#140: How To 10x Your Outcome // Recapping Our Grant Cardone Interview // Next Level Pros Podcast

Have you ever considered that losing everything may be the greatest opportunity that you have? In today's episode, we're going to go back into the archives and pull out one of my original interviews with Grant Cardone, where Grant shares with us how going from a $10 million net worth to almost losing everything was the foundation of building his billion dollar empire. He'll dive in and share with us how thinking bigger is the only thing that allowed him to pull himself up by his bootstraps and regain it all.

And one of the only thing that allowed him to pull himself up by his bootstraps and regain it all.

And one of the craziest things that when he wrote the 10x rule, one of the best sellers in the self-development industry,

was written for himself as a personal manifesto to be able to take himself to the next level.

After we hear from Grant, we're going to come back and remark and share a few of our thoughts. Let's dive in.
So take me back to like middle of the crash, right? So you're worth a couple million bucks, right? You're 50 years old or just after 50. Like what's going through your mind? Like what, what decision

did you make at that point? That's, that's catapulted you to this amazing success. Well, what was going through my mind was, and this may sound ridiculous to people, but I'm like, I'm, I am and I fucked up.
And you know, like for those of you who don't understand what that, that concept is like i had worked for 26 years and saw my entire net worth over a weekend when a lean-in collapsed go from dude i was good and then all of a sudden i wasn't good right and this is why i wrote the 10x rule the 10x rule is basically a concept about you we set goals and targets and we find places of comfort that are too small. They don't have insurance for the average American today.
Like if you have three months of savings, you think you're good. You're not good.
Okay. You don't need three months of savings.
You need assets that save you for 30 years. Cash flow.
And unfortunately, the financial planning in this country and the financial illiteracy and the indoctrination and and the popularity of these these these financial gurus telling you guys to pay your debt off and to basically have three months of savings is ridiculous because millions of people tens of millions of people lost their homes in 2008 and they've never recovered from it right and so so you know the first thing that changed was i realized i was like that that i had fucked up and that you took the personal accountability right you're like this is not on anybody else this is on me this ain't a team deal bro like i watched the celtics get their ass whipped last night and then the guy one of the players was like yeah we just didn't play as a team bro first thing you got to say is you fucked up you got to say i messed up and then by the way if you mess up the team's gonna mess In my case, I didn't have a team, right? It was me and a couple of people. That's not a team.
That's a group, a small, tiny group, basically three Musketeers. Three Musketeers didn't do anything great ever.
And you need an army, man. So first thing I did was, oh, I screwed up here when I thought I was good.
Second thing is I got to realize what did I do wrong? I have to figure out what is the thing I did wrong. I identified that.
And what I did wrong was I went too small. So when I wrote the 10X rule, when I wrote that book you showed or talked about, I'm like, oh, I get it.
I needed 10 industries. I had one company that paid me money.
I had one industry that paid me, two companies that basically could go out and get it. And then I dumped it into the real estate.
The two businesses were both slaughtered. I mean, slaughtered, bro.
One day they were doing great. The next day they literally could not pay bills.
Right. And I was not part of the mortgage crisis.
I had nothing to do with the mortgage crisis. I did not buy a bunch of houses.
The 200 units that I had actually in the shopping center actually cash flowed me through the collapse. Wow.
So when I wrote this, this book was not really written for other people. I was literally trying to figure out what, what am I going to do to get a bigger audience? How am I going to scale to other industries? So back then we had, we talked to one industry every day and, uh, which was automotive.
And today automotive was literally 100% of all my revenue today. Automotive is less than 1% of my revenue.
It's amazing. Yeah.
I think, I think in your, uh, your book, be obsessed or be average, you actually refer to the 10 X rule that it was kind of like your personal manifesto that basically it was a rule book that you were writing for yourself that you wanted to live by. And so I think that's so awesome.
And I think it's important for just listeners and whatnot to understand that nobody's got to figure it out, even if we write it and think we have it figured out. We really all have to go and do the work.
And so you wrote the book and then you started basically living the book. Yeah, exactly.
Awesome. So in the comments, I would love you to share a few things that you learned just from watching that clip with Grant.
So guys, what were your guys' main takeaways from this? I love how Grant talks about taking accountability for what he did, what he could have done in his position. I mean,

he's worth nearly $10 million at this point. There's probably a lot of reasons why he didn't have to blame himself.
Something Daryl and Chris that you guys talk about a lot is as you get better at what you do, your excuses also get better. Hey guys, it's Chris.
Hey, a lot of you leave comments asking for help. Do me a real quick favor.
Shoot me a text at 509-374-7554. That's 509-374-7554.
Shoot me a text. I'll answer and help you with whatever you need.
Don't worry. I got you back.
Let's go back to the show, baby. 100%.
I think, you know, as I became like top tier in door knocking industry, right? Like I would be out there knocking doors and top performer. Like I was number three out of 3000 reps, right? But my excuses just got better during that time, right? Like, so I would have three sales on the day.
It would be six o'clock. I knew I needed to be knocking until 10 PM.
And like little thoughts would creep in like, hey, you know, go home, enjoy a nice little meal with the wife. You're out here by yourself.
You have nobody you got to take home or nobody's going to expect you to do more than three. Like you've already hit your quota for the day, right? Like you can always, you're going to, you can always do a little bit more tomorrow or by selling more today.
You're actually going to take sales from tomorrow. Like literally like all these little lies that start creaming.
It is crazy. I can recognize those lies.
Yes. So I guess my question is, right, there's there's people in our audience who are trying to be successful, who are starting out, who are, you know, have been successful.
I think it's, it's, I think the reason that this is a really good story about Grant is, at least for myself, is I've been motivated by his book, 10x, which he talks about using that to, to basically define his future. Yeah.
So I think, you know, we were actually talking this off camera. You know, change really starts with you got to feel some sort of motivation to change, right? Like you're either inspired by a book or maybe the pain is so great that you want to change.
I think in Grant's instance, right, he lost everything. It's like, dude, I got to change, right? Otherwise, it's just going to continue to be painful.
So it's either like I feel some external motivation from a friend, a speaker, an author, or it's so bad that I have to make some changes. I think it kind of starts there with a feeling.
But then the second thing, which Grant talks about, is like the truth, right? Like identifying the lies that we're telling in our lives, the things that we've allowed ourselves to believe up until this point. And so Grant clearly, you know, this interview took place, you know, 15 years after the fact of this actual thing.
So it's easy for him to look back and be like, yeah, man, I effed up. I screwed this up.
But I mean, was that what he was telling himself in the moment? I think he had to eventually get there. But sometimes in those moments, it's really hard to admit, man, I suck.
I'm effed up. This is my fault and take like full ownership and responsibility.
But I think too, like when you're trying to find success and we're trying to figure things out, like you just gotta, you don't know what you don't know. For sure.
And so it's like, it's not about like, I gotta avoid, I gotta take accountability. I gotta avoid, you know, making mistakes.
It's more of like make mistakes, acknowledge the mistake and then figure out how to like adjust from there so that you don't make it again or you learn from it so it accelerates your yeah i don't think i don't think i'm saying uh you know don't make mistakes you got you got to learn but it's just like owning the truth right like when i win it was a win when it was a loss it was a loss right because a lot of times whenever we have a loss we try to justify why we lost or like believe certain things that allow us to continue to take less action and so it's like when you when you start from a baseline of like i suck at this i want to improve it it's much easier to go but then also like to your point is like be completely okay with failure yeah in order to know the road map of where you want to go a lot of us focus on the destination every we all want to know where we want to end up and we want to be rich and famous or whatever it might be, but you can't put in the directions on your phone without also putting in exactly where you're at. I think to your guys's point, that's the whole point of being so roughly truthful with yourself to be like, you know what, I'm going to hold myself and this is

exactly where I'm at and this is how I'm standing right now. And if you're not doing that, you can't

know where you're going to go or how you're going to get there.

So I think there's two issues that I see with this topic. And I think the first one is

people want something, but they don't know what the first step is, right? The other side of it is

Let's go. people want something, but they don't know what the first step is, right? The other side of it is you don't know if you're really meant to like have that vision, right? If you come up with a big vision, sometimes it's scary to say that's who I want to become because you're so far from it that it's like it doesn't make sense.
If I look at my younger years's that's what I struggled with where it was like okay I have this big vision like but it is so unrealistic to who I am today that it's hard to want to like believe in it so I think I think one thing to definitely be learned from Grant Cardone and even from like my own personal experience in this situation is like when you're willing to lose it all like when you or you actually go to zero you quickly realize none of the possessions matter none of the actual physical things because those come and go and so it's really about experience so then when you're talking about like i don't know what action what action to take, you're not scared to take action because you don't care whether you win or you lose, right? And so like that's, I think the key to anybody that wants to change their life is just understanding that action is the key and take it the best way you know how. Go and learn from mentors, study YouTube channels, go to a podcast, whatever.
Take some action. If it works, it works.
Do some more of that. If it doesn't, stop doing that.
And don't be so worried about the physical possessions that come and go. So I think the hard part, right, is whenever you listen to these success stories, you always see people with the success.
And it's really hard to have perspective of actually what it looked like when they went through the hard hard stuff and so that's like like you're saying like you just have to take action you have to move and you have to be willing to lose over and over and over again knowing that you will win i think one of one of the biggest things to take from grant obviously is is just from his book the 10x rule the whole premise of that book is that in the moment, take massive action, right? Like if you think to hit this goal, you need to do these things, do 10 times that amount of thing and you'll for sure get that result. So if you think that you need to knock 10 doors to get one sale, knock 100 doors and you'll guarantee yourself that sale.
And I think that's probably like the biggest lesson that Grant Cardone has given to the world is like the rule of massive action. Again, this book was actually written as a manifesto for himself, right? Like he was designing like, man, what do I need to do to get myself out of this terrible situation in which my net worth almost went to zero and I want to go and, you know, obviously he's always been a big thinker and everything like that.
He just realized I got to have massive action. And then on top of that, having these massive goals backed by massive action, it actually motivates, right? Like nobody, nobody gets stoked about like, Hey, let's, you know, have McDonald's for lunch.
No, dude, let's figure out how we can have steak for lunch every single day, right? People get in. And then when you identify a destination, this is a key thing, right? So say you have a goal and that goal is you want to have a million dollars in your bank account, okay? What if you change that goal and you're like a hundred million dollars and you want to do in the same timeframe, say it was like two years and you had this two-year goal to put a million bucks in your bank account or five-year goal to put a million dollars in your bank account.
The action required to put a hundred million dollars in your bank account is drastically different than the action to get $1 million in your bank account. So you can figure out real low ways to get that million bucks over the next five years.
But there are zero low ways to get $100 million in a bank account in five years. And so now what you start thinking about is the different vehicles that are going to require, right? Like to go and get a million bucks, I can think of a lot of different ways.
It's like, well, I can get a job that pays me $300,000 a year. I can live off of $100,000 a year.
And the extra $200,000 a year goes to savings. And then I have a million dollars account.
So now I'm thinking real low. I'm thinking employment.
I'm thinking like sales. I'm thinking something else where that solution for $100 million doesn't fit the model.
There's nothing in this world that I can just go and sell or be employed by to be able to get $100 million in my bank account. So now I got to start thinking about what would provide $100 million worth of net value at the end of the day.
And so now I'm starting thinking about building rocket ships, settling Mars, right? Doing all these different things. And so like goals and in a plan to get to those goals, I think that's also very important here, right? Like you can't just have like this massive goal of like a hundred million and I'm just going to work hard, right? You're going to be like, you got to start thinking about the, the different avenues, the different, uh, like, am I, am I taking a jet or am I taking a bicycle? Right.
And so it just, I think, uh, was it Myron that talks about, uh, like if you want to go and run a mile, right. So one of my favorite metaphors in regarding to this is when you pick a distance that you have to go.
So say we all selected a mile distance and that was the goal of what you wanted to go and achieve. You have a lot of different ways that you can go a mile.
You would consider walking a mile. You would consider running a mile, getting on a bike and potentially even consider a car.
Just kind of depending how close it is. Now, you change that distance to 10,000 miles or 1,000 miles.
There's no way in heck you are considering walking, running. You might consider a bike.
That would be crazy. That's going to take you a long time to be able to do on a bike.
At a minimum, your vehicle that you're selecting is a car, and you're most likely looking at a plane, right? Like, you're going to Japan here in a little bit, right? Would you ever consider swimming to Japan? Absolutely not. Can't swim either.
And the reason is because the goal is completely different, right? Like, if we were in an Olympic sized pool, and we like the other side, even though you can't swim very well, you would consider swimming to that distance. And so like, this is the power of the 10 X rule and what Grant teaches.
And it's a very sound principle. Like think huge, identify, identify vehicles that can get you there.
And all of a sudden you're going to be able to back it up with massive clear action. And I think that goes down to like the theory that we talk about clarity.
You want to share like what clarity does for us? Hey guys, it's Chris. If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe.
That way people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube. Now let's dive back in the show.
Yeah, we don't believe that there are lazy people out there. We believe that there are unclear people out there.
Clarity creates action. When you're unclear, you don't know what to do.
If I want to get in shape, but I don't know how to get in shape, I'm probably just going to sit on the couch. So what's the best way to create clarity? Dude, you got to go in and you've got to actually map things out.
You got to sit down. Something that we teach in our NLS system is the five-year plan.
A lot of people, they overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in five. And so what we've built out is this amazing system to teach you guys how to go and back things up from five years out into one year.
Because if you wanted to get $100 million in one year, that might seem kind of egregious, but we could probably do it in five years. So really doing the work, mapping it out, having a clear road plan.
And I think with all those things, it's important to have a mentor that actually can show you the way that has run the path themselves. Like that's why the NLS system works because we've done it.
But on top of that, the reason why I've been able to develop the NLS system is because of so many other mentors that took my hand and helped me along the way. It's like willingness to going back to even grant, right? Like willingness to admit you're wrong, that you need to make a change.
Those things allow us to look and ask for help versus like ego Chris at age 27. I wasn't willing to ask for help.
Like I thought I knew everything and therefore I continue to struggle until I, you know, ask for the, uh, for the, the life raft out there. Yeah.
I think too, like I, you know, our audience is, is mostly business owners, entrepreneurs, but I'm hoping there's people there that are like trying to figure out how do I get from this employee situation to like the next level. And I was thinking about this morning.
I don't know why, but it kind of goes along with what we're talking about. I think if you're in a situation where it's like, I, I don't even know like be a business owner, an entrepreneur and that stuff, I would say figure out how to make someone else a ton of money.
If you can make someone tens of millions of dollars, you will make a lot of money. You'll learn how to create value.
You'll either get paid for making that, creating that value, or you'll learn how to do it and you can go do it yourself. And don't fool yourself or lie to yourself.
Just because you're a part of the process doesn't mean you're making the extra money or that you're not bringing the extra value. You have to actually bring value that would have never existed in whatever capacity you can.
Yep. And I think, I think the other just caution there is like, yeah, just because you were a part of it doesn't mean you can go out and do it on your own.
I made that mistake as well early on. I'm like, ah, do all this, man.
I can, I can go and own a business. There's a lot to it.
And again, the reason why we promote, like be a part of a community, be among other business owners that are doing it so that you can bounce ideas, share the wins, share the losses. Like those things are like just so, so, so important.
I think something interesting, too, and I've thought a lot about this is is how I grew up versus how I think today. And, you know, I have to contribute.
We've had a lot of a lot of challenges, a lot of successes, a lot of failures, a lot of wins. And I've always thought like, what's changed?

What's different? And, you know, the way we grew up was like, be a man of your word. And what I

found interesting is like, that's very contradictive if you've got a big vision. Because if you have a

big vision, you have no way to like back up what you say you're going to do. Right? And so I think instead of, instead of focusing on being a man of your word, be a man of your vision.
In other words, what you say always ties you to your vision and your vision is big and excites you. Right.
A lot of times we, we create these like visions of I'm going to be a billionaire and I'm going to be whatever. And there's no emotion to it.
There's no like excitement to it. It's just like numbers that maybe impress someone else or that, uh, you know, you think is people will look at you differently, but what really would get you excited every day and, and make your, make your vision tied to emotions that like you can't shake.
Love it. I love it.
Is there times in your guys's life that you remember of taking massive action 100 like there's there's been so many one right now with what we're building with next level like because we've gotten so clear in the last few months of exactly what our mission is what our direction is like the levels of action that i'm taking taking right now in the business, freaking dialed in. Obviously, SoulGen, right? Like, because we were so clear, just going back to the concept of like, clarity triggers action.
And because you're just so excited, like, you know exactly that if I do this, I get this result. If I do this, I i get this result and you're going after big crazy hairy audacious goals yeah i'd say i'd say for me it's like once you because i feel like i've taken massive action in my lows when things are just going horrible to get out right with sales there's there's highs and there's lows um and i've also taken massive action when uh in in on the highs and continue to find the next level.
I think what's important is to realize, where am I lying to myself and how do I shake it and how do I take action that I know will continue making me move forward? One of my favorite examples of massive action, it was actually both of our lives. So when I went through bankruptcy, we had immediately launched another company called K2K Alarm.

And so it was at the moment just under Daryl's name because I was going through all these collections and trying to get it all out.

But during that time, it was like one of the most sweet times of my life in which it was just like getting back to the grind.

I remember going

every single day up to Quincy, Washington. It was in the middle of December.
I was in the process

of filing bankruptcy, started the process in November, finally filed in January. But during

those two, three months, we were out knocking doors in a foot, two feet of snow, selling alarm

systems, trying to pay the bills. And like, those are like some of the sweetest like most like core memories I look back and just think of like that is when like I knew there was something greater and I just have to push through and do whatever it takes to get there yeah I can I can remember the doors I can remember the.
I know exactly the times you're talking about.

And it was like, I can remember thinking,

I'd have the thought come in, like, why am I doing this?

And I'd immediately take that thought, throw it away,

like, I know why I'm doing this.

I've got to push through.

I've got to figure out, like, I've got to get myself through this.

And this is just part of the process.

And it sucks.

You have to repeat that sometimes multiple times where you're like, dang, what I thought was going to work isn't working. And I got to push through this.
But it always takes you a step further, whether sometimes you realize it or not. When you guys were on the doors, what was the feeling going through that again? I mean, you guys were building up something special.
You guys had a great vision. Chris, you just came out of like this crazy bankruptcy situation.
But I want to know, when you're on these doors, you kind of have to start over, essentially. What are you feeling and experiencing on every door? You know, it was humbling.
But it also set the table for kind of the rest of my life is that like when you scale a business, you stop doing a lot of like the ground level work. Right.
But the mentality that this helped create was like, I never want to put myself above or being willing to do the work. And so even, even with what we're building right now with next level, right? Like I am committed, like, yes, I want to have this huge sales team again, right? Like we built a 300 man sales team and I want to get next level back up to that point of coaches and everything else.
But in the meantime, as I'm building building it like i've got to be willing to get back

on the proverbial doors and sit down and do sales calls and coaching calls and everything else with community members and so like even right now i'm going have, just in the last month, been going back to Quincy.

I love it.

Going back to Quincy.

Dude, we should...

Go to Quincy?

No, we should put a map in our office with directions to Quincy.

That would be dope.

What you don't understand about Quincy, it's a freaking two and a half hour drive each way. So you have a lot of time to think every day.
But yeah, I think that's just like a key principle. If people can just get over over their ego.
Because, dude, I got a lot of freaking egos still to this day. And I got a lot of reasons why I shouldn't go back to Quincy.
Right? Like, I've already done it. Got two nine-figure exits under the belt.
Got plenty of money in the bank account. Got assets on assets on assets.
I've got relationships with guys like Grant Cardone. I've got all all the things that that what most people would say matter but like and then I just got to check my ego and say, none of that crap matters what matters that you're always willing always willing to go back to Quincy no matter what no matter where you're at in life and figure it out figure out like how to scale because like when you grow a business you have to go through that process if you're unwilling to go through that process.
If you're unwilling to go through that process, your business will never grow. Darrell, when you were in Chris getting back together and starting K2K up in Quincy, you probably had every reason to brush Chris off and be like, you know what? I watched what happened.
I don't want to be a part of that anymore. I'm going to do my own thing.
I'm going to build my own thing. I'm going to be a part of something else.
What was it about Chris and that situation that made you want to work with that again? There's two things that I can think of top of the head that, like, have always excited me about working with Chris. One is he's a man of his vision.
He loves creating vision. He loves talking about vision, vision, vision.
And I do too. I think what I like about it is Chris's vision, it's like I know he's going to push the limits, which keeps me uncomfortable and keeps me pushing the limits.
So that's what I like about it is Chris's vision. It's like, I know he's going to push the limits,

which keeps me uncomfortable and keeps me pushing the limits.

So that's what I love about that too.

He's always hungry.

Like he's always hungry.

No matter what situation we're in,

it's like,

what more can I get?

And the competitive nature in me thrives in that.

Cause I'm like,

Oh,

he wants more.

I want more than him.

And it's like, I mean, there's some of the dumbest arguments we've had is just, just, just competitiveness. Let's like argue about this or let's, let's, let's fight about that just to like be competitive.
But it's like that hunger that he has in life is like something that I've fed off of and it's pushed me. And I think then that pushes him and then, and then we just keep pushing each other.
And I think that's where, um, I, I don't know if I identified it, but I connected with it early on. And that's, I think what's allowed us to continue working together.
That's why I still work with them. It's like, I told Chris, I'm like, dude, I can go do other stuff, but like, I love, I love pushing each other.
I love feeling uncomfortable around you. Like I love putting myself in a situation where I don't know what's going to happen, but like, I love, I love pushing each other.
I love feeling uncomfortable around you.

Like I love putting myself in a situation where I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm like finding new levels of, uh, of, of, you know, experience and opportunities. Hey guys, it's Chris.
Hey, a lot of you leave comments, ask you for help. Do me a real quick favor shoot me a text at 509-374-7554 that at 509-374-7554.
That's 509-374-7554. Shoot me a text.
I'll answer and help you with whatever you need. Don't worry, I got you back.
Let's go back to the show, baby. I think that's awesome to hear because I think, you know, just as a normal person, probably your knee-jerk reaction is to brush people off based off of their failures especially big failures but what i really have enjoyed viewing your guys's relationship and hearing specifically that is you didn't let that failure define your guys's relationship your guys's who chris is as a person or yourself as a person and instead it i mean i'll tell you i'll tell you frankly like i remember making a decision i remember working with chris when he was a sales rep and i'm like he is so demanding right why because he like he he has a he has a big vision and you can't be like you can't settle for for mediocre if you got a big vision.
I didn't really understand at the time. At the time, I'm like, dude, he's so demanding, but he's pushing harder and harder than anyone else.
I'm like, all right, I either have to be willing to work with that and accept that is 100% what I'm going to work with, or completely repel it and go find people that are easy to work with that you know are I can I can control that are you know satisfied with with you know easy or normal or standard and I knew with working with Chris I I'd never get that. Let's go.
And so I remember like making the decision of like, all right, I'm all in. I want more people like Chris around me than less, which means I'm willing to accept hard, challenging, complicated people who can cut deeper, who can punch harder than anyone else.

Let's go.

Guys, we appreciate you watching.

A couple of takeaways from the episode.

Realize that your biggest failures could lead to your largest success

if you can buy into an incredible vision,

take massive action,

and always be willing to go back to Quincy.

Until next time.