Everything I Learned At Grant Cardone's Private Event

Welcome to the Ryan Pineda Show, where our mission is to invest, innovate, and inspire. I only expect to make money in things that I understand. It's about believing in the future and thinking about what the future will be rather than the past. I am much more likely to hit my goal just due to putting it out there. You're now rocking with the best!

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Ryan Pineda Show. Today, I've got a solo podcast, and I don't even remember the last time I did one. The reason I'm doing this is because I recently went to a private event at Grant Cardone's office, and it was literally the best event I've ever been to in my entire life. I documented it on Instagram, and so many people were like, "Hey Ryan, can you please just do a podcast about the things you learned?"

I'm not one to blow smoke and claim everything's the best. I said on Instagram, "This was literally the best event I've ever been to." I am dumbfounded by just how little I actually know compared to Grant and other things, and it lit a fire under me. We are making major changes to my business. So, I said, "You know what? I'm going to review my notes." I've got my notebook right here, and I'm just going to go through it.

It's going to be a ramble of a bunch of different things, and I'm going to go in-depth on what stood out to me that Grant and the other speakers said. I think you guys are going to get a ton of value out of this. I would say this is probably going to be my most valuable podcast, so you probably want to watch it again at some point.

To set some context before I go into my notes about what this event was, my good buddy Pete Vargas and I are in a Christian Bible study together. He said, "Hey, Grant's going to hold this private event. He's in charge of running all of Grant's events, and it's going to be at his office in Miami. It's going to be for three days, invite-only. Grant's not selling anything; there's no cost to the event. It's literally just an invite-only thing. Grant wants to give value and talk about some things he's got going on."

I said, "Okay, I'm down. I don't even know what we're going to talk about or who's going to be there, but I'm in." So, I ended up flying to his office, and there were probably, man, if I had to guess, 60 people there. The majority of them were really high-level business people that maybe weren't so well-known on social media. A lot of these guys were doing big money—30, 40, 50 million dollars a year in revenue. I had never heard of them before, and they were just really crushing it in business.

There were some other guys who were pretty big on social media, and it was just literally the best mix of people that I've been a part of in a group. I learned a ton from these guys outside of the event networking things. We were all staying at the same hotel. Grant rented this giant yacht that cost like $150,000 for the night, and everybody was hanging out, exchanging ideas, all that stuff.

There were dinners and lunches, and we just got a lot of time to network with all of the attendees. It was super cool because I learned a ton from those people outside of the event. During the event, it was two days at Cardone's office, and there was just so much value. I think Grant probably, within the two days, talked at the front and did Q&A for at least six or seven hours. He was there the whole time.

When he wasn't speaking, he was just sitting in the crowd taking notes himself, learning from the people he had on stage. Plus, a lot of the people at the event were actually sharing things that were working for them, so he was a student even a part of this as well, which is really the definition of a mastermind.

I talk about masterminds and why they're so important. It's not always about just the face of the mastermind—in this case, Grant presenting and giving value. That is one element, but when you get a room of high-level people together, there's lots to learn even when you're the face. I know this is true at my own masterminds for Future Flipper. I totally learn from my students and the people that attend all the time.

It was really cool to see Grant doing that. I mean, Grant doesn't have to do any of this. The dude's a billionaire; he's accomplished almost everything you can accomplish in business and social media. But to see him still being a student of the game, you know, well into his 60s now, is pretty crazy.

I learned a ton. We got to ride Grant's helicopter all over Miami. We got to go on the yacht, like I said. We got to see his entire office and operation, see his staff, go see all the different departments of 10X, and overall, it was just crazy. I got a ton of value out of it.

You might be thinking at this point, "What's the catch? Why were you even at the event? What was the purpose of it?" I was debating if I should just save that to the end to keep you guys on a cliffhanger, but I'll just tell you. One of the reasons—there are a few reasons, really.

One would be Cardone Capital. A lot of these big business people need a place to put their money, and Cardone Capital makes sense. Two was Cardone Ventures. I would say this was probably the main reason. They're essentially trying to acquire businesses and get them under the Cardone Enterprises umbrella, and they made really good arguments of why it would make sense, even for a guy like me, to potentially sell one of my companies and go under the Cardone Ventures brand.

The third reason is he's going to be holding a huge event. I can't say much about it because it hasn't gone public yet, but there's going to be a huge event that he would like guys like me to talk about and affiliate with. I'm going to be more than happy to do that. If you follow me for a long time, I don't affiliate with anybody else's stuff really at all. I talk about my own businesses because I can control them, and talking about my own stuff makes me a lot more money than talking about somebody else's business.

But I felt like this event was so good that I just owe it to Grant to promote his event, even though financially it really wouldn't make that much sense. I think the event is going to really change a lot of people's lives. I don't have any details on that today; I wish I did because I'm sure a bunch of you guys would go buy it right now. But stay on the lookout for that because it's going to be huge, and it's going to be early next year. That is all I can really say about that event.

Now that you know the context of this, let me dive into some notes. I'll just say I am not a note-taker. I go to events every month, really many of them because I'm speaking at them. My typical thing I do at events—I'm not proud of—but is I go, I usually golf in the morning, I don't even attend the morning session, and then I maybe come for the end and then I hang out at the parties and network and stuff.

That's really kind of why I go to events, just because a lot of times I've heard a lot of these speakers and things a million times. For me, sitting there in the seminar isn't getting a ton of value. The value for me at a lot of these events is speaking on stage and getting exposure that way, but also talking to people during these networking events because those are people that I can do business with. I enjoy it; I can learn from them if I build a good relationship with a certain person.

That's my normal event routine, but with this event, I didn't really know what to expect. Like I said, Pete Vargas texted me and just kind of said, "Show up and see what happens." I said, "Okay, I'll go." The moment Grant got on in front of everyone and started talking, I didn't even have my notebook out or anything. I was just going to sit there and listen like I do at every event.

He just started saying things that I was like, "Holy crap, that's really smart. I cannot forget that." So, I ripped out my journal, which I wasn't even going to bring. I brought the journal right before I hopped on the flight, thinking, "You know what? I might want to write down some of my thoughts after the fact and see some things I can execute."

I immediately pulled it out once he started talking because there were so many things he was saying, and it was crazy. I'm going to just jump into some of the thoughts. Like I said, they're going to just be bullet point thoughts; that's how I take notes. I'll kind of go into the bullet points that I think are relevant to many people who listen to this podcast. I'm not going to go over everything; this podcast would be like five hours if I did.

So, I'm going to give you kind of the bullet points I think are relevant to you as the viewer. The first thing, man, he said this right at the beginning: "Hey, when you guys find something that works, do it again over and over again."

It's interesting because when I'm creating content or something, I'm always conscious of, "Man, I said that a million times; nobody wants to hear that again." The reality is most people haven't heard you say it a million times; they may have never heard you say it at all. You run a promotion that makes you a lot of money; you build a product that makes you a lot of money. All of a sudden, just go create a new product or a new promotion. You literally just go all in on that ad or promotion that's worked non-stop over and over again until it doesn't work.

A good example for me in this is my TV commercial here in Vegas for buying houses. We started running this TV commercial in like January of 2020, and it's been almost three years now. We literally have never changed the commercial. It is the same exact commercial for three years straight. We've put millions of dollars behind that commercial, and it still crushes.

I remember asking my ads guy, "Hey, do you think we should change the commercial? People have seen it a thousand times." He was like, "Until it doesn't generate leads and produce the results we want, we're not changing it." Essentially, Grant's saying the same thing: when you find a winner and you find what works, do not worry about whether people have seen it or your perception. Just do it over and over again.

Later on, he reiterated that point, basically saying that nobody has seen your ad; nobody has seen your piece of content. Assume nobody ever saw it. You and your mind know that you've made it a bunch of times, but assume nobody else has seen it. It's just true. I don't need to reinvent the wheel with content. There are going to be so many things that I need to say over and over again because more than likely, nobody ever saw the first one.

That's the reality. I might get bored talking about it over and over again, but at the end of the day, if you're trying to get results in your business or your personal brand or your social media or whatever, just do the right things over and over again until they stop working. So, that was a big takeaway.

He also said, "At the end of the day, you cannot stay small in anything you do." In fact, he said it is far easier for him to have a large company than it was when he was small. I go, "Wow, that's crazy." I think they said they had like 700 employees across multiple states and all this stuff. You have less stress and more free time with infinitely more going on than when he was just getting started.

It makes sense. I started to think back to my career as a house flipper, and I said, "Man, I was way busier when I had to go find all the deals myself, talk to all the sellers, go do all the construction management, and list it as a realtor." That was a lot of work and a lot of stress for very little.

Now, I look at how much time and effort I put into Home Run Offer and the house flipping game, and I'm like, "Yeah, I don't really do much. The team runs itself, and I just don't even have to worry about it." The time I spend in that company is very minimal.

It's like, yeah, the more we've gotten bigger, the more free time I've gotten because we have the ability to delegate, get A-players, and really try to grow it big. I've seen that play out in basically my entire ecosystem of the Pineda company as we've grown. That was an eye-opener to me, and I'm really excited to know that, okay, things do actually get better as you get bigger. You can't stay small, so something for you guys to think about.

Another thing he talked about was you cannot essentially try to be humble. I want to kind of say this the right way so that people don't say, "Oh, well, Grant's cocky," and "Grant is always just talking crap; he's arrogant," all this stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's what works for his business; that's what gets eyeballs.

He knows by having that more controversial type approach, he's always going to get attention. You look at the best people who get attention; they all do some kind of controversy. It's like Donald Trump became the president because he was so divisive. Grant even said that too. By the way, Grant wants to run for president if anyone didn't know. I don't know when he's going to run, but he wants to run.

He basically said, "Hey, if you want to be the president, 50% of the country has got to hate you." If you don't have people who dislike you a lot, you are never going to get big. It makes sense, man. You cannot just please everybody because if you just stand for nothing, nobody has any reason to follow you.

You've got to have your opinions voiced and all that stuff, but it just kind of goes back down to not trying to be humble and not trying to be politically correct and not offend people. That's not the recipe to grow your business or your brand or anything. Just try to avoid all those things; it doesn't work.

In the end, you should really just do what you believe and really put it out there to the extreme. For Grant, he does that. I personally have been very reluctant to do that. I don't want people to dislike me. I don't want people to whatever. I've just realized being around him and watching these other guys who've gotten really big really fast, it's like, "You know what? Whatever you truly believe, let it be known."

If people don't like it, that's great. People shouldn't agree with everything you do. I think you'll see me—I don't want to say become a lot more controversial because that's not even the intent—but to really let you know how I feel and the things that I believe. There are people that are going to really love it, and there are people that are following me now who really like me who are going to say, "Dude, I don't like that; I'm done following you," and that's totally cool.

Grant says he tries to get people to unsubscribe from his emails. He tries to get people out of his ecosystem because it's going to lead to the people he wants. It makes complete sense. As far as the bragging and stuff goes, I've said this before: for everybody who wants to be humble and not talk about their success and what they're doing, they're not helping themselves at all or their families. They're not helping their business at all.

You've got to brag about your success. If you're crushing it and you're flipping houses and making money, if your business is crushing it and generating all this revenue, your students and clients are having all the success, you should be shouting it from the rooftops about what you do.

He talked about how during COVID, they tried to ease off on the bragging and the persona that he has. His team said, "Hey, Grant, a lot of people are struggling and hurting right now; you should probably tone it down a little bit." So, they did, and they saw that the views, the revenue, the leads—everything just plummeted when he stopped doing that.

Then they saw that when he started doing it again a couple of weeks later, he said, "Dude, I'm not doing this anymore; this is dumb. I'm doing what got us here." All of a sudden, everything spikes back up. In the end, it's like people want to be inspired. They want to see the jet; they want to see the watches, the cars, the apartments, and the checks. They want to see all that stuff because it motivates them.

For me, I've avoided doing that. Honestly, my nature is that I don't want to be always talking about me, me, me and the things that I've accomplished. I always want to give value to the viewer and just train people and help them. But I'm kind of, like I said, I'm not really taking my own advice. I'm doing myself a disservice by not highlighting all the cool things that I do and have.

I bought the Porsche Taycan; I rarely even show it or mention it. I've got the nice watches, but unless somebody else brings it up, I never bring it up. I'm not flexing it, and I think that needs to change. Even though it's uncomfortable for me, I think it's something that I need to do because that will help us get to the next level, and that's just part of it.

That actually leads to another point. I'm kind of going off the notes now because I just have it ingrained in my mind a lot of things he said. He brought up another point: "What are you willing to sacrifice to get to where you want to be?" A lot of things have to be sacrificed.

I give you the example for him and for me. For Grant, he started out as a car sales guy. Eventually, he had to sacrifice being a car sales guy to be like a general sales guy. Then he had to sacrifice that to become a social media influencer. He wanted to be known as a real estate guy, so he sacrificed the whole sales training thing to be more known in real estate.

He even said, "At some point, I'm going to have to sacrifice being an influencer to get to a level I want to get to and become like Blackstone and BlackRock." He said, "Do you know anybody that works there? They don't have a face; they live in the shadows." He's like, "If I want to go sell $50 billion of real estate and be like those guys, then I need to really do what those guys do, and I might have to sacrifice the 10X brand."

I thought that was interesting, and I thought about all the sacrifices I've made along the way to get to where I'm at today. I sacrificed my pride when I started flipping couches. I'm like, "I'll try this; it's freaking weird, but I'm going to do it." So, I start flipping couches, then I realize I want to flip houses, so I stop flipping couches. I make the sacrifice and give up the thing that has made me the most money to this point.

Then, house flipping has success, and I sacrificed my house flipping career to go on social media. I was working full-time in the house flipping business. I was going on appointments, closing deals, making money, and I said, "I'm not doing that anymore; I'm going to focus on social media." The sacrifice was, "Hey, I'm not going to make as much money by being out of the business, and it's going to be a hit."

But I was willing to take that sacrifice because I believed social media was such an important thing. Along the way, I've sacrificed businesses and other things. We built this brokerage, Forever Home Realty, over 200 agents, and I just realized it wasn't scalable. It wasn't going to be a business I could see myself in long term, so we sacrificed a profitable business to do something different.

That ended up becoming The Wealthy Agent, teaching realtors all the things we know about investing, social media, and tax. That business is way more scalable. We shut Forever Home down; our revenue and profits dropped. But now we're at the point where we're making more money now because I was willing to make that sacrifice to get to the next level.

For me, there's going to be a lot of sacrifice as things grow and as my career evolves. Grant mentioned that: "What are you willing to sacrifice to take it to the next level?" It's something everyone should really think about in their life and their business.

If you're listening to this podcast, then my guess is you're interested in real estate investing. Some of you are just starting out, while others are trying to scale their business to the next level. But the problem is, with so much information out there, most people don't know which program or coach to trust.

Well, I'm a bit biased, but I believe my company, Future Flipper, can help you get to the next level. We've coached thousands of students from all over the world on how to build their real estate investing business. It doesn't matter whether you want to flip, wholesale, or buy rentals; our coaching program has everything you need to become a great investor.

There are many things that we include with coaching, but to give you a few examples, you're going to get an accountability coach. These are people that have had success in their own business, and they want to make sure that you achieve success in yours. We also have all of our documents, our systems, and processes that I've used to buy hundreds of homes. You can copy and paste them directly into your own business.

We have events where you get to meet me, top-level guest speakers, and other students who are crushing it. My students do deals with each other, and I personally do deals with them too. In fact, at a recent event, I just honored over 20 people in our program that made over a million dollars in the last year.

So, if you want to grow your real estate business, head over to futureflipper.com and apply for a call with our team. The call is completely free, and they can help point you in the right direction, whether you work with us or not. So, go to futureflipper.com and book your call today.

For the last year, the real estate market has been on absolute fire. Prices are at all-time highs, interest rates are at all-time lows, and there is more money in the economy than ever. But with so much competition, many investors are sitting on cash, struggling to find great deals.

If this sounds like you, then you need to invest with Pineda Capital. With my network and social media following, we get access to the best real estate deals all over the country. If you're an accredited investor, you can invest with me on those deals. In fact, last year, we purchased a 334-unit apartment complex in Georgia for almost $20 million. We expect it to be worth well over $30 million when it's all said and done.

Our goal with each deal is to build in so much equity from the beginning that we're able to refinance, our investors cash out, and own the properties together with little to no money into the deal. The best part is you don't have to do anything. Our team will find the deals, handle the renovations, get them leased, and eventually refinance or sell. All you have to do is provide the capital.

So, if you want exclusive access to our deals before they hit the public, go to pinedacapital.com to schedule a call. We can put your money to work today to start getting you great returns, so go to pinedacapital.com now to get access to our deals.

I underline this one; this was interesting. He said, "Whatever you resent may be an indication of what you should be doing." This is so true. Everybody hates on things and all this stuff, but the reality is the stuff you're hating on is probably because you know you should be doing it.

I remember a lot of people were hating on me for getting on TikTok and all this stuff a couple of years ago, trying to be a YouTuber. They were like, "What's this guy doing?" Sure enough, it worked out, and I see anyone who's in the industry trying to now follow suit. A lot of these guys were haters back then, and they were resenting it because they realized they should have been doing it the whole time.

I've been no different. I was hating on social media guys before I started. I'm like, "Why do these YouTubers get all the clout? They don't even flip as much as me; they're not as good as me, yet they get all the attention and clout." I said, "You know what? I need to not be like that; I should just be doing it."

I've seen that in my life a lot, and in many of the businesses I've started, the things that I've resented are things I know I should be doing. For instance, I've always been a hater of the people showing the flashy cars, the watches, and the jets. But now I realize it's because I know that stuff works, and I should be doing it.

I think I'm above it. I think I'm living by some moral code where it's like, "I shouldn't do that because that's what freaking guru-y." It's really like I know I should be doing it because it works. Regardless of how uncomfortable it may make me, if it gets more people into my ecosystem where we can really help, and it helps me get more eyeballs on the content too, that I know is going to really benefit them or inspire them, I'm doing everyone a disservice by not really embracing it.

Whatever you resent is probably an indication of what you should be doing. That's another thing he talked a lot about—customers and things. I'll talk about this briefly. He says that really the biggest complainers are the people who just never even buy from you. They talk crap on the internet because they've never even bought anything. That's just how it goes.

He also said that if you're making content on social media, your job is to convert your audience into a product or service. It really makes sense. For one, you're obviously putting in all this work and effort and money into putting out the content. Obviously, there needs to be an ROI.

But he said even further, the reason is you cannot provide them a good service if they don't buy from you. If you've been watching my podcast for over a year, you've been watching my social media for years now, and you've never bought anything from me, you can say, "I like Ryan's content," but you've never gotten to experience what we can really do for you in the various companies.

That's his point. It's like, "Dude, unless somebody buys a ticket to 10X GrowthCon or attends one of our events or coaching programs or whatever, they're really not going to get the true benefit of what we have to offer." So, it's our duty as business people, as content creators, as influencers to sell people into our things if we believe that they are the best, which he believes, and I believe everything else.

Think about that for your own business. If you believe your business is that good and everyone should work with you and that you can help people improve their lives, why would you not sell it to the best of your ability? If people think you're too salesy or that you market too much, who cares? They ain't your customers anyway.

Like you said, the biggest complainers are the people who don't buy. I can go talk to everyone in Future Flipper, and the majority of them will say, "Dude, I'm so glad I got in Future Flipper," etc. If they just follow me and watch the free YouTube videos, it will still help them by all means, but they never got to taste the full experience of what they could get.

It's your duty to sell; it's your duty to convert because it is going to help the people watching you, and it's going to help your family, your business, your employees, everything else. That was good.

Another thing he mentioned that I've always mentioned that was interesting is he said, "Hey, marketing is the most important part of this game. It is not sales; it's not creating the best product." I have a common saying that it's not the best product that wins; it's the best marketer. He said the exact same thing.

He goes, "I've seen a lot of great products get destroyed by great marketers." I've seen a lot of great marketers sell a lot of stuff even if their sales game sucked. He was making fun of the MyPillow guy who always has his commercials, and it's like the worst sales pitch ever to sell MyPillow. But you know what? Grant made the joke, "I ended up buying MyPillow. I got tired of seeing his marketing all the time. I was like, 'I have to try it.'"

Sure enough, if you're just in front of people all the time, eventually they'll just buy your stuff because you're just there all the time. You don't even need great sales at that point because you have so many bullets, and you're just ingrained in the customer's mind.

That was really cool to hear him say that because that's something I've always said, but to hear it at a high level is really important. Another thing—okay, and this was probably one of the bigger takeaways I had from the event—was what he talked about was valuations of companies.

A lot of the event was for Cardone Ventures, which they're basically trying to buy businesses or partner with people and bring them under their entire parent company, Cardone Enterprises, and be able to grow that business obviously with their resources—Grant's marketing powers, email lists, their systems, their processes. The business will grow just from Grant's expertise.

For me, that was really all I thought about. "Okay, that makes complete sense. Somebody would definitely love to partner with Grant because they're going to grow the business for sure with his marketing power and his operational expertise." But the part I didn't realize why it was so important was because now being in his ecosystem, the multiple of your company goes up tremendously.

For instance, just to give a clear example, a normal company—I don't even say a normal company, but let's just say it's like a $10 million a year revenue company. Maybe you get anywhere from 2 to 5x EBITDA on your multiple. If this company nets $3 million a year, there's probably a buyer that might be willing to pay $10 to $15 million for your company, assuming you meet these criteria.

That's really good if you want to sell, and that's all fine and dandy. But Grant's point is the moment you come into his ecosystem, it becomes not a 3 to 5x anymore because now you're a part of a company that's doing over $100 million a year in revenue that owns billions of dollars in real estate. You're getting a totally different multiple now because you're attractive to Wall Street.

For somebody to go buy a company that makes a million dollars a year, it's probably just like some random mom-and-pop. A $10 million company might be like a smaller type firm. I'm not super into this; this is all new to me too, so I'm just putting it out there. Correct me if I'm wrong in any of the comments, but based on what Grant's saying and things I've just heard from guys like Alex Hormozi and everyone else, the smaller you are, the less multiple you're going to get because there's just less interested buyers.

But once you get into a big umbrella of companies that are doing big numbers, now Wall Street's interested, and now they're going to pay a crazy multiple. You might get 10 to 20x on the multiple because you're now just a part of this umbrella where they would look at acquiring Cardone Enterprises and all the companies within it. They're going to pay way higher because they can just make this purchase in bulk.

It's a big enough deal for them, and they've got this diversified set of companies now. It never occurred to me that this is what big companies do. This is what Warren Buffett has done with Berkshire Hathaway. He's got Coca-Cola; he's got, I think, Apple; he's got a bunch of companies in this portfolio. You look at Blackstone; Blackstone's the same thing. They own so many different things, and that's what gives Blackstone the parent company value.

This is clearly what Grant Cardone is trying to do. He is trying to acquire a bunch of companies into his entire ecosystem to build up the overall value of his parent company. He can then go public or sell it or whatever else, and all the companies he ends up bringing in benefit tremendously.

If that company by itself—let's just take the $10 million example—maybe they get a 5x EBITDA. Okay, and they're at $10 million. The moment they join Cardone, a couple of things happen. You get his marketing power, all that stuff. All of a sudden, just by doing nothing, the $10 million turns into, call it, $30, even $50 million just by adding his marketing power and everything else.

You're thinking, "That's great from the bottom line perspective and how much money you're making this year." But the real benefit is down the road. Now this company is going to get 10 to 20x EBITDA. Last year, you were a $10 million company; maybe somebody was willing to pay you $10 million for it. But now you're doing $50 million, and you're getting a way higher multiple because in the event the parent company goes public or sells, you're included in that giant acquisition or whatever it is.

If you're at $50 million, you might end up being a half a billion dollar company now by joining in the ecosystem. It all kind of clicked for me when I heard it. I said, "Wow, that is super smart. I understand why somebody would want to join."

Even if you're a guy like me who's built up a company and you know you own 100%, it still would make sense to join Grant and have his marketing power and all those things I just mentioned. It makes a lot of sense.

That was the biggest takeaway I had with everything. But here's what I'll say: I personally did not even realize I was doing this with my own parent company, the Pineda Company. I did not realize this entire time as I've been starting up all these different companies that I was building my own little Blackstone, Berkshire—a portfolio of companies that I own, and we're building them up all simultaneously.

I always looked at it from the surface level point of the business where it's like, "Hey, somebody who joins Future Flipper definitely needs tax." We can definitely monetize in multiple ways with these different companies. I always thought about it from the surface level, but the reality is if all of the revenues go up and the Pineda Company becomes this company that does over $100 million in revenue, all of a sudden now a tax company that might not be worth much more than 2 to 3x EBITDA is all of a sudden now going to be worth way more in the event the Pineda Company wants to go public or sell or whatever else.

I told him I had a huge meeting with my co's for a few hours just detailing everything I learned and why this is so important. It's like, "Yeah, the success of every company is so vital to each other, not just from how many customers interact between companies but for the overall valuation of the corporation." I was like, "Wow, I unknowingly have been doing this for the reasons I now understand."

It was just an epiphany to see, "Okay, yeah, Berkshire, Grant, Blackstone." You even see a guy like Alex Hormozi, who I mentioned earlier, is doing the same thing. He's trying to build this portfolio of companies under Acquisition.com that he can basically take with him to a big exit. I'm like, "It makes sense; I get what they're all doing now."

The only difference, I guess, for me is that I've started up all my companies; I haven't been trying to acquire other companies. But I know that it is something that eventually I'll end up doing because, like what Grant does with his, I'll be able to offer that same thing: "Hey, come in our ecosystem; we can integrate you with all of our other verticals."

Right now, business is going to do well regardless, but also, in the event we want to go take this thing public or whatever, there's going to be a way bigger payday for you than it otherwise would have been by yourself. I think it becomes now an easy pitch to go acquire companies with even where we're at today.

I'm sure some of you guys watching this right now are like, "Dude, I want to join; how do I get in?" This is not even meant to be a sales pitch, but we don't even have a process for it. I guess just email me at ryanpineda.com if you're interested in something like that and think you have a company that might be a fit.

Anyways, that was mind-blowing to me to realize that that's what all these guys are playing. They're all playing the game of building up one massive company, having all these other companies underneath, being able to bring together all their revenues, and do what you want with it and exit. Man, that was crazy.

I could end the podcast there, but there's a lot of other things I want to share with you guys. Okay, so to just jump into a new topic now, Grant said, "Use whatever the universe gives you and just basically make it marketing or ads or anything else."

Some examples of what he was doing were the vaccine. Everybody was up in arms about the vaccine, obviously. For those of you interested, just causing controversy, I am not vaccinated; I never was pro-vaccination or anything, and I think it's dumb that the government is trying to make people do all that stuff.

Regardless of that, however you feel, Grant took what Google had done. Google was saying, "Hey, you can't work at Google unless you're vaccinated." The next day, he says, "Hey, at Cardone, we don't care if you're vaccinated or not; you have the right to choose what you put in your body. Come apply for us."

He said it was the most applications they've ever gotten—high-level people from Google, from all these other tech companies where they're being forced to get vaccinated. He's over there saying, "You don't have to," and he's being very public against it. Did he get a lot of backlash for it? Absolutely. A lot of people hated him, whatever. But was it worth it? Absolutely. He got A-players; he got the people he actually wanted in his company.

People can get mad at me for just saying what I just said; absolutely, I don't really care anymore. Like I said with Cardone, I'm going to tell you guys exactly how I really feel because it's the truth. He just did it in a way smarter way than I did. He made it public and actually used it to his advantage.

That's what he's saying: give whatever the world or the universe gives you and use it to your advantage. Same thing with—they had a hurricane in Miami, and basically, they had to evacuate his office and all this stuff. He's like, "You know what? Let's film an ad."

He filmed this ad of him in his office, wearing a rain jacket over his head, running around like it's crazy. They put storm noise and stuff in the ad, and he's like, "Guys, we got to get rid of everything; there's a hurricane. Everything's got to go."

He goes in his little storage closet with all their merch, and he's like, "This hat's 90% off; it's all going to go to the hurricane anyway. If you want it, go to 10X whatever their shop is and just buy it now." I remember seeing this commercial a while back; it's super funny because that was the most merch we've ever sold in a day because we just used what was around us with the world and the current event.

Another one was during COVID. People were saying Grant was going bankrupt, and so many of you watching this may have seen this video where he put it on YouTube and said, "I'm going bankrupt." All these people were freaking out, and obviously, it was a joke for him. He just was like, "Yep, going bankrupt. The jet I just bought, you could probably get it 20 cents on the dollar. Our beautiful big apartment we just got, everything's toast. You guys can probably make an offer on it; get it 10 cents on the dollar."

Sure enough, he looks at his Google Analytics—how many people searched Grant Cardone, all this stuff—and there's just this enormous spike on Google. He looked up the dates, and just all this traffic. Then you see all these YouTubers making videos about him going bankrupt like they think he's really going bankrupt. They're just not very smart.

Even the ones who may have known what he was doing, they still make a video about it and give him more attention. That's his deal: get people to talk about him, good or bad. It just goes back to the old Hollywood saying of "all press is good press," apparently.

He ended up using that and just getting more and more attention for all the stuff. He did mention it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do because a lot of his investors were freaking out because they were thinking all this stuff was happening. He was like, "Yeah, that part I regret." But it was like a couple of days, and then everybody knew the truth.

Pretty funny just seeing the way his mind thinks with current events. For me, one thing I can tell you is I've avoided current events and things that are happening with the world in my content because I just don't really watch the news that much. I just kind of live in my own bubble, and I'm not passionate about it.

I also didn't really want to cause drama with being politically correct or anything else. Now, just hearing that, one thing we're going to be doing is we're going to be launching a brand new podcast here, man, within a month from you watching this. We will be on our new podcast set; it'll be rebranded, everything.

One thing I'm going to do is we're going to have a live talk show, so you guys will be able to listen and watch the podcast live, interact, ask questions, all that stuff. We're going to talk about current events, pop culture, money, things that are happening—Biden, you know, we'll talk about anything and everything.

I think it's going to open me up as far as my brand to a whole new realm of people that are searching for current events and opinions on current events. I'm going to have guest hosts and people that I can debate with who have very different opinions, and I think it's going to be a really entertaining show.

Hearing Cardone talk about that made me realize, like, man, I've watched—once again, it goes back to whatever you resent is what you know you should be doing. I've always said when I watched my buddies like Graham Stephan, Meet Kevin, and Andre Jikh make literally all the same video about the current event of the world, they all talk about the same exact thing.

I always hate on it, and you can, I guess, tell by my tone. I'm like, "I don't have time to talk about that crap. I'm going to tell you real business things that I do on a day-to-day basis," kind of with pride. But the reason is because I know I should be doing that. That's what people are obviously looking for.

They know they've cracked the code; everyone knows that current events are what get eyeballs. Do I want to do it for all my content? Absolutely not, just regardless of how big I think it could make me or help views or brand grow. I just personally don't want to do it, and there's always going to be that element of it.

But I do need to do some of it, and so we're going to have a live show just talking about these current events every single week. I think that's going to be fun and kind of a good compromise to incorporate all those elements. If you're still with me, let me know if that's something that you want to see. You want to see raw truth about everything that's going on in the world—the market, politics, pop culture, all that stuff. Let me know in the comments.

To reiterate, he says, "If you want everyone to like you, you ain't going to make it." There are going to have to be a lot of people who don't like you if you want to be big. One of his biggest things is he wants to get people to unsubscribe from his emails. He wants to be emailing so much that people unsubscribe because he says people who unsubscribe end up still buying from him.

How do I know this? I unsubscribe from Grant. I hate getting emails, but I love buying Grant's stuff. The dude, like 10X, changed my life back in 2018. I've told that story before, and this event definitely changed my life. You can hear it; everything I'm telling you, I'm going on a different path because of this event specifically.

It's just true. I unsubscribe because it was just like, "Dude, you're annoying; you have so many emails." But it doesn't mean I dislike it; it's just I don't want to see all these emails. I've had people message me like, "Dude, your email is way too much," because we have beefed up our email in the last six months. I'm like, "Well, oh well; you can still unsubscribe if you don't want to see them."

But it doesn't matter to me; we're going to email non-stop. That was something that was interesting. This next part, my buddy Pete Vargas, who originally invited me—shout out to Pete—he's been such a good friend and somebody who's helped a lot. He gave a whole presentation on how to run events, specifically hybrid live and virtual events.

Our next event, yeah, you guys will still have time. The next one is September 26th to the 28th at the Mandalay Bay. We've already sold out the live tickets, so now we are only selling virtual tickets. It's our first time ever doing the virtual event because of what I've learned from Pete Vargas, especially at this event.

There's a ton of stuff that we're going to implement to make the virtual experience really cool. You can go get a ticket at futureflipper.com and link to that.

Let's see what else I learned. I learned a lot from just random people that I met at the event. A lot of it is applicable to some of my businesses. One guy's name is Brian Page; he sells an Airbnb coaching program. To hear his model of having, you know, I think he has 50-plus setters and like eight closers, and to see how they're hitting their leads and everything and closing was mind-blowing. We're going to definitely implement some of that stuff at Future Flipper and all the other education programs, so that was cool.

Okay, what I just told you was literally day one. We're 45 minutes in, and I only got through day one. I hate to rush, but I'm going to rush through day two because this podcast will last forever.

Going into day two, let me add to this that I forgot to mention this. Grant, during this time, was super accessible. He attended all the after-parties, all the networking events, and I would say I got more time with him than most people. I was very fortunate.

He made a point to meet with me and talk to me. I mean, we've done the podcast before, and it was great, but he made an effort; he wanted to really spend some extra time with me. He talked to me personally about things he's seen me do. He's paying attention to what I'm doing on social media and just wanting to work together, so that was really cool.

I have all of his team's contact info; they've been super helpful. That was one thing they said at the event: "Hey, if you need anything," and this was to everyone, not just me, "you have all of the resources of what we have at Cardone. You want to talk to our marketing guy? Go get his number. You want to talk to Jared, his right-hand man? Go get his number." Jared and I have been talking, and so that was super cool.

I got to spend probably, I would say, an hour with Grant between all the different parts of the event—one-on-one, him and I talking—and it was great. I'll just tell you, he is very personable. He's caring; he's genuine about what he says. He wants to help people; you can see it. The guy has made enough money; he's got no reason to continue doing what he does.

You can see from a genuine place he wants to help people, and I'm good at sniffing that out. I don't do business with people that I don't want to do business with, and I was like, "Dude, I want to do business with this guy one way or another." I don't know what that looks like, and I'm sure our relationship will develop as time goes on, but just seeing how genuine he was in our conversations was really cool.

You get to see this different side of him of what he's really all about, so that was awesome. Going into day two, one thing he said was day two, I think he sat on stage for like three hours straight—no pee break, nothing—and just answered question after question from the audience.

He said he beats people with his execution. He's able to get to monetization faster than anybody, and this resonated with me because I've always thought that about myself too. If I get an idea, the moment I get an idea that I know is good, I get to execution really fast and monetization really fast.

He said the same thing, and the example he gave was his 10X conference. He goes, "How many guys are already registered for the 10X GrowthCon in 2023?" A bunch of people in the room say they're registered. He goes, "How many guys even know where it's at or what day?" Nobody raised their hand.

He's like, "Yeah, we don't either yet. We have not booked the venue yet; we don't even have it." But people are buying it, and they're getting a discount for buying it early. He's basically monetizing it already without having all the details.

This makes complete sense. We've done this before too in lots of my businesses. For instance, with Tykes NFT, we did a giant pre-sale months ago, well before we ever minted the NFT. No NFT project really did it like that before, but for me, I was like, "If people are ready to buy this right now, why would we not sell it to them at least in a pre-sale and give them a special discount?"

Why do we have to wait until midday? They might not even want to buy in midday; something might happen between now and then. If they're ready to go right now, sell them right now. That's what we did, and it was amazing.

Grant is doing that with GrowthCon. He basically said, "If people don't know when GrowthCon is and where it's at, it's actually better for sales because if they know the date, they might not be available that date. If they know the location, they might say, 'Oh, I'm in Vegas; I don't want to go to Florida; that's really far.'"

It totally is better on that front. Most people want to get rich at all costs. They make sacrifices with their family, their health, and their faith in the pursuit of money without even realizing it. But what if I told you it doesn't have to be that way? What if you could grow your wealth in all areas of life?

Well, it's possible, and that's why I created The Wealthy Way. It's a community of people striving to grow together in all areas, and we have multiple tools for you to use that are completely free. You can get access to The Wealthy Way planner, where you can set goals and hold yourself accountable on a daily basis.

We also have our Wealth Builder Academy, which is over four hours of content teaching you how to manage your time, create the right goals, and all the biggest secrets I've used to grow my life—not only in my net worth but in all aspects. Lastly, we have our Discord community, where thousands of Wealth Builders are all over the world encouraging one another and growing together.

Once again, all of this is completely free. There are no upsells; there are no hidden catches. For me, this is a passion project, and I want to build a community of like-minded people. So, if you want to start living The Wealthy Way today, go to wealthyway.com. There, you can get all the free resources like the course, planner, and Discord community.

So, go to wealthyway.com. Another cool thing that Grant did was he had a video detailing how much his employees made. You know, this quick highlight reel of people just walking up saying, "Hey, I used to be a financial advisor; I was making $50,000 a year at Chase Bank, and now I work for Cardone Enterprises. I make $150,000."

He did that over and over again. I just thought, "Wow, that is such a good piece of content for attracting talent into your business." I'm definitely going to implement that because we've got a lot of employees now, and there are so many ways that we could do this.

Another thing that he said that was really cool to me is that he's updated every single day on his KPIs. He's updated on how many leads are being generated, how much revenue is coming in every day across all the companies, and that way he can make adjustments to his marketing.

At the end of the day, he said that at this moment in time, his sole responsibility is to be the face and the marketer of the company. If there's an event or if there's a capital raise or something else, his job is to talk about it non-stop and raise the revenue.

I've said to myself too, written to my staff, like my main thing is marketing at this point. You look at Gary Vee; it's the same thing. The guy just speaks on stage all day. He runs this company and stuff too, but in the end, when you become like an entrepreneur influencer—even though you maybe started as an entrepreneur and like in the trenches kind of guy—you start to realize the marketing side of what you do is more valuable.

I've realized that myself; that's why I'm making a podcast right now. This hour-long podcast, however long it ends up being, doesn't technically make me money doing it. But I know that the benefit from doing this will help all of the businesses in the long haul. He understands that too.

For him to understand how he needs to market better, he makes sure he's updated daily. He also said he loves the hate—any kind of hateful comments or people talking crap. He just uses that as material to talk about things and bring it up instead of trying to ignore it or get butt hurt by it. He just talks about it, and that's made him really famous and helped him deal with criticism and all that stuff.

That was good. He mentioned it again the next day about just, "Hey, what do you got to give up to get to where you want to be?" That's something we should all think about, and it's something I'm always constantly thinking about.

Another thing he brought up was his superpower is staying broke. He talks about this like, "You guys need to get rid of your cash; get rid of it, and that will help you be hungrier." I've realized that too. When you get comfy where you're at, you're less inclined to go out and innovate and hustle and do the things you need to do.

I'm guilty of this. I've made more money than I thought I would ever make in my life, and I do find myself getting content on a lot of things. Really, after that event, it made me realize, "Man, I got so much more in the tank. I know I'm capable of a lot more."

Even though it seems like I'm doing a lot, I know I'm capable of a lot more. One way to do that is to really put yourself with your back against the wall where you have to do this. Once you get to the point of Grant, you're a billionaire; you don't have to do anything, right? But he still has that mentality like he's broke. He's willing to go and make things happen, so that was a cool little tidbit that he said.

His superpower is staying broke. One thing that really stuck out to me, and this is something I had never heard or considered before, was he said, "Hey, when I'm evaluating a real estate deal, this is the percentage of what I value."

He said 80% of what is important to him on a real estate deal is the actual real estate itself. Where's it at? How big is it? What's its location? What's it look like? The actual real estate itself—take money out of the equation. He just wants to buy grade A, beautiful properties. That is his whole mentality.

Eighty percent, 15% is the financing. If the financing is not good, it might not make the deal make sense, especially when you're dealing with multifamily. If your interest rate's too high, a lot of the numbers won't pencil out, and so therefore the deal doesn't become good.

Fifteen percent of what he looks at is the financing. Five percent of what he looks at is the equity. How good of a deal is he getting? When you think about this, you're like, "What? Only 5% of the deal is based on how much of a deal he's getting? That's kind of weird."

We're always, as flippers and wholesalers, it's the opposite. Think about it. For me, if I'm flipping a house, I literally don't care where the house is. I could care less about the real estate. It could be a mobile home; it could be a mansion; it could be something in between. I don't care. I'm indifferent.

I'd put it at 1% that I actually care about the real estate. The second part that you mentioned was financing. As a flipper, again, financing is important as far as if I can get into a deal with no money. But as far as the interest and all that stuff, we pay really high interest on these flips.

We pay 10-12%. Obviously, you're not going to pay 50% interest on a flip; that would be really bad. But the going rate on flips is 10-12%, even a lot less. A lot of companies are 7-8%. So, for us as flippers, we don't really care too much about the financing. You could really say that's another 3-4% of what matters to us on a deal.

That then leaves 95% based on the equity, which is completely true. All we care about is how good of a deal are we getting on this flip because we're trying to sell this thing in the next few months. So, how much of a spread we have is really all that matters.

Especially if you're wholesaling, you don't care about financing at all because you're never buying it. You don't care about where it's located because you're never going to keep it. All you care about is, "Do you have a spread? Can you sell to someone else?" So, wholesalers are 100% equity-based; flippers maybe are 95%.

When you start looking at this, when Grant says the exact opposite—he's just 80% real estate-based, 15% finance, 5% equity—you've got to say, "Why does he think that?" Well, for him, he's got a 10-year time horizon on his properties. He's not trying to flip it tomorrow.

He knows that in 10 years, his grade A property will be worth way more than somebody who gets a good deal on a piece of crap. He's right. The reason I realized he was right was because I looked back 10 years ago in my real estate career.

In 2012, properties here in Vegas—I could give you guys an example. I could have bought a house for, call it, $150,000—a super nice house, you know, entry-level, middle-class home was $150,000 essentially, 1,500 square feet, 1,800 square feet, pretty good area, nothing crazy—and it was great.

Let's just say I got a great deal on it. I'm just such a good flipper; I bought it for $80,000. I got instant $70,000 of equity in this home. Ten years from now, or whatever it is today, 2022, 10 years later, that house is probably worth $500,000. That's a really good deal. You paid $80,000; it's worth $500,000.

But here's the alternative: what if I would have bought a grade A piece of property in Vegas? Let's say I bought a million-dollar home at market value. I bought one on the golf course; it was sick. I mean, dude, 10 years ago, a million dollars got you the craziest house in Las Vegas. It's crazy how cheap they were.

But you just get this sick house in Vegas for a million bucks 10 years ago. Well, ten years later, that house, depending on just what it is, how rare it was, what its view is, and all that stuff, I guarantee you it is worth $5 million to $10 million.

It's one home, and it's crazy to think about because obviously owning that one home would have been a far better use of funds. Along with that, the rents on those homes increased so significantly, and it just ends up being this overall way better deal with better tenants and everything else.

Even though you paid market value for it, I've even noticed that in properties that I own today. I'm only looking at A and B class single-family homes on the side of Home Run Offer, where we're always looking for deals, and I'm just keeping the A-class homes because I know in the long run they're going to be way better than just a C-class home.

Granted, we're getting a good deal on all of our properties; that's just what we do over there. But those really good quality homes, I'm just trying to keep all of them. You look at what the hedge funds are doing; they do the same thing. They're just trying to keep the newer homes in the nice areas. That's their whole game plan.

If you look at the last 10 years, I mean, I used an entry-level home for example, but if you would have bought a mobile home or a condo or something, obviously everything went up in the last 10 years. But man, those trophy assets went up a lot.

It made me realize why a lot of these guys buy these crazy homes. It's like, "Why did Grant, after hating on single-family so long, buy a $40 million home in Malibu on the beach, Billionaires Beach?" I was wondering that.

Then he bought, I think it was Tommy Hilfiger's house in Miami on the beach. He's just buying trophy assets. That's all he wants to buy because he knows something that is limited will always be in demand by the ultra-wealthy, and there's just scarcity to it.

You can always build C-level, B-level housing. There's always going to be spots to go build that. But the trophy assets have a limited amount of spots. You know, the houses on the beach—there are only so many spots on the beach. If there are 20 houses on that beach and they're all built, maybe 19 of them are never going to go for sale because they're all rich people that don't need to sell.

The time one of them comes up, you think you can haggle and try to get a deal? Probably not. This is a trophy asset, and there are a lot of people who want to live on Billionaires Beach in Malibu. So, I get it.

The more I start to think about it, even with my land—recently, for those of you who know, you can go on my YouTube channel and look up the series on my mountain. It's this two acres I bought here in Las Vegas—literally, to me, it's a top three piece of land in the entire city as far as where you would build a single-family home. It's got unobstructed views of the entire strip, no neighbors; it's crazy, and it's in just a great area.

I bought this two acres for $600,000, a little over $600,000. It was just an insane deal. At the time, the owner wanted a million bucks, which still I would have paid a million bucks because I just knew this was just my dream land—not even for a flip or an investment, but just I want to live on this; this is so cool.

I knew that going into it, even at a million bucks, I was going to have a ton of equity in the long run. Well, I recently had one of the top realtors here in Vegas come tell me what he thinks the land is worth because I said, "You know what? I might sell it because I'm moving into a different house. I would love to build on here; it's going to be really cool."

But I'm indifferent; everything's always for sale when you're a real estate investor. I was like, "Tell me what you think it would be worth if we listed it." He did his analysis, and he said, "I think it's worth anywhere from $8 to $10 million." I was like, "That's crazy."

But I actually—that's what I think it's worth too, looking at everything. In a year and a half, this would be the craziest flip ever, and it's not because I got a better deal on it off the million bucks. It's just because it's a trophy asset. It's a trophy piece of land that can never be replicated.

Nobody can buy anything like this. Would it take a long time to sell? For sure. It's going to only go to somebody that values scarcity and premium and trophy assets, which a lot of rich people do. They don't want to buy just normal stuff.

I see the value of buying these trophy assets. The problem is for most people is they can't buy them because you don't have exit strategies. When you get a property that's super deeply discounted, you can do a lot. You could flip it; you could wholesale it; you could keep it as a rental. The possibilities are endless because you've got a lot of equity.

If you pay market value or even above market value, like people have said Grant's done because he wanted the right asset, you can't resell it tomorrow; you're going to lose money. You can't wholesale it; nobody's going to buy it from you. You've got it already overpriced, so his only option is to rent it long-term.

When you do this, in the end, as long as your time horizon is 10 years, you are going to win. You will win with the better asset every time 10 years from now. That is what I've learned from Grant and why Cardone Capital buys what they buy.

I'm definitely influenced with what we do at Pineda Capital to see that and understand that that is the end game. We might not be there today where we can go buy $300-$400 million apartments. This is why Grant says to invest in them because not anyone can get access to those deals; it is what it is.

But the investor also has to know that the payouts on those properties are not going to be anything crazy during the buildup. It's going to take time for that to really pay off, which is fine as long as you understand that going into it.

I've seen people who complain about his deals. They're like, "Man, I'm getting these little baby checks every month." It's like, "Yeah, I mean, anytime you buy a grade A asset, usually the rents have not caught up to the price yet."

You might break even; you might lose money if just talking from a single-family perspective. That's why I've never bought them because I looked at it, and I'm like, "Dude, this doesn't cash flow at all." But the reality is, let's just take five years ago. Had I bought a super nice million-dollar home on the golf course, at the time, my mortgage would have been $6,000.

Somebody might have rented it for $5,000-$6,000, right? But today, five years later, that house is probably worth $3-$4 million and probably rents for $20,000-$25,000. The cash flow would be ridiculous today. If I made it a corporate rental, you know, I furnished it and all that stuff, it'd be even crazier.

You've got to start thinking about the long-term game, and that's what I'm really doing. It's like, "Okay, as I grow, I understand what the wealthy do. I understand what the Blackstones do, the Cardones do. I understand why they do it, how do I adjust my strategy knowing that this is where we're headed and where we want to go, and how do we kind of get there quicker?"

I'll end with that. There's a lot of other stuff, and I know we're over an hour. I wrote a ton of task things for me to do that aren't really relevant to you guys, but I hope that this was super insightful for you. I hope that you learned a lot.

It was an amazing event. As I said, he's going to have another event that I'll be promoting here in the coming months that I think you guys should all attend because it's going to be amazing. Big shout out to Grant for hosting this event. I think he spent over like a million dollars; somebody told me no ticket price or monetization.

Obviously, it's going to make way more than that from everything that comes from it, but kudos to him for really putting it on. I'm super grateful because it's definitely changing the trajectory of what I'm going to do. I hope through me, this podcast can help you guys think bigger and really see what's next.

Anyways, if you liked it, subscribe, and I'll catch you on the next one. Peace!

Thanks for watching the Ryan Pineda Show. If you want to work with me, head over to ryanpineda.com. You can find my courses, coaching programs, and upcoming events. We also have free resources you can download, so head over to ryanpineda.com.