Sales Strategies, Business Hustling and More with Grant Cardone

Grant Cardone is the man.

I was recently introduced to Grant and fell in love with one specific thing about him.

His Attitude.

I also love his passion, hustle, and drive for excellence.

He may be the one guy (besides my man David from The Rise To The Top) who has as much energy and passion for what he does.

Tell you what… I dig that about him.

He’s also a bro’s bro, a man’s man, and he can pull off a pink shirt (unlike me).

He is filled with confidence and does the little things every day (that others don’t do) which helps him achieve every goal in business and life he desires.

Pretty cool right?

You’ll want to watch this video interview below because you’ll be fired up to take more action and sell more right after.  Here are some of the things Grant covers:

• The real definition of “Sales” and why you need to understand it
• What type of people to hire in sales roles (it’s not who you think at all!)
• The biggest mistake all sales professionals make and how to overcome it
• The easiest way to increase sales using social media
• The art of hustling in sales (in a positive way)
• and much more…

Watch this 33 minute, high energy and completely raw interview with Grant Cardone below.

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What did you think of this interview with Grant?  Did you believe in his sales strategies and can you see the power in his ideas for your business?  Please leave a comment with your thoughts below and share this with your friends on Twitter and Facebook.  Also make sure to follow Grant on Twitter here. 

Want to read the entire interview?  Check out the transcript of this interview below: 

Lewis Howes: What’s up everyone, Lewis Howes here.  I am super pumped for my special interview today with Grant Cardone.  What’s up Grant? How are you doing?

Grant Cardone:        How are you doing, Man?  Good to be here with you.

Lewis Howes:  I’m really excited to introduce all of you to Grant because, just recently, a couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to Grant through a friend of mine through a company called Atlas Media. Grant has a TV show out there called “The Turnaround King”. He is also a New York Times best-selling author, international sales coach, trainer, creator of thousands of products, digitally and physical products, speaks all over the world at seminars, he’s got bumper stickers, everything you can think of, he has got it.  He has helped out a lot of big Fortune 500 companies, small business owners, and entrepreneurs really increase their sales effectively and really turn around their businesses; hence, The Turnaround King.  I never heard about you, Grant, until my friend mentioned you, and then I went online and researched you.  I was pretty much blown away by the stuff that you do.  So I’m really excited about this.   Before we get into questions, I have eight core questions for you.  Let’s talk really quickly about what got you into sales, what makes you excited about the selling process, can you talk to us about how you got into this, before I let people know what we are going in to.

Grant Cardone: What got me into sales? First of all, I want to thank you for your time today and your being interested in me, in what we are doing, and also for your viewers who watch this because obviously those are people who are entrepreneurs, people that aren’t satisfied, and God bless you.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone:  You’re interested in taking good care of yourself, your company, your household; I think that’s an ethical obligation.  I think that’s actually a spiritual quality, and people should be commended, that people want to go out and take care of them selves and their family, and there’s not enough of that in America today.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: The way I got into sales was out of necessity.  I mean, it wasn’t like,… I went to college. I got a degree in accounting. I didn’t think about being a sales person.

Lewis Howes: Right

Grant Cardone:  Even though my father who was fairly successful always told me, he died when I was 10. But he always told us and then told my mother to inform the boys because he knew he was going to die.

Lewis Howes: Right

Grant Cardone: Hey, make sure those boys learn how to sell because they’re pathetic and they can’t do anything.  And if you can sell, you can do anything, any economy, any product, any city, any nation, anywhere. You can move, you can literally move to another economy   and another industry and take care of yourself.

Lewis Howes: Right

Grant Cardone: So the unemployment numbers that you see in America today, they’re not even close to what I was dealing with when I got out of college.

Lewis Howes: Really?

Grant Cardone:  24 percent of the people where I worked were unemployed, could not get a job.  So I got out of college with the degree on, I owed I think $50,000 or $60,000 in government student loans, couldn’t get a job, couldn’t get a job.  My uncle said, “Why don’t you get into sales, because despite the economy, every company needs sales people?“

I went to work for a car dealer; that was the first job.  Well, that was not the first sales job I had. I actually sold furniture, jewelry, produce, clothes in the summer months to get through school.

Lewis Howes: Sure

Grant Cardone: I went and sold cars, and hated it. Absolutely, hated it, Man.  I was a disaster at it.  I did that for a couple of years, and I realized I still couldn’t find work. The problem wasn’t the car business; the problem wasn’t that customers didn’t like car salesmen; the problem was I didn’t know how to sell.  I was 25 years old and made a commitment to myself that I was going to learn how to sell.  Because regardless of the business I was going to go into, I had this entrepreneurial inclination. And regardless of the business whether you’re a chiropractor, a chemist, a doctor, a lawyer, you want to be a plastic surgeon right here in Beverly Hills, you’ve got to sell, Man.

You can fix the nose, but if you don’t have the nose to fix that means you’re working on yourself, that’s not going to last for very long.

Lewis Howes:  I love the attitude. I love it.  I feel like I can really relate to you because you’re like a man’s man.  You like saying how it is, there’s no fluff.

Grant Cardone: Who can wear pink!

Lewis Howes: I can’t pull off the pink, but it’s all good, I’m glad you can. Maybe one day I’ll get the balls to do that.  Allright, let’s go in to, What’s your definition of selling?  Then, is it more of a step-by-step process, or is there an art to the selling or the close?  I know you’ve got lots of training programs out there and you speak all the time on this, but what is your definition of selling?

Grant Cardone:  First of all, I mean, I am a master in selling.  I couldn’t say that about baseball. I played baseball when I was in college.  I never made a full commitment to it and then I got hurt, and I had to bail on the game.   I love it man, the game, I was like, I am going to be a professional catcher, you know.

Despite my size, I probably wasn’t big enough and strong enough, but my body broke down so I couldn’t do it.  Look if you look at professional sports, for example, those guys train every day.  I’m going the long way around this answer to your question about “what is selling”. The problem with most people; most people have two problems with sales:    either they don’t want to be one, and they don’t understand that their life depends on it; or number 2; they get into it and it’s like something mechanical.  It’s something you have to be fully committed to in order to be great at it.

You can’t be great at baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, whatever…

Lewis Howes: Only a few can really be great at that,  they are really gifted and dedicated but it’s very few and far between.

Grant Cardone: But give me one extremely gifted athlete that you know.  The most gifted athlete you have.

Lewis Howes: Deion Sanders, didn’t he play two sports or…

Grant Cardone: Let’s take Deion, okay? Is he still required to train and keep his game on?

Lewis Howes: Yes

Grant Cardone: Mohammad Ali said, “I hated every second I spent training in a ring, but I suffered through it so I could be a champion for a life time. “

Lewis Howes: Right

Grant Cardone: People want to be entrepreneurs. Everybody wants to be “the business man or woman”.  Everybody wants to be the CEO or the vice-president.  Look if you can’t sell your product, your ideas and your dreams, go work for somebody else because it is not going to happen.  You got to sell.  When Lehman’s collapsed 2 years ago, 28 months ago, the internal world, at least in the United States all became sales people.  CEOs, vice presidents, god-like figures, bankers.  If you can’t sell, you’re going to lose your job.  If you can’t sell, your dreams won’t come true.  So selling for me, to answer your question, it encompasses everything.  It’s not  one small thing.  For me to get the woman I want, or the mate I want, I got to sell the right person.   Most people don’t do that.   Most people say, “Oh, I can’t get that, so I’ll just drop down a level.”

Rather than say, “No, that’s the partner I want in my life, now I’m going to figure out how to convince her, follow her up, persist until she actually loves me.   Have you ever seen an ugly guy with a beautiful woman?  You’ve seen that.

Lewis Howes: Yeah!  It’s persistent.

Grant Cardone: That’s selling right there, buddy!

Lewis Howes:  Exactly, it’s like selling ice to an Eskimo.  An ugly guy that has a beautiful woman.  Good stuff, great answer. Alright, next question, Who you would rather take then, would you rather take someone who’s a hustler or someone who is book smart to be your closer.

Grant Cardone: To be my closer?  I want women to be my closer.

Lewis Howes: To be a sales guy, not for women.  I mean, for sales in general

Grant Cardone: If I’m looking for a person to hire, I don’t need any talent at all.  You give me one thing, and I can teach anybody how to sell.

Lewis Howes: Okay, awesome.   I mean what should people be looking for if they…

Grant Cardone:  Willingness.  Willingness.  Just look for willingness.   I’m not looking for a sales type.

Lewis Howes: Okay.

Grant Cardone: I’m not looking for a hustler.  I mean a hustler. I like the idea of a hustler.  But the problem with a hustler is  they run out of steam.  They hustle and then, bam! They’re like, oh, oh..I don’t want to hear that.  And then they go hustlle in another corner.  That’s the problem.  Particularly of the hustler, he doesn’t have any persistence in him.   I’m looking for willingness.  I’m looking for somebody,… you know what, I don’t have many rules.

Lewis Howes: I like that.

Grant Cardone: The people that are winning in this planet, the people that win don’t have rules.  It doesn’t mean they’re unethical, it means they’re there to take care of their family first, show me some body, show me a husband or a mother that will do anything for their family. I can make them into a sales person.

Lewis Howes:  Nice!

Grant Cardone: That’s why people that come from other countries; the Iranians, anybody from Persia, Iran or Iraq, they come to the United States.  Look, this is what they do.  They make their money, they send most back home, and they live on the rest.  They let everybody in their family know what they are doing. You know why, because they are selling as a duty not for the money.  No offense to Americans, but if you give me a guy from the Middle East, and you give me an American. And you say you can only hire only one of them.   I mean I’ll hire the guy from the Middle East every time.  Sorry, he is so hungry.   His hunger is not on money; his hunger is on duty.  I got to take care of my family.

Lewis Howes: That’s right!

Grant Cardone: That’s the sense that I operate from.  You know, what we really teach people first is, “Look, success is your duty; it’s your obligation; it’s your responsibility; if you don’t provide for your family, you’re unethical.”

Lewis Howes: It’s great!

Grant Cardone: I was doing a YouTube conference, a video conference like this the other night.  There was a million and a half people watching this; I’m sure you’re going to have more viewers than that.

Lewis Howes: Wow, that’s awesome!

Grant Cardone: Somebody wrote in, they tweeted in and said, “What about the good parent?”  Look, you’re not a good parent if you can’t provide for your family.

Lewis Howes: Right.  You mean the good parent who is always there for their children, like spending all his time with them, is that what they meant by good parent?

Grant Cardone: Exactly, “the good parent”, you know.   I have quality time; I take care of my kids.  Good!  You know what, you should be both.  Not one or the other.  I’ve been studying rich people for 28 years.  Rich people do not think either/or; they think both, happiness and money.  Poor people think either/or; they think, “Oh, if I’m going to be rich, then   I can’t be happy.”

So I’m going to be happy.   Dude, you can be both.  You can be a great parent.  I’m a great parent. I just had my first kid; I’m 53 years old.  I just had my first child. I’m an unbelievable parent.  Swim with my daughter every afternoon. I take her to the grocery store; every morning at 6 o’clock I wake her up.

Lewis Howes: Wow!

Grant Cardone: And I work the rest of the day so I can provide for her.

Lewis Howes: Sure.

Grant Cardone: So, people can do it all, Man.  There’s no shortage of creativity that you   have that you can only be one or the other.

Lewis Howes: Right, exactly. And where are you from, by the way? I’m trying to figure it out.

Grant Cardone: I’m from Louisiana.

Lewis Howes: Alright, I figured … somewhere in the South.

Grant Cardone: I lived in the south, Man, for 29 years. My first job selling was, I was working on the oil rigs in the summers.  And I spent two weeks on and two weeks off.

Lewis Howes: Okay

Grant Cardone: And we were on a supply boat, and we would fish in our down time; and there was a lot of down time. One day we launched into these red snappers, and we must have caught 200 or 300 pounds of red snapper.  I couldn’t eat it all. I put it in the freezer; I bought all the snapper from the other 3 guys, and I sold it when we got back to shore. I sold it all the way back to my house.  I would just stop into businesses and start saying, “I got some red snapper; fresh; I just caught it, you want it?”

I made more money selling red fish, okay, snapper than I made the two weeks I was out there; and I made it in about 3 hours.

Lewis Howes: Wow!

Grant Cardone: I was hooked on selling man, but I still didn’t know what I was doing.

Lewis Howes: Awesome, allright.  I want to read a quick quote.  This is going to lead us into this next question.  Tony Robbins says, “Energy is the edge”. And I was watching some of your YouTube videos, and you talk a lot about that no one does enough; no one does more than they should be doing, and that a lot of people are really lazy out there.  And you’ve been mentioning that briefly so far.  Here’s a quick quote from you in one of your Huffington Post articles saying, “Those that are most secure  in today’s economy, do not approach opportunity lazily but industriously. The super successful and those most secure do not seek to just do enough but instead go way above what others are doing.”

So, let’s talk a little bit about laziness.   You mentioned how, when you graduated from college, 24 percent was the unemployment rate; now I’m not really sure what it is, 10 or 15 percent, or it might be less or more, but I feel like my generation, I’m 28, but in my generation in the 22 year olds, people are getting out of college; a couple of years after college they are so lazy they feel entitled to just have things happen to them. They should just make money.  What’s up with people; why are they so lazy?

Grant Cardone: Let me just tell you, first of all, your parents said the same thing about you and your generation that you are now saying about this generation.

My parents said the same thing about my generation; this has been going on for two thousand years.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone:  Probably, you know, Joseph probably said, “Jesus is lazy; we’ve got to get him to work.  Come on, Man, here’s a hammer, here’s some nails. Let’s get to work, let’s build some houses.  So the truth is, look, I don’t agree with Tony about the energetic thing.  Laziness, anywhere laziness is seen, there’s a lack of understanding.  People are not active in anything they don’t understand.  So, like I don’t do calls and puts in the stock market.  My brother says, “Why don’t you, Man; you know you bought that stock and you’re going to keep it.  All you have to do is put a call on it and protect your position.” He would think that I am lazy because I’m not doing that.

The truth is I don’t understand it, that’s why I don’t do it.

Lewis Howes: Okay.

Grant Cardone: Plumbing in my house; when the plumbing goes out, you’re going to see Grant operate very lazy.  Why?  Because I don’t know anything about plumbing!

So when the plumbing is screwed up and my wife is screaming, I’m in there playing X-Box with my brother for a hundred bucks a kill.

Lewis Howes: Looking lazy

Grant Cardone: No, no, no, I’m very active.  See the difference?

Lewis Howes: Right

Grant Cardone: So even for that lazy 19 year old right now that’s out of work, watching, being online, playing online poker for 4, 5  & 6 hours at a time.  See, he is not lazy with things he understands.

So anywhere, I see lazy, two things happen to me as the owner of a company. (1) Do you not understand something? Is there something you don’t understand, and then I get him trained; or (2) The executives of the company are actually allowing people to be lazy.  Lazy, and what I was saying in the article, if you’re a viewer…

Lewis Howes: I’ll link it up.

 

Grant Cardone: Tweet me, just search it’s called “Lazy is an Entitlement Concept.”  And I just did a video on it because I got so much hate mail.  Did you see the video I did?

 

Lewis Howes: Yeah, I did.

 

Grant Cardone: So I’m saying look, lazy is educated into people, it’s encouraged, and it’s allowed.  Anywhere you see lazy in any company; you’re going to see encouraged, allowed and educated.  The school system in our country educates people to be lazy. Sit there; sit there for 50 minutes, Man.  I can’t even pick the courses I want anymore.   So, this is the problem and now, the pharmaceutical companies want to medicate everybody and make them  even more lazy.  So I think lazy is something particularly for the executive, he needs to look at being responsible.  We’re responsible and not blame people for being lazy, but not allow it in his organization.

 

Lewis Howes: Right, good answer.  Let’s go into the next question, kind of switching topics a little bit.  Now, I told you before I never heard about you and I’m extremely active on social media.

 

Grant Cardone: I’m sorry, Man.

 

Lewis Howes: I know, but I’m glad I did now. I’m glad we’re connected. I never heard about you because no one else in my circle of social media kind of like experts or people in the industry had really written about you or done stories about you that I have seen; or maybe I just missed over them, and they already have.  But I noticed you are really active on social media.  You’re talking a lot about, especially in this show, The Turnaround King show, which I am not even supposed to have.  It’s an early edition of this show.

 

Grant Cardone: You can buy it from Nat Geo now.  We’re going to get it picked up somewhere else, but the show was so successful with their viewers that  it’s the only show they ever sold a DVD to but didn’t pick the show up, it’s crazy.

 

Lewis Howes: It’s a great show.   I’m recommending people to go and check them out.  Grant is like a better looking and more guys’ guy like Danny Doish type of style show, you know.  But let’s talk about social media for sales. You are extremely active on social media; you’ve got YouTube, GooglePlus, Facebook, Tweeter, you’re everywhere.  And that’s one of the things you talked about in the show.   You say, “Get your flip cam out.”  You say, “Talk about your products.”  You say, “Post it up on Facebook, on YouTube, on Tweeter.”  And you say, “This is free marketing.”  And this is something I preach to a lot to my members, who are pretty much social media savvy.  But let’s talk about maybe one or two tips for selling via social media.  What’s kind of like your  best practice for anyone looking to sell more through social media?

 

Grant Cardone: First of all, I didn’t even have a Facebook account a year ago.  I know nothing about social media.

 

Lewis Howes: Right.

 

Grant Cardone: So I’m telling everybody right now, I know nothing. But I’ll stack up my fans against any social media guru guy; I’ll stack up the number of posts I’ve done.  I think I’ve done 11,000 posts in ten months on Tweeter alone.  I have three Facebook accounts.  I was one of the first people in Google Plus, one of the first people doing Google hangouts.  The tip with social media is you have to hammer; you have to hammer it so hard and so creatively.  If you’re doing 1 or 2 posts a day, no one even knows you exist.

 

Lewis Howes: Right.

 

Grant Cardone: It’s like throwing a pebble into the Pacific Ocean and thinking you are going to create a big Tsunami. Dude, you got to bang it. You got to bang it so hard that you actually get criticism because of the amount of attention you’re getting.

 

Lewis Howes: I like that.

 

Grant Cardone: Now this is what I do with social media, and I’ve been told, I can’t tell you how many times, ”You post too much. “

 

Lewis Howes:          Right, but you get attention.

 

Grant Cardone: I got a lot to say, Man. You have to understand that most people aren’t seeing that post.

 

Lewis Howes:        Right.

 

Grant Cardone: So, and anybody that it bothers – if you have 5 Facebook fans, and I’m one of them.  You’re whole wall is going to be covered up with me.  It’s not my problem; it’s your problem.

 

Grant Cardone: The word that I use in my life today, and this isn’t about social media this is about the U.S. economy:  omni-presence should be the thing that you use in every decision you make.  The word omni-present means to be everywhere all at the same time. Anything assigned to omni-presence will be assigned power, and then will be successful: Coca Cola, Starbucks, Apple computer, God.   God is everywhere.

Lewis Howes: I like this.

Grant Cardone: Right, God is everywhere. So people that haven’t even met God assign God a lot of power.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: Coca Cola, everywhere; the Kardashians, everywhere; the Kardashians,… there’s not even anything to sell, Man!

Lewis Howes: There’s the clothing now, but, that’s about it.  Yeah, it’s funny.  I live in New York City two blocks from their store, Dash; and it’s the only store in Soho that I’ve seen that has a line outside every single day. There’s a line of people waiting to get in every time I walk by it.  No other store has that in New York City.

Grant Cardone: Yes. See, there you go, Man. So the point is the people that you are working with need to think in terms of massive levels of action. Now, I’m going to tell you, when Lehman’s collapsed, do you remember where you were that day?

Lewis Howes: I don’t remember, but, specifically…

Grant Cardone: Ok. You remember that happening?

Lewis Howes: I remember it happening.  Yes.

Grant Cardone: I had never written a book in my life, ok, on that day.  And this is more about social media and not just social media because I see people doing social media and dropping out their other things.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: And that’s a mistake.  A lot of people on Google Plus right now, spending too much time on Google Plus and not putting hands in hands, not touching customers any more.   The day Lehman’s collapsed Thursday afternoon, four days later I wrote this book. Now, I’m not selling books in this interview.

Lewis Howes: No. That’s fine.

Grant Cardone: But I’m telling a story here.  I wrote this book.  It took three hours to write this book, okay? Three months later I wrote this book called “The Closer’s Survival Guide”. Nine months later this book became a New York Times best seller, it’s called “If You’re Not First, You’re Last”. The original title of this book was  “Don’t Be a Little Bitch”.

Lewis Howes: I love it.

Grant Cardone: Okay, This book came out one month ago called “The 10x Rule”.  I was writing about how to get a TV show in this book; this book came out before I actually landed the show.

Lewis Howes: You got the show, yes.

Grant Cardone: Ok. So the point I’m making is this. Four books in twenty-four months.

Lewis Howes: Wow.

Grant Cardone: Why would I do that? I ask your listener, your viewer, why would I do that? To sell books? To make money in books?  There’s no money in books.  A book sells for thirty bucks.  There’s no money in a book. The reason I did it is because the top CEO‘s in America read sixty books a year.

Lewis Howes: Sixty?  Six zero?

Grant Cardone: Six zero.  The top CEO’s in America in 2008 were surveyed and read sixty plus books a year.

Lewis Howes: Wow.

Grant Cardone: The average American can’t finish one book.

Lewis Howes: Wow, nice.

Grant Cardone: Can’t finish one, okay. In the last two years I wrote four books.  I became a blogger on Huffington Post. I don’t even know how many articles I’ve done there. I’ve written, I don’t know, maybe two hundred articles that have been dispersed in different communities, different sites, blogs; created eleven hundred videos, another four hundred on YouTube; have no clue how many posts I’ve done on Facebook and Twitter; I know its eleven thousand on Twitter, the point is…

Lewis Howes: You’re everywhere!

Grant Cardone: Exactly!  Dude, you want omni-presence. You want to push into the market place so violently, so aggressively, okay? So that the first thing that will happen is you’re going for attention. I’ll give you a formula here that you should never forget.  Go for attention, until it gets criticism, and then add more attention until it becomes hate, and keep pushing on attention until haters become admirers.

Lewis Howes: Wow.

Grant Cardone: It goes like this:  attention, criticism, hate, admiration.

Lewis Howes: I love that, Man.

Grant Cardone: And because if you’re not getting any criticizers, nobody knows you even exist.

Lewis Howes: Right, its true, it’s very true.  You know, I’m so appreciative of you’re saying this right now because a lot of people… I’ve just been in business for a few years and I’ve built my own seven figure business, you know I’m super grateful for all the success that I have had.  But people always tell me, every day I hear this, they say, “Lewis, I see you everywhere!”   I’m literally hustling around the world going to every major event.  I’m on two to three webinars a day to thousands of people. I’m posting on social media, just like you said, kind of do the same similar strategies. I’m writing articles, videos everything, and I mean I’m pretty much a testament of the structure and the strategy you talked about.  If you’re everywhere, you can achieve the success you want; you can achieve what you want financially; and so I believe in that a hundred percent. I’m supper happy that you said that cause no one really understands that.  They don’t understand to be everywhere; they think it’s too much. Here’s what I think people feel. They feel two things: they want the success, but they are afraid of what the success will bring whether it would be the attitude their friends, their peers will think of them, or they’re afraid to fail big time.  Or how they’d be viewed by their family, their friends and so they just stay on this middle level the whole time instead of really trying to go for it which…

Grant Cardone: Yes, you know there’s basically in this last book that I wrote called “The 10x Rule” which I love because this book is about goal setting and how much action you need to take.

Lewis Howes: Okay.

Grant Cardone: And it talks about there are four levels of action that every human being takes.  You do it all day long; you don’t know even know you’re doing it. You either do nothing; you retreat; you do normal levels; the most dangerous is number three: normal levels of activity is the most dangerous.  Or you do what me and you do which is massive amounts of activity.

Lewis Howes: Action. Take massive action basically.

Grant Cardone: Exactly, Normal is the most accepted because it is accepted by the middle class.

Lewis Howes: Right

Grant Cardone: And when I say middle class I’m not talking about the income level. I’m not talking about the income level; I’m talking about the think. Normal think: “Oh I went to work today, yep.  I did my 8 hours, and I did five days in a row, and I did my forty hours.”  And you wonder why inflation comes, economy crashes, and why you’re not getting ahead because you’re doing normal. Any normal level of activity is going to get crashed by some abnormal conditions.

Lewis Howes: Right

Grant Cardone: And the fact that “Oh, Man, let’s take a vacation every year.”  Why? Why do you have to take a vacation every year?  You don’t have the money to do that.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: And when you do start making big money you might not be in a position to take the vacation anymore because it costs you too much to go on vacation until you really get into power.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: When things can run with or without you.

Lewis Howes: Right. Exactly, yes, listen up. I’m  loving this! Allright; three more quick questions then, so this is more complicated.

Grant Cardone: I knew you wouldn’t do twenty minutes with me, Dude.

Lewis Howes: I had to tell you twenty so basically you’d do this with me, because I knew  forty  would be too long. So, this is going to be a little bit more personal, not too personal, but what’s your morning ritual like? Do you visualize the day, visualize your goals, think about long term, the closing the sale, or do you just wake up and say …

Grant Cardone: I wake up.  I got one of these by my bed.

Lewis Howes: Ok

Grant Cardone: Ok. I wake up in the morning, and the first thing I do is to write down every thing I want to accomplish in my lifetime. I keep this everywhere I go.  It’s an old legal pad.  Before I go to sleep at night I put this down, and before I go to sleep at night I write down my goals again, in the morning and at night. I’m driven by my goals. I’m driven by my future.  I have no attention on the rearview mirror.  Rearview mirrors are that big.  Windshields are that big. There’s a reason why.  Keep your attention that way.

Lewis Howes: I love it.

Grant Cardone: And so, most people will write their goals down once a year, maybe twice a year. You need to be writing your goals down every day, morning and night, morning and night.  If you’re not doing that you will only make somebody else’s goals and dreams come true.

Lewis Howes: Wow. I love it. I really love your attitude. I just feel so in sync to what you are saying.  So I’m just, like your preaching to the choir to me, but I think everyone needs to hear this, for sure.

Grant Cardone: You know I’m a completely obsessed human being. I mean, when somebody said, “You got a disorder called obsessive.”   I’m like, “Hey, Bro, you selling pills or what?” Cause I’m telling you something; I have studied a lot of highly successful people; I’ve never met one of them who wasn’t completely obsessed and immersed in their adventure.

Lewis Howes: In their passion, right?

Grant Cardone: Totally, Dude.  They’re immersed completely; they just covered up. It’s not work to them.  It is an obsession.  It’s not a bad word.  That’s something that’s should be admired in people, not denegrated.

Lewis Howes: Right. Exactly. Nice.  Ok, cool.  Two last questions:  name me one or two of your biggest mentors that inspired you to get to where you are today; so maybe as a kid, or even now, or whenever.

Grant Cardone: Ok. Let me see.  Let me tell you, I’m telling you a couple of something.

Lewis Howes: Maybe at least one that we would even know of, maybe.

Grant Cardone: Yes. Definitely my dad; Definitely my dad.

Lewis Howes: Sure.

Grant Cardone: Yes. Everybody does their parents, right?

Lewis Howes: Yes

Grant Cardone: Let’s see here, now I read a book that, you know some of the books that have Nightingale stuff. I love that stuff.  What’s the guy’s name; he was a big insurance guy,. Williams. Read a lot of his stuff that helped.  A very controversial guy I read that I love, he wrote a book called, “Problems at Work” and even more controversial books, “Dianetics” …  L. Ron Hubbard, love that guys writings.

Lewis Howes: Yup.

Grant Cardone: That guy gets what people’s problems really are.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: You know, and observing people, man. I watch people a lot.

Lewis Howes: Sure.

Grant Cardone: Like Howard Schultz. I love Howard Schultz at Starbucks.  I spent time with him, you know when the economy collapse, first thing he did was he started to get rid of stores that weren’t producing, second thing he did he went and literally met every store in America and the patrons in the stores and had meetings with them saying “Hey, what can we give you? What do you need? What do u want?” So I love his work ethic.

Lewis Howes: Right. Awesome, okay, cool, last question.  You kind of mentioned this already, but the last question is:  What is the best book you can recommend, besides your own, for people that want to increase sales and just achieve greater success in their business? Just one book that you would recommend that stands above the rest.

Grant Cardone: Well, I wouldn’t recommend, I mean for sales books, I think there’s a lot of sales books out there that are garbage.

Lewis Howes: Yeah.

Grant Cardone: I think they, actually some of them particularly sell, that even some well known guys can actually hurt on that field a bit because its manipulative stuff like, neurolinguistic programming. It’s not a nice thing; it’s not good for anybody.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: Because it’s built on manipulation.  So what we are teaching for people to do in sales is like, ethical, integrity, like clean communication, quick cycles. We don’t spend long periods of time with people.

Lewis Howes: Right.

Grant Cardone: So I mean, I’m a little bias on the sales thing but…

Lewis Howes: Right, we’ll just tell people to go to your site and get your book then…

Grant Cardone: I mean, this book right here, this is the first book I ever wrote. This book, people will be reading this book a hundred years from now.

Lewis Howes: Okay.

Grant Cardone: It’s called “Sell to Survive”.

Lewis Howes: Nice, awesome.

Grant Cardone: It’ll completely get rid of any misnomers, or miseducation people have about selling; and you’ve got to assume there’s some miseducation  about this because it’s not covered by any schools.

Lewis Howes: Right, right. Exactly.

Grant Cardone: I’m going to Duke right now, Duke University, next month to do a whole presentation to their graduating class and to a whole bunch of entrepreneurs about why they need to know how to sell.

Lewis Howes:   Right. Awesome, cool! Well, Grant Cardone, where should people go to find you online? Should they go to your website, or do you want them to follow you…

 

Grant Cardone: They can go to grantcardone.com; I got a site there.  My YouTube channel’s got, I don’t know, a couple three hundred different sales tip videos that are free, so they can go to Grant Cardone at YouTube, you can go to Twitter @grantcardone and you’ll see I do tweets everyday that are sales entrepreneurial focus,

Lewis Howes: Tips, yup.

Grant Cardone: Yes, tips.

Lewis Howes: Yes, awesome. I’ll be sure to link up everything below this video on my post and make sure everyone go to grantcardone.com.  This guy has really taken over and since I’ve been picking up on you, I’ve been checking out your stuff and I’m really loving it, and I love your passion, hopefully I’ll get to connect with you again soon, but thanks again my man, and we’ll see you…

Grant Cardone: If you ever come out to LA come on out and stay at the house, allright?

Lewis Howes: I’m down. Thanks again, my man, appreciate it.

Grant Cardone: Okay, Man. Thank you for having me. Good luck to everybody.