In order to be successful, you have to be able to communicate your ideas, who you are, and your point of view. And so, I use three steps in every communication that can be used for getting a promotion, laying people off. It could be used to persuading your significant other, "Where are you going to go to dinner that night?
" And it allowed me to go from being in a room where I couldn't have a conversation with people and crippled with anxiety and fear to co-founding two nine-figure businesses, helping over 15,000 business owners scale their organizations, as well as helping people unpack the strategies that the top 1% of people use to gain clicked on this conversation, what is the reason that you think it's important for them to stay and listen to what we're going to talk about today and all of the things that you've spent your career understanding? If you are somebody who has really struggled with working hard and putting in the effort and the energy, but you don't actually have wealth to show for it, this conversation is important because wealth should come from hard work on the right set of problems. And so you have to ask yourself the question, what problems do I work on every single day?
And whether you're a team member in an organization, And so as you sit here now, what is your business? What's the scale of the business? And uh what does it do?
Yeah, over the last six years, I co-founded two businesses that are both nine figures today. One is a management consulting investment firm. It's called Cardone Ventures, and we help small business owners grow and scale their organizations.
So, I work with business owners on a daily basis who will be doing $3 million in annual revenue. They want to know, how do I become one of the So it was a 2019 you started this business. So if I jumped back to 2019, what is the difference like fundamental difference in the principles of how to be successful in business that you know now that you wouldn't have known then?
Like what are the glaring principles? I often think that like the further you go down any path, it becomes more and more clear what the like fundamental rules of the game are. your framework for goal setting?
If someone at home isn't quite clear on their goals, what what should they be doing? I have a three-step methodology for goal setting that I have rolled out to thousands of people. And this three-step framework has really transformed my life because it allows me to create buckets for goals.
And the process is called personal goals, professional goals, and financial goals. And after having over a thousand of these conversations personally where I've interviewed team have you always been like this? I always wanted this, but today I am this.
At 20 years old, I was crippled with anxiety and fear about what others thought of me. What changed? What happened?
How did you acquire such an aura? I think the aura came from targeting, getting stats that I could prove that let somebody not see me in my life choices, but actually let them see an outcome. So that first insecurities and maybe aren't the most conf confident, maybe a bit anxious, scared about what people might think if they try.
What would you say to those people from your experience? Go all in on yourself. Go all in on that weird thing that you're interested in.
If it's scrapbooking, if it's social media, if it's recruiting, if you like reading business books, go allin on that thing. And Does it matter how you look? I've I've heard you talk about this in a video you made in April where you're talking about seven steps to transforming yourself and you say that you should rebrand your look.
Does it matter how I look? I think it matters a lot to people how they look. I think people have a lot of ideas about levels of acceptance about how they look and ultimately you have to decide if you are comfortable with the way that you look and I do think many people would be to start to look like, dress like, act like that thing that I want to become.
How important do you think communication is in terms of like the way that you show up here and the way that you talk? Do you think that's important? And if so, what advice would you give to to my audience about being an effective communicator?
Of course, communication is the most important thing. Next to being successful, What about how you speak? how the very the most effective speakers that you've encountered, what it is they do tactically to make sure that people hear what they're saying and are persuaded by them, you know, and there's a spectrum, right?
There'll be these business owners that you meet that are like terrible communicators and speakers. What are they doing wrong? And then the very best that you meet, what are they doing right?
The more frameworks somebody has to frame their communication, I think helps um, and being more high conviction and certain with the way that you communicate with people. Mh. Explain that to me.
That honestly might be outdated for me. Yeah. Because in a day and age where it's important to share your point of view, it's not a bad thing to say, I think this is the right path, especially if you aren't certain.
And it shows You talk about mastering your calendar as well being central transformation. Why is why is this so important and what does that mean? Well, if you want anything in life, you actually have to spend time to get that thing.
things don't just magically manifest into people's lives despite what the internet tells you. So, in order for me to have the relationship You know, people talk a lot about work life balance and I think a lot of people want want everything. We want to, you know, get to 40, have the yacht, have the great family, have great relationships, have a great business.
I mean, that's an ideal outcome for all of us. What would you say to people about the concept of working hard and how critical or or unimportant that is? Working hard is the most important thing.
You cannot get to where you want to go if it's truly something that is unusual or out of the ordinary without working hard. Never burnout inducing though. And I think that that's a Burnout then in your view.
Why do people say, do you know I was doing this thing and I got burnt out so I had what is that? The thing that people do is not actually leading to where they want to go. So, if I thought that it was going to require me to work out two hours a day in the gym and only eat chicken and rice and never have any of the things that I love to never get a six-pack, I'm not going to do that.
But if I think that by Of course they do. And what should someone do that is looking to earn the respect? some someone that feels like they're continually disrespected.
There's something about them. There's something in the way they carry themselves that what they continually feel like people are disrespecting them. They might work in a business or, you know, they might be low down in a company or maybe they're not.
Maybe they're just someone who's gone through the corporate world and they're continually disrespected. Yeah. Oh, and they both had partners outside of the company.
Both had partners outside of the company. As soon as I caught wind of it, it wasn't even like a a split-second decision. Well, I guess it technically was a split-second decision.
Was like, I can't have this in my environment, you know, you've spoken to thousands and thousands and thousands of business owners online, probably many millions of business owners. When we think about that initial period of like coming up with the idea and picking what to work on. Is there any advice you would give people based on the success and failure you've seen about what they should aim at, what they should work on, especially in the context of like 2025 when so much in the world is changing so quickly?
If they could use the frame, if any business owner or potential business owner could think about starting a Of course the market growth is everything because if you want to start a paper business in 2025, you would have to be the best paper business and really have a unique positioning to make that successful. when you could do something less well and be much more successful because there's just more opportunity in the growth and there's less players in markets. So the growth allows for innovation, the growth allows for new entrance and as I mentioned with AI, uh there's just an unprecedented Yeah.
I've heard you talk about when you described the six most profitable businesses that you think will be around in 2026. We've talked about AI businesses, talked about home services. The other one was hybrid wellness clubs.
Mhm. Why is why is health such a a big predict prediction for you in terms of profitability and a good place to set up shop? There's growth in the health space after co the whole world changed and their priorities changed as it relates to health.
the statistics I read recently they won't say it like this but what they're describing is that they're a bottleneck in their own business. They're at maybe I don't know a million in revenue. I mean most people that come up to me say this exact same thing.
They've reached about a million in revenue in total and they don't know how to scale beyond their typically like service based businesses where someone's doing a service for a client. And uh what would you what do you say to those people when you've encountered them in your your company? without aiming extremely high with the talent.
But that's actually because I'm harder to dup now. So if you have to pay someone a huge salary for example and give them a huge package whatever I'm better able to assess whether they are worth it and what their ROI is going to be versus the start of my career where hiring someone on and taking such a big risk on someone I didn't have enough data to understand if I was being duped or not. So it was a lot of faith and trust and well they worked at this incredible company so they must be good and I've also seen that completely And when I asked you what was front of mind for you at the moment, you referenced that you were thinking a lot about the women's wealth transfer.
What is this? The women's wealth transfer. between 2025 and 2030 looks like just these are US stats 10 trillion dollars are in the hands of women right now and between now and 2030 that number is going to go up to $30 trillion.
So this wealth is going to balloon. And when you think about the implications of how this wealth transfer happens, it's plug-in microphone, and my Mac right here. And I have to say when I first had the idea for the diary of a CEO, my thinking was that the world might want to see into the diaries of some of the most interesting, successful people really in high places that were doing interesting things.
So after recording that first episode under my duvet, I sat on my Mac, which is from our sponsor Apple, and spent hours editing and eventually uploaded it. And honestly, I thought that would probably be it. But a couple of my friends said they enjoyed it, so I kept on recording.
And over time, the microphone has changed and we People love talking about passive income, especially on YouTube and the internet. They everyone wants passive income. The idea that you can make income and do [ __ ] all is unbelievably compelling.
Yeah. Like I would like some passive income. What is the reality of this?
Because there's a real obsession with figuring out ways to make passive income. I want to earn money when I sleep. Um what is the reality of that?
Is that is that a thing? Is that possible? Is that something I should be aiming at?
much of what we employ people to do these days will be redundant in the in the near future. Mhm. And that's not to say that there won't be new jobs, but it's a difficult time to be um investing heavily in any particular skill set.
Well, some to some skill sets because they're they're becoming invalid in no time at all. Like even as a writer, so like I've written two books and I enjoy the process of writing. I considered it to be one of my edges.
I was like, I'm quite good at writing. So that's useful. You can build a personal brand.
You can send good emails. You can convince people, I think this is a connected subject but I would want anybody in the audience whether you make 60,000 a year a million a year a 100red million a year to actually have the belief in themselves that they can learn anything that they want to know and that there isn't actually a barrier there that exists because if I could get people to really believe that their entire life would change due to the access that they have today due to the tools that they have today. And so taking that confidence I noticed that um you know I've had a bunch of conversations on this show with people like Evie Porus who is the uh the the Secret Service agent and you have a lot of similarities to her.