Lessons From Grant Cardone's 10X GrowthCon 3

Keri Shull and I recently attended Grant Cardone’s 10X GrowthCon3, the largest business conference in the world.

Grant hosted the event at Marlins Park and had nearly 35,000 attendees at the three-day event starting February 1st. We got to experience 10X GrowthCon crom the Diamond section which meant front row seating, backstage access, and meet and greet events with most of the speakers.

The event was inspiring, educational and motivational. The kickoff, which featured Grant parachuting into the stadium and entertainment from Snoop Dog and Lil John, opened an amazing line up of speakers and lessons from Grant Cardone himself.

With over three days of content and dozens of speakers there were no shortage of lessons I learned, any one of which could be a game-changer in your business or life. So here is a quick run down of the lessons I learned from Grant Cardone as well as what I learned from each individual speaker.

Lessons from Grant Cardone and the Conference as a Whole

Ask yourself what a 10X would do for your life. 

Thinking bigger and scaling makes any problems, obstacles and challenges look small.

One of the best ways to improve your sales and cash flow is to reach a larger audience. You must make more contacts to do this.

With a bigger audience you have the volume to make your product or service offering such a good deal that it’s stupid not to accept. You can go bigger on the benefits and smaller on the margin and capture massive market share. Again, this all starts with thinking bigger.

Grant’s rules of attention 

Attention attracts money. Grant’s rules about attention are simple, but so on point. 

1. Get Attention
2. Keep Attention
3. Multiply Attention

As you do this your success will increase. Along with that the haters you encounter will increase. Don’t worry about the haters – they are a sign that you are succeeding.

Grant shared that in his email marketing campaigns he measured success by the unsubscribe rates. If his unsubscribe rates were too low, he would keep emailing his list until it went up. He had already done something to capture people’s attention and get their email address and he intended to keep their attention and multiply it.

Grant’s rules of marketing

Rule 1: If the public doesn’t know you they won’t flow you. If people do not know who you are they will not do business with you. 

Rule 2: Best-known beats best. There are plenty of examples in history where the first product to market or the best product to market it gets beat by the product that becomes better known. This is not to say you can have a bad product or service, but rather the importance of getting attention from the people that product or service is for.

Rule 3: It is impossible to overspend on marketing. You simply cannot overspend on marketing. Yes you should analyze it and try to figure out your return on investment, but do not focus on the micro at the expense of the macro. Many times what looks like a loss on paper is actually a huge gain when you factor in future business or the amount of market share you gain.

Here are the top reasons people do not invest in marketing:

1. They are trained not to, sometimes even in school
2. Their goals are too small
3. They don’t know how to convert sales
4. They don’t trust their execution
5. They are not repurposing their products and services to sell more
6. They are not being relevant
7. They are not collaborating with others to increase sales

Grant Cardone on execution

Here is how Grant suggests carrying out a plan, order, or course of action.

First, get everyone on the same page

Grant puts people into three buckets: 

1. People who are with him
2. Other
3. Haters or enemies

The most dangerous group is the “other” category. These are people in your own organization or life that are not visibly against you like a hater, but they are still not carrying out the mission. An “other” could be a family member that tells you, “Just be happy with what you have.” It could be an employee that doesn’t make it a priority to carry out the mission. These types are the most dangerous because they will hold you back, but it might be a lot less visible.

Choose role models carefully

Yes, you need role models.

However, you need to choose your role models carefully and understand where they are in their cycle compared to where you are. They may be at a very different point in life or business and you need to consider that when you listen to what they say. You also need to closely watch what they do – how they execute – as opposed to just listening to what they say.

Future events can pull you forward.

Use someone else’s event or an event you are putting on; get important dates on the calendar and use them to motivate and drive you. Attending 10X GrowthCon this year is just one example of the exciting and educational events I’ve attended already in 2019. Keri and I always make time for events.

Train every day

Every day you should be doing something to improve your skills – whether it be a course, coaching, reading or something else. You need to constantly improve your skills.

Take care of yourself

You need to stay in great physical and mental shape. If you do not, you will not only limit your wellbeing, but you will limit everything else in life. All the areas of life are connected; when one area suffers it will have an impact on every other area of your life.

Don’t let up on marketing and advertising

Commit to this, get moving, and figure the rest out later. This happens to be the theme I chose for 2019 for myself and my business: Just execute.

Establish multiple flows of income

Make money several different ways, both actively and passively.

Fire people

Don’t be afraid to fire quickly if people are not meeting the standard. Don’t let people quit – when people quit it means you did not fire them soon enough. Remember, people don’t quit the day they leave you. They usually quit a few months ago and then decided to leave.

 

Lessons from the 10X GrowthCon 3 Speakers

Lessons from Russel Brunson at 10X GrowthCon

Russel Brunson kicked off day one of GrowthCon 3 with a talk on how he built Click Funnels as an easy-to-use platform that could give business owners the ability to get their products and services in front of more clients.

In case you did not know, funnels are rapidly becoming a crucial way for companies to get consumers to take action on their products and services. Funnels provide a much more focused approach in directing consumers to take specific actions, rather than letting them get lost on websites.

Russel demonstrated how he and Grant Cardone built an entire funnel during a two-hour plane ride. Russel also showed us how easy it is to research funnels that are already in the marketplace… and how to easily duplicate the best performing ones. 

On day two, Russel came back out and gave specific details on how he designs his speaking on stage to sell products. He also made a very interesting case that he is the highest paid speaker in the world: In 2018 at 10x GrowthCon 2 he sold over 3 million dollars of Clickfunnel products in less than 90 minutes, a much higher fee than any of the world’s highest paid speakers get.

Lessons from Jesse Itzler at 10X GrowthCon

Jesse Itzler’s energy and passion have driven him to have a diverse range of life experiences: having a number one hit rap song; starting Marquis Jets; running 100-mile races; writing bestselling books about his time living with monks and living with a Navy Seal. Jesse brought that same energy and passion to the stage.

Jesse encouraged people to find their true calling, which lies at the intersection of what you love to do, what you are really good at, and what helps the world.

Another key lesson from Jesse was that people do not buy products. They buy good stories. No matter what you are selling, make sure you have a good story behind it. 

Jesse learned from living with and training with a Navy Seal that you are capable of at least 40% more than you think. While the Seal applied this to physical training primarily, Jesse emphasized that this mindset could transfer into business and life in general.

Jesse is also the husband of self-made billionaire Sara Blakely.

Lessons from Sara Blakely at 10X GrowthCon

Sara, the founder of Spanx, first self-made female billionaire and wife of Jesse, spoke next. Elena Cardone interviewed her and Sara had some great insights.

Make sure you fail at something every week. Sara told how every week her dad would ask them what they failed at and expected an answer. What a great upbringing! If you are not failing, you are not learning.

Everything in life is about sales. Too many people say they are not in sales, but everyone must be able to sell other people on something to get anything done in life.

Differentiate yourself and tell others. You need to stand out from others, and you need to tell people how you are different.

Sara also discussed how she manages doing so much without getting overwhelmed. First, she thinks about everything she needs to get done. Next, she prioritizes and delegates. Finally, she lets it go. 

Lessons from Tai Lopez at 10X GrowthCon

Tai Lopez is a leading Internet marketer and businessman. He dropped a ton of strategies on us from the stage at 10X GrowthCon – some specific, some general.

Tai said: “You get paid in proportion to the difficulty of the problems you solve.”

 Tai’s five keys to making more money were:

 Knowledge – Focus on the law of attraction and obtaining the knowledge required to take action. If you can start to believe it, you will achieve it.

Networking – Every day, focus on increasing your network’s reach. Tai Lopez’s success has been dependent on creating a huge network.

Personal Service Brands – Some examples are: social media marketing agencies, AirBnB management agencies, and eCommerce. These are the biggest opportunities Tai sees right now.

Infinite Scaling Business – Build a business that has no limits on the scale and your income will have no limits.

Passively Appreciating Assets – Buy assets that will appreciate without any work. Real estate is the best example.

Lessons from Steve Harvey at 10X GrowthCon

Steve Harvey finished off the first day at 10X GrowthCon. The highly successful comedian, game show host and entertainer did not disappoint.

Steve walked us through his life story and focused on the topic of finding your gift. Steve’s gift was making people laugh. He first discovered it when he landed a very small stand-up comedy routine. It was not a big venue at all, but he made the few people that were there laugh. He got paid $25. On the way back home, he started crying from being so happy and his date thought he was crazy and reminded him it was only $25. 

He told her, “I made people laugh. I found my gift.” 

The rest is history as he went on to become an entertainer that makes millions of people laugh now and gets paid tens of millions of dollars.

Find your gift.

Lessons from Daymond John at 10X GrowthCon

Daymond John, the founder of FUBU, serial entrepreneur and Shark Tank host, kicked off day two and had two great lessons to share.

Use O.P.M. – Other people’s money, marketing and manpower.

Read your complaints – 90% of all successful products come from the results of customer complaints. Read the analytics and look at the data. Get feedback from your customers and execute on solving their problems.

Daymond John stressed the importance of enjoying the grind. It takes hustle, hard work and grit to succeed! You need to constantly look for how you can solve problems and go solve them.

Lessons from John Maxwell at 10X GrowthCo

John Maxwell is the leading authority on leadership. He has been studying leadership for over 50 years so he had a wealth of information to share. Here are the best highlights:

Be intentional about growth and personal development – John has a learning lunch once a week. He has done this for decades. He invites someone he wants to learn from to lunch and buys them lunch. He gets out a notepad and takes notes on their answers to questions he has prepared for them.

Consistency compounds – This is a common theme I hear from successful people. A lot of people talk about the compound effect of money, but it is true about any resource, including effort. The big payoffs for your effort come over time when the effort is consistent.

Live life to add value – Figure out how you can add value to others. When you do that, there is no limit to what you can achieve.

Lessons from Bethenny Frankel at 10X GrowthCon

Bethenny Frankel is a reality television star, author and serial entrepreneur. She is also the founder of Skinnygirl, which she sold for $100 million. At the event Elena Cardone interviewed her and she had several amazing lessons. Here are the highlights:

 "Build the rocket ship as you are flying it."  Bethenny told the story about how she ended up getting over 50 private planes to fly supplies to Puerto Rico after the hurricane. She had never done anything like this before, but was passionate about helping and figure it out along the way. She called everyone she knew that owned a plane, got supplies and somehow got it done. The lesson here was that commitment to a goal plus action is greater than experience.

Most people don’t work hard – They work long, but not hard. There is a huge difference here. Make sure you are effective.

Saying no is saying yes – If you don’t say no to some things, you will not be able to focus on getting important things done… so you effectively need to say no to things in order to say yes. Her standard for saying yes to something is that it needs to be inspiring, help people, or make money.

Bethenny was one of the most effective speakers at 10X GrowthCon because of the fire and passion she brought.

Lessons from Ryan Deiss at 10X GrowthCon

Ryan is one of the founders or Digital Marketer. He is also extremely well-studied when it comes to marketing. His company teaches marketers in the following areas:

• Conversion Funnels
• Content Marketing
• Paid Traffic
• Email Marketing
• Social Media
• Search Analytics
• Data and Analytics
• Testing and Optimization

He recommends you know a little about all of these, but really go deep on one or two. Here are two other great points Ryan made:

• “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
• “Money loves speed”

Lessons from Elena Cardone at 10x GrowthCon

Elena Cardone took the stage on day two and spoke about what it is like building an empire with Grant.

Elena encouraged everyone to build their own empire and to put the joint vision you have with your partner above all the trivial disagreements that come up in life. My biggest takeaway from her ties back to something Grant said about setting goals so big your problems seem so small. If you really want to make the things in life that most partners fight about seem small, then set bigger goals, have a bigger vision and go support each other in making it happen.

Lessons from Pete Vargas at 10X GrowthCon

Pete Vargas was the last speaker to take the stage before Grant Cardone himself stepped in. Pete is the world’s premiere booking agent, teaching people to grow their businesses and spread their messages through speaking events.

Pete told the story of how he has been able to help people learn to tell their stories whether it was one-to-one, one-to-few, or one-to-many. He taught us that any good story that moves people to action will have these elements:

• Heart – You need to connect with people up front
• Head – You need to show them logical steps that will solve a problem
• Hands – You need to get them to take action
• Heart – Always end your story with something memorable that reconnects with the heart

The Wrap-Up

Another highlight of the last day was seeing Grant’s two daughters speak. For being ages six and nine, the girls did an amazing job, which is a true reflection of the job Grant and Elena have done as parents.

I had a great time attending 10X GrowthCon 3 and I look forward to 10X GrowthCon 4!