Transcription
The first time I heard about you was when you and Cardone started doing stuff together. Then from there, I saw the Dana stuff, and then you and I met at the UFC thing and we started talking. Earlier today, when the guys and I were doing final prep for the podcast, we went on the 10x Health website, and when I thought about health, I thought about you. I don't think I see Cardone as a health guy; I see him as a real estate guy. I think of you as a health guy. And I saw what's going on recently with you—what happened between the two of you. It's so sad. My wife and I, like so many other business owners, were completely duped by Grant and his partner, Brandon Dawson. They built an industry on creating the hope that you can be successful in business by doing his real estate courses or by allowing Cardone Ventures—they have an entity called Cardone Ventures—supposedly, they're professionals at business scaling. They're actually kind of professionals at business scamming.
When we got into business with them, my wife and I started a company called Streamline Medical Group. We started it because we wanted to make an impact on humanity and really wanted to shift what was going on in modern medicine. We treated Grant Cardone; he had a great experience with us. Then he said he was going to buy us and blow our business up; we were going to scale to the moon. What we realized was that really what they wanted to do was take over our business. Now, look, I take responsibility for this because I signed a really bad contract with some really bad people. I didn't know at the time because I was this wide-eyed entrepreneur, and I wanted to make this huge impact on humanity. Brandon Dawson and Grant were talking about building a billion-dollar company. We scaled all of these companies—it turned out to be complete nonsense. Essentially, what they did was they paid us nothing for the company. They strung the payouts out over about three years. We got a quarter of a million dollars at the closing, which we were then forced to put into Cardone Capital. We put it into Cardone Capital before Grant Cardone told me that he was under investigation by the feds—a two-year criminal investigation was underway at Cardone Capital. We put the money in when Grant Cardone knew he was under investigation. He didn't disclose that to us for another two and a half years.
We got into business with them, and you go to these events—they're so intoxicating. There are celebrities on stage, fireworks, and Grant showing you his planes and his oceanfront mansions. Brandon's talking about all these businesses that he's scaled. What you realize is happening is they are selling the dream of success, not success. They built a fee-based company meant to strip fees from these young companies—3 to 8 million dollar companies—strip fees out of these companies, take equity in these companies, promise them that you're going to scale their company but not have any obligation to scale the company. So the entrepreneur is obligated to pay fees; Cardone Ventures is not obligated to scale their business. They put them in these bear trap contracts. As soon as we announced the lawsuit against Cardone Ventures, my law firm got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calls from young entrepreneurs like my wife and I that had been scammed the same way we had been. Essentially, they build this massive dream, but the contracts don't reflect what they're promising you. Because you're so intoxicated by this dream of a billion-dollar company and changing thousands of lives, you sign these agreements because they seem like great people. Then all of a sudden, you realize that you've not just sold your company, you've sold your soul, and they want to control every word you say.
I went on The Joe Rogan podcast in November of 2023. Coming out of that podcast, we did 20,000 genetic tests and did 17 million that month in revenue. Brandon Dawson and Cardone Ventures sent me a cease and desist because I wore the wrong t-shirt and didn't use an affiliate link that would drive all those leads into the system that would turn them into other courses. My objective when we started was not to pay your company fees to build your business; my objective was to get this information to the masses. What they did behind our back was the most sinister thing that happened, and this is all in our lawsuits, so I'm not defaming them. My wife, Sage, and I were partners with Grant and Brandon. We were killing it in the genetic testing market. I believed in the gene test; I believed in the supplements. It took me two and a half years to formulate the supplement that we used to fix these genetic breaks, and tens of thousands—in fact, hundreds of thousands—of people were benefiting from it. We were really addressing the masses; we were killing it; we were doing 17 million a month in revenue; we were doing 20,000 new gene tests; we couldn't even keep inventory on the shelves.
Then, without telling us, they went out and bought a company outside of our company. They bought a genetic testing lab in Austria; they bought a manufacturer of supplements in Austria. Without telling us—because Brandon Dawson was the CEO of both companies, the company he was partnered with my wife and I and Cardone Ventures—he forced 10x Health to do business with the company that he bought outside of our 10x Health company. He forced us to do business with this company halfway around the world. We didn't realize when he was pitching it to us why he was so insistent that we start taking patients' DNA that we were testing in the United States and ship it halfway around the world. So now we do a cheek swab in the US; they ship your DNA to Austria; it gets run in a lab in Austria; then they make your supplements in Austria and ship your supplements back from Austria back to the United States. When he presented us with this new genetic test, I couldn't understand why he was pushing it so hard. I said, "Brandon, this genetic test is terrible. First of all, the gene snips in the tests we do in the United States are not even matching the genetic results you're getting overseas. We're shipping supplements from halfway around the world through customs; they're getting trapped in customs and getting sent back. We're not even telling the people here that we're sending their DNA outside of the country." They would put DNA swabs in refrigerators for weeks before they would even ship it overseas. The supplements were wildly underdosed. My wife had panic attacks; I had massive headaches and got acid reflux from them. A lot of the compounds hadn't been tested on humans yet or in human trials.
We got to the point where we said, "Look, I'm not going to sell this test. You've taken the successful genetic test and supplements that's helping hundreds of thousands of people, and now you're doubling the price of the genetic test—you're taking it from $600 to $1,200—you're quadrupling the price of these supplements—it's $300 a month, and you have to buy three months, so it's $900 out of pocket for the average family, which means a family of four is out of pocket $20,000 to do a simple genetic test, which you could take your gene results and run it through ChatGPT and get the exact same results." I'll tell you right now, if you have a genetic test you've done anywhere in the world, run it through ChatGPT, and it'll tell you what supplements to take. It's perfectly accurate. I'll put a link to how to do it on ChatGPT for free. So now we have a genetic test that's doubled in price, quadrupled in supplements, supplements that haven't been tested, cheek swabs we're sending halfway around the world, and then bang, the shoe dropped. We found out they went out and spent seven million—which they took out of 10x Health in the form of a distribution—bought a company outside of it and shoved that company down our throats. I said, "I'm not selling this genetic test," and they said, "If you don't sell this genetic test, we'll terminate you," and they kept their word; they terminated me and my wife in a company that we sold our primary residence to start. We didn't do everything perfectly, and they put $250,000 in our pocket to buy this company, which I immediately put into Cardone Capital, so we never took any money off the table. When the company started making money, they stripped $9 million out in distributions to themselves, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in totally unnecessary fees because Cardone Ventures, which owned 82% of our company, has this thing called the strategic business unit, which is a bunch of untrained young entrepreneurs with no specific expertise in the area of business that they sell services in. Even though they owned 82% of our company, they still charged massive fees every month, which they paid to themselves to scale our business. Our business wasn't scaling because of the strategic business unit; our business was scaling because the message was resonating.
You don't think he… so when you're saying 17 million that one month is of that business that they owned 82% of that business—$7 million in a month—wow, that's pretty explosive. So you don't think that 10x brand and Cardone promoting and talking about it helped get it off the ground? It helped me a lot. I mean, I never… first of all, I owe a debt of gratitude to Grant Cardone for even taking the risk of saying that he wanted to partner with our company. I don't take that away from him at all. In fact, a lot of my issues are not with Grant. I think Brandon Dawson, his partner, is going to be the downfall of the entire organization. You and Grant are good; you don't have issues with Grant? I don't have real issues with Grant. He's got a few issues with me because I left. Basically, they said, "Either sell this test or we terminate you," and I said, "I'm not selling the test. I am not going to use my reputation to shove this thing down the throat of patients that I care about." Some of the clinicians that have been in my business since we started that business, some of the employees that are there, some of the practicing clinicians, are some of the best people in the entire world. You want to hear something amazing? So they… what is that, Rob? They're now launching… so on January 4th… I have The Ultimate Human, it's my podcast… they went out on January 4th and bought UltimateHuman.com. I have The Ultimate Human; they bought UltimateHuman.com, and now they're launching Ultimate Human Analysis. The 10x brand has been so damaged and so destroyed… and it had… look at that—see any similarity between that logo and this logo? That's Cardone Ventures. Are you serious? Cardone Ventures, you joking or are you serious? I wish I was joking. They just started this. Yeah, so Brandon Dawson went out, while I was his business partner in March of 2024—while we were still business partners, while Sage and I were running our podcast and feeding leads to 10x Health and boosting 10x Health—Brandon Dawson went out and bought a trademark from a doctor, a trademark called Ultimate Human Analysis. Never even told us; we found out he bought the trademark a few months later. He goes, "Oh, I bought this trademark to protect you guys," and we're like, "Well, why would you buy an Ultimate Human trademark? I've got The Ultimate Human podcast." He goes, "Yeah, I bought it to protect you guys." So he went out and bought this trademark, sat on it. I sued him on the 26th of December; on the 28th of December, he went out and bought, in the name of that trademark, he bought the social media domains Ultimate Human Analysis. Then, on January 4th, a few weeks into our lawsuit, he bought UltimateHuman.com, and now he's starting Ultimate Human Community, The Ultimate Human. Look at the font, look at the coloring, look at the letters. The brand has been so tarnished that Grant and Brandon just dropped the 10x brand like a stone, and now they're chasing, you know, obviously, the Ultimate Human brand. We'll see how it goes, but it's just a sad story, man, because I really believed what those guys said; I believed what I heard from the stage. It was a horrible experience.
At the time where we knew we could no longer do business with them, I told Grant we wanted out, and he said, "I don't even like the space anyway; why don't you guys make me an offer to buy my shares?" So my wife and I ran around Wall Street trying to raise money. We raised about $75 million, and I asked Grant to play backgammon one night, and I went up there and said, "Look, we need to have a divorce. I don't want it to be a public divorce; I don't want to hurt the patients; I don't want to hurt the clients; I certainly don't want to hurt the employees that were with me from the beginning—these clinicians that have been with me from the beginning, some of the most intentional good people, really good practitioners, are still on the deck of that ship." And I made him an offer; he seemed excited about the offer. He went to his partner, Brandon Dawson; Brandon was like, "Absolutely not." Scary, trying to steal the business. I said, "Look, just so that you know that this is an honest offer, I will not only pay you this valuation for your shares, but you can also buy my wife and I out at the same valuation." Oh, it's either we do it to you or you do it to us. I'll either buy your 82% out at this valuation—at the time, I offered them 65%; they could buy at the $75 million valuation, a $65 million valuation—so they could buy me, my 18%, and have the entire company, or we would buy their majority interest. They said, "It's too little for you to buy our shares and it's too much for us to buy your shares." So, in other words, we don't think you're giving us enough money, but that valuation would be too much for your shares. So they forced us to stay in a loveless marriage, and then they wanted us to sell this abject failure of a gene test, which they know doesn't work. They try to hire celebrities and influencers to shove this test down people's throats. The market is picking up on the inauthenticity of the messaging because the intention, when it becomes solely to make money and not to help people with their well-being, the rate of collapse was just cataclysmic.
I thought you guys were… because this business is… it's not a business I'm interested in getting into because there are too many technicalities to it, and I leave it to the experts to do what they want to do with this. Trust me, like we have a lot… right now we have a guy that wants to do a big sponsorship for one of our events, and I cannot tell you how many questions we're asking before we take sponsorship money. We don't even take sponsorship money the last 18 months; we gave away $6 million because we're just not doing it on the podcast because of that specific reason. But I thought for sure you guys were going to work together for many years and do great things, and it's unfortunate to hear because I think his strength of marketing and just driving and your ability to go out there and present—you come across very likable, trusting. You just said sometimes I've made mistakes when I said this. Oh, I've definitely made mistakes. No, but what I'm saying is… all I'm saying is your approach gets me and others to say, "Okay, I'm willing to give this guy a shot and listen to him," especially if somebody doesn't know who you are, they haven't spent time with you. But I thought you guys were going to do big things together; it's unfortunate what happened. Here's the thing: we were doing big things together; what we were doing was working. It was the incessant level of greed. They said, "We're going to take what's actually really working, what's scaling, and what is helping the masses, and we're going to go… we're going to buy a new company for ourselves; we're going to hold it for ourselves; and we're going to force all of this… this steel flow… that all of these people that are coming into the funnel… that were largely coming from like the podcast and stage talks and everything else… and yes, I will say Grant Cardone did a lot to elevate my awareness, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for that, but then greed just takes over, and you say, 'Well, we're making 17 million a month; we could make 50 million a month if we double the price of the test, if we own the genetics company, if we owned the supplements, if we quadrupled the price of the monthly supplements,' and people… and Gary will just shove it down their throat. Then they ran into a brick wall. I said, "Listen, man, you bought our company; you didn't buy our soul," and it's sad because I want to go back out in the market and help people. I've got 21 more months on my non-compete, so I've got to sit quiet in the United States before I can really get back to what I love to do, so I have to go outside the United States to do it while we see how the lawsuit plays out. But it is what it is. All the best to both of you guys. I'm sure Grant's going to do well. I always say Grant and I… we had a friendship many years ago, and we… we had a falling out after I did an interview with somebody who wasn't too happy about it, and we didn't keep in contact. I think we spoke one time and visited one time in the last six or seven years, and it was a great conversation to see what he wants to do next. But when I watch him, his wife, and his daughters—you can say whatever you want to say—they love their father and husband; you got to respect that. He is a great dad. I actually spent a lot of time around him, and ironically, even Elena, that I'm suing right now… and they're great parents. You know, behind closed doors, when I would spend time at their house, they're very intentional with their kids. You see a lot of things on social media, but behind the scenes, he actually is a very good dad, and Elena is a good mother, too. They really care about their daughters, and they're intentional about the way they're raising them; they spend a lot of time with them. You go over to a lot of wealthy people's houses, and the kids are always tucked away somewhere with the nanny; it's not like that. I just unfortunately think that there's an incessant level of greed. I think there's good and evil in every person, right? Unfortunately, that happens in families, that happens in businesses, that happens in siblings… that happens… you try to do everything… and a lot of times… you know what I've learned? I'm a big fan of prenuptial agreements, and a lot of people are like, "Why would you want to do that?" I'm eliminating future arguments where, if we can put it on paper… at first, you're kind of like, "But we love each other; we don't need to do this; we don't need to do this," just put it on paper—what if this happens, you do this; what if that happens, we do this; what if this happens, you do this. Okay, any relationship—business or family—whatever—the more things are documented on a piece of paper to agree on… my wife and I, first or second date, I bought her a book, 101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged, why… we talked about so many different things—how we raise our kids, how many kids I want to have, financially, who manages the finances, how many days can you go without me being on the road, the faith, the politics. It was such a great exercise. I bought a few thousand copies and gave them away to all my single guys on my team. Like, "Guys, read this." I cannot tell you how many… and eventually, I'm going to read it even though I'm married; I have a great marriage. It's an unbelievable book that every young man and woman… by the way, the whole book is literally just 101 questions; there's nothing in the book; it's a question page, question page. I had one for business, and I could have read it before I got into business with Cardone Ventures. By the way, you know what? That's actually… Rob, can you text me that idea? It's actually very good to say, "101 Questions to Ask Before You Get into Business With Someone." I would actually entertain writing a book like that. I would read… can you put… can you text me for that? I think that would be something that we ought to consider because a lot of people think about it that way. But if you go through… a guy messages me, says, "Hey, I'm thinking about going through with this partnership, and we're going to do it this way, and if after a year we do this, we're going to merge the two companies together." I'm like, "Dude, I've got 20 questions for you: what's going to happen with this? What if the other person stops working? What's the arrangement to buy back? How are you going to evaluate the company to buy it back? If the person says no, they don't want to buy it back, does it trigger something for you to be able to sell it? Do they have to go out…" Every one of these things… if I don't do it upfront… if you don't do it upfront, we're a little bit guilty. You know what? My wife took everything I had, really. Yeah, and you were worth 50 million before you got married. Yes, and you didn't put a pre-nuptial agreement? No. You deserve it. Yeah, I… I… you know, I do bear a lot of that responsibility myself. Looking back, I was so caught up in the dream, and there was a fear that we didn't know how to scale the business; there was the hope that we could build this into something massive. You were the brand. I thought of you as the brand. So for me, you're the WNC. Yeah, you're the product. Jobs without Wozniak, Jobs without WNC doesn't have Macintosh, doesn't have Apple, doesn't have the product. You know, we… the consumers watched you for… here's what he's talking about—very interesting guy. I'm going to try that. Very interesting; I'm going to try this. Oh, really, Dana? I'm going to try this. Well, I never thought about it; I'm going to try this. Right, so that's the part… when a businessman… it's… it's… it's… yeah, you know… the saying goes, "When a man with experience meets a man with money, the man with the money…" Let's just say, "The man with experience meets a man with money." SL idea. Okay. Mhm. "The man with the money leaves with the experience; the man with the experience leaves with the money and the idea." Did you get it? So that's kind of how this works out. The guy with experience knows because he's been through this a million times. The guy with the idea or the money is like, "I'm just so excited to do something like this." It's purely coming from an enthusiasm place; it's innocent; it's beautiful; it's… you know… so but if those two can find a way to make it work… yeah, no, when we were together, it was amazing. And you know, we both had the same mission; we wanted to help the masses; we wanted it to be affordable; we wanted it to be scalable, and it was scaling, and it was… but then the podcast… you know, The Ultimate Human podcast became so popular… they just constantly cease and desist… you know, were upset I was talking about hydrogen water or talking about amino acids. I was like, "Guys, the only way to get to optimal health is not just our supplements or just our red bed or just our gene test; we have to be authentic when we deliver this information to people." I mean, if you go back and listen to this podcast, probably 85% of what I said is not going to cost people much of anything, and if it does, you're not even buying it from me. And I believe that the authenticity of the message makes an impact because you can educate people, but if you don't inspire them to make some kind of change, you really haven't done much of anything. And it's… you know… it's really sad because it was working, and I think just the incessant level of greed, and then, you know, once this lawsuit became public, we opened this hotline for people to call, and it's just absolutely ringing off the hook. I mean, our lawyers are deluged with people that have the exact same experience as my wife and I. I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of businesses, families, relationships ruined because they believed in what was being told to them from the stage by Cardone Ventures in these intoxicating environments; they signed these agreements, and then they got absolutely crushed. It's a shame.
Well, something tells me you're going to do fine, and something tells me they're going to do fine. I think… sometimes… I hope so. I mean, I really hope that the company… you… I think you… I think you're going to do fine. I think… for you to be out there talking… there's a market that wants to hear what you have to say, nowadays more than ever. The brand you wear reflects and represents who you are. So for us, if you wear a Future Looks Bright hat or Valuetainment gear, you're telling the world, "I'm optimistic; I'm excited about what's going to be happening, but you're a free thinker; you question things; you like debate." By the way, last year, 120,000 people got a piece of Future Looks Bright gear or Valuetainment. We have so many new things; the cufflinks are here; new Future Looks Bright… this is my favorite, the green one… just yesterday somebody placed an order for a hundred of these. If you watch the PBD podcast, you got a bunch to choose from—white ones, black ones. I… if you… if you smoke cigars and you come to our cigar lounge, we have this high-quality lighter, cutter, and a holder for the cigars. We got sweaters with the VMENT logo on it; we got mugs; we got a bunch of different things. But if you believe the future looks bright, if you follow our content and what we represent with Valuetainment, with the PBD podcast, go to VTmerch.com. And by the way, if you order right now, there's going to be a special VT gift inside just for you. So again, go to VTmerch.com, place your order, tell the world that you believe the future looks bright. If you enjoy this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here, and if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here. [Music]