Matt Manero interview with Grant Cardone.

Transcription of Power Players Episode 

Hosted by Grant Cardone Interviewing Matt Manero

Grant Cardone: Hey, Grant Cardone here. Power players, I have today, both ask a pro, power player, Matt Manero is going to talk to you about money, talk to me about money, why you need more money, and why you need the book, You Need More Money, man. I know I inspired this title.

Matt Manero: Dude, you inspired me to be me now, man.

Grant Cardone: Man, I love that, man.

Matt Manero: Come on.

Grant Cardone: This guy's all over. CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, can't even believe you go over there, but he's all over the TV right now talking to people about money. Do they invite you back after you tell them, "Hey, you need more money"?

Matt Manero: They are freaked out about it, and I'm so unabashed about it that I don't know what to make of it. But a few weeks ago, I just did this thing with MarketWatch, and then the comments were horrendous. I mean, people just hate on this topic, right?

Grant Cardone: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: And then it comes at me. Then some other outlet picked it up and said, "Some finance expert got us slaughtered because of the comments," and they started quoting the people in the comments like I'm wrong and the people in the comments are right.

Grant Cardone: Right.

Matt Manero: Right?

Grant Cardone: Right, right.

Matt Manero: Because I said you need to save 40% of your gross income to get ahead.

Grant Cardone: I like that. I like the 40% rule, but it makes it impossible for people that are making 70 grand a year.

Matt Manero: Well, that's why you got to make more money.

Grant Cardone: Yeah.

Matt Manero: I mean, it's just that simple. It's not a matter of live where you are, it's go get more. Right?

Grant Cardone: So this is going to be good for me to be on this side of this, right? Because then I get to be the questionnaire, not the person assaulted for being the idiot.

Matt Manero: I'll take the arrow. I'll take the arrow.

Grant Cardone: So first of all, why'd you write the book?

Matt Manero: Look, I wrote the book because my wife's brother, my brother-in-law, John, got diagnosed with cancer at 46 and he died two years ago, he left a wife and four kids with no health insurance, no life insurance, and 100 bucks in the bank. That's why I wrote this book.

Grant Cardone: Wow.

Matt Manero: But what's amazing is since I wrote this book-

Grant Cardone: Was he making money when he ...

Matt Manero: I mean, it was always a chicken and feathers existence for him. Right?

Grant Cardone: What does that mean? What's the chicken and feathers?

Matt Manero: It was up and down. He was in the car business.

Grant Cardone: Why do they call that chicken and feathers? I never heard that term.

Matt Manero: One day you're eating chicken, the next day you're eating feathers. You know?

Grant Cardone: Oh, okay. I've never heard that term.

Matt Manero: So it was a huge tragedy. And you know my wife, Rokki. There was-

Grant Cardone: Yeah, she's awesome.

Matt Manero: You couldn't have picked a worse person to take from her than her brother. I mean, they were thick as thieves, man. Then for him to die with no money, Rokki and I took care of all the bills, we handled everything, but it didn't buy his health back. He still died almost one year to the day. And I said, "Man, there's a lot of people that are probably in this same spot." So I wrote the book, and since I wrote the book, I've had two scenarios in my life just recently. Last week, one of, probably not one of, my best buddy in the world, went to the doctor with some liver problems, was diagnosed with liver cancer, and a short period of time to live. Then Rokki has a very close friend in her 50s who's dying of this.

So when we put our head in-

Grant Cardone: And the issue is not that ... We're all going to die, right?

Matt Manero: That is not the issue.

Grant Cardone: So what is it? Because-

Matt Manero: The issue is we're all going to die, so in my world, that doesn't even need to be that feared, it's what happens to legacy and the people that we leave behind financially. And most people are completely clueless about it. I have three very close examples of how freaking important it is.

Grant Cardone: Yeah. So like my dad died, as you know, when I was 10. He did really well for my family, until the income stopped. And I think that people don't calculate, like we just don't look at a lot of things that can go wrong in our lives, whether it's bad health, or death, or the main income provider, or some economic cataclysm. What is enough then, Matt? I mean, based on what you're looking at and talking to people about.

Matt Manero: Look, I believe, and the publisher, by the way, made me take this out of the book, right? They said, "This will alienate the Americans."

Grant Cardone: Who's the publisher?

Matt Manero: It's Penguin.

Grant Cardone: Oh my gosh.

Matt Manero: They will alienate-

Grant Cardone: You guys.

Matt Manero: So in the book, I wrote an entire ... By the way, I wrote 75,000 words. This book is 51,000 words. They took out 24,000 words of content that I thought was important. Right? But I wrote, "Life begins at 150 grand, life gets better at 250, life gets real good at 500." And they said, "You must take that out. That's going to alienate the American people." I said, "But that's about how it is." So that's how it is in my mind.

Grant Cardone: So that didn't get included in the book?

Matt Manero: They took it out, they killed it.

Grant Cardone: Okay, so we're going to give you guys some stuff that's not in the book. Okay?

Matt Manero: Yeah.

Grant Cardone: So when you get the book, it's at Amazon, right?

Matt Manero: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere books are sold, yeah.

Grant Cardone: You Need More Money costs what? 25 bucks?

Matt Manero: 20.

Grant Cardone: 20 bucks. But you might need more money to buy the book.

Matt Manero: Listen, I don't want to be too harsh about it, but if you don't want to spend 20 bucks to help your money situation, don't buy the book. You're never going to get it figured out.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, it is tax deductible, though.

Matt Manero: Totally.

Grant Cardone: Just to keep that in mind for everybody. So you're saying 150 ...

Matt Manero: I'm saying life begins at 150, gets better at 250, it gets real good at 500. That's annual income.

Grant Cardone: Okay, so let's just do some math here because you talked about the 100%. Let's just validate this 150. At 40% of 150, can I even do that? I'm saving, you're saying the 40% rule is I'm putting away 40% of my gross?

Matt Manero: I'm saying you need to save 40% of your gross. Now here's where this gets a little twisted, because that's really not the case if you're in your 20s. You don't need to say 40% in your 20s, you got to compound interest that's going to help you out. But most people aren't saving in their 20s, and they're not even saving in their 30s. So guess when they start to wake up and say, "Oh shit, I'm behind"? In your 40s. Well guess what? To make up that gap, you better start saving about 40% to make up the gap. That's the reality of what's going on out there. I know you know this, but I don't understand-

Grant Cardone: But tell me about this thing you said about compound interest. Because you know, guys, I call anybody out on anything. Where does anybody get compound interest from today?

Matt Manero: Well let's just say-

Grant Cardone: I'm compounding what? A half of 1%?

Matt Manero: Well let's just say, I mean, if we use-

Grant Cardone: You got to do a lot of compounding now.

Matt Manero: You need time. You need time and you need the right vehicle. So if you could pull in an index fund, if you could pull, over time, 4%, and you put a few bucks in in your 20s, and you kept funding it, you'll be okay. That's not the route I took. Dude, I didn't have any money to put away in my 20s.

Grant Cardone: Right.

Matt Manero: In my 30s, I was still trying to figure it out. How do I build a freaking business? I was reinvesting everything. There was no money in the early part of my 30s going into any savings whatsoever. So I had to make up the gap. And how do you make up the gap? You fricking save more money, and you make more money.

Grant Cardone: So why can't a guy, then, 22 years old, he's making ... I mean, how many 22 year olds making 150 grand? That would put him in the top 1% of all earners.

Matt Manero: Yeah. Hey, just FYI-

Grant Cardone: But it just sounds impossible. I'm going to be that chick at MSNBC, "It sounds what you're saying it's impossible." What's her name?

Matt Manero: I can't remember what her name was.

Grant Cardone: She does this Sunday show.

Matt Manero: Oh, it was JJ Ramberg.

Grant Cardone: JJ.

Matt Manero: Yeah.

Grant Cardone: "That sounds impossible, Mr. Manero, what you're saying, just impossible."

Matt Manero: Well, here's what I would say. I would say, number one, most people are in the wrong platform. They are not in a business that is ever going to get them financially free. Now that does not mean, and a lot of people have that twisted around, I know we're on the exact same page here. People think that that means, "I've got to go start my own gig." Dude, you do not need to start your own gig. 99% of people should not be in business for themselves. They don't have the tolerance for pain that you and I have. And it's perfectly fine because there's a lot of amazing opportunities to be the intrapreneur, the guy underneath someone. Jared is a perfect example in this office of that, like the perfect example of that.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, Ryan Tseko is a perfect example.

Matt Manero: Yeah, Todd is too.

Grant Cardone: Yup, ya, exactly.

Matt Manero: I mean you have a lot of guys that are in that spot. Isn't that why people come to work for you too? Because they're like, "Everyone else got me here, and now I can go here, here, and I don't have to be the big boss."

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: I'm the big boss. It's a bitch. Okay? The stuff that we have to handle and deal with never goes away. We think about it all the time.

Grant Cardone: Somebody told me the other day, they said, "Man, it's lonely at the top." I said, "No, dude, it's scary." It ain't lonely. Lonely is not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about am I doing the right thing here?

Matt Manero: Of course, because ... So you're saying it's impossible, here's my stance. You've got to skill up. You got to figure out, and this is a big part of my book though, Grant, truly, is you really have to be totally aligned with what it is that you want your life to look like. Like I know I have left millions of dollars on the table because I made a commitment very early on in my career when I didn't have any money that I wasn't going to screw customers.

Grant Cardone: Yeah. This is chapter three, Lifestyle By Design, you talk about that, right?

Matt Manero: Lifestyle By Design. What is it?

Grant Cardone: So yeah, tell me what is that?

Matt Manero: For me, it's literally, what are your core values? What will you tolerate and what will you not tolerate? And that is very important to figure out. I kind of figured that out early. My stance was I wasn't going to take bribes, right? I wasn't going to give bribes, and I was always going to do the deal that I thought was right for the customer. And by the way, I left millions on the table because of that.

Grant Cardone: Uh-huh (affirmative), because you didn't take bribes.

Matt Manero: And I always did the deal that I thought was best for the customer. I guarantee I left tons of money on the table because the customers would have paid more. But I was, by the way, self-esteem issue too, right?

Grant Cardone: Right, right.

Matt Manero: I was selling way too cheap [crosstalk 00:12:46].

Grant Cardone: So some of that life by design, I'm glad you brought that up, you were designing your life at different ages where you look back now and you're like, "Eh, I probably wouldn't have done that," life by design.

Matt Manero: But I never had an ethical question. And that's an important part because there's a lot of people going into platforms chasing money, and they're giving up their ethics to chase the money. That always burns up.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, but isn't the reverse of that true as well? A lot of people going into platforms chasing nothing?

Matt Manero: Yes!

Grant Cardone: And giving up their self-esteem.

Matt Manero: Totally. Well that's true too.

Grant Cardone: Right?

Matt Manero: That's true too. We're going to pay the price.

Grant Cardone: Oh, totally. So what Matt's saying here, I'm just going to give you a little bit of a, you know, the krill coming out of the whale, right? I'm clarifying what he's saying. You guys, some of you 20, 30, 40, 50 years old, your life by design, and I talk about this in the 10X rule, man, you can only write goals to where you can imagine. We just finished having 45 minutes in my office talking about some deals I'm doing. I know you're going to walk out here saying, "Did I ... "

Matt Manero: Got to go bigger.

Grant Cardone: Got to go bigger.

Matt Manero: Totally.

Grant Cardone: And you can't do that, you can't think big if you're surrounded by small thinking.

Matt Manero: Well, I don't want to get too deep in the mindset, because everybody knows that about you. I mean, you're such a mindset guy. But what you're talking about foundationally, dude, you have to put yourself in a bigger pond, in order to get out of ... Look, my business, Grant, was based on, I thought big companies grew at 3-5% a year, so if I grew at 15% a year, I was killing it.

Grant Cardone: Right.

Matt Manero: And I would use those stupid adjectives, "How's business?" "Oh, we're killing it." Well, how am I killing it? Well, you grew at 50%. Dude, when you're doing a million dollars a year in sales, you should be growing at 100, 200, 300% a year, not 15%.

Grant Cardone: Right, right. Right, right.

Matt Manero: That's a huge problem that happens with people when it comes to their money. They want these small incremental moves. And I'm here to challenge them, to say that is not the way it needs to go. You can go from 70 grand to 150 in a very short period of time, and you've fixed a lot of problems. And 150 to 300, and 300 to 600 because then the confidence starts to crank up.

Grant Cardone: You're saying it's easier for a guy starting making 60 grand a year, average income in America 60 right now. It's easier for him to go from 60 to 100 than it is the guy to go from 6 million to 10 million?

Matt Manero: I would say so if they're willing to pay a price.

Grant Cardone: Right. So let's go back, I want to tie these two things together. You talked about the 40% rule. I agree with the 40% rule. Guy's making 60 grand a year, he lives in Miami. You live in Atlanta, right?

Matt Manero: I live in Dallas.

Grant Cardone: You live in Dallas? Very similar to Atlanta.

Matt Manero: Yeah, it is.

Grant Cardone: I confuse them all the time.

Matt Manero: Yeah, it is, totally.

Grant Cardone: Dallas, Atlanta, they're close. So you live in Dallas, I'm making 60 grand. That means I would have to save 24,000. That seems impossible.

Matt Manero: Right? It is impossible. So what's the only solution?

Grant Cardone: I got to live on 36 grand.

Matt Manero: So what's the only solution? Go make more money. Buy the book, I show you exactly how to do it. I give you the roadmap. The first part of the book is the wake up call, the second part is the roadmap, the step by step process that I took to get myself out of broke and into what some people might consider rich.

Grant Cardone: So if I make 100, let's say that guy gets out, he does what you say in the book, he goes from 60 to 100, now he's saving 40,000.

Matt Manero: Going to live pretty frugally, don't you think?

Grant Cardone: He's going to live on 60 grand a year? $5,000 a month?

Matt Manero: Get used to it. Perfect, just the way it should be.

Grant Cardone: Taxes and everything. That's taxes.

Matt Manero: Perfect, just the way it should be. Good.

Grant Cardone: What does that mean, just the way it should be?

Matt Manero: It means-

Grant Cardone: That's not a life by design.

Matt Manero: Dude, if you want to get ahead financially, you've got to pay a price. Period. And if that price means you get to squirrel away 40 Gs a year, and you still get five grand a month, dude, you can live just fine for a couple of years like that.

Grant Cardone: So I went from 60 grand to 100 grand, I made more money, but I didn't get a better car.

Matt Manero: I hope not.

Grant Cardone: I didn't get a watch.

Matt Manero: Dude, I hope you're living ridiculously frugal, because here's the bottom line.

Grant Cardone: I can't even get designer jeans.

Matt Manero: Dude, I don't care about any of that shit. You shouldn't get any of that stuff. You have to pay a price.

Grant Cardone: When do I get the designer jeans, the watch, and the car?

Matt Manero: Here's the deal, and I think we're actually on the exact same page on this. I argue in the book that until you have $50,000 liquid cash, you are still broke. The next phase of wealth turns into accumulation mode, and that's the stack and rack piece. Which I think is, by the way, really interesting because I think everybody knows your story, right? Before 25, and obviously they see this incredible success now. But what I don't think a lot of people know is what that 30 to 42, 12 years looked like, you know?

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: I mean tell me, just give me a little bit on that for a second.

Grant Cardone: Well, you know, it's interesting because Michael Burt, you know, Coach Mike.

Matt Manero: Okay, sure.

Grant Cardone: I think y'all did something in Vegas together. He said, "You really should do a thing about how to go from millionaire to the multimillionaire thing." I think he's trying to figure ... he's running up against, "Okay this is hard now. This is where it gets ... " because you got to put stuff at risk. I just had John Hugh, a Chinese kid, in here and he's coming in, man, he's bumping up against, "I accumulated this, I don't want to lose this." So yeah, those years are difficult.

But one thing I didn't do was I didn't buy expensive cars, designer jeans, and watches.

Matt Manero: And you stacked and racked.

Grant Cardone: I stacked, stored, and then invested.

Matt Manero: And then deployed.

Grant Cardone: The big mistake that I made was that I started coasting, because I had a bunch of people around me telling me how good I was doing.

Matt Manero: How many years do you think you coasted for?

Grant Cardone: Oh man. Dude, at least from ... 15 years.

Matt Manero: 15 years?

Grant Cardone: Oh yeah, very stupid.

Matt Manero: Oh my gosh. No kidding.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, I should've been buying deals the whole time. I should've been doing what I'm doing right now with the real estate.

Matt Manero: But were you getting tired? You were like-

Grant Cardone: No, I wasn't getting tired. I was bored. Yeah, I was exhausted all the time because I wasn't doing enough.

Matt Manero: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such an important thing. I saw you do something recently where you said you need to force your people to work because when they work, that's when they get energized. And that's so true.

Grant Cardone: Yup, yup, yeah. So your point about that was what, the in between place?

Matt Manero: Well, I think my point is that we have to understand the three phases of wealth: poor accumulation, and rich. And I've mentioned that to you before, and you added that fourth one, which was wealthy. I actually reference that in the book, right? Wealthy is indestructible wealth, right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: But that's not really-

Grant Cardone: You gave me credit for that?

Matt Manero: I did.

Grant Cardone: Oh, thank you man.

Matt Manero: This book is not written for people who are looking to do that. This book is written for people who just want to leave more than what they currently have. So we've got three phases of wealth: broke, accumulation, and rich. Broke is defined as under 50 Gs liquid.

Grant Cardone: Okay.

Matt Manero: Now, I don't know why I picked that. It's my version of it, right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: But who talks about that?

Grant Cardone: Yeah. Yeah, nobody.

Matt Manero: Nobody talks about what these real numbers should be. Now, here's where it goes from there.

Grant Cardone: Look, me, I got buddies that would be like, "50 grand, I'm broke."

Matt Manero: Of course, but there'd be a lot of people who say, "50 grand? I don't have 500. How can I get 50 grand?"

Grant Cardone: But is that true, dude? Is 50 grand really like any money?

Matt Manero: Dude, that's, when you're coming from nothing, it's something.

Grant Cardone: Okay, so it's only a real number because I'm in poverty.

Matt Manero: Yes. Because here's where the next real number comes from, it's 100.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: Because let's look at it, and even in Cardone Capital, for example, or any of the deals that I've done, whether they're real estate deals or investment deals, the starting number is 100 Gs. Nobody wants you to play with them unless you can put in 100. To me, my experience is that's the starting number. So then we've got to go from 50 to 100 liquid and investible. You and I have talked about this before, this reserve account.

Grant Cardone: Yeah.

Matt Manero: That reserve account is the only reason that I've survived, that I was so disciplined that I took money from this bucket and I put it into this bucket, and I never touched it. Like never would tap into it. I don't care what the emergency was. Even if I had it in there, I would still say, "We can't do it." Right? And so that's this, "I'm in accumulation mode." This is a power statement that I put in the book, where people need to stop saying, "I can't do it," and they need to start saying, "I'm in accumulation mode."

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: When I to say that to people, they were like, "Well, tell me what that-"

Grant Cardone: And you're not accumulating cars, and watches, and designer jeans, you're accumulating cash.

Matt Manero: Yeah, and you're stacking and racking it in this reserve account, and you're preparing for when that final deal that you watched all the other people get, right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah.

Matt Manero: And you've been saying, "Well how come those deals don't come across my eyes?" Because then it comes across, and then you can do it. Right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah.

Matt Manero: As you say, you can pull the trigger, and you can actually make the move on it.

Grant Cardone: Yeah. So the 100 ... because one of the things I do with the 100, is if I'm not willing to put 100 grand into a deal, because the 100, that's a serious number to me ...

Matt Manero: It is.

Grant Cardone: I'm like, "Okay, that's a big number."

Matt Manero: Sure, gets attention.

Grant Cardone: One thing I realized was, like I would play with six and eight and 10, or four, or two, but when you get to 100, you don't go buy $100,000 worth of Bitcoin.

Matt Manero: But you'll lose six or eight or 10, because you're not putting any attention on it.

Grant Cardone: Exactly.

Matt Manero: But 100 you're like, "Hey, how am I doing today?"

Grant Cardone: So one of my things is, if I'm not willing to invest 100, I don't look at the investment. That's really for me, not for the guy taking money from me. It's like, that's how I make a decision, because it becomes enough to where I'm like, "I don't want to risk that."

Matt Manero: So why do I start to come up with these numbers and even have the balls to talk about it in a book and take the hate for it? Because when you really begin to expand it out, it gets us to the next point of the book, which is the money has moved, and so everything is more expensive. Give you an example, I graduated college in 1991. When I graduated college, to be in the top 1% of earners in America you needed to make 100 grand. Today, that number is 384,000. And yet people still think-

Grant Cardone: What's that number again?

Matt Manero: 384 is the number today.

Grant Cardone: 384, three commas. No, one comma, three zeros.

Matt Manero: 384,000 to be in the top 1% of earners today. And yet, lots of people still think 100 grand means, "I can do whatever I want." The money's moved. And people don't understand this. So then if we begin to expand, which I take it out, then we get to this million dollar number, right? Which is something I've heard you mention many times, and I agree completely. If you have $1 million ... By the way, average social security benefit in America is $1,466.

Grant Cardone: A month.

Matt Manero: A month. So if you're getting 3% on your tax-free municipal bonds on your million bucks, right? That's 30 grand.

Grant Cardone: If I'm getting what?

Matt Manero: If you're getting say 3%, let's just say you have a million bucks saved up towards the end, and you said, "I have to put it in the most conservative investments," and you put it in tax-free municipal bonds, and they're paying 3%. So your million is throwing off 30 Gs, plus your social security benefit, right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah.

Matt Manero: Which is about another 16-17,000. So you're living on $46-47,000 a year, and yet you thought when you'd be a millionaire you'd be going to Tuscany, and you'd be on the RV cruising the country.

Grant Cardone: Oh dude, I thought I was going to be on a big 200 foot yacht or something with a million dollars.

Matt Manero: So here's the toughest message out of the book man, and this is, I think, what I've gotten the most hate from, is that you need more money than you think.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, and this is the money mindset, really.

Matt Manero: It's the money mindset. It's the wake up call that says we are all thinking too small, and some are living so close to the edge, like people I've loved that it put a tremendous burden on me and my wife, and now a tremendous burden on his wife and his four kids.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, the community.

Matt Manero: Dude, it's-

Grant Cardone: The family, the network, the people that depend on you, right?

Matt Manero: It's terrible.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, it is terrible. And this is where I think that people are not told the truth. I mean, if you really told the truth about 50 grand, you'd probably drop it from the book.

Matt Manero: What do you mean?

Grant Cardone: I mean if you were telling me the truth, if I was your brother, and you weren't writing a book, I don't think you would encourage me to have 50 grand as the number.

Matt Manero: That's an interesting point.

Grant Cardone: Right? Because look, that means I die and I only got 50 grand, Elena, the wife and the kids have four grand a month for 12 months.

Matt Manero: So let's talk about that for a sec.

Grant Cardone: She's dating the next day.

Matt Manero: Here's the thing.

Grant Cardone: She's calling John at home, "John, got some work for me?"

Matt Manero: Look, here's a beautiful part about it, though, Grant. I'm not selling any insurance, none of that. But you can hedge your brokeness with insurance. So my brother-in-law could have-

Grant Cardone: Wait, what does that mean now?

Matt Manero: People say, here's the thing, people say, "I can't do what you're telling me. It seems like a pipe dream, right?" And my response to that is-

Grant Cardone: Well, what part can't they do? They can't make the money? They can't earn more money.

Matt Manero: They can't get rich. They can't be a millionaire. They can't make more money. All this stuff that I put in the book, they push back against it and say, "Not for me. That's somebody else's world." And my response to them, not true, number one, but number two, you have the ability to fix a problem through insurance. Example, for $50 a month, someone can buy a term life insurance policy, 20 years, 30 years, say it's $100,000.

Grant Cardone: $100,000 worth of insurance.

Matt Manero: My brother-in-law, for $50 a month, he pissed it away at dinners all the time and on iPhones and all that stuff.

Grant Cardone: Wow.

Matt Manero: If he left his wife and his four children with $100,000 ...

Grant Cardone: It would've been something.

Matt Manero: Dude, it would have been ... everything would have changed. In his mind, that year that he lived with the guilt of what's going to happen, right, that we talked about, he and I, on his death bed, talked about at length about, "How did I let it happen?" he would say, "How did I not put enough money away that I'm leaving my family ... How did I not buy insurance?" Right?

Grant Cardone: He was your brother or brother-in-law?

Matt Manero: My brother-in-law. But you know, Rokki and I have been together forever, so I was tight with him,

Grant Cardone: Dude, he was selfish.

Matt Manero: I've heard you say that before, and it's a powerful statement, but if you don't get your money right, it is you caring more about you than it is the people that you're working for. Right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah.

Matt Manero: It's a big deal. What you just said is like crazy for most people, but it's true.

Grant Cardone: Look, as you know, I sold cars for a living. I watched people, I preyed on people because, you know, they wanted a bigger car they couldn't afford.

Matt Manero: Yeah.

Grant Cardone: Like, "Yeah, dude, I'll put you in it. I'll even make sense of it." Like, if you even wandering, wandering, like thinking BMW, I'll get you to pay for it. And they do it to you every day. You guys need to know, the whole world's preying on you every day.

Matt Manero: But here's the bottom line, Grant. If you follow these steps in this book, I believe anybody has the ability to fix their money situation. If you skill up, if you become an expert, if you figure out how to handle risk ... Right? Risk is such a freaky thing for most people. But the reason people feel risk is because they haven't done the research and analysis, and so they stay in the risk world. How else does one guy buy one door, and you buy 5,000 doors? How? I mean, I look at in my business-

Grant Cardone: Because I'm selfish.

Matt Manero: No, because you've done the research and analysis to understand what risk means.

Grant Cardone: I'm greedy, man, I'm a greedy bastard.

Matt Manero: Not, it's not. None of that, dude. It's none of that. Anyone who says that is so retarded, it's so ridiculous.

Grant Cardone: Right?

Matt Manero: It's ridiculous. That thought is ridiculous. It has nothing to do with that.

Grant Cardone: But you know what's really ridiculous? And this is why I say, "Hey, what side of ridiculous you want to be on?" I'm the same guy that couldn't pay $275 a month for rent. Don't worry about it. I couldn't ... My credit score was bad. I didn't have any money, couldn't make sense of anything. Until I started doing what you're saying. First thing I had to do was get my skills up, I had to get my income up.

Matt Manero: Have to get your income up.

Grant Cardone: What does somebody get started before we go? First of all, the book's at Amazon. It's waiting for you right now. You Need More Money. Okay? Matt's my friend. Get the book, and I'll get Matt to sign it for you.

Matt Manero: All right, we'll work something out.

Grant Cardone: He'll send you a card, inserted in the book. All right? And where do people start? I'm making 50 grand a year right now.

Matt Manero: So I think the first thing you got to start is back to those core values, Grant. What is it that you're going to tolerate and what are you not going to tolerate? Because dude, a lot of people are going down paths that are not going to serve them well. They're chasing the dollar, and they're giving up their soul to do it. And I don't agree with that. I'm not saying that you have to be holy about it, you just don't want to be screwing people. Dude, I've been in business a long time. It all comes back.

Grant Cardone: Do you think there's a to of people screwing people out there?

Matt Manero: I was just at this event recently, and some guy gets up there talking about how you sell products on the internet, and every word out of his mouth was, "Here's the hack, here's the hack, here's the hack. None of these posts are legitimate. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. All these pictures are staged." I'm like, "Well, all right, I mean that's not how I roll."

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: So if you're teaching people that's how they roll, dude, the roost comes back.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: That ain't for me. And I want to run clean, and I always have.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, I think most of the people watching this do too. I'm concerned that the people watching screw themselves the other way.

Matt Manero: Okay, 10-4. You mean they're screwing themselves internally rather than screwing customers.

Grant Cardone: Dude, the core values is not just being honest with others. It's like, you guys got to get honest with yourself.

Matt Manero: Sure.

Grant Cardone: Quit telling yourself you can't do something about it.

Matt Manero: Yeah. So look, we want to fix it. We want to dial it in.

Grant Cardone: See, I think my dad, my dad wouldn't screw anybody, but I think my dad got a little blindsided because he thought maybe he was going to live forever or something, or that he bought enough insurance. Like, I think everybody's not predicting what the future brings.

Matt Manero: I saw the future firsthand. I saw with my brother-in-law, I'm seeing it currently with my best friend, my wife's seeing it with her very close friend. Dude, I'm living this. You have too.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: I'm living this firsthand of what ... I just literally, last week, got the phone call from my buddy, "Hey, I'm going to go see the doctor tomorrow, and I got something going on with my liver."

Grant Cardone: Wow.

Matt Manero: "Okay. Call me. Let me know how it goes." 85% of his liver eaten up with cancer, the rest is metastasized to his bone. He's 48 years old. He's my closest friend in the world.

Grant Cardone: Oh my God, man.

Matt Manero: That's right. He's got a wife and two kids. Now, he does have a few bucks, so that's a little different. Right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah. How much money do you think he's got?

Matt Manero: I think he's got about 7 million bucks. I think his wife would be left with about 7 million bucks. She'll be okay. Right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah.

Matt Manero: But you know, he wants more. Here's the sad part-

Grant Cardone: She's going to be concerned. Well, you guys, really do the math on that deal.

Matt Manero: You bet.

Grant Cardone: If she's 47 years old, she's got 40 years, man. If she can't produce new income, and doesn't know what to do with that 7 million, you know?

Matt Manero: Here's the sad part about her, and my buddy's situation, just on a side note, the next 10 years Grant, all that strategy that he put in place, that 7 million would have turned into big numbers for her.

Grant Cardone: Right, right.

Matt Manero: He needed that next 10 years, you know?

Grant Cardone: Uh-huh (affirmative).

Matt Manero: But you don't know that stuff. So now what's going to happen is she's going to contract, and she's going to be a squirrel that just hoards those nuts.

Grant Cardone: Totally.

Matt Manero: And that upside that he was preparing for, right? That next role, that next play, never going to happen.

Grant Cardone: Yeah. She's got 12 grand a month she can to live on. Without earning another penny, she can exhaust 12 grand a month. Anybody can live on that. Most of you out there watching, you don't have that $7 million problem. You haven't gotten ... He gave you two great situations, his brother-in-law and his best friend. One guy got enough, could have done more, maybe he doesn't need to, and you don't need to if it's just your wife and your kids you're trying to take care of, but if it's your church you're trying to take care of, a legacy-

Matt Manero: Well, I think it's all of it.

Grant Cardone: ... you don't want the company to shut down the next day.

Matt Manero: Dude, it's all of it. My point in the book-

Grant Cardone: Does he work at a company?

Matt Manero: No, he owns his own business,.

Grant Cardone: Yeah, okay.

Matt Manero: But that's probably not going to make it.

Grant Cardone: It'll shut down.

Matt Manero: That business will shut down.

Grant Cardone: She's not going to keep feeding it.

Matt Manero: Nope, and she doesn't know how to run it. So it's over.

Grant Cardone: So you see? That's over, so a bunch of employees, if that's part of your extended family, this is what nobody prepares for.

Matt Manero: What I know will happen in that situation is they will all start looking at gas prices again.

Grant Cardone: Right.

Matt Manero: Right? When you got a machine that spits out tokens, you're not looking at gas prices. You're just filling up, right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: But the minute that condenses, you're like, "$3 a gallon? Well, I'll go to 87 at 2.65," right?

Grant Cardone: Yeah, yeah.

Matt Manero: It changes everything. I know that happened when you were a kid, man.

Grant Cardone: Hey guys, get yourself in the position, okay? I talk about this all the time. I really appreciate Matt taking the time to write the book, You Need More Money. Grab your copy today at Amazon. I'll get Matt to sign it for you. You need more money, you know that's true.

Matt Manero: You Need More Money. Come on, John-

Grant Cardone: I love the title.

Matt Manero: You need more money!

Grant Cardone: Right? You need more money. Who's got it? Matt's going to show you how to get it, how to skill up to get it, and how to get the people around you thinking the same way. Matt, thanks for being here today.

Matt Manero: Thanks buddy.