0:03 spk_0

I’m Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sai. Like I always say, this is the podcast that will make you a smarter investor, period. And if you don’t get smarter after this episode, well, you gotta have your pulse or heart checked or something. Let’s bring in Grant Cardone, uh, CEO of Cardone Capital. I’ve followed Grant’s work for many years, focused in on real estate, his views on business. Grant, welcome to the podcast. Good to see you, man.

0:28 spk_1

Hey Brian, big fan, man, and thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And by the way, to everybody watching right now, if you, if you, if you leave with a less IQ, that’s on you, not on me and Brian.

0:38 spk_0

That’s show, well, great, I just, I brought you on here cause I wonder how you got all these social media followers. You have like your following is huge.

0:45 spk_1

Yeah, dude, I, you know, the way I do it is I when I was 10 years old, my dad died, and I kept waiting. I had 3 uncles and I kept thinking the 3 uncles were gonna step up and like.You know, teach me how to be a man, teach me about business and money, and, and they never did. They had their own families and their own issues and, and I swore to myself when I was 13 or 14 years old, I actually told my mom, I said, if I ever make it, and I’ve always wanted to make it since I was 8 years old, I’ve always wanted to be successful. And um I said, Mom, if I’m ever successful, I am going to help so many people. I’m gonna be the uncle.To other people that my uncle was not to me. And today we got about 20 million people that follow follow me online and um.And about 160 million people get free content from me on all our platforms.You know what I thought I’m

1:35 spk_0

doing, you’re doing all right. You know what I find amazing with successful folks, great, is that they never feel like they have achieved success. Did you feel that way, like you’re always reaching for something else?

1:46 spk_1

Do we have a saying in this house? Hey, it’s actually a question. When are we gonna make it?So my wife and I have said this for years, like, hey, when are we gonna make it? When are we gonna finally get our break? I mean, still today I’m suffering from this umThis, this, this idea that, you know, I can do more and um this divine discontentment, if you will.Uh, actually, Sam Walton talked about being discontent all the time, like, he wanted to do more, wanted to achieve more, believed he could achieve more and um I think that that’s a gift from God, actually. I think it’s a gift, not not something that you’re like, many people say you’re not never satisfied, but really it’s not about being satisfied, it’s about what else can I do to possibly make a difference in a world where people need people to make a difference.

2:39 spk_0

You know, the only thing we can’t get back, I guess, granted is time, you know, and you always feel like, I guess you’re in a, you’re in a rush.

2:47 spk_1

Yeah, but, but you can extend time.You, you might not be able to get back what you did, but I believe that you can extend it. Walt Disney did, you know, his name is still known today. Abe Lincoln did. I mean, Trump’s gonna go down as somebody you people will be talking about Trump 200 years from now.So you can extend time. Steve Jobs will extend his time, right? So you can extend time.Um,Look, I don’t get enough done every day. I know that, like there’s nothing.If anything, I, I waste, like people, people worry about me working too much. I’m like, bro, don’t worry about me working too much, worry about me wasting time not working.

3:27 spk_0

You know, Grant, you mentioned, um, President Trump. Obviously we’re not going to be alive for 200 years from now. I don’t know, maybe I, I haven’t tried these no,

3:36 spk_1

Brian, you might be coming back.

3:37 spk_0

Yeah, well, I, that’s fair, and you know, I may dabble in some of these longevity surfaces, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m interested in them. But what do you think, what do you think people are gonna be saying 200 years from now? I mean, we’re so in it right now, Gra with tariffs and market plunges, but 200 years from now, I mean, how’s this period gonna be remembered?

3:54 spk_1

They’re gonna look back and say, hey, tariffs are good, tariffs are important, OK, you either have tariffs on all parties or you have no tariffs, which isIt’s equal, so, um, I I I don’t know where we’re gonna be 200 years from now, we’re gonna be better, we’re gonna be bigger.Um, the the, the all countries will continue to be manifesting whatever reality people are attempting to manifest.Uh, and despite all the volatility in the marketplace, a guy worth $14 billion told me this about 4 years ago. Grant, remember, no matter how bad it gets, most people are gonna be doing what they were doing the day before.And all these things pass, and we continue to evolve and like people are acting like, oh, the world is gonna end, or the world ain’t gonna end.The world has never ended, and if it does, you don’t need to worry about your investments. So, um, I think people people just could keep their attention on, I mean, I’m look, I’m pro tariffs, I always have been, I’ve always believed.When I go to Europe and I don’t see a Ford anywhere on the roads, I’m like, why don’t we have Ford trucks over here?Uh, you know, and it’s not because it’s not a better a good product, you know, people over that wanna buy, but the problem is when you add a 45% tax on top of a $80,000 vehicle, it goes to $140 and they’re like, I don’t wanna pay that.

5:19 spk_0

Greg, you’re, of course, I mean you’re only a brand, you’re also a business person. I mean you’ve built up a phenomenal series of businesses over many years just working your butt off. I mean, but as a businessman, when you see the market go down as much as it has.Do you, do you get nervous?

5:36 spk_1

Uh, no, I don’t, not even a little bit.But, but, but I’m a long term investor. I don’t use margins.I only invest in companies that I absolutely understand and believe in.Um,You know, I’m heavily invested in real estate.So, you know, my real, we, we got 20,000 investors in our real estate funds, 20,000.We don’t use institutional money.If I don’t have to use a bank, I won’t.Um, we’re not overleveraged.I, I, I don’t walk into a casino. I, I just, I don’t spend my time at casinos, so I know you love the casino.You know, your background suggests that you need to be in a casino.

6:19 spk_0

I’mjust reporting on this stuff, Grant. I’m just

6:21 spk_1

reporting. Yeah, I hear you, I hear you, but um.You know, I work really hard, dude. I work hard for my money, like most people, I do not.And I’ve made the mistake. So I remember this guy told me, I got this tip, it’s a tip, it’s gonna be great. Yeah, I put $5000 in 500’s gone. I remember buying Lehman, Lehman at $1 because it had dropped from 187. I’m like, I put a million dollars in it, the million dollars is gone.And so now I, I just have a discipline like I’m gonna miss a bunch of great deals. I’m gonna miss a bunch of opportunities, but I’m gonna go big. When I bet, I bet very big on a handful of things that I completely understand.

7:00 spk_0

So you’re not big on stocks. I,

7:02 spk_1

I welcome the volatility actually. I, I wish the market would pull back another 30 or 40%. Wow.

7:08 spk_0

What would that, that has to impact your real estate holdings,

7:11 spk_1

no?Uh, it makes people want to be in real estate more. Hm.Cause, cause the, the market, the marketplace volatility can happen in real estate. The real estate is not moving. It’s just gonna be, it’s an illiquid asset. I don’t personally like liquidity. I think liquidity is the devil’s drug, right? Because it’s like, hey, you could be liquid, and that’s the problem. When, when there’s volatility in a real estate deal, I’m not gonna go sell $200 million building tomorrow.I can’t make a decision at 5 o’clock at night. I’m I’m done with that building. Like, you, you don’t have that.junky response, you know, that degenerate, I gotta sell it right now or I gotta buy it right now and umYou know, the, the liquidity of the stock market is beautiful.If you, if you’re disciplined, but unfortunately, as you know, most people are not disciplined, they sell when they should buy, and they buy when they should sell.

8:10 spk_0

Every seemingly every strategist I talked to on the street, Grant, and they, I’d say the base case is now for a US recession this year. So I got that. I got that in a box and then I get on.

8:22 spk_1

You mean you mean you mean a continued recession since Biden? Yes,

8:26 spk_0

just one long.Periods of slow growth. So we have that. And then we have Bill Ackman out there saying, uh, we can get a nuclear winter. I mean, do these things change how you invest in real estate? Do you say, you know what, I’m not gonna, I’m gonna put that deal off because maybe these folks are right.

8:45 spk_1

Uh, that’s a change it for me, bro, because the more, the more, the more of these, um,The more uncertainty that we have, the more people will rent and not own. Uh, the higher, you know, the, there’s so many problems today in America. I just want to go back to this recession thing, cause some of your people are gonna be like, we weren’t in a recession during Biden. No, you weren’t in a defined recession only because they changed the definition. If you leave the unemployment numbers out, we, we had multiple quarters back to back where we had uh a loss in GDP.We had the highest debt, he put on, he added $8.4 trillion of debt. We had a job market that was only uh floating because of 40 or 45% of all the jobs added were government jobs. For another 40% were part time. We had the highest.Number of part-time.I’m sorry, uh, secondary jobs since the Great Depression. So, all they did was hide the fact that we had a recession, but we had a rolling recession through the country. Now, now we have something obvious that that the, the other side, the liberal side, is gonna be like, it’s a recession. We’re gonna be talking about deflation here in a few minutes.Um, you’re seeing that, uh, fuel prices and gas prices, uh, down at 60 $60 a barrel, you’re gonna see this contraction happening because they want to replace Trump. Now, that being said,When you have this volatility, it does not affect the real estate because it’s not liquid, and it tends to make more people that were considering buying a house to become renters.So it’s my it’s my, it’s my kind of operating basis that America becomes a runner nation over the next decade.That will have more renters in the future than we have owners. You see that in many markets, 84% of all.The entire population of California rents, they do not own less than 16% of the people own a home there. It’s unaffordable. They don’t qualify for a mortgage. Many people don’t want to commit to 30 years. They’re on the move, they’re being mobile. So all these things, this uncertainty really benefits, uh, what we’re doing in real estate.

10:49 spk_0

Are you more or less optimistic on the next 4 years today compared to inauguration Day? Has anything changed for you? Yeah,

10:58 spk_1

I, I am more, more convinced and more certain and more confident and more happy uh with President Trump than than I was the day I voted for him.Dude, you got, look, I, I own businesses. I started businesses from scratch. I walk into businesses, we take over businesses. The first thing we do when we take over a business is we immediately get rid of everybody there that was not moving the ball forward. I’ve neverI’m part of about 12 companies.Uh, 8 of them are startups that we bought into.6 of them we have control of, complete control.100% of them, we removed people.Anytime I have, anytime my graph and any of my businesses is flat or going down, we are going to remove someone.It it was not because of the economy, it wasn’t because we weren’t working, it wasn’t cause we didn’t try, it wasn’t cause I wasn’t busting my ass. If that grab drops, I’m gonna find somebody to fire, because it’s always a person. Now I know this is cruel and it sounds terrible and awful, but if everybody ran and operated their businesses like this, anytime I’m having problems in life, I look for who is causing the problems, cause it’s always a who. It’s not a what.It’s a who, it’s a person getting in the way of the growth of the organization, cause the organism wants to grow.You know, you wanna survive, you wanna do better.

12:25 spk_0

Hang with us, Grant. We’re gonna go right off uh for a quick break. I want to dive into real estate because I know you got a lot of things, interesting stuff popping. We’ll be right back on opening bid.All right, welcome back to Opening bid. Hanging out with Grant Cardone, uh, CEO of Cardone Capital, uh, talk about the economy, state of business. I want to lean into your wheelhouse a bit here, Grant. This is real estate, right? Um, a lot of people have gotten pasted in stocks this year. It hasn’t been good for them. I mean, Mach 7 Nvidia, I mean, they’re all up in smoke. If they are, if they had enough with stocks, how could the normal human being take advantage of real estate in a market that, by all indications looks pretty good from an outsider looking in.

13:07 spk_1

Well, first of all, let’s just define what kind of real estate we’re talking about here. I am not talking, when I talk about the, put the two words real estate together, I am not talking about a single family home.Single family home is not an investment. Let’s just get that out of the way.It is a place to live, you pay for it, and there’s a very good chance you will earn less than 1% of your money over the period of time that you were in that house.Just do the math.

13:32 spk_0

Thank God I never bought a home. Thank God I didn’t buy a home. Forget it.

13:35 spk_1

It’s a terrible, it’s a terrible deal.It it’s a terrible deal, but the banks60 years ago, maybe 70 years ago, convinced everybody it’s a dream. It’s a dream, it’s an investment, it’s not an investment. It doesn’t even belong on your on your financial statement. It is a liability to own a home.SoNumber 12, if you don’t agree with that, by the way, I understand people get very, very, uh, triggered by this concept.The second part here is, um,The mortgage on a home today is almost double what the average rent is in this country. It’s actually like 2.5 times. So it’s cheaper to rent.Than it is to own a home. Now all that being said, if you don’t want to rent and you don’t wanna own, what you should do is own rentals.And have the rentals pay for your where you live.So what we do is rentals. We do apartment buildings, and we do office buildings. They have to be cash flow positive, the day we buy them, they’re stabilized, I build nothing.Um, I need to get a big tax write off when I buy it. I always do, and you always will out of these, these types of real estate. Number 3, I want to be in a location that is irreplaceable today, tomorrow, and into the future. Irreplaceable, if you, if you look, and number 4, don’t over leverage the asset. I mean, the perfect purchase would be all cash.Raise the money amongst the people that you know. I was with a dozen firemen in Los Angeles the other night, uh, celebrating them for their response to the fires in January.And they, they said, hey Grant, what should I buy or should I sell right now? I said, what you dumb asses should do. Can I say that on this? Fire away.What you guys should do is you guys should put all your damn money together and buy the whole neighborhood.And then protect that neighborhood as firemen.And be paid every month, get big tax write-offs, and wait for the rents to slowly grow over time. The properties I’m buying or not. If I wanted to sell the house I’m in today, I have to, I have to know if my neighbor, you know, I’m gonna get a comp from the neighborhood, and if the comps are good, then maybe I sell my house. So the market’s good, maybe I sell my house, but if the market’s bad, I’m not gonna be able to sell my house for what I want to. In rental properties, large, these are large 300 unit, 150 unit complexes.In great locations, is the rents grow, the value of the property grows. I don’t have to grow the rents. Inflation, printing money, time, time literally gets me rent growth, and when I get rent growth, I get more cash flow and I get an increased value, this fighting against the gravity of the printer.And soI’m a coward, man, I’m a coward investor, uh, you know, I, I don’t need my thing to go up. I wanna preserve my capital, I wanna get my tax write off, I wanna get cash flow. Now, if I could add some things to that.To, to make the returns better, you know, like the deals we do do like 12% a year, 12 to 15%, but it’s, it’s with very, very tiny um risk of ever losing my money. What markets acting, what markets be looking good for you.Uh, Austin, Dallas, the, the entire, the entire United States of America in this class of asset is in a major correction.Nobody ever covers this story. They’re always talking about single family homes. Brian, major correction. I just bought $600 million worth of real estate that should have sold for a billion dollars. I paid all cash. I bought it from institutions. That was in Florida. So, uh, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, the entire Gulf Coast of Florida, I would go all the way to Gulfport, um, Gulfport, the Gulf of, uh, uh, Alabama.The South, the Carolinas, Savannah, Georgia is good. Nashville, Tennessee, I mean, Clarksville, Tennessee. I could just go on and on. Austin, I wouldn’t do San Antonio, Houston’s in a correction. The entire state of California will be on sale here in the next 9 months.

17:53 spk_0

What’s causingthe what’s causing the correction? Is all this work from home stuff?

17:58 spk_1

No, no, no, it’s not work from home. It’s, it, it, it’s uh the the it’s, it’s, it’s the hou the housing market.Cannot refinance itself. 70% of all the single family homes in this country are under 4%, so nobody’s moving homes.And until interest rates drop on single family homes, the prices will not come down. Now, this is contrarian thinking, but rates need to come down to 4% or below before single family homes start selling again. If single family homes aren’t selling, rentals are gonna be used as the place to live.So, and you can’t build affordable housing in this country. It’s impossible to build affordable housing.So,I believe the entire country becomes a renter market.Like Ubis or Mexico, people don’t own homes down there, they rent.Uh, and people could invest in, if you could find 32 units, it’s a perfect scenario. If your first deal was 32 units and the rents were $400 too low, you would make a million dollars on that transaction.If you move the rents up.

19:03 spk_0

How are you, uh, we were talking briefly before we started this, um, how are you weaving in?Crypto into what you do.

19:12 spk_1

Yeah, so we, we own 15,000 units, and I have been investing in Bitcoin since quietly for about 13 years.And I’ve, I was in these rooms where people are debating what’s better, real estate, you know, you’ve heard these arguments, real estate, Bitcoin or or stocks. And every time I heard this argument, I’m like, what if I could put all three of them together?What if the real estate bought my Bitcoin, and then I could actually take the whole thing public. So what we did, we did, we, we launched the first one this year, we took a $88 million piece of real estate.That we bought for 72 million.I bought it as a correction. OK, it’s a brand new asset in Daytona, near the SpaceX coast, near, near where Elon’s launching rockets.It was, it should have sold for 88 million, but because the debt markets all fed up right now, it’s sold for 72.Rather than me just stealing the real estate, I added $15 million of Bitcoin to it at time of purchase, so I bought the real estate for $72 I paid cash for $15 million worth of bitcoin, and I put them together in a fund.I went to my audience and said, hey, I have an $88 million fund, I’ll keep it all, or you guys can take part of it. They, they, they, they consumed it so fast, it was unbelievable. People that had never invested with real estate, people that had never bought any Bitcoin, they bought the combination.The property has no debt on it. The real uh the Bitcoin has no debt. So each month, the the property cash flow is about $350,000 a month. We buy more Bitcoin. This month we’ll buy 44.125 Bitcoin at $80,000 out of the cash flow of the real estate.4 years from now, I still own the real estate.The glass is the real estate, and let’s say the real estate is actually worth $88 million today, 4 years from now, if it’s still worth $88 million it hasn’t gone up or down. It got back to what it should have been bought at in 2025.I will own $29 million worth of Bitcoin at yesterday’s prices, 4 years from now.So I could sell the real estate.Let’s say me and you were in the deal. I’ll give you your $44 million back, I take my $44 million and me and you split $29 million worth of Bitcoin at yesterday’s prices that we didn’t buy.So what’s better than real estate or Bitcoin?What’s better is if I could get Bitcoin out of my real estate and then take the 2 things. I’m gonna do 10 of these. We’ve done 4 already. I’m gonna take 10 of these, bring it to the public markets at the end of this year or the first of next year, and we’re gonna go ring the bell and turn it into a piece of paper.

21:53 spk_0

Well, uh, lookingforward to following that journey real quick, uh, Grant, before we let you go, we always love to get a hot take from our guests at the end. And let’s just lean into your, uh, views on Bitcoin here. What do you think aboutWhat Michael Seer has done loading up his balance sheet with with Bitcoin. Now, Ryan Cohen over at GameStop has an investment committee. He’s gonna add Bitcoin to his balance sheet. I mean, that company’s supposed to be selling video games, right, but not, not anymore. What do you think about what these guys are doing?

22:18 spk_1

I love it, dude, I met, I actually met with Mike Saylor before I created the fund. I was sitting down with Mike, uh, I had two meetings with him. I said, Mike, how would I do this? He’s like, number one, you have to trust the people, that’s the most important thing. And number 2, he’s like, you ought to figure out how to go public. I said, well, I can’t go public cause I’m not public. So I went home and figured out how to get the real estate to buy the Bitcoin, put the two together, and then go public. I love what Michael’s Michael’s doing, and look, if he hits any of the numbers.If he hits any of his expectations, I think we’re gonna see more and more companies turn their fiat or a portion of their balance sheet. I’ve done it at my other companies, my education company, my health company. We’re taking portions of our cash assets and converting them to Bitcoin if we don’t need the cash.

23:05 spk_0

Good

23:05 spk_1

stuff.

23:06 spk_0

That’s why we had them on here. CEO of Cardone Capital, Grant Cardone.

23:09 spk_1

I hope everybody’s smarter but as a result of this. Oh, they’re,

23:12 spk_0

they’re a lot smarter, but because of both of us, but mostly because of you on this one. Grant Cardone, good to see you. Uh, that’s it for the latest episode of Opening bid. all continue to hit us with all those 5 stars on the podcast platforms. Thumbs up on YouTube. Appreciate the love, appreciate the feedback. I always try to answer every single thing you hit me with. Talk to you soon.