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.
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.
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Caleb, do you think all of those success authors write their books on their own or do they hire someone to interview them, take notes and then turn that into a book?
Some do, but a lot don’t. The more rich or famous the writer, the more likely they are to do that.
I’m think Grant Cardone actually did write The 10X Rule since it was written a few years ago, but I’m not sure, nor am I sure he still does this today with his current books.
1)Caleb,for the guys who didnt read the book,do you think this book is worth reading?261 pages?
2)I mean the unchained man is very practical and you can implement a lot of great concepts,but from the outside ,after reading be obsessed or be average,i think that 10 x rule will be a book about motivation and no practical advice,only work hard,do sales ,marketing,and thats all.From one to five how many stars will you give to this book,the 10 x rule?
Also The milionaire Fastlane book,how many stars would you give to that book?I think that is the second greatest book after the unchained man,from over 100 books that i have read.
3)I watched your course and your upsell program and both were great and I know based on that information that in 2 to maximum 3 years,if not sooner i will hit the financial goals of an alpha 2.0,the 75.000$ a year,working 30 hours or less.But for the guys who want to earn millions a year,do you think that they can do this using an alpha 2.0 business system,or after a certain sum of money the only way to earn huge amounts of money is to have a traditional alpha 1.0 business?
Off topic,but what changes are you going to do on this blog after that feedback from guys on the article “Suggestions for this blog”?
Yes, I recommend it (with the caveats I already explained).
More or less accurate. The Unchained Man is much better for the exact reason you stated. 10X Rule doesn’t have nearly as much practical advice. Yet, it still has some good stuff in there. But yeah, if you need a large amount of practical advice, don’t read it; it will just piss you off.
I read it but it really bored me because I already knew everything in it so it was all review for me. So I’m not a good guy to ask regarding that book.
A man can make up to about $1.5 million per year under the Alpha 2.0 business model (depending on various factors). Beyond that income, yes, you’ll have to start hiring real employees and building real infrastructure, leaving the model behind.
I’ve already radically changed the topic posting schedule for this blog, as of right now, based on the suggestions I received.
Right now I’m working on radically upgrading all of my blogs. More on that soon.
I seem to find the man too hyper. Could you name some guys other than you, that you personally follow and are more concise and structured in their approach to self improvement?
I work with nothing but ladies. Can you imagine if I used Grant’s techniques on them?
It might be a good video if you want to see female head’s explode. lol
I haven’t head of this guy, but the way you describe him reminds me of the Instanity workouts. They’re insane, because they appeal to the masochistic bone in some people.
Insane hard work, commitment or other obligation for the sake of the intensity doesn’t usually achieve the desired results, simply because the course of action is so intense. Rather, well thought out goals backed my meaningful action steps that minimize the time and efforts to achieve the results is ideal. I’m “creatively lazy” in that I think through the minimum investment of work, time and money to achieve the maximum results. Also, the ultimate maximum results — like the case of this guy saying you need to be a multi-millionaire — is also nonsense, as it doesn’t account for many factors in a man’s life and optimal lifestyle to achieve, and more importantly maintain such a level of success, if you want to call it success (like suggesting that getting tenant call in the middle of the night is a signal of success). That’s just silly.
I take guys like this with a skeptical eye and grain of salt. I’ve been in the real estate investment biz a long time and know the type of guys that sell this kind of balls-to-the-wall ideology to simpletons who are easily swayed by intense emotional sales and marketing — a real contrast to their dull, boring pre-programmed lives.
It’s tempting to get caught up in the unrestrained bravado of motivational speeches, without doing the calculus to understand inputs and outputs for desired outcomes.
Caleb, I would like to know your thoughts on Gary Vee?
I’m an ENTJ with a little bit of Introversion in the mix so Gary Vee, Grant Cardone & Tai Lopez are too much for me to handle.
Brian Tracy, Robert Ringer, Dan Kennedy, Alan Weiss. Many others but those will get you started.
What does Gary Vee teach? I honestly don’t know what content Gary Vee espouses other than “stop being a pussy and get to work.” Seriously, I’ve seen a bunch of his videos and 100% of his messaging seems to be just that and nothing else.
I’m pure INTJ. For me, I can’t listen to Tai Lopez at all, Grant Cardone is good in smaller doeses, and Gary Vee is fine except I don’t know what techniques he teaches.
Great article. I’d like to read more about your opinion on other success gurus/public figures who have credit/their books and courses. It’s hard to select worth-taking information in a sea of self-claim experts out there, especially when your time is limited.
Thank you caleb! You’re note in the comments about when the Alpha 2.0 model would transfer over is helpful! Now I see even more how Alpha 2.0 is like a ninja alternative to the romance of what a super duper millionaire life advertises.
From what I understand, Garyvee focuses on social media, branding, “doing what you love,” e-commerce and digital marketing (the importance of the internet), and garage sale flipping. Also some about having a mission that can go on for forever and the insane work ethic stuff you mentioned.
I had a revelation after working with some startups and clients that became 9 figure businesses, and plenty that failed over 10 years:
Most people who become financially succesful are the kind of people who are never satisfied by it, and most people who WOULD be satisfied by financial success, never acheive it.
I think that aligns with his 10x your goals mentality.
While I don’t dislike him, I haven’t heard many good things about him. Heard he just had a lot of startup money and pumps out a lot of hot air, similar to Gary Vee.
Hey Caleb, what do you think about Dan Lok and his wealth triangle?
https://youtu.be/hjgN-K_b7nk
I’ve been following this guy for several months and find his content pretty eye opening. But I wanted to hear your perspective on it.
Great write-up Caleb. As you mentioned, Grant does have a lot of good content. His style and approach may not work for everyone. The key is to listen and learn something, then apply it to your goals.
I am glad that Grant talks about hard work, which few others gurus do. As you mentioned, one thing that a lot of people need to keep in mind is what will make you happy in life, and work towards that. You don’t always need to 10X everything, especially if it won’t make you happy. As a Lifestyle Builder, I much rather prefer to define what makes me happy, determine what I need to do to get there and work hard to make that happen. I’m not 10Xing just to 10X.