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Many guys in my audience have asked for my opinion regarding Grant Cardone. I’ve watched many of his videos, read some of his stuff, and recently finished reading his most well-known book, The 10X Rule.
-By Caleb Jones
If you don’t know who he is, Grant Cardone is a Tony Robbins-like success and get-rich guru who focuses on sales and real estate. He is an extreme, high-energy, off-the-chart extrovert who tends to appeal to men of a similar personality type.
Before I get into my opinion of him, let me first say that unlike most angry loser-haters on the internet, I never denigrate any self-made businessperson who makes more money than me. Even if I completely disagree with such a person and/or disagree with his marketing techniques, I always refrain from shitting all over the guy and instead look to see what he’s doing that I can copy or exploit.
This is the opposite from most internet loser-haters who are constantly looking for reasons to bash men who are more successful than they are. I never want to be in that category and you don’t either.
That also doesn’t mean I completely disagree with Grant Cardone. Much of what he says I agree with completely. He says you need to work damn hard for your success. I agree. He says, or at least implies, that lazy people are losers. I agree. He says that most big projects or businesses or marketing campaigns you plan will take much more work than you first anticipate. I agree. He says you need to set big goals. I agree to a point (more on that in a minute). He says you need to focus on sales and marketing. I agree. He actually says you need to blow your brains out with sales and marketing. I more or less agree, though again, I’ll clarify that in a minute. He gets into people’s faces and tells them to get off their asses and get to fucking work. Obviously I wholeheartedly agree since I do the same thing.
His overcall concept is 10X, meaning that you need to take all of your goals and multiply them by ten. If you want to make $100,000 per year, he says that’s bullshit and that goal should be to make $1 million per year instead. He says if you’re going to work hard anyway, you might as well work hard for a lot more than you want instead of working hard for less.
To be fair, he also says you should plan on working 10X harder than you’re currently planning on working, so he’s not one of these “success is easy” or get rich quick guys, which I respect.
All fine and good; I have no major disagreements with any of this. If you want to make $1 million per year in income, go for it. I don't need to make that much money, but if you've decided that's something you really want, I think that's great.
Where we differ is when we get into the specifics of his work advice. Grant thinks that working just to work, just to blow your brains out with 10X is a great idea. Working 12 hours, a day seven days a week for the rest of your life is just fine. “Hell yeah man! Get rich!”
Um, no. You can get quite rich without working 12 hours a day, seven days a week for the rest of your life. As I talk about in my main Alpha Male 2.0 book, you can become financially successful working far less than that. I'm quite financially successful. I don’t have the net worth or income of Grant Cardone, but I don’t need to in order to be happy. I’ll cover that in a minute too.
I once saw him on a video respond to a complaint that people who own real estate might get phone calls in the middle of the night from renters needing their toilets fixed. His answer was, “Yeah man! I HOPE THEY CALL ME! I want people calling me! That means things are happenin’, man!”
Um, no. The correct answer to that objection is that you pay 8% of your rent to a management company so that you can be location independent and own the real estate investment without ever having to answer the phone. I’m sure Grant does the same thing, but he seems to think that working just to work (“Because things are happening, man!”) is a great idea.
No, work must be done to produce very specific results. Once those results are produced, you either don’t need to work on that any more, or can work on something else, or can back off on your work to enjoy the other six of the Seven Life Areas (financial, woman, family, physical, spiritual, recreational, and social.) He occasionally pays some lip service to these areas, but you can clearly see that he doesn’t really give a shit about these to any strong degree beyond his personal branding.
Which is fine. If it works for him, and clearly it does, I think that’s great. Personally, I don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars to make me happy, nor do I need to make millions of dollars a year. Grant seems to imply that if you are worth less than $10 million or invest in a real estate property with less than 32 doors then you’re just not cutting it. While I don’t exactly disagree (remember that I’m the guy who said this), I don’t agree either. Yeah, you need a million or more by your old age, but you can be very happy and very financially stable at with a few million in solid investments, or even less, depending on your personality and how you structure your lifestyle.
There’s also the issue of his delivery style. Sometimes guys can say everything I agree with, yet it’s hard for me to listen to them because their personalities are so opposite from mine. Grant Cardone falls into this category. I can’t listen to him for more than about 20 minutes because the guy is just so wired that it’s hard for an INTJ like me to process it.
It’s even worse when I try to listen to Tai Lopez. Nothing wrong with the guy or his advice, but he’s so talkative and emotional that I just can’t relate at all to his communication style. He drones on and on and on, and god damn dude, I just need the 1-2-3 how to’s so I can get back to work. I have shit to do.
That’s purely a communication style issue though; nothing to do with content. Grant Cardone’s content is good and I do recommend it. Lots of his sales advice and some of his investment advice is sound. He’s also motivational and teaches a fantastic work ethic. I would just temper it with Alpha 2.0 concepts such as income diversification (which Grant doesn’t really believe in), working less than 30 hours per week long-term (which would horrify Grant) and nonmonogamy (Grant is monogamously married to a woman with whom he had hardcore oneitis for years, by his own admission).
Traditional success is good. It really is. But Alpha Male 2.0 success is even better.
Before I get into my opinion of him, let me first say that unlike most angry loser-haters on the internet, I never denigrate any self-made businessperson who makes more money than me. Even if I completely disagree with such a person and/or disagree with his marketing techniques, I always refrain from shitting all over the guy and instead look to see what he’s doing that I can copy or exploit.
This is the opposite from most internet loser-haters who are constantly looking for reasons to bash men who are more successful than they are. I never want to be in that category and you don’t either.
That also doesn’t mean I completely disagree with Grant Cardone. Much of what he says I agree with completely. He says you need to work damn hard for your success. I agree. He says, or at least implies, that lazy people are losers. I agree. He says that most big projects or businesses or marketing campaigns you plan will take much more work than you first anticipate. I agree. He says you need to set big goals. I agree to a point (more on that in a minute). He says you need to focus on sales and marketing. I agree. He actually says you need to blow your brains out with sales and marketing. I more or less agree, though again, I’ll clarify that in a minute. He gets into people’s faces and tells them to get off their asses and get to fucking work. Obviously I wholeheartedly agree since I do the same thing.
His overcall concept is 10X, meaning that you need to take all of your goals and multiply them by ten. If you want to make $100,000 per year, he says that’s bullshit and that goal should be to make $1 million per year instead. He says if you’re going to work hard anyway, you might as well work hard for a lot more than you want instead of working hard for less.
To be fair, he also says you should plan on working 10X harder than you’re currently planning on working, so he’s not one of these “success is easy” or get rich quick guys, which I respect.
All fine and good; I have no major disagreements with any of this. If you want to make $1 million per year in income, go for it. I don't need to make that much money, but if you've decided that's something you really want, I think that's great.
Where we differ is when we get into the specifics of his work advice. Grant thinks that working just to work, just to blow your brains out with 10X is a great idea. Working 12 hours, a day seven days a week for the rest of your life is just fine. “Hell yeah man! Get rich!”
Um, no. You can get quite rich without working 12 hours a day, seven days a week for the rest of your life. As I talk about in my main Alpha Male 2.0 book, you can become financially successful working far less than that. I'm quite financially successful. I don’t have the net worth or income of Grant Cardone, but I don’t need to in order to be happy. I’ll cover that in a minute too.
I once saw him on a video respond to a complaint that people who own real estate might get phone calls in the middle of the night from renters needing their toilets fixed. His answer was, “Yeah man! I HOPE THEY CALL ME! I want people calling me! That means things are happenin’, man!”
Um, no. The correct answer to that objection is that you pay 8% of your rent to a management company so that you can be location independent and own the real estate investment without ever having to answer the phone. I’m sure Grant does the same thing, but he seems to think that working just to work (“Because things are happening, man!”) is a great idea.
No, work must be done to produce very specific results. Once those results are produced, you either don’t need to work on that any more, or can work on something else, or can back off on your work to enjoy the other six of the Seven Life Areas (financial, woman, family, physical, spiritual, recreational, and social.) He occasionally pays some lip service to these areas, but you can clearly see that he doesn’t really give a shit about these to any strong degree beyond his personal branding.
Which is fine. If it works for him, and clearly it does, I think that’s great. Personally, I don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars to make me happy, nor do I need to make millions of dollars a year. Grant seems to imply that if you are worth less than $10 million or invest in a real estate property with less than 32 doors then you’re just not cutting it. While I don’t exactly disagree (remember that I’m the guy who said this), I don’t agree either. Yeah, you need a million or more by your old age, but you can be very happy and very financially stable at with a few million in solid investments, or even less, depending on your personality and how you structure your lifestyle.
There’s also the issue of his delivery style. Sometimes guys can say everything I agree with, yet it’s hard for me to listen to them because their personalities are so opposite from mine. Grant Cardone falls into this category. I can’t listen to him for more than about 20 minutes because the guy is just so wired that it’s hard for an INTJ like me to process it.
It’s even worse when I try to listen to Tai Lopez. Nothing wrong with the guy or his advice, but he’s so talkative and emotional that I just can’t relate at all to his communication style. He drones on and on and on, and god damn dude, I just need the 1-2-3 how to’s so I can get back to work. I have shit to do.
That’s purely a communication style issue though; nothing to do with content. Grant Cardone’s content is good and I do recommend it. Lots of his sales advice and some of his investment advice is sound. He’s also motivational and teaches a fantastic work ethic. I would just temper it with Alpha 2.0 concepts such as income diversification (which Grant doesn’t really believe in), working less than 30 hours per week long-term (which would horrify Grant) and nonmonogamy (Grant is monogamously married to a woman with whom he had hardcore oneitis for years, by his own admission).
Traditional success is good. It really is. But Alpha Male 2.0 success is even better.