basement learning chords and scales and music and all of that. And ended up getting really good at that because obviously whatever you devote your time and attention to is something you're probably going to get good at. And um started a band and thought I was going to be a rock star and get famous and rich that way. So since I couldn't get famous and rich playing soccer, music was going to be my thing. And then that kind of carried me into like my first year or two of college where I was, you know, hoping to be a musician, but you know, we weren't really paying the bills, of course. And that's um ultimately where I started getting in door to door.

I want to take you back because you said a couple things and I want to make sure that our audience, you know, has the details. So, what age you fell in love with soccer?

Four or five. Four or five. And at what age you're like, you know what, that door is closed. My parents don't want to, you know, invest into traveling. I got to move on. What age did you realize that?

14, 15. 14, 15. Okay. And at that point, you get into music.

Yep. Right. And that's because of the attention of the girls. And you know, you want to be able to say, you know what, look at how this guy's getting attention. I want the same attention.

Okay. Did you ever when you picked up the guitar still miss soccer?

100%. I miss it to this very day? Wow. Okay. Like if I ever have an opportunity like in my backyard with my daughter. Thank god they get older. Yeah. Right now they're uh 2 years old and 8 months so there's no soccer to be played. But like I'll still go in the backyard juggle, you know, buy a little soccer goal and take some shots. And yeah, I miss it to this day. I love that game.

That's amazing. Wow. And then when you got into the music, right, you fell in love with it?

100%. Interesting. And you never had any interest until that moment?

No. My mom forced me to play uh piano from probably like 6 to maybe like 12. And then uh I got into band or something in 8th grade and played trumpet for like a year or two. Hated it. Uh and from there I had like this musical break where like my mom wasn't forcing me to play instruments. And so it was only because of girls having attention on those two guys under the tree playing guitar that I was like guitar is my thing. So my dad bought me a guitar, cheap one. Wanted to test out my you know my my commitment and uh boom I played 6 hours a night for years until

Yeah. Yeah. What's the favorite song that you can play that you can like almost like say, you know, every time I picked up the guitar, that's what I want to play, man.

There's there's a couple of them still that I could confidently like if we had a guitar here, I could bust it out on a on a podcast and people would be like, crazy, dude. That's pretty damn good. Uh, I would say mostly all my own songs. Uh, I I placed a lot of time and attention into writing my own songs.

Interesting. Those are the ones I enjoy playing the most and the ones that I can play with the most conviction and and passion. You know, your daughters must love it.

They really do. Honestly, they don't really understand it. My my 2-year-old now, she'll say, "Daddy, play guitar." But and I don't have to sing or really do anything. I just noodle around on it. But they they they love the fact that it's not a Disney song or whatever, and their dad is sitting there with this block of wood doing something that sounds cool. So, you still have love for soccer. You're still up for music, right? But when did the music door said, "Yeah, I'm not going to be the rock star."

That's probably like age 20, 21 when like um that was after I dropped out of college and like life was like kind of real where it's like, okay, my parents aren't going to give me a car and I'm not going to live in my parents' basement for the rest of my life. Like, I need to learn how to make money. And um yeah, we tried we tried as hard as we could to make it out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin with like a band or something. Wasn't really in the cards. And quite honestly, thank God I didn't go into that life and become some type of rock star. I've got the type of personality would take me straight back down to rock bottom with that type of exposure to money and things. So I think I think my lucky star is that God didn't have that in the cards for me.

Wow. So 21 years old you're like okay let me close that door. Why did you drop out of college? Like what what was the you know indication that yeah college is not for me. I know we we know that you have AD GDDD right you can't sit still but is there was there something deeper than that?

Yeah. Um I spent two years at a just a really small uh technical college whatever you'd call it University of Wisconsin. And uh I did that after going to like I think at the time, maybe it still is, I went to this place here locally called Brookfield Academy. And at the time it was the fourth best college prep school. Like a lot of the people that I graduated with got full rides to Harvard, Yale, WashU. Like I don't know what they're doing these days. Yeah, we can go back to that. It's kind of funny uh to figure out where they've made it versus me. But, uh, I went to like this small college for 2 years, got my associates degree, and literally went then to a four-year college, W Milwaukee, downtown Milwaukee. And I bought all my books, and it was like 1,800 bucks. And I go to the first class, I sit down, I look around, and I'm like, [ __ ] dude. Th this is just what am I doing here? Like, what am I really doing? And it just I didn't know what else I was going to do. I just knew I wasn't gonna do that. So, I literally within 30 minutes of that first class went back to the bookstore, showed the receipt, got my money back, drove back home, and then I had that uncomfortable conversation with my parents where I'm like, uh, I'm not going back to school.

Wow. Yeah. So, what did parents do? What did mom and dad do?

They were kind of like I would say they kind of took it on the chin and that they almost kind of expected it but didn't really want it to happen. um you know, they're they're baby boomers and they still kind of adhere to the philosophy that, you know, go to a four-year school, get a degree, get a good job, take care of your family, get married, live in a house, and die. Yeah. And I just didn't really see that being the route for me because I don't really have a lot of interest in anything. I've never really had a lot of interest outside of just having a big life.

M and that's what soccer provided for me obviously was the activity that one day I could become professional play in the World Cup, be on the cover of you know uh ESPN or then pick up a guitar and be the next you know at the time Dave Matthews was the guy kind of worshiped and make millions that way. And then I had like kind of like that identity loss. It wasn't even identity loss cuz I wasn't old enough to really have one. But I was just I remember sitting in my parents' basement literally staring at the wall like, "Okay, I just dropped out of school. The band's not really working. I'm never really going to get back into playing soccer in that level."

Sure. Like, what the [ __ ] am I going to do? And that's when I opened up my computer and went to Craigslist.

Ah, okay. Yeah. And you went to Craigslist for the point of finding a job.

moment. I typed in sales jobs. Okay. Why did you say sales?

It was a moment of me swallowing my pride. Uh my dad every single day didn't look as good as you look in your suit, but he wore a suit and tie every day. He was a very successful sales guy. Um I want to say probably his best year, you know, back in the 90s taking home 6 700K. Wow. Um never heard my parents fight about money. I wouldn't say that we lived very rich at all. They drove minivans and sent me to a really expensive high school and they were very, you know, responsible, but I'd never really knew at the time how well my dad was truly doing for himself and his family in sales. And I remember one night kind of near the tail end of that like music career chapter uh where he's like like, "Hey dude, like you need to start like taking life a little bit more seriously and like you're going to have a family one day." I was like I remember looking him in the face. I was like I will never ever turn out like you. I will never wear a suit every day and I will never be in sales.

Wow. And like yeah probably two years after that just like swallowed my pride, opened up my laptop, went to Craigslist and typed in sales jobs and just closed my eyes and just hit the enter button.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Why did you have that, you know, I would say anger towards sales? Why did you not want to be like your dad? He made good money. He provided a good living. Yeah. Why did you have that demonstrity towards it?

You know, I just I don't really think I knew what it was. I thought my dad was just, you know, a a tie all the way up stuffy professional corpory sales guy, but I didn't really know what like sales really was. Sure. And um I guess I just kind of put him in a in a box cuz I was kind of the rock and roll kid. M I put him in that that corpory I'm never going to be like you and have this 9 to 5 and work 40 hours like I'm going to work 15 minutes on this song get rich and then go party you know.

Yeah. Wow. And that's kind of what I thought it really was. And then and then all of that changed once I hit enter on that Craigslist search.

Did you always wanted to be rich?

I've always wanted to have a big life. I wouldn't necessarily say be rich. I've always wanted to experience finer things in life. I've always liked uh really nice cars. I got exposed to a bit of that in high school going to a really expensive Ritz Ritzy college prep school. I got to like sit in I think the very first Porsche 911 GT3 that was ever ever created and just like holy [ __ ] Yeah. like and this house is on the lake and there's like jet skis and a boat and then a second garage with an with another sport and I was like I want this like forget all this like I want a big life with options fast cars land boats like freedom so Jordan Stuper wanted to be a soccer player rock star wanted to have a big life but then there's a moment of this you know realization I'm opening my laptop and I got to go into Craigslist look for a job.

Yeah. Okay. What happens next?

So, I realized I didn't have any true sales experience. I sold like vacuum cleaners to my family and like Kurby's and Rainbows. Okay. And so, like I had a I had that experience, but it it wasn't like sales experience where you're prospecting and you know. Um, and so I found a I saw this this this one Craigslist post that's like get paid to give away alarm systems for free. I was like this this is probably the easiest thing that a guy like myself could do. No experience necessary. And they had their little uh recruitment video where all their top reps are partying on a boat and driving new Mercedes and stuff. And I was like lined up the interview and um I went into that interview and the guy had one question for his first I maybe had more questions but he just said uh you know hey what's up and I was like hi he's like so where do you want to be in 5 years if if you started in this job and I just said I'll never forget this. I I looked at him straight straight like serious and I was like, "I'm gonna be on a boat with Carrie Underwood." And he's like, "You're hired, bro." Like that's the most ambitious thing I think I've ever heard. And so, uh, literally the next day I went to like correlation where, you know, they give you your binder and your contracts and then literally got put into a minivan with a bunch of other guys after eating Chipotle. We filled up on energy drinks and I got dropped off in the middle of the hood, a place I've never been in Milwaukee, and it was time to knock doors.

What was going through your mind? Like, okay, this is different. This is not the big life that I dreamed about. It's hot or cold, maybe, right? And I have bunch of guys here who's probably chewing tobacco, doing some, you know, crazy [ __ ] Yeah. But this is what I need to do to make money. Like, what's going through your mind?

Yeah. So, honestly, at first it felt really cool because, okay, I'm not at a cubicle. I'm not checking into an office. Um, I'm a 1099, so like there's no clock to punch. Okay, so this kind of checks out with my rock and roll attitude. Um, and then, you know, I just kind of shadowed a guy for the first two days and I saw him sell a couple of deals and I was like, dude, I can do this. like you're just talking to people, you know? It's a little intimidating knocking on a door, but like I can probably get over that part and I can probably talk to people. And so at first it was cool, free. I can't believe I'm I could get paid to do this. This is dope. Yeah. And then uh day number three or whatever, it's like you find yourself on the street corner a whole line of houses and then it goes from cool to like holy [ __ ] Yeah. Like what did I just learn over the last 48 hour? Like how did they say hi? And like when that lady said like not interested like what did he do? Like and so um my sales career started uh two straight weeks working Monday through Saturday from about 11:00 in the morning until sundown. I luckily started in the summer so the days were a little bit longer and luckily it wasn't freezing cold. M uh 2 weeks zero sales. And I keep on going into this office for the morning correlation. There's probably 30 sales guys in the room. The majority of them are putting up two deals, three deals every single day, making 8 900 bucks every single day. And I'm I'm I'm like starting to really question my ability to do this. And obviously there's no motivation, there's no momentum. And so, uh, literally, I think it was 15 days into me personally knocking, the sun

I was going down and, uh, I was waiting to get picked up. And I wasn't waiting to get picked up by my manager. I was waiting to get picked up by my mom. Uh, I had called her and I said, "I quit. I'm done. I I'm not cut out for this." 15 days in. 15 days in, I've knocked tons of doors. Slammed in the face. Just literally not a single opportunity to really do much, and I was just beaten up and I was done. So I called my mom, smoking a cigarette on the corner, cuz that's what I was doing at the time, and she's like, okay, deal. I'll come pick you up, but you have to agree to one thing. I was like, what, what, what do you want? You have to promise me that before I pick you up, after you hang up this phone call, you knock one more door. Wow. And I was like, "For real? F-- Like fine. I'm done anyway." And like over the last two weeks, it's been nothing but doors slammed in my face. So be it, Mom.

I hang up the phone, ditch my cigarette. I think before that cigarette butt actually flew back onto the street. Yo, bro. I'm like, "Oh, there's some like some dude like looking like father time, dude. The guy was 185 years old, working on uh, 185-year-old Ford truck out in the middle of the street. Yeah. Uh, yo man, get on get over here, man. What you selling?" I'm like, dude, I'm not selling anything, bro. Like, I I'm just I'm giving away an alarm system today. He's like, well, godamn. Why don't you come inside, man? I've been thinking about getting one of those. Wow. I'm like, okay. We go inside. We sit at the dinner table. He's like, "So, like, you know, what's it do?" And I'm like, "Well, you know, it comes with this panel and put it on the doors and, you know, and you know, it's it's it's uh $49 bucks a month." And, you know, there's a three three-year contract and there's a $99, you know, activation fee. And I'm like already just I'm I say it like waiting to just Yeah, dude. Get out of here. I'm not paying. And he's like, "Oh, that sounds like a damn good deal, bro. Like, sign me up."

Then I was like, "Okay, holy [ __ ] bro. Like, this guy's down." The next thing that you need to do in alarm sales is you need to check credit because it's free equipment on a contract. Can this person actually show that they have payments? Um, and you have to have a 625 or above. Meanwhile, I'm like, "Dude, I'm in the ghetto." Like I call of this. I call it in and uh, the girl at the credit check office or whatever is that's an A as an alpha and I was like, "Oh, that's awesome." Ended up signing up that deal. He was h I'm pretty sure that he signed up because he knew he was going to die the next day and like he wouldn't have to pay for the contract anymore. He was that old though. Kindest uh, old, you know, black dude I've ever met in my entire life. That's amazing. Um, his name was Frank. I'll never forget his name. Um, my technicians show up 20 30 minutes later cuz we had to do same day installs. That's how you get sticky sale. Yeah. Um, and I'll never forget looking down at my Nikes, stepping out of his house onto his like stoop or whatever and like coming to the realization that I just made $225 in 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. And then it like that was the needle in the arm, bro. Wow. Because like, dude, I made 225 bucks in 30 minutes as a like a 19-year-old. Like, what? Like, the only question here is how many times in a day can I do this, right? It's all downhill from there, bro. It's been in sales ever since.

Have you always been this confident or you had to? No. Okay. No. Hell no. I'm I'm introverted. I used to be painfully shy as a kid. Wow. Back in my childhood, my my mom would have to drag me like to the front door just to meet like our cousins. It like I never really had a lot of confidence. I was never very good at talking, public speaking or communicating in general. This is honestly whatever you're hearing right now, this is a lot of intentional effort and tens of thousands of hours of communicating. So, what moment in your childhood did you realize that you were different from everyone else? Damn, that's a good question. I suppose that I kind of realized I was different from the status quo somewhere in maybe junior year of high school. It really became apparent to me that I wasn't going to be going to Yale. It really became apparent me apparent to me that I didn't even give a [ __ ] if I went to Harvard or had a 4.0 or any of these things that society kind of puts on you. Labels you with. Yeah. I And from there like it was always just, you know, soccer, guitar, you know, something that like I'm not going down this like classical route of stuff because I don't want to be an engineer. I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't want to be um, you know, a dentist. Like I don't know what I want to be honestly. I know that I wanted to be a soccer player and that didn't happen. I know that I wanted to be a guitar player and a a a rock star, but that didn't happen. Like I guess now I'm just going to have to become the greatest salesperson that at least I can be and maybe I can outperform these other people and get noticed for it.

What habit or I would say belief you had to kill within yourself to evolve to the person you are today? Another good question. I would say one of the biggest old habits or like limiting beliefs that I previously had that I've had to kill off is valuing myself based on my perceived value other people have of me. Go ahead. Um, I spent a really good chunk of my sales career, I mean, in my defense, I was in my 20s and I was making just enough money to party, but like I spent a good chunk of my 20s um, like chasing the validation of girls and seeing like, am I good enough to get a date, you know? And that just led to a lot of, you know, going to the bar a lot and partying and, you know, just I realized that that is just a broken route. And that if I ever really wanted to obtain what I wanted most, I'd have to let go of that and use my own work. Yeah. As my own personal validation and see the value in myself that way. I love what you just said, right? Because it seems like at that point in your career, you're making money, but you just don't know better, right? So you're just going through the emotions, right? So what advice do you know today that you have received from someone that you needed at that time? Like what would you say made that paradigm shift say, "Yeah, I got to stop this thing."

I really wish that I had I would have had somebody um on my team or a mentor or somebody in my network, just even just a random Ferrari guy just pull over and be like, "Dude, here's the game." Yeah. And I wish somebody would have just told me like, "Bro, you're really [ __ ] good and you have no idea the real opportunity if you just are disciplined and if you just do this every single day and you live below your means, like it doesn't matter if you're knocking doors, if you're making cold calls at Axel, or if you're selling ice cream." Yeah. You're going to [ __ ] kill it. I love that. I wish somebody would have told me that cuz I probably um I probably would have heard that out. Interesting story. Sooner or later, somebody did kind of give me that advice. I had an opportunity to speak speak to a a very successful person uh prior to moving to Miami and um they gave me kind of the the the be do have lesson. They're like, "What's one thing, dude, that you've always just wanted?" I'm like, "A Porsche 911." They're like, "Okay, be that person right now." I'm like, "Dude, come on. That's stupid. I'm not a Porsche. Be that guy right now. Close your eyes and just be that person. Okay, fine. What do you think that that guy would do on a daily basis? I'm like, well, you know, he's probably not getting drunk every night, smoking weed, watching Netflix, he's probably reading books, first one in, last one out, blah blah blah blah blah. He's like, cool, do that stuff. And in about 18, 24 months, I can almost guarantee you he'll probably be driving a Porsche 911. Wow. And literally he was probably a couple months off, but that's about how long it took from that moment of me understanding that. So I think the big takeaway for this little segment is is that you got to check to see who's around you to give you the advice that you definitely need. Yeah. But then again, at the exact same time, maybe you're not even ready for it. You kind of have to be listening and aligned to the advice that you do need, or else you might just write it off. I don't know.

Yeah. I'll never forget when I was 18 and I went vision hunting. I don't know if you know what that is. Like going to see mansions, cars, all this stuff and I was with my team at that point. I'm like, let's go vision hunting. We go to one of the richest areas in Connecticut and I don't know better. I all the Maseratis are parked outside and I go in. It's late at night, Sunday night. It's dark. I go in and look at every single Maserati and I still have a picture cuz I had them take a picture. I'm like one day I'm going to drive a Maserati. I have the security guard, the manager come out like you have no business being here. You'll never drive any of these cars, right? And I'm like burning just burning with just anger. Like you don't know who I am. You don't know how I'm built. You have no idea the things that I want in my life. And watch I'm going to get it. It's like yeah just get out of my parking lot and you're never going to amount to anything. These cars are way too expensive for you. And I remember right the day that I got my Maserati, right? Yeah. So, it's like that moment of just like, you know what, I proved you wrong and I proved myself right, right? And being able to like you got somebody told you about be, do have, right? For me, I didn't have anyone tell me. Yeah. But it's almost like I started to ask myself like, well, who drives these cars? Cuz he made a comment. He goes, people like you. That's what he said. People like you don't drive cars like this. Yes. And when he said that, I'm like, when you when you say people like me, what does that mean? And are there different type of people? Who are these people? Like, I didn't take it as offense. I'm like, well, what do those people do? Where do they live? What do they, you know, study or what kind of jobs do they do? And when I got that, I was like, okay, let me just look up how do these people operate? What type of mindset they have? And I started to study this. And a lot of things have changed for me. So I can relate to that a lot. A lot.

Do you think people are too stupid or too smart to take down advice? That's a great question. I want to make it easy and say like it's a mixture of both. I think that people are too comfortable to take advice. Too comfort. So right in the middle. I think people I think people know good advice when they hear it. I think people generally know bad advice when they hear it. Good advice requires you to challenge your current paradigm. Good advice challenges you to admit to yourself that there's another level. Good advice and growth is going to just ultimately challenge what you currently think, how you currently operate, uh the activities and behaviors that you currently have. Sure. And look, growth is uncomfortable and letting go of specific behaviors or mindsets or thought processes. Um, you know, I'm I'm in the sales world every day saying to people, you can make more money, right? I I've done it, right? H well, you know, I'm good. And it's like, you're not really telling me you're good. You're telling me that you're comfortable right now. Yeah. You told me you settled. Yeah. And so yeah, I think I think people for that answer than to answer your question, I think people are too smart to take good advice because they the smart thing to do for your brain. Your brain wants you to be comfortable and so they don't want to acknowledge that there's a more difficult path that leads to an easier. Yeah. My personal trainer Luke yesterday was the first time I went to the gym in a very long time and he's like, "Oh, we're going to take it easy. Like don't worry." Puts me on the suicide bike and I'm like, he goes, "Go as hard as you can. Go as hard as you can." And I'm like, literally did it for 90 seconds. I get up and I'm like, "I need to puke. This is so uncomfortable." Right there in the back of my head, Jordan, all I'm thinking is like, "I'm not coming back here. I'm done. I'm done. This is this is not cool." So, thinking about like, "I'm too smart because it's uncomfortable." I can relate to that because yeah, your body, your mind, your soul, everything is designed to protect you. You're almost in this mode. Something that feels unusual, uncomfortable. You're like, "Oh, no danger. Got to go." And that's how we were programmed since the young age. But I think the things that we don't want are the things that we need. Yeah. And that's what makes us, you know, grow and evolve and become stronger.

Y for you, right, you're selling alarms now. Yep. In the ghetto, you know, you're you're doing everything you can to make it. When did this decision come to go to Miami and how? So, kind of to fast forward the door-to-door thing. I did that for eight years. Eight years. Wow. I knocked doors in Milwaukee uh for two years. And then, um like a lot of younger salespeople, I found a company that's like, "Dude, we're going to pay you $50 more per deal." And I'm like, "Sign me up, dude." Yeah. Yeah. So, I I grabbed my duffel bag and uh my guitar cuz that was all my possessions at the time. Left Wisconsin and moved to um Norfolk, Virginia. I lived there and knocked doors for about 8 months. I absolutely hated it. Uh, company played with my money a little bit, blah blah blah. So, me and my another rep, we bought a 1988 Toyota Corolla with a broken driver side window with the intentions of driving straight down to Dallas, Texas to find another alarm door knocking deal. So, we do that. Uh, never ever buy a car with a broken driver side window. We had like a torrential like uh rainstorm driving through like Tennessee and just every truck that passed us. It was like right in your face. Oh my god. Uh, but we made it down to uh to sunny Dallas. How much was the car? I'm just curious. Car was 400 bucks. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that was a bad car. That's a cheap ticket right there to Texas. Wow. Okay, so we make it down to Dallas. Uh I lived in Dallas and knocked doors there for three and a half years. Mhm. Um that's where I I got like formally good at at knocking doors and sales. I managed a team there of about 12 guys after a year or two. Um so I got introduced to some leadership aspects. Um and then the girl that I kind of fell for first back when I lived in Wisconsin moved to New York City and we were kind of rekindling some things. Sure. And so what does Amanda do? Chase love. I move up to New York City. Wow. Um, and that's where I didn't knock doors. And so she was actually looking for me to get, you know, a base job. Sure. Security, New York City's expensive. And me, I'm like, dude, I've never had I've never had a salary in my life. This bogus. So, I found an inside sales job at a company called Copart. Maybe you're familiar. The the world's largest auto auction. Oh, okay. But they had a new division where it's kind of like inverse sales where we were taking um inbound calls from people looking to junk their car or whatever and we would buy it for as little as possible. That was the sale. And then either we would junk it and whatever, get paid by the towers, or we would find a gem, a 1988 Toyota Corolla that still runs and drives, throw that on the auction block and make the spread. Um, I instantaneously from day one to the day that I left 11 months later, every single week was the top salesperson there by a lot. Wow. And the main reason for that wasn't because I wanted to be. It was because I had to be. The relationship that I had with this girl in New York City kind of fizzled out after a little while. So, I was on the hook for all of the rent. Oh my god. And all the bills. And every single week, they did a bait and switch on me. The day that we started, it went from an uncapped commission to if you're the top guy, you make 500 bucks a week on top of your, you know, little base or whatever. Sure. So, I needed that 500 bucks or else my car was going to get repoed and I was going to get evicted. So, I was the first one in, last one out. And that started developing some of my undeveloped discipline. M but it was discipline out of necessity. Not discipline out of I want to be a champion and this is what it takes. Yeah. This is a great culture. I want recognition. It wasn't that. It was necessity. Exactly. So I was the only guy just reaching and overreaching. And then uh I lived I was there for 11 months and I remember seeing a tweet one day. I was at my apartment in Astoria, Queens. And at the time I'm probably $40,000 in debt because like I couldn't afford New York and like I'm borrowing money from the bank and like calling my dad and like he's tracking the numbers and I'm literally top performer but literally not making ends meet and I don't have family there. I have no friends there. I had a broken relationship while I lived in New York City. I never went out to dinner. The only thing that I could really afford to do was eat like ramen and like Chinese occasionally some Chinese and like once in a blue moon I would maybe order like a pizza or something like that. That's crazy. Yeah. So I I had this moment all for love. Yeah, bro. Crazy what we did, right? That's crazy. And um I had this moment one morning. I woke up with probably the biggest hangover of my life. I drank an entire one liter bottle of Evan Williams. I don't know if you're familiar, but that's like an $8 bottle of whiskey. So, like bottom of the It killed you. Yeah. Killed me. I woke up. Wow. And it's like 10:00 on a Saturday. Beautiful day in New York City. It's probably like August, whatever. And uh I remember sitting on the couch and I just was like that you couldn't afford. Yeah. Right. Like I couldn't afford anything. Yeah. And I remember literally getting up and just going to the the one little jail cell window that I had that, you know, didn't have a view. It was just another brick building, you know, New York City. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just had this like come to Jesus moment where I was like, why am I here? It wasn't like a suicidal Yeah. like thought. It was just like what the [ __ ] am I doing? Enough is enough. Enough is enough. And that's where it was like, okay, I don't need to change like one thing and stop smoking weed or like stop doing it's like I need to change [ __ ] everything right now. So, I literally took my Xbox, didn't unplug it, just grabbed it. Wires and all. Opened the window, dropped it off the two-story thing, cancelled Netflix, took my whatever bag of weed I had, flushed it down the toilet, took the backup bottle of uh Evan Williams that I had, flushed it down the toilet, um, and then like deleted any other little stupid subscriptions to like whatever it was, Hulu at the time or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Point is is I I just immediately just like rided myself of all this [ __ ] And I remember literally sitting back down on the couch and I was like, "Okay, dude. Like this has got to be worth something."

Like I had, I had to have made some money, right? Like I'm a millionaire now. I just did this. I check up the bank account. It's like $514. I'm like, "Dude, none of this did anything. Now I just don't have any distractions." Yeah.

Literally probably a moment later, I'm just going through Twitter and I see this guy who I've seen do some like, you know, sales stuff. I'd never bought a book of his or been to an event, or I just, I just knew him from Twitter. Grant Cardone. Wow. His tweet said, um, "Apply for our reality TV show, whatever it takes to win a to win a dream job in Miami." I don't think that there's any other day of my life where I would have read that and taken action on it. That was the day of my life where I just kind of rid myself of these like vices and distractions and like, "Fuck it, dude. Here's an opportunity." So, I click on the little link and it's like, hey, you know, shoot us a minute or two video to the producers and if we like you, you know, you'll get an email back. And so, I'm like, all right, whatever.

So, I uh go into my kitchen. I set up my however old MacBook that is, in like 2012. Yeah. And I just flip it on and I take like a three-minute video. "Hi guys, my name is Jordan Stupar and I'm up in New York and uh I know nothing about your company or who you guys are, but it says win a reality to win a dream job. So like sign me up. Right. Right." I uh I send that to the producers. Monday comes around. I go in, I go into the office uh that I was working at in Brooklyn. Cool party. Yeah. And I'm just, I'm back on the phones doing my thing and I get this email from these producers. They're like, "Hey Jordan, really enjoyed your video. Uh we would like to add you to the show. Uh the only stipulation is is that you put yourself up in your own hotel in Miami and we're not flying, we're not paying for travel or food or or anything. You can come down and you can you can join the show." I'm like, "Dude, I, I can't even buy ramen. How am I going to get down there?"

Luckily, I had racked up just enough Southwest points to get a round trip and um I couldn't afford a hotel, but I did find a hostel on Ocean Drive right there where all the neon lights are. And Yeah. Yeah. So, that was like 34 bucks a night. I was like, "I'm already in debt, dude. I might as well go an extra $300 in debt and go down to Miami and see if I can win this thing." And so, um, you know, like a week or two goes by and then it's it's time for me to go. No called, no showed into the sales job that I did have. So, the only like level of of uh, you know, solid ground that I had, I was like, "Yeah, you like whatever." Cuz I knew I was top guy. I was like, "That's my get out of jail free card." I hop on a plane. I go to Miami and like from the moment that I got in the Uber or the taxi. It was like a taxi bus because I couldn't afford my own taxi. Uh I get dropped off at this hostel. I see all the trees and the neons and I'm like [ __ ] me. This place I'm never leaving. Like I'm, I'm not even going to go back to New York and get my car. Like I'm just going to stay here. This is beautiful. This is, it's warm. Like wow. Yeah. Yeah.

I check into this hostel and [Music] um I mean the hostel was just absolutely awful. Like the first thing you walk in, I saw some dude doing blow and then I saw a threesome happening in another bunk bed. Oh my god. And like I have a job interview tomorrow morning, you know? I need some rest, guys. Yeah. So, like I just put in my headphones. I listened to um Dollar in a Dream by J. Cole on repeat. Bro, that was the only like life that I had going in between my head. And uh I got like 45 minutes of sleep. Woke up at like 3:30 in the morning cuz it's just loud and noisy still. I put on my suit. I shower and I literally walk um I walked all the way from Ocean Drive down at the very tip of South Beach all the way up se to 71st in Collins where Grant's office was. And at 4:45, 5:00 in the morning, I just stood on that street corner, bro, just listening to J Cole on repeat thinking like, I have no other options here.

Did you think that was going to be a turning point in your sales career or your life? You were just like, I'm just going with the flow. I got to be here because I got nothing else. I basically the main thing I was trying to accomplish is get the hell out of New York City. That's it. I was like, if this guy offers me 20 G's a month or I'm sorry, 20 G's a year and like I have to clean toilets, whatever, dude. I'm at least out in New York City and there'll be there'll be something else here for me in Miami.

Sure. And um I guess kind of long story short is after 3 days of shooting this reality TV show, um I ended up winning. Was it actually reality TV or was it Okay, so Whatever it Takes was a reality TV show. Um, they don't have my episode up anymore. They don't. We'll talk more about that chapter later. Uh, but basically every single person that was on the show competing for the job already had a job at at Cardone's office. I was the only person Oh my god. that like legitimately showed up. Wow. To compete for a job. It was, It's almost meant for you. It was meant, it was 100% meant for me. That's so crazy. Yeah. Out of every episode with every single person, they were all employees. Wow. And I didn't really know that. It took me two and a half years to find that out, by the way. So, like this whole time, like I'm like, "Dude, yeah, remember the show." And they're like they part of the Scientology group. They're like, "Keep coming in." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like I, so like of course I outperformed anybody anyway. I crushed them cuz every night in New York City since I couldn't drink and smoke I ran 10 miles every single night through Astoria down Ditmars. I would just cruise and I actually enjoyed that just weaving in between people. And I did that until I just like literally couldn't walk and then I would literally just eat a bunch of rice go to sleep. So I was in ridiculously good uh cardiac shape.

Sure. And so I ran circles around all the other people uh on the show that were competing with you. Yeah. Yeah. And then um yeah, they offered me a spot and they were like, "You start in 2 weeks." And I was like, "I don't know how I'm going to break my lease or get down here, but like I, I" And so I went back up to New York City, showed up to work again, and they're like, "Dude, where the where the hell you been?" Yeah, like I'm putting in my two weeks if you if you'll have me. I kind of need some extra money for this trip I'm making down to Miami. And they're like, "Yeah, dude. We got you." And uh my landlord at the time, too, was really sweet about it. I had like 3 months left. And he's like, "We get it, bro. Like, you're good. We'll let we'll let you go. And here's 50 bucks for that stupid uh toll that you're going to have to pay going over the Delaware Bridge or whatever one that is." That's like 43 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, man. Drove straight down to Miami. Uh, no sleep, just 27 hours of just carrying a U-Haul in my Nissan Maxima. And, uh, I moved into the ghetto in Miami cuz north side of Miami. Yeah, bro. 135th in Biscane. Okay. Uh, my apartment was $800 per month if that gives you Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Any idea of of what that Still better than a hostel? Still way better than a hostel. No threesomes, no [ __ ] That's it, dude. For real. Way better.

And um that was uh I think Halloween of 2013. Wow. Is is that little chapter? You're not going to believe this. Your episode. Me and my wife watching on a mattress renting a basement from a my brother's friend and I'm laying there and I'm like I'm in the worst position. Okay, my team died. I'm like I need like I, I'm a great salesperson. I can run circles around these people. And I was watching Whatever it Takes. First I was watching Million-Dollar Listing. Yep. And then I said, I love that show. Like this guy, I think the guy's name was Lewis or something on the show. And I'm like, I could be better than this guy. Then we're like, where's more shows like that? Because that motivated the [ __ ] out of me. I'm like, I'm going to get out of this thing. And we were watching Whatever it Takes. And I remember watching your episode. You were a black suit. Mhm. Right. And you were there and I'm like, man, like I want to get in it. I want to get and I remember like finding ways sending messages to million-dollar listing, sending messages to wherever it takes like give me a shot. Like I got to figure this thing out. And then, you know, things just that motivation of just wanting to be better pushed me by saying like there's people doing it. There's people want more. They're competing. My shot will come. So, I put my head down and I kept grinding. But I remember that show and I remember you. So when I met you in 2016, I was like, that's the guy that won the show. That's the guy that did this.

So when in 2013, tell me like, are you excited? Are you nervous? Or you're like, this is just another sales job. Um, yeah, I had no idea what I was doing there. Like I've mentioned, I, I had never bought in a book. I'd never wr written read anything other than a tweet from Grant. And there I am on 71st in Collins at my uh desk. I have a photo of it. You can you can have it so you video people can see like that first desk. And I'm overlooking the ocean. And uh literally day one like okay like where do I go? And they're like here's your desk. I look at my desk. I'm like okay I got a uh uh computer here. I got a desk phone. Uh there's a legal pad and there is a pen. Hm. I'm like, "All right, I've been in sales, dude. Like, where's the leads?" Right. Uh Jared, the VP at the time, he's like, "Um, yeah, we don't have any leads. What you're going to do is just cold call car dealerships." I'm like, "Wow." Okay. So, like, he's like, "Dude, just go to Google, type in car dealerships Houston." Map pops up all the little red dots. He's like, "Click on each dot, go to the website, click on meet the staff, find the general manager, grab your sheet of paper, write down the name of the dealership, write down the general manager's name, the phone number for the dealership, right? And that's a lead." I'm like, dope, cool. So I sat there and did that for like that was my first week is just I'm kind of listening to a couple phone calls. Yeah. But like mostly like I'm just creating a list that I can get to call on. Once I had, you know, 100, 200 leads um that you created. Then um they gave me like the voicemail script and so I just, I was like why am I learning the voicemail script? And they're like you'll find out. So, you know, I make my first phone call and it's like, I am looking for, you know, Tom, the GM. Uh, yeah, you know, he's busy. I'll throw you to his voicemail. I'm like, that's why they had me learn the voicemail.

So, um, literally, dude, no CRM, no inbound leads. Um, I mean, literally nothing at the time, dude, that's 2013. Uh, Grant was, he was not a household name. He wasn't known for 10x. He wasn't known. He was known a bit inside the automotive space, which is why we focused so heavily on car dealerships is I mean occasionally you'd get somebody on the phone and be like, "Oh yeah, man. I've been to, you know, a Cardone seminar 10 years ago. Like I'll take a look at what he's got." And like that's what you were basically looking for.

Interesting. And um one of my favorite parts about kind of the come-up story over there is uh they give you at least at the time when I started there, they give you 3 months of um like base pay um because you know it takes a little while to fill up the pipeline. You have no lead and then you're commission only. And then you're commission only. What was the base pay like? It was $3,000 a month. So 1,500 bucks uh bi-weekly. uh taxes taken out because you're W2 over there and or at least at the time that that's what I was and uh it's a um what do you call it where uh they can recall advanced pay? Yeah. So a rebate maybe. Yep. So basically worst case for them, they're not going to retain you and they're out 9,000 bucks or less depending on how long you stick around. Best case for them, you perform, they uh take back their nine grand that they've paid you for that three months, and then you're just commission only. Wow. So, um, all that I knew is that I had an $800 a month lease on a 12-month lease, and if I wasn't going to make it, I'd have to go tail between my legs back up to Wisconsin and really cry into my pillow. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so you know, one or two weeks in, I was like, "Okay, I'm fucked." Yeah. Like, there's no way that I'm going to be able to sell deals in this short a period of time. The clock is ticking. Like, this whole 9:00 and leave at 6 is is [ __ ] I called the COO. I need a key. I'm going to be in the office. Love that. Early. She's like, "How early?" I was like, "Probably 6:00 to 7:00 in the morning." Okay. I get a key. Thank God. That saved my life. Wow. I'm in the office Monday through Friday, probably 6:30, 7:00, 2 hours ahead of everybody else. Yes. Pounding the phones, waiting for some general manager at some dealership on the East Coast to be in early enough to say what's up. So, you don't have to deal with a voicemail or gatekeepers. You just get to them right away. Yep. That didn't really pan out for me because, you know, most people don't show up to work that early. just leaving a lot of voicemails. Then I worked until about 10 or 11:00 at night. So everyone else leaves at like 6. Some of the hustler sales guys at the time were staying till like 7, 7:30. Wow. I'm there until 10, 11:00 at night calling Alaska. And in that 3 months like rent is like starting to, you know, get up for that fourth month and like I need some deals. I remember spending pretty much three months 10 o'clock at night calling these general managers in Alaska. I'm like my line was like, "Albert, it's Jordan over here, Cardone's office, man. I'm in [Music] Miami. The hell are you doing in Miami, dude? It's 6:00 at night over here." I'm like, "Yeah, I know. It's it it's 12:00 here or 11:00 here." Wow. They're like, "Look, man. I'm really not interested, but I'm going to give you a minute because I got to hear what you got to say. What are you doing at the office at 11 o'clock at night? I respect your hustle." They respected the hustle. So all of my first deals that allowed me not really to succeed, but to sustain my opportunity there, they all came came from Wasilla and Anchorage, Alaska, from basically the Lithia Automotive Group that I called on 9, 10:00, 11:00 at night in Miami Beach.

So your first deal came from Alaska. The first like 12 came from Alaska. Wow. So that was your advantage. That was your leverage. Everybody was calling, you know, US or not US states, right? But basically, they were calling normal time zones and you said, you know what, I'm going to think outside the box. Yeah. I'm going to play my game, not your game. And I'm going to go somewhere where, you know, I have advantage. Open market space. 100%. Wow. How did you think of that? I thought of it. Honestly, I don't think it was like a creative like, oh, how can I get an edge? It was like, dude, how can I just make sure I don't die? Wow. It was kind of out of desperation to make sure that that opportunity survival. Yeah. Wow. Wow. What was your first impression of Grant? The first time you meet him? First time I met him, I was like, damn. Like, this guy's like the most successful guy I've ever met at the time and probably truly was. What gave you that impression? Um, it wasn't his car. He pulled the first car he drove when I was kind of hanging out at his office, he had like a Mercedes like CLS like 500. Wasn't even like the 55. Sure. Sure. Sure. But but the one thing that he ended up kind of mentioning whether it's true or not is negligible. Uh but he was like living like ocean view side in this building right next to the office for like I think his rent was like 20k a month. And I just literally could not even wrap my head around how somebody could pay 20K a month for rent. Um, so from there I was just like, "Okay, and he's got like the suit and tie and he's got staff and like I'm like, "Okay, this guy, he certainly has more money than I do, so I'm going to pay attention. I'm going to listen. I'm going to watch." Yep. Yep.

When was the first time you said, "Okay, I can learn something from him." Not just because of his image or reputation, but because he did something that was like, "This is actually very good. I can use that. This is very helpful." Anything like that happened before? I probably took most note or inventory of his just dynamic energy as kind of like not even a sales guy, but just kind of as that guruish like high energy, get your money up. let's make some calls. Like I wasn't really communicating like that and I'd never really known or seen anybody kind of communicating on that level. Yeah. Um so I would say that's the first thing that I was like okay like this level of energy vibration is is attractive. Not obviously in a sexual way for me everybody but like you kind of want to be around this level of energy. So like that was the first thing I really kind of noticed. I love that. Okay. Yeah. I agree with that. All right. There's that energy that walks into the room and you're like, "Okay, now it gets a little bit lighter in here. It's a It's a little bit more fun." Right. So, I, I understand what you're saying. Okay. Now, at what point would you say that you fell in love with sales? Cuz you know, earlier we were talking before we started shooting like, "Dude, I'm not supposed to be here. I, I didn't even like sales." Yeah. So like at what point you fall in love with sales and are you still in love with are you in love with sales same way that you love the guitar same way you love soccer or is a different type of love? Great question. Uh to answer the first question I think that I initially fell in love with sales on that first sale when I made 225 bucks. That was your first that was like my first like all right dude like I'm going to get really good at this. But then it was kind of miserable for a while cuz I still didn't really have a lot of stuff figured out. I would say that I truly, truly, truly fell in love with sales when I was living in Dallas and I was having like a good month where like I don't know I made like 15 grand for the first time and then I was like in a month? Yeah. Mhm. And I was like, "Dude, I can go to the swimming pool and then I can go to the club and like it's 12:00. It's 109° outside. The girls are at the pool. So, like I love this, man. I just made good money and now I can just take time off." Yeah. Uh that's also the side of sales that I hated because I didn't have the discipline to truly But that's where I would say like I formally was like, I'm not doing anything else for like a career. I'm not looking around like sales is going to be my thing. Yep. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. You stayed in the door-to-door game for eight years. Yeah. Was it the money that kept you? What was it that kept you there? Because a lot of people do sales for a year or two and then they go back to saying, "You know what? Enough. I made some money. Now I'm out because I can't handle it." What kept you there?

Um, I would say when you when you kind of make your way through door-to-door sales for like, say, 2, 3 years and you're kind of around other people that have been in it for longer, and you're also surrounded by people that have been there for 2, 3 years, you're kind of stuck a little bit because it is a true balance of like, uh, like business and pleasure. Like you truly can go home or go to the bar, do whatever you want to do when you want to do it. Nobody can tell you differently.

Gotcha. Um, and the money, you know, once you kind of figure out some of it, you know, like the money can be great. You know, that's the that's the trap that a lot of these people people had going into solars. They saw a couple of guys making a million bucks a year or whatever, and it's like, oh, dude, I'm going to go do that, and they never made [ __ ]

Sure. Uh, but like for those that kind of made it through that first year or two and made a hundred grand, like there's really not a lot of other options for them that they see.

No. And so they you just don't know what you don't know about different careers or fields or places to go. And so it's easy to kind of just get stuck there, and that's kind of where I was for a little while.

Do you believe you can make more money on the phones or knocking doors? And which one do you think is more effective?

The phones. The phones. Right. All day long. Yeah. If if sales is a numbers game, yeah, that's your answer. Because I know that you could if you max out maybe 100, maybe 120 doors a day, dude, I can knock down 120 dials in two hours like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Tell me, how long did it take you to become a number one closer, top producer in, you know, Grant Cardone's office?

I want to say about a year and a half. Was there like a Goliath that you had to take out? Like was there a guy that was like good that everybody looked up to, and then you come in and you're like, I'm taking your ass out?

Not really, honestly. Um, we all looked up to Jared cuz he had been with Grant for the longest. So if there was like a but he wasn't really competing with us. He was just managing us. Um, and me and the rest of the guys on the sales floor, there was only four of us. So like that's when I worked for Grant. I was the fourth sales guy on the sales floor. Uh, and we all pretty much started at the same time. We were all broke as [ __ ] Uh, we all worked really hard and pushed each other. Um, and uh, are all four still there? You know, like besides you, of course.

The f Yes, they're all still there. They're all still there. Yeah. 10 years later. 12 years later.

Wow. Okay. As far as I'm aware of. I don't track anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. I don't watch those from your from your perspective. You Yeah. Okay. Wow.

So, what did you do differently to separate yourself and become that top producer? Now, there's the big question. The thing that I did, it was a couple of things. Number one is I never I never let up on the discipline that I created out of necessity. So, that discipline of like, hey, dude, this little draw that I'm going to get for the next three months is over, and then I'm it's sinker swim time. I kept that going for years. I still don't think I've let go of it. You can check my license plate on my 911. It says work more. Yeah. I don't think I've ever let go of that. So, number one, I never let off the gas. Number two is I changed my goals from I want to make this much money in sales to I'm going to be the top guy. So, in 2014, my first full year at Cardone's office, I made like 80,000 bucks. The goal was to make a quarter million. So, I doubled my income that year from 40 the previous year, which was nice, but I fell on my ass from the 250 that I wanted to make. I walked into 2015 and I said, "You know what? I'm not going to set any income goal. If I make a hundred grand, cool. If I make a million dollars, cool. I'm just going to be the top guy."

What did you make 40? What What year did you first year make 40?

That was 2013. And I had only worked there for like three months. Okay, got it. So yeah, that's where I was moving from New York to Miami September, October, November, December. Boom. So my first full year there, I made I want to say like 81, 82 something.

Okay. So you go from 40 to 81.

Yep. Is that the most money you ever made? On an annual basis at that time?

Yes. Okay. So 40, 81, you're still in debt. You're still living in an $800 apartment.

Correct. At the end of 2014, when my lease at the first place was up, I moved into an uh $1,800 a month, my first like partial ocean view like condo on the uh 21st floor.

Gotcha. So, things are kind of moving in the right direction. Okay. Um, and then in 2015, I said, "Okay, no income goals. Don't care what I make. Genuinely don't care. I'm not even gonna I'm not even gonna track it.

Wow. I just want to make sure on the first of every month that when they clean that whiteboard, my name is at the top.

Wow. By as much as humanly possible. It was at that time in 2015 that they started uh this is bullet point number three of what I did. Um, the companies uh gave each salesperson a monthly revenue quota, and that monthly revenue quota was $100,000 of total contract value signed. So that means company grants company revenueed 100k correct that month because that was your quarter.

Correct. Okay. How hard is it to get 100k? Is it a one deal? Is it 10 deals? Like what's the average size deal?

Average size deal. um contract value. So not just like what the monthly is what collected average deal probably about 18 to 24K.

Okay. So you you would need four or five deals on average to kind of hit this quota. Still figuring out your own leads or now they have a system.

I'm still cold calling all my own stuff. Um, and then I bought my own CRM. I bought Close IO for myself. 99 bucks a month investing into myself.

Sure. Uh, wasn't waiting for the company to do anything and uh I started really organizing my leads and like getting more and more professional because the again I wasn't there to make money. I was there to be number one. So what are these guys doing? [ __ ] that. I'm doing this.

You're no longer operating through desperation survival. You want to build the identity of the top top producer. When I walk differently when I walk in the room, I want the temperature to change.

Wow. I want people to be like, "Fuck, dude. This [ __ ] is here." I'm on the phone. Hello. Hello. Because I just appeared.

Wow. Um, the next thing that I did, I think bullet point number three is uh the company gave quota to every salesperson of 100,000 and um, cool. Great. Got it. Good. I took that quota and mentally threw it in the trash. I multiplied it by three.

Wow. So my quota became 300,000 and um per month per month. And so for the first probably month two, three maybe I didn't really hit it but I was hitting like 150, 175. So I'm like beating myself up, but at least I'm beating everybody else up too. And then dude, I hit 300. I'm like okay. So once I hit a number that is the baseline now. There is no going realistically fine. I might not hit it again, but in my head, the goal never I'm never going to reduce it. Be like, "Oh, it's seasonal." Or it if I hit $32,000, $32,000 is the benchmark now. It is the norm.

Wow. And I will do everything in my power to achieve that or exceed it.

How old are you at that time?

I'm 26. 26. Okay. 26ish. Yeah. About a decade ago as we sit here today.

Wow. Um, so I tripled my own personal quota, and then once I hit that quota, that quota never went back down. That quota became 400, and then two or 3 months I hit that number.

Sweet. The quota now for Jordan Stupar is 500. Five times that of the normal salesperson working there. And uh I did back-to-back record months of 400 then 500. And I was like 600's the new goal. And so, uh, one tip for anybody in inside sales where you can look at a number, instead of writing down your income or whatever, like whatever the deal volume size is or whatever, like when 300 was my quota, I just took a a word document, typed 300,000 at the very top of it, printed it off, put it front center on my desk, right next to a photo of Warren Buffett because that's who I needed to speak to.

M and I needed to make sure like, dude, are you speaking like you would speak to Warren Buffett?

Sure. So, every time I got a deal, cross off that 300K. Now it's 275. Sweet. You're going, "Okay, and I was just watching this big ass number get smaller and smaller." And dude, I remember um one of my biggest pet peeves in sales is like there were some months, dude, where I'd hit that 300 on the seventh day of the month. Done. quota toasted three times the and it's like that's the time where a lot of people let off the gas.

Yeah. Oh, dude. I I did it. That's for me the most addicting part of sales is like, dude, I've already made 37 grand this month. It's the seventh. I'm going to be here on Saturday. I'm going to be here on Sunday. I'm going to be here at 7 until like how much can I actually do this month?

Wow. And uh my biggest check, I made over $200,000 in earned sales commissions December of 2016.

In one month. In one month. Wow.

Now, as you're doing this, you're crushing it. You are number one salesperson. You're doing your quota by 3x, 4x, 5x. Is Grant recognizing you? Are you getting like, you know, trip to go here, trip to go there? Are you getting bonuses? Or it's like, no, that's what you're supposed to be doing. just keep doing it.

Um, you know, I maybe got like a pat on the back. Uh, good job. Uh, the paycheck was the bonus. Uh, the paycheck was the incentive. The paycheck was the trip. And, um, no, there was no trips. Um, I would say after maybe my third year there is where like I think they had their first like yacht party as a company, but it was like as a company for like my top five guys were balling out today. Ace of spades, champagne, spill it up, you know. Um, and honestly, that yacht party, I remember leaving Miami in January for that yacht party and went to Michigan to close a $16,000 deal because guess what? I knew that my competition was on that boat, and if I wanted to be number one, that's what I would need to do.

Love that. I have the same mindset. Yeah, I love that. Like, dude, I've never to this day I'm I'm I'm 38. I'm a multi-millionaire. To this day, I have not boarded a private jet.

Wow. I've not been I've been invited on them.

Sure. I don't want to be on yours.

Right. Even if I have to charge it myself and it's not my jet or whatever, it's going to be my experience.

Yes. And so boat parties and all this [ __ ] it doesn't really get me cuz it's not me, right? And so I just want to continue being a savage. That's really like my game. Like I like I said, when I walk in, I want like the air to change.

That's awesome. That is awesome. How did you develop that? Because here you are at one point lost, not knowing what to do, right? Wanted to be a soccer player, rock star, stuck looking at the Craigslist, going to door-to-door sales, quitting almost on the 15th day, and then becoming the savage who says, "Work more, grind harder, and I'm going to destroy my competition." Like, what happened? How did you develop that?

that has always existed. Interesting. I um I distinctly remember these same kind of like emotions uh being in soccer where it it was it was never a friendly game of soccer for me. It was a point it was a place for me to prove a point and embarrass you.

Wow. If possible. And I hate losing. I've always hated losing. I hate losing more than I like winning.

Okay. I love that. And like I love winning, right? So, just I don't really know where that kind of comes from. I suppose you could maybe unpack this thing through therapy and say that like I I have some remnants of emotion from like maybe being bullied in like grade school or something and I just have a chip on my shoulder or something. But is your father same way? Is your mom like that? Is there anybody in your family that has the same tendencies?

No, I'm I'm distinctly the most intense person in my in my family for sure.

So, do you think you were born like this?

Parts of it. I think parts of it.

Okay. Parts of it. So, what separates someone that's making $225 a month? Okay. To $225,000 a month. I mean, if I had to boil it down to one word, it's discipline.

Discipline. Discipline. But in several areas. So, like, how would you break it down?

Yeah. So, I mean, number one, you have to do the work. Like, the actual work of making the calls. Like, I wasn't sitting at Grant's office just sitting by the phone waiting for Mr. Big to call me and say, "Hey, dude. Here's my black A MX card. Can you run it?" Like, I'm hustling. Um, like, dude, I'm not doing a 1-hour lunch. Like, I'm eating at my desk. I'm ordering Denny's literally, it was a block away. I'm ordering Denny's breakfast by Uber so that I could spend those extra what six minutes walking making six phone calls.

Wow. Maximizing my time. So discipline in the actual work ethic. Then what a lot of people miss if they have that great you'll you'll make something of yourself. You also have to be unbelievably disciplined in what you do outside of work. One of the best pieces of advice that I ever got from anybody was make the time that you spend outside of work harder than your work. So that your work is the easiest part of your day.

Interesting. Most people run away from work. They are not in love of hard work. They want to find a shortcut. They want to make it easier to find that silver bullet.

Okay. You're saying no, accept the hard work. Make it the easiest part of your day. and then everything else will fall in the right places.

So, how does someone go and make the work the easiest part? What do they need to do outside of the work?

Probably do something similar to what I did. I uh started, you know, waking up and going straight to the gym.

Okay. I find that to be the hardest thing. If I can go in and I can do cardio or weights or whatever kind of program I'm on and I can get that done, dude. You think I'm going to have a problem picking up a phone call? Like I just talk myself out of bed before the sun is up to go sweat and kill myself. Like everything else is easy. So that's kind of number one. Number two is like it's really easy to listen to like rap music and rock or whatever the hell you're into. And it's a little bit harder to maybe just tune into a podcast, you know, like what you're listening to right now.

Yeah. Um, or an audio book or just sit down and read a book. So like all of these things are like inherently easy. Like eating a salad is easy. It's just a little bit easier to grab that Snickers bar that's, you know, in your desk drawer tempting you. It's easy to go to the gym, but it's just a little bit easier to not.

Yeah. You know, and so that's kind of what I'm talking about is taking easy things and normalizing the fact that you're doing those easy things instead of doing what's easiest.

Wow. And that will allow you to I mean where you if you can show up like that in the morning, that's how you show up at work. That's how you're going to show up at night. Are you really going to kill this great healthy day that you had at 7:00 p.m. because there's a cookie in your pantry? No. [ __ ] that cookie because you just stayed so good. You did all this. You don't want to erase all this work. And um yeah, I would say so you know it's discipline carried out in different areas of your life so that you know you can perform at an elite level on a daily basis.

You know, talking about making the harder part of your day to be outside of work than inside of work. Yesterday when I went up with a personal trainer I'm like this shit's hard, man. And and I'm like, "Look, I'll tell you what. It's easier to make a million dollars than to do this shit."

100%. You know, it's so it's like I couldn't walk. Like he's like, "Let me help you out." I'm like, "Yeah, please. Because I cannot walk. You killed me." So like I understand what you're saying, but most people are running away from the discipline, from uncomfortability, from growth.

How does someone who knows they're running away from these things rewire their mind to go head on towards it?

Start somewhere with one thing. Okay? Prove it to yourself that you can just do it one time in one area. Maybe that's fine. You don't want to start at the gym.

Got it. Uh, instead of eating a triple Baconator from Wendy's today, go to Wendy's and order the salad. Just do that one and just see how completing that one thing makes you feel afterwards. Just do better. Just just and then [ __ ] off for the rest of the day. But tomorrow, eat the salad from Wendy's and don't even go to the gym. Just walk a mile.

Wow. See how you feel after doing those two things. And before you know it, a year down the road, you're not eating salad at Wendy's no more. Maybe you're making your own. and then you're going to the gym and you're doing a full-on program and you're drinking a gallon of water and you're not doing these things and you it's just start somewhere. You don't have to start with this massive thing.

Yeah. You know, I read somewhere and I think it was Jim Ron who said it, and I think this is where your story right completely evolves and changes. said we have emotions in our system, right? Who we are, we have emotions. But there's one emotion, right? That drives us insane. And that emotion is called being disgusted by who you are. And there's a story that he shares that, hey, there's, you know, this guy, he looks at his car and he said, I'm disgusted by the car I drive. That's it. I'm done. Takes a shotgun, shoots all the windows, all the tires, breaks it, and says that's it. Enough is enough. I'm no longer driving this car. I deserve better. Right? When you're telling me that you're sitting there and you're looking outside that New York window and you're just like, "That's it. I'm removing all the distractions. I'm going to throw away the weed. I'm going to throw away the Xbox. I am disgusted with the person that I am and I'm going to change everything about me." Right? That to me is that driving force of being disgusted of who you are. But that only comes when you can accept you for who you are. got and be willing to change every aspect of who you need to be so that way you can live the life that you desire to live. Right?

If you were to go back to that window moment, okay, and knock on that door to talk to Jordan, okay, what would you tell him in that moment? Cuz I'm sure he needed a friend in that moment.

Oh boy. He could Yeah, he could have used a guy like me right there, right? I I suppose I'm not sure that I would have interfered too much, but I would have just said this is the correct thing. It won't feel like it for another 3 years.

Wow. Don't expect this thing to pay off for another couple of years. Yeah, you've probably feel a

Little bit better or whatever, but like in the grand scheme of you changing your life, like bro, you're not going to pay off $40,000 worth of debt next week because you threw your Xbox out the window. Like stick with it. And that's what I pretty much did. But it would have been nice to like know like, hey, dude, this is going to be a 2-3 year long dark ass tunnel. Yeah. But I promise you in about June of 2016, bro, [ __ ] man, you're going to really like this decision. So just stick it out.

Many of our listeners might be listening right now at this point and they're like, "Wow, what a great story. Bright future. Look, happy ending." But what they don't know is in 2016, right? Going into 2017, things go opposite big time, right? You go from making 500,000-700,000 a year to being sued from losing your opportunity or deciding to leave the opportunity to start over. Can you get into that?

Yeah. So May 2nd. May 2nd. So, like, dude, yeah. 3 days ago. Yeah. We're like almost on the anniversary of that fateful decision. Wow. Actually, for a little context, cuz I I I always find this unbelievably interesting and funny is what was it? Uh, April-May, April 29th. I'm sitting at the PF Chang's in Aventura, Florida by my yacht club that I was living in. And you know at PF Chang's they have the best uh steak. No, the best um fortune cookies. Okay. Not the cookie part, but like the the actual little note in the fortune cookie. And I remember unraveling this cuz I had mentally accepted like I'm resigning from Cardone. So you made the decision. I don't really know when, but like I know I'm done. It could be next month, two months. Like I know I'm done though. And then uh I opened this fortune cookie and it just says uh, "You will soon make a decision that will test your strength." Oh my god. And I remember looking at that that cookie and I was like, man [ __ ] bro. Like damn. That's when you're like fortune cookies are real. Yeah. That's crazy. Like bro, I believe in PF Chang's fortune cookies now. Everybody go to PF Chang's, grab a cookie. Like if PF Chang's cookie says you're going to have a bad day, like bro, just don't even wake up that day, stay home. It's like the Saratoga with the whole thing. Now Saratoga sales went up because of Jordan Tupar. Fortune cookies at PF Chang's just went off the roof. Dude, I just want the free uh PF Chang's chicken for the rest of my life, please. That's so funny.

Uh but yeah, like whatever, a week later, I'm sitting in uh, you know, the the Cardone new world headquarters place that they still have right now in Adventura. I'm sitting in my brand new 911. I'm wearing my custom-tailored Hugo Boss suit and like, dude, I got, you know, 350, 375 grand cash sitting in the bank. I'm dating a Norwegian model. I'm living at a yacht club and I'm like, "Let me screw this thing up. I'm gonna [ __ ] this thing up real quick." And I'm I'm and like I typed out this little resignation note and I'll never forget, dude, I walk in and like, dude, the the air for me changed cuz like I changed. I go to my desk and I kind of put down my little bag and I kind of just like I'm like, "Shit, dude. Am I really am I really about to do this?" This is in the morning, afternoon, first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning. So, you're already coming with the decision. I'm doing this. I'm doing this today. Wow. And I spent 3 hours on this two-paragraph resignation letter. And uh do you remember what it said, man? It was it was pretty to the point, but very like courteous. Uh, you know, "To whom it may concern, like this has been one of the greatest chapters of my life. I endlessly uh enjoyed this position and this role. I've learned a lot, blah blah blah. However, after a ton of consideration, obviously, I feel as now I'm being pulled in a different chapter of my life and I'd like to amicably and respectfully close this one." Something sure like that. Um, no trap back in the day to help us out. Yeah. I'm like on thesaurus.com like what's a better word for grateful, you know? I love it.

Um, and so I walk in and um, you know, I think one thing to note is like this wasn't like a job. This was like life. Like I came up with these guys. Sure. We're all making 40, 50, 60 grand a month. We got our own inside jokes. And like, like I said to you before the podcast, like one of those guys like if I had gotten married at the time would have been my best man. All of them would have been in my wedding party. Like this is my family, bro. Like this is it and like I'm about to leave these people. And I remember going in to the COO's office and you know just kind of sit down and I just slide this little note over and within about 14 seconds she takes her eyeglasses down. One second, walks out, grabs Jared. They come in and they're like, "So you want to leave?" Like you can you can you walk us through this like tell us why. I had platinum handcuffs on. They're like, "You really want the key?" And I'm like, "Look, you know like like I said right here if you actually read it like I love you guys okay uh this has been one of the greatest chapters of my life um I have an unbelievable amount of gratitude for the opportunities here and blah blah blah blah blah blah like I just feel like now is I I need to go grow somewhere else. Like, I'm kind of just done with this chapter." And they just could not figure out that that was like the reality. So, they're like, they kind of started getting in that like offense of like, well, you you you know, Albert, you know, Jordan, like you're never going to make this type of money anywhere else, right? Like, you know that. And I'm like, all right. Yeah. Like, so what? Like, Um, and then uh yeah, then Grant walked in. So Grant shows up. So I'm getting triple-teamed here by every executive in the office and he's like, "What are you doing, bro?" Like got now I have to reiterate everything I just spent an hour on. Sure. It's just time, you know? I I love this place. I love you guys. Nothing against anybody here, but like it's just my time to go.

Um, and then like dude, then I walked out of that office, jumped in my car, I was like, "What the [ __ ] have I done?" Wow. Like, dude, I just I just quit as the top sales guy. It was instant like that. So, as soon as you sat in your car, you're like, "What the [ __ ] did I do, dude?" Like, everything I could still see everything, but everything just turned black and white. Like it was like this just out of bodyish type of like Yeah. You just did that, bro. Like are you are you insane? Like every version of your conscious, the the demon and the angel, they're both they're both looking at each other like what the [ __ ] did this guy just do? Wow. And um but at the exact same moment, I was like, "Dude, I just did that." Yeah. Like I am a free man. I'm going to pursue entrepreneurship. Yeah. Holy f. So like, you know, there was this extreme level of naive excitement flowing through my my veins that I had kind of accomplished something here. Sure. And I was ready for the next chapter. And um Yeah. That that didn't last very long. No. Tell me when was like Yeah. The excitement is good. And I have young guys on my team and they're like, "Oh, we're going to expand to North Carolina, Miami," and they're like, "it's more exciting to build that than build what we're building here in the house, right?" But that excitement only lasts until you face some real [ __ ], right? Like, yeah, Marshall shows up and says, "You're being sued," or "this bill's due, credit card's due," and you see your cash just depleting, right? Step by step. So at one point, how long did it last for the excitement to go to now fear maybe?

Um, about two weeks. Two weeks. Wow. So I had like a good little two-week honeymoon. Uh, mostly because I was dead quiet. I didn't say anything on social. Um, I wasn't here to badmouth any. I just just a little peace for like two weeks. Sure. Just like preparing for like my next thing and figuring it out. So, like that was a fun little two weeks. And then about two weeks after that, um you know, I make a Facebook post and I'm like, "I'm going live tomorrow and I got some big news." And [Music] um I went live the next day and I was like, "Go to jordansteopar.com. Uh, join my email list. I'm starting the sales academy." And uh by the way, I know I no longer work over here and I'm I'm I'm my own guy. I'm open for business. I I can't take a credit card and I don't really have a landing page and I don't really know how any of this stuff works, but like I'd love to give some advice or help you out because of what I've learned and what I know. And um dude, my like just organic little it wasn't a business. It's just like a little, you know, mom, dad, sister, friend Facebook page. I don't think to this day I've ever seen anybody gain as much organic like viewers, attraction, likes, and like bro, the level of hate that I got, too. I Wow. I kind of miss it, honestly. Did you get more hate or more love?

It was split down the center. Um, so I don't remember who it was, but they messaged me and they're like, "Dude, it's like watching you and G go through a divorce, bro." Wow. It's like we're we're just the kids, you know? Like we're watching mom and dad get split up and we we both kind of like you but we got to kind of pick sides type thing. And it's like do you bro like you know if you you want to like me cool. If if you don't like and then of course there was a lot of people like, "You're a [ __ ] idiot. You know you'll never stand on your own two feet." Yeah. You know blah blah blah. Um, but of course um there was a good equal amount of support as well. Wow. So 3 days or 3 weeks later right from what I know you get a call.

Yeah. So, three days later, I get a phone call from Grant. Um, I'm sitting at the swimming pool at my yacht club with my girlfriend at the time and uh kind of still in that like honeymoon phase of entrepreneurship. Oh, yeah. And uh I get a call from Grant. I pick up. I'm like, "What's up?" And he says, you know, "Hey, dude. Like, what's up?" I'm like, "Sitting by the pool, dude." You know, like like relaxing. Yeah. What's up with you? Um, "Look, man, I just want to I want to I want to find out why you left. Um, you know, we're were like, were you stealing money? Um, were you like stealing leads or like working, you know, shady with the marketing team for some stuff or like like, you know, no, right?" Uh, he asked me if I kissed his wife. I'm like, "No. Hell no." My god. And uh I'm like, "Yeah, like dude, I it's what I told you in the office." Like I just wanted to leave. And that's where I've never really shared this publicly before. That's where he said, "I'm going to give you two options." He said, "You can either a go down to this place and do a security check that can prove to me that you didn't do anything wrong in the business or if I see you start up a business like I saw on Facebook, I'm going to sue you." Hm. And I kind of carefully thought about it for a quick second and me kind of still having a little bit of that rock and roll rebel in me. Uh and of course not really knowing what a lawsuit is, feels like, looks like, or anything. I I literally said, "Sue me." Really? That was your response? That was my response. Wow. And he hung up the phone. He didn't respond back. He just hung up. Hung up. I got blocked. Um, and I be I became like bad goods with all my friends there. Yeah. Um, they weren't even PS like while it was still kind of good that little twoe period like not a single person that I worked with reached out to me. That's so And we all lived in the same apartment together like in different condos. Like not one single person uh was able to contact me. I'm good friends still with uh Natasha who worked there and um we chat now and again. She doesn't work there no more either, but literally like she was instructed like verbally and um uh like typed out instructed and it was expressed to her that she is to have no communication with me whatsoever about anything for any reason under any circumstance like ever. Wow. And I'm assuming that the rest of those guys probably got that as well. And um look, man, that was uh that there was not the dark day. That was just kind of like, holy, yeah. Yeah. Is he going to do this? Right. And then were you waiting, anticipating?

Oh, yeah. You were. From from there, dude, I don't think my like my resting heart rate has ever dropped below like, you know, a certain new elevated level. Um, and probably about two and a half, maybe 3 weeks after that, um, I remember it was Friday night, 1000 p.m., and, uh, I'm chilling with my girlfriend at my condo and there's a knock at the door. I'm like, "Dude, who who the hell's coming by my house at 10 p.m.?" Open the door and like, dude, stack of pages like this big. Like, [ __ ] brick. Boom. Right into my chest. They all drop to the ground and he says, "You've been served." I close the door and I'm just like, "It happened." All righty. So So here we are. How long after that call? Two and a halfish weeks something. I I recall. Stupid Academy is up. Steepart Academy's up. We had our first couple of clients. Wow. Making a couple of those first couple of bucks. The sweetest bucks I've ever tasted in my life, bro. Wow. And like um I lose all my friends. I can't those are ex I'm excommunicadoed. It's like John Wick like in about in five minutes everybody's going to come after you. Um and like I'm a very I want to make it abundantly clear to anybody listening. I have taken every single step since May 2nd to communicate and articulate that I valued my time at Cardone's office. And to this day, I still respect the man. Maybe one of these days we'll jump on a podcast like uh but point is is that I want to make it abundantly clear. I was sued on a non-compete and there was nothing ever found through evidence, discovery, otherwise that said that at any point in time that I had breached any form of that employee contract. And I want to make it abundantly clear, I never did anything wrong. All I ever wanted to do is I just wanted to help people. And to this day, that's what gets me up in the morning is to help other people.

Um, but kind of back into that story, I think you had a question. I do. I saw I saw that look in your eye. Yeah. No, because like I'm putting myself in a position of listeners that are like doesn't seem like there's a good reason why you left. What was the reason that really pushed you to say, "Yeah, I can't do this with Grant. I can't do this with them." There's honestly, I think for every significant decision that you have in life, I think there's probably a a pretty long list of things that, you know, from little tiny little things to, you know, maybe some heavier ones. But you know the main things is I I just no longer really wanted to participate in Scientology. That's kind of a it's a well-known thing I think at this point that everybody knows that uh you know Grant's in Scientology. I too was kind of I don't want to use the word forced but I was kind of pushed in that direction. I participated in that uh for quite some time during my tenure there like a lot of people uh either still do or did when they were there. And I just kind of just I'm a pastor's kid, dude. My parents are Christian. Like I'm not a Scientologist, right? I just kind of did it to get myself some advantages while working there professionally, which I think is still semi-disgusting. Um I got tired of that. Um, I got tired of the fact that they were beginning to see me as I was beginning to see myself, which is I am the value ad in what I'm selling here and what I'm doing with clients. And I don't think that they liked the fact that I could personally be taking credit for some of the boosts in sales or some of the things that some of my personal clients uh ended up, you know, seeing. And of course while I was there like my exposure kind of grew and there was you know podcast opportunities and things of that nature to the Jordan Steupar brand that they kind of wanted to hey slow it down you like you know and so you used to do these Wednesday calls right used to be you know training people and used to put your spin on things. Yeah. Right. And that's what they didn't appreciate. And I I that still confuses me because that's one of the ways that I was able to attract some of the most business that I was bringing in is making my own face and kind of co-branding myself beneath that umbrella. And it was a lot of those types of things where it's like, I see where this is going. They want me to just be this one thing. But the main thing, the main thing for the listeners, the main main main reason why I left is I went to the 2017 10X Growth Con. Y that's where I met you. Yes. Yeah. Um, and uh, I was Grant's top guy and so I'm in the backstage and blah blah blah and like I knew the speaker lineup and I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to have probably 20 to 30 seconds maybe if I'm lucky with pretty much all these speakers from Andy Fcella to Tim Grover to uh, Damon John, blah blah blah." And um I was high level enough to know at the time like if you're going to meet somebody like that and you got 20 seconds like don't ask them like hey dude how can I make more money too general like you want something kind of specific with a bit of context like make it a good question. So I remember I met Andy Fcella in the bathroom and uh I I just after we got out of the bathroom I was like what's up dude? You Andy? Yeah dude what's up? Yeah. I was like, "Hey dude, can I ask you like one question? I'm Grant's one of Grant's sales guys." "Oh, dude, for sure. What's up?" It's like, "Okay." In 2013, I made 40 grand. In 2014, I made $80,000. In 2015, I made $373,000. In 2016, I made $452,000. It's 2017. I've probably already made a quarter of a million, but I'm curious. If you were me, how do you compress time? And how do you make a million dollars in sales commissions in one year? And every single speaker that I spoke to, and there's like 15 of them, 12 of them, something like that. Every single one of them gave me the same answer. Well, sounds like you're pretty good at closing deals, bro. Uh, what? Like, are you still prospecting? Yeah, dude. I'm still spending 70-80% of my time cold calling. Oh, well, why don't you just get two or three, you know, cold callers beneath you so that they can just line up your calendar and all you do all day is just close them. Just close deals. And I'm like, honestly, that's a really damn good idea. How come I haven't thought of this myself? Sure. And also, like each one of those talks, it's the entrepreneurship talk and like when are you gonna actually go and do this? And like I'm like now. Pretty much right now, bro. So, like after that event, um I'm in the parking lot. Grant's coming out of the office and getting into his Rolls and I'm walking into the office and I'm like, "Yo, G, question." He's like, "What's up?" I'm like, "Hey, bro. In 2013, I made 40 grand. In 2014, I made 80 grand. In 2015, I made 373. In 2016, I made 452. I've made about a quarter so far. It's May. How do I compress time? How do I make a million dollars in a year?" And I was expecting the same answer cuz these are all like,

You know, entrepreneurs, looks at me, he's like, "Bro, you made $452,000 last year. If you change anything, you're a [ __ ] idiot." Puts on his sunglasses, unlocks the rolls, gets in, takes off, and I'm just literally standing there like, "How did I get? How is that his answer?" Right?

The guy that says, "Think bigger." I know for every $100,000 I make for myself, I'm making you like 600,000. So like, so yeah, let's touch up on that. Like Grant is, you know, wrote a book 10x y, right? And a lot of people who may have not read the book or understand it, but it's all about like, okay, think bigger, right? It's almost like the magic of thinking big, but more of a modern version. And telling you, well, don't [ __ ] change anything. Think small, settle, is the opposite of what he teaches, right?

Why would he say that? I'll be I'll be 100% honest with you. I have no idea. There was I don't think as a business owner now with several years of experience, I don't see any real incentive for me to tell my guys to play smaller or play on the like I don't think that there's any re any real incentive there. I really don't know why. And that's what I found most perplexing is like I I really thought that through. I don't I'm not here to waste somebody else's time or be an ass. Like I just like I one of the other reasons why I left I left when I was 30 years old. I made a promise to myself on 71st in Collins at 5:00 in the morning as a 25-year-old prior to working there that I will make a million dollars in one year by the time that I'm 30 or I'm going to quit this opportunity and pursue something else. Wow. And I hadn't done that yet. And that was my that was I was turning 30 and I was looking for that answer so that I could give myself a good reason to stay there instead of breaching my own contract. Yeah. Um so like I said, it's kind of a little garbage list of a bunch of but those are kind of the main big ones of why I really ended up leaving.

My guys, right, they're making 300 $400,000. I would never tell a Ferrari to slow down, right? It just doesn't make any sense. So, like I actually like I'm the type of leader that, you know, I push my guys to say, "You're 30, you're making 400. How do we get you to a million?" Right? Like, "How else can we help your family?" Right? How can we help your family? What do you need? More resources. Oh, you want to expand? Okay, you have your ducks in a row here. Let's go ahead and do that. To me, that's like like every business owner's dream is to have a person that wants to build, wants to grow, wants to find ways to make more money. And the answer was don't do anything. Yeah. Wow. And I found that to be extremely perplexing a lot. I don't know what their culture is these days. I'm assuming that they may carry on a couple of things that I helped develop. Yeah, develop uh yeah just I found it very perplexing based on several areas of their overall sales culture that I was 100% responsible for kind of creating or spinning up. Um you know I really thought like I was I was trying to trying to buy into being entrepreneurial and kind of like dude I I want to be here. This is my thing. I'm here for it. Can I build this within the thing? And I I I don't know why they didn't want it, but what would they need to do differently? Like let's just say we could rewind back. What response were you looking from Grant for you to say still be there today or do you think that would never have happened?

Dude, I teach this to managers and owners all the time. Um, number one, uh, just just basic levels of recognition can go so far. Yeah. So far. Yes. Yes. I get it. Yeah. The paycheck. I earned 60 grand this month. Mhm. And like, but dude, if I'm your top guy, I'm not saying you got to put me on the jet or fly me out or put me on a yacht or do any rent me a Lambo. I can rent my own damn Lambo for you. Like, dude, just like walk up to me and be like, "Hey, bro, you're a [ __ ] killer." Genuinely, I love having you on the team and maybe one of these days, let's go get dinner or something or share a drink or go smoke a cigar. I just I I'd want to pick your brain about some things that maybe we can do to help. I love that. I'd be like, "What?" Yeah. Me? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, "Of course me." But like, you're looking up there to your your boss, you know? Yeah. Number one. Number two is um you know give people give people that are truly genuinely interested in improving the business and being entrepreneurs and what I'm not saying like do things that shouldn't really happen in the bit. I'm not saying like hey dude let's make a line of energy drinks. I'm like hey bro can I get two or three cold callers on the sales floor just for me so that I can do what I really do best here which is close deals. It's like, well, yeah, at least it's worth a conversation, of course. You know, um, so that's number two. And then number three, number three is never change the [ __ ] pay plan on your top guy ever. Don't touch that thing. And if you are, figure out a way to make it better. I was making 500 grand a year and um they were like, "Hi, instead of paying you a percentage on the total contract that you sign, we're just going to give you $5,000 a month salary and then we're going to give you 10% of each dollar that comes in." So I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to make I'm making like 50 $60,000 a month on average." Yeah. I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to go down to five guaranteed." To make $50,000, I would need to collect $500,000 worth of new revenue when your quarter used to be 100. Yeah. And I got to collect that money to get 10% of it. Get bent, bro. Yeah.

I want to touch up on that because, you know, in my market where we are, right, we get paid by the carriers. Yeah. So something happened last year. The carrier changed the compensation. So now our company profit margins are not the same, right? So that means the cost, the fixed cost is the same. Contest all these things are all stayed the same, right? But now how do we go and pay where we don't drown? So I made an executive decision as CEO. I said we are not killing our momentum in the fourth quarter. We're not doing that, right? I'm gonna bite the bullet. I'm gonna I'm gonna continue to do what we do. We're gonna put our people first. We're gonna pay them. We're gonna figure out. We're gonna bring other projects to be able to even it out. But yeah, sometimes you don't control it. But if your CEO or if you whatever industry you're in and you don't control the market, like what's going on with tariffs today, right? Everybody's like, "Man, like I can't pay my people the same. My profit margin not the same." Make it known to your people. It's not you making that decision because you're a greedy bastard. It's because that's what's happening in the marketplace and that's the change of the industry, not just your sole decision. Amen. Yeah. And hats off to you for doing that, bro. I mean, that's literally Yeah. Like I said, bullet point number three is and I mean especially to your top people that are working their asses off for you. Like don't make it harder to make the same amount of money. make it easier to make more. Yeah. And um yeah, those would be I would say like the the main main reasons why I ended up doing what I did. And uh yeah, before I turn into a sales game, right?

You know, you mentioned something about taking care of your top guys. We just had a Jamaica trip, you know, all paid expense trip. And one of the guys, you know, couldn't get his passport. Yeah. We told him six months ago, three months ago, hey, get your passport. couldn't get it. So, I have one empty spot to fulfill. Yeah. Right. I pick up the phone 8:00 at night. I'm like, "Hey, Chris." Yeah. Listen, you haven't missed a day in two years. I want you to know that I recognize that. I want you to know that I appreciate that you're 1099. You're working for yourself. You're making a lot of money. You're crushing it. But you know what? What I want to do for you, I want to send you to Jamaica. All paid expense. Yeah. Those are the moments if you're a leader, business owner, manager, whatever it is, right? When you just go in and you say, you know what, let me take care of someone else when they least expect it, right? They're going to remember that. They're going to value that. So, 100%. Good on you for I mean, that's probably why you have whatever you said like 80% plus retention rate across hundreds. 72%. Yeah. That's in sales. Unheard of. Yeah. And that's probably a little bit why. So if you are I know I'm paying attention to that. So good for you on that.

There's five levels of sales. Okay. Right. Timeline. Okay. You talked about that. Like people go into sales and they think about quitting. Right. What are the five levels? Yeah. I just dropped a uh YouTube channel about this. Good. Good on you for doing whatever homework you did or had your assistant do or whatever. Yeah. Um, essentially you got five kind of like levels. Level number one is like you're pretty much new amateur. You're probably making like 30 to 70 grand a year type thing. You're probably working maybe retail at Yeah. at the Verizon store at the car dealership. Like it's not this tried-and-true sales gig, but you're facilitating stuff. And you know, this is where you're literally just learning how to like show up, talk to a person, and hopefully give them the confidence to buy something. Sure. Um, once you kind of develop at least those basic skills, the level two is kind of like that, you know, 60K to like 100K a year type thing where you're still kind of like amateur, like maybe some door-to-door, you know, whatever. And the skill that you're really developing there is you're developing the uh the skill of discipline a little bit on a basic level. Not like lights out like some of the things I've shared on my story of working until 10 11:00. I'm just saying from 9 to 6 you're doing some work. You're not wasting the whole day. You're not scrolling through Instagram. Exactly. Um and from there that's that's where a lot of people stay. Level three is you're working simultaneously on higher levels of discipline, but also working simultaneously on actual sales skills. The way that your tonality is and the way that you sound and pitch and handle objections is you're working on some real mechanics here of communication. And um your income range usually on this level is like 100k to like 150 175. you're you're like kind of a professional now, right? Then you have level four um is where you're diving deep into the mechanics of how you sell. You're really really trying to figure out the psychology behind the questions that you ask, uh the way that you really show up, but you're also extremely knowledgeable in your industry, your competitors, your product. Like you understand everything about what you sell and you know how to articulate it. income range generally for somebody like this. Um, oh, and you're also likely selling higher ticket things. Uh, usually B2B, but again could be uh business to consumer. And for the people that are listening that maybe not in sales, but when I get into sales, higher ticket items is not the, you know, the little ones where you're getting paid maybe $10,000, $5,000, you know, dollars. It's a big item that you have a high level of commission that you can go and say, you know, I'm dealing with a client that has 25 locations. I'm going to go close 25 locations and get 25 times what I would get paid rather than one time. Y Yeah. Like Yeah. I'm not talking about like high ticket sales of five grand. I'm talking like $500,000 tickets. Y um and so the income bracket usually at like level four is kind of like the like one like 175 to like 300k. And by the way, for those of you listening, $300,000 of income, if you're making that right now, you're part of 2% of Americans that do that. Wow. So if you lined up a hundred Americans on wherever, two of them are making 300 grand. And it seems like it can seem like a ton of money once you eclipse that. It can also seem like a very small amount of money. Sure. But um again, there's really truly not a lot of salespeople making over 300 grand a year. It is hyper unrealistic to consider that. So, if you are looking at this scale and you're thinking about where you'd like to end up in sales or where you'd like to get to, understand that there's a pretty good level of work to get to that 300k level and that you're joining 2% of uh the American population at that income bracket. If however you want to make more money, there is another level and that's level number five. Level number five in sales is generally 300k plus. I know lots of sales people that are making two, three, four million dollars a year. These are people that have mastered discipline. They've mastered their industry. They've mastered their product. They've mastered their own tonality, communication, the way that they've asked questions, but now what they've done is they are part of the network that they sell to. Sure. This is the person that probably really doesn't go to the office and honestly probably spends a good chunk of his day at the country club with the affluent business owners and titans of industry and is just truly a relationship-based uh person and again just shaking hands and and doing deals. And if you are a massochist, you can jump off of level five and hope to build a parachute on your way down and start your own business like I did.

Wow. Amazing. Amazing. This is the type of content that most people don't get, right? That's why, you know, sitting down here with you today, when I say you bled for it, everything you just shared through, you lived it. You lived it, right? Twice. You lived it. And and that's why I love this. Now, when people walk in through my interview process, right, we have three-step interview process. Number one disqualifier for me, right, is that you don't want to be a sales professional. that you're coming here to tip your toes in the water that you just want to make some money, you want to make quick money. How does someone, you know, I'm going to ask you almost the same question that you asked, you know, Andy, how do you compress time and become sales professional faster? Yeah. Um, two things. I talked about this at a um at a seminar I just gave in Kentucky. We're all going to make a million dollars. Yes. I'm just going to do it a whole lot quicker than you because I'm going to put in all of those reps that it's going to take you three or four or five years to make and I'm going to do that in six months. Yep. So, I'm running from opportunity to opportunity, opportunity, high levels of activity that obviously is going to give you exposure to more opportunities in a shorter period of time, but also gives you enough at bats to build skill. And of course, if you can continue that level of activity while your quality per opportunity goes up, congratulations. You're gonna get rich. Yeah. The second thing uh goes a little bit back to how you're spending your time outside of work. Like I like I cannot I cannot I wish I would have documented this. This is like that Gary Vee video where he's like, "Yeah, you're going to wish you dog." And I'm like, I do wish that I I can't tell you how many nights I went home Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 40, uh, Thursday, Friday, and literally just listened to We didn't have phone call recordings at Grant's office, so I literally would use my iPhone. Oh, really? I can't tell you how many sales pitches I listen to where I couldn't hear the prospect. I was just listening to myself. Dude, I sounded like an ass, right? I can't believe I just said trillion ROI. Like I said, "Dude, I called Albert, dude." And I'm hoping to get him to Okay, now that I'm aware of these things, I can't tell you how many hours of time I spent in the mirror. Hello, sir. Yeah. Hello, sir. Thanks for joining the No, that's stupid. I don't want to thank this guy. Hey, Albert. Appreciate you showing up to the call. I'm grateful we were both able to take some time out of our day to take a look at this. Okay. Did I get you to have this in time? Did I catch you at a halfway decent time? Oh [ __ ] dude. That was flame. Writing this stuff down. Now I'm compiling my everything that I teach now. It's like, oh, where did you come up with all these videos? It's like, bro, I've done this for years for myself and it helped me. So I'm, you know, but literally if you want to be that sales professional, whether you work at my organization, Albert's, whatever, number one, activity. Number two, different type of activity. Work on your skills so that when you work on your activity, you're lethal. In our culture, in our sales, you know, headquarters, which I love, by the way. I have never really been there, but looking at it, do it. The doors are open. We will treat you the king that you are, you know. We would love that. Please, please do. the the guys and the girls will love you because you are someone that's going to come in and give them the real juice. And I love that about you. So please, the invitation is extended. Yeah. Now, in our culture, it is mandatory for my managers, for my directors of sales to listen to your calls with you. Love it. Like I don't understand how can you play a sport and not watch tape, right? It just doesn't make sense. So if you are in the sales industry, you are in sales, you know, business and you have salespeople and you don't have call recording, you're killing your business. You will never train them to become a lethal weapon. You will never help them improve and adjust and pivot on the things that they're struggling with and you'll never going to be able to get them to be as sharp as a steak knife. So therefore, my advice to every single sales business owner out there that has a sales team, train your people, listen to their calls, work on their rebuttals, and make sure that they hear themselves and they understand that there's ways to improve and that you're there with them teaching them how to do so. Yeah, I think that's extremely important. Wow. It's I I can't believe that someone like Grant did not have that. Nothing nothing like that. It was it was the only the only thing we got was we got like his university like we were forced to watch six videos a day and that was that was about it.

You know how they say like, you know, sometimes McDonald's have a [ __ ] product, but they have one of the best marketings, right? And it's almost the same thing, right? I'm not going to talk [ __ ] about Grant's product because I don't know Grant's product. But my thing is like no leads, no dialer, no like CRM, there's nothing like extensive, but the guy's making millions upon millions of dollars and it's because the brand, the marketing. So, how important is for you to build the marketing and brand to become who you are today? I mean, it's unbelievably I would say that it's it's one of the foundations of my business is to give my people every distinct advantage I can give them from the tools, the tech, the the marketing, the advertising, the lead distribution, the lead scoring. I've I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of my time just tweaking optimizing little systems and lists and processes and blah blah blah so that all they got to do you can pick up the phone. Yes. Yes. You can follow at least a little bit of this script. You're going to make money. Oh yeah. And um man, the one of the most shocking parts of my business is talking to other businesses that are doing millions of dollars a year like having like I got some success and they're like they don't have anything like that set up. It's a bit of like what I experienced at Grants where it's like dude we're killing it over here but like you can't see how many your guys are literally doing tally on like how many calls they made. That's how

You bank as a manager to figure out how many calls they made. Yeah. Like what if they just you're not you don't have call recordings, you don't have screen share record, like you don't have a CRM to actually like track like how many emails got sent. It's like it blows my mind how many businesses don't have that implemented, and if you're one of those people, please just give us a call. I won't even sell you on it because I don't sell that stuff, but I'll tell you how to do it. You know, like it's just so important, you know, talking about branding, talking about tools.

What we have right behind you is the cash cards, right? Can you touch up on that? How did the idea come? Yeah. And how money how many people actually reached out to you and shared their testimonials on how this has helped them?

Yeah. So, cash cards, I I really personally can't take the credit. I think that idea came from God. Wow. I was um I was firing up this business for the second time back in 2020, and I was like, dude, like how am I going to get leads? Like, am I going to have to do this the way that I did it before and just go on to Google and like I was like, I wonder if any I wonder if anybody's made flash cards for for sales objections. And I Googled it and I was like, dude, you mean to tell me that none of these none of these guys have made this before? I'm getting straight to it. And then I was like, "Oh, cash cash cards, flash cards for clothes." So, good good marketing name. And um to be totally clear on the entrepreneurship side of this story, I didn't I'd never made a tangible product before. I didn't know where to make a deck of cards. I didn't know where a manufacturer was or how much it was going to cost. I didn't even have any money to really make them, but I was like, I'm going to do it.

Yeah. That's bullet point number one of entrepreneurship. Anyway, I did it, and um I finally got like my first five decks in the mail because that's like what I could like afford. And I took like this little selfie and I put it on Facebook, and I basically just said like um I wish uh my parents would have included a deck of these in my hooked down Phonics. I'd be retired by now.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I had like a little link to my like Shopify store, and I was like, "Dude, my wife or my fiance at the time, she's like that's stupid. Like nobody's going to buy." And within like three minutes, ch-ing, chuch-ing, chuch-ching, chuch-ching, chuch-ching, sold out. I was like, "Wow, dude, I just made 150 bucks."

Yeah. Reordered. Ordered 25 more. And I was like, "Hey guys, back in stock." And I'm like, "Dude, I'm going get like one more person." Within seven minutes, 25 decks gone, sold. And I'm like, "Whoa, this is dope. This is awesome." And uh fast forward nearly five years now, we've sold $3 million worth of cards, we've generated 90,000 qualified leads of people saying, "Hey, I got my and um look, if you're listening to this and we've ever called you like four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times uh because you bought a deck of cards, it it's in your best interest to pick up that phone because the deck of cards, It's the tip of the iceberg of what we could really do for you. And our our intention is not to bug you and be salesy. It's truly to identify like, dude, which one of these cards are you really do you want to role play right now? Like we want to make you better.

I love that. Um, so that's that's the one misunderstanding I haven't missed I haven't been able to really capitalize on because I don't know how to advertise that at scale. We're like we are not the rest of the sales trainers in this space. We are not here to upsell you on 10k packages and a bunch of [ __ ] Like we genuinely want to help.

So I don't know if you remember this and I want to make sure that I remember it right. This was your almost you know it's not I would not call it branding. I would say like a slogan and it was underdog.

Yeah. Where did that come from? That was like 2017 while I was the underdog. Okay. Yeah. Do you still feel like an underdog? 100%. Still. Still. Um exit multiple businesses, real estate investments, beautiful wife and children, fantastic office. You're successful. Why do you still feel like an underdog?

I still feel like there's I still feel the chip on my shoulder to prove a point to myself about about why I decided to do any of this stuff in the first place. like um when the COO at Cardone told me like you know you're never going to make more money anywhere else like I eclipsed that a couple years ago so it's it's not really got that weight on you it's like I got to hit this number um but now it's like dude I have to like transcend the doubt that that that anyone has ever put on me and I have to be I have to cast a shadow on the negativity ity and on the the doubt that other people have on me so that it's so dark that nobody nobody can even see that doubt. There will be no doubt as to who the most authentic, realist, and truly best person is in my space. I'm not I'm not trying to, hey man, let let's make let's make a little bit of money this year. The money's cool right now. The mission is to cast a shadow on all the doubt, all the haters, and I still have hundreds of screenshots in my phone from all the people back in the day that said I was never going to be [ __ ]

Wow. I remember Patrick David telling me, you know, you have to choose your enemy wisely. I read that book. Yeah. Great book. Great book. Right. And one of the things they like I was reading, I'm like, you know what? Who are the enemies? What are the enemies? And is the enemies is those screenshots? Is the voice of the CEO telling you that you're never going to make those that much money. What is the biggest enemy you have today that you want to conquer? What or who that is? You don't have to name the publicly their name, but like what have they done to be able to say, you know what, wait till you see.

Biggest enemy I have today split between like two entities. One is I had this teacher in high school that he kind of called me out in English class and it w it wasn't like a reachable target like oh you'll never make this type of money before. It was you'll never make much out of yourself. Yeah. And I kind of see that I've made something of myself so far. But is it much? Like what's his definition? And then how does that align itself with my definition? So it's kind of this it doesn't really matter how good things get or what I accomplish. Like have I it can I call Mr. Flag back and be like, "Hey bro, like did I do it?" Yeah. You know, like so it's it's kind of this super general it moving goalpost type of thing. Uh, but the main thing for me, my enemy is time. When I got sued, I lost the ability to do what I believe I'm best at and the thing that I learned to truly love. Like, dude, you could give me the worst deck of cards right now in the world, and I will literally go into that desk, and I will live there, sleep there, eat there, piss there, do everything there, and it won't feel like anything to me, right? uh because I love doing what I'm doing. And so the the the main main main enemy is like, dude, I lost three years of my life. I'm three years behind you, bro. Like for for 942 days. I had to log on to Instagram and I know you went through your own channel, no doubt. But I got to see you like, you know, with you know, whatever it was, four guys, but he had the champagne bottle. I'm like, yeah, man. [ __ ] this guy, bro. Like he can do that. and I I I can't do it. And so that's my main thing is I just I have like a vandetta on like I have to create out of thin air 3 years of extra time. But no matter how many times I do that, that three years is still gone. So I'm constantly trying to make up for that three years of um just inability to do the thing that I'm doing. But the main thing that I operate from is gratitude to do the thing that I'm doing.

Wow. There's a lot of people that wake up every single day, every single day that literally like go into a job that they hate. Yeah. Or are in a relationship they don't like or whatever. And like, dude, I would rather die than be one of those people because I know what it's like to have to do something I don't want to do because I don't even have the freedom to do the thing that I want to do. So, every single day on my worst days, bro, I'm like, [ __ ] this is better than doing this is better doing that thing that I had to do.

I agree. So, just I operate from a lot of gratitude versus, you know, enemies. But again, there are some enemies and I'm sure a lot of you guys can name them.

May I throw a different perspective? For sure. Okay. For you as a as as a friend, someone that knows your story, understands your story, been through similar things. Why did you move back? How did you meet your wife?

Oh, that's a great question. I um I moved back to Wisconsin in 2018. Uhhuh. because I kind of ran out of money. I didn't have any friends left in Miami. The relationship that I had got toxic because that was kind of like one of those like money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course. And um so I just I packed up my U-Haul, came to Wisconsin, and I kind of promised to myself I was like, "Dude, I'm I'm not I'm not meeting anybody for a long time. Like I'm good. I just got my ass kicked." Uh but sure enough, like three weeks here, you know, I I go out to a bar with one of my buddies and um he's like kind of the one of the guys to know around town in Milwaukee or whatever and um we go out to watch like a Packer game and eat some wings and like we walk up to these two girls and I just I saw my who's my wife now. I was like, "Bro, who was that?" He's like, "Oh, that that's just Marian." And I was like just, you know, I almost blasted him in the face right there for like, you know, and literally I followed her out of that bar. I went to the next place that she went to. Kind of insane. Creative follow-up. Like I'm like, "Oh yeah, tap me out, bro. Like I need to go to catch up." And um and then I followed her to the next place. And then I finally I literally just pulled up a chair. I'm like, "Hi. I just moved back here from Miami." She's like, "For real? Me, too." I was like, "Shut your mouth." I was like, "How long ago?" She's like, "Oh, like three months ago." I was like, "Two months a like, where did you live?" I mean, if you meet somebody from Miami that you just left Miami and like you've never met, you meet in Milwaukee, like you're going to be hanging out for a while.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, technically, this how we met is in a bar, which is, I mean, the most cliche Wisconsin thing to say. You have a beautiful family. I love my family. Yeah. Beautiful. I mean, and I'm even talking like seeing how your parents are involved with the church, your girls. I mean, what you just did took them to Disney World. I mean, that's just fantastic. I mean, that's every the father's dream to be able to say, "Let's go Saturday. We're going to freaking Disney World, right?"

What if this whole lawsuit, this whole thing happened because you were meant to meet your wife and bring those two beautiful girls here? Without a doubt. Here's here's here's the perspective. Grant didn't sue me. God sued me. Yeah. And I'm not gonna get all preachy preachy on anybody or tell you what to believe or anything. You could say the universe sued me. Whatever you want. Insert your belief here. Um, when I left that office, you know, dude, I you know, I thought I was hot [ __ ] you know, I thought I was the next best thing since sliced bread and, you know, warm chocolate cookies. Like, I I was untouchable. And, um, honestly, I was I I was getting to a point of looking down at people that had less. Um, and then I got my ass whooped and went right back, way past them, way less than them. And uh to be perfectly clear y'all, when I say like I went way down past like them, I'm talking about like I started this business on July 1st, 2020 with $117,000 worth of debt. That's what I owed my attorney still from the lawsuit. I had $800 in the bank account and like no customer like no like so like I'm humble.

Yeah. I the success that I do have right now and the growth that I have experienced is something that just I feel very grateful for because I know that God can pull the rug at any time. But to answer your question 100% I believe that a lot of this was God's path of putting me back into a place where I could oh yeah find this life and I am eternally grateful for it.

That's right. You know, there's a quote that I dedicate to you and that is the rock bottom became the foundation that I built my massive success on 100%. And you've been there, you love there, you said, you know what, I'm comfortable here and I'll build from here.

Oh, so yeah, Jordan, thank you so much for being on the show. We appreciate you. Great story, amazing lessons, and we'll do this again when you Connecticut. It's been a great chat. Thank you. [Music]