be obsessed or be average

GET IT DONE, THEN GET IT RIGHT

"Perfectionism" is nothing but a fancy word for not getting started and not persisting. When you insist on everything being perfect, you end up waiting too long, you delay your success, and you never get to try things out—which is actually what's necessary to achieve high quality. Perfectionists lie to themselves and disguise their lack of persistence by claiming that once it's perfected, everything will sell itself. How delusional and egotistical can people be? While they wait to get it perfect, I take market share from them. Whether it's that the app isn't ready, the bugs are not all worked out, one person doesn't like the product, the script needs more work, blah, blah, blah . . . people usually come up with some excuse. This is why people are so scared of public speaking or of making a video, of being recorded, and especially of live interviews. They want to get it so right that they can't even try. I just want to get it done and get it out. The marketplace requires that a product or service be updated and changed constantly, whether it's a coffeemaker, sales training, or the next smartphone. That's the market: It demands persistence and rewards only those who have it. Not those who are perfect. The trick is to keep moving forward, keep persisting, and keep innovating—keep being obsessed. The marketplace is the only place where you can develop the genius in you and the genius of your product; that big, bad, emotionless economy pays only those who persist in the midst of it. No one gets everything right the first time. Releasing something you're obsessed with, even when you're not sure if it's ready, is better than releasing it when everything is "right." My first twelve sales programs and my first two books were self-published. I wrote my first book, Sell or Be Sold, in three hours. I heard lots of criticism when I released it because there were spelling mistakes, grammatical problems, and run-on sentences. But by the time I sold out of four editions, all that stuff had been fixed and the cover and title had been changed, and it has won an award for "best sales business book" of all time. Meanwhile, those people who criticized my book had never published one. Now, that doesn't mean I want to be sloppy, but I do need to be willing to get to market. You are not going to get it right the first time, so persist, and eventually you will nail it. Sometimes it takes a while to discover the best approach to whatever you're doing, and only by doing it over and over again do you get it right. Quantity and frequency seem to grow the genius: Even after thousands of times doing something, you will still be changing how you do it, because the more you do something, the more you understand and discover how to do it better. I know that's how it works for me. Only I know that my "overnight" success came after some 150,000 social media posts, 78,000 tweets, 13,000 speaking engagements, 1,100 articles, 700 interviews, thousands of live streams, three million flight miles, and who knows how many cold calls. Because all that cumulative trial and error led me to "explode" into success. Better to fall facing forward than to never try at all because you want your first attempt to be perfect (which won't happen anyway). Persist and one day you will perfect. Then persist some more and you will find what you thought was perfect was a joke. Obsession is a cycle.

STOP WHINING ABOUT PAYROLL

A lot of people don't want the expense of paying employees. The truth? People don't cost money. Not growing your business costs money. Every new hire should bring you more money, and if they do not, you don't have the right crew or are not managing them correctly. I have gone from having five employees to having a couple of hundred, and as my payroll blew up, the revenue of my business blew up as well. While the bottom line grew to five times what it had been, the company's top line grew to almost one hundred times what it had been. And that is just the first bit of good news. We multiplied our number of customers by eight thousand, the amount of attention we received by millions, and we created twelve times as many products. On top of all that, the most valuable result has been that the company still has a viable future without my day-to-day involvement. I can put my focus and my efforts into the things I do best. Without the help of an expanding expert team, you're already guaranteed a loss. So quit complaining about payroll costs.

ALL THE WAY IS THE ONLY WAY TO CLOSE

A major failure of sales organizations is that salespeople and managers are running around talking to customers but never presenting figures to them. They make contact with the customer, talk to the customer—and then report back to upper management about why the customer didn't buy. It doesn't matter that the customer said, "It's not the right time for us to buy," when the salesperson didn't even present an offer. We did a mystery shopper program with over five hundred companies in America and discovered that this happens more than 70 percent of the time. In fact, never asking for the order is one of the top reasons sales organizations fail. The salesperson is scared of the competition or rejection or has some other neurosis, so they refuse to walk the prospect all the way through the sales process to a proposal. I have worked with tens of thousands of sales organizations and, while this may blow your mind, I assure you that it's salespeople's own fault that they're losing sales. And the reason it happens is a lack of training and the fact that no one is holding the salespeople accountable for the little things along the way to closing. This results in sales cycles that are longer than necessary, razor-thin margins, and over 50 percent of sales organizations missing quotas—all because the salesperson never took the transaction all the way and because the manager never held them accountable. It's a simple fact: If you miss a step, you will lose the sale. If you don't ask for the order, you cannot close the sale. If you don't present a proposal, you cannot close the sale. If you don't deal with the decision maker, you will not close the sale. If you don't deal with all the influencers, you will not close the sale. If you don't solve the magic problem, you will not close the sale. If you don't follow up, you will not close most of the sales. If you are not obsessed with closing, you won't. Go into every sales situation and customer interaction believing you can close the sale.

THE DISTRACTION OF THE MASSES

Add to that the fact that every day, we are hammered relentlessly with distractions, lies, political agendas, crises, terror, and false hopes. This constant bombardment makes people believe they are powerless—mere spectators in their own lives who only know how to just get by. Millions of people spend three to four hours of their workday scanning Facebook and then go home to watch hours of television on ninety-inch screens they bought on credit. They're hypnotized by the national media's coverage of the most recent terrorist attack, missing plane, and celebrity scandal. Or they're glued to one of so many made-up sagas about cops solving crimes or battles in imaginary kingdoms. Turn those off, and you live in a world where there are more mobile devices than human beings. We are being blasted by 24-7 Internet jabber, Twitter feeds in the hundreds of billions, eight billion daily Snapchat and YouTube videos, trillions of useless posts every day, and now streaming video where everyone can be a broadcaster puking mindless content. Not to mention we're constantly being spammed with pornography, celebrity fascinations, and bouncing cats. With this much distraction coming at you nonstop, the chance for success is slight. But you can break out of the average cycle—in fact, you must. Average is a failing formula and it works for no one, no matter how much they try to make sense of it. Unhappy people can't teach you how to be happy. The poor can't teach you how to get rich. A guy in a failing marriage cannot teach you how to make your marriage work. An average person can't teach you how to be exceptional. I have a saying I live by: "Never take advice from a quitter." And let me be clear—average people are quitters. They quit striving for a better life and quit short of their potential. So how can you live above the average line? By being all in and obsessed. Let's look at some people who have proven that.

KEEPING YOUR OBSESSIONS FRESH

All of life is a transition. You will work out what it is you are supposed to be doing and commit completely to that thing. Then there will come a time when you will again wonder what you are supposed to be doing, and the process of clarifying your purpose will start over again. Last year I was working with the Pentagon on a project to help troops transition from military service back into civilian life. Many of these great people had committed to being career soldiers. Now these veterans needed to move from an environment with lots of structure, leadership, and clarity to jobs in companies that lack direction, where everyone is too scared to make decisions, meetings don't even start on time, and employees complain about not having windows in their offices. I told the soldiers, and I'll tell you, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, your life is in transition. It is not just the start and the finish that matter; it's all the stuff in the middle. Those who are really alive and who make the biggest difference know how to keep updating and refocusing their obsession as they mature, as life changes, and as opportunities come and go. It is challenging, but you must redefine who you are and refuel your obsessions as conditions change and your previous goals are achieved. This will determine how much you can get done in your time here. It is you continuing to create you. The key to tying your obsession to your purpose is to always set new goals for yourself. Someone might say, "If I just had a million dollars, I would retire and play golf every day." Then this guy gets there, plays golf every day for five hours, becomes a 10 handicap, watches television the rest of the day, and hates his life. When he got there, he quit setting goals. As a result, he lost his way. Just as you reboot a computer by restarting it and reloading the operating system, all people need to reboot themselves. We are all in transition, getting older, starting over—and things change. The destination changes, conditions change, motivation changes. There are disappointments, challenges, losses. If you don't stay obsessed with where you are going, you will become that person you don't want to be: lost, jaded, and wasting away. I've been there; I've done that. When I didn't know why I was getting up every day, I felt like I was dying inside. Purpose keeps me from spending a lifetime wandering around planet Earth without direction. So that you always understand your purpose and what you should be obsessed with at any given time in your life, let's talk about igniting the power of writing your goals down every day.

how to focus on increasing income.

Also, don't miss this point I mentioned earlier: Once you cut waste out of the organization, never look at that again, and instead focus on increasing income. You can't grow your company by making it smaller—you need to grow the top line. That's where I invest most of my time, energy, and creativity. I spend 95 percent of my time focused on getting money and 5 percent of my time on budgets. Invest in getting the attention of people who will exchange their money for your products or services, not on worrying about your books all the time.

meet with your team leader everyday

Anything worth doing is worth doing every day. If you don't meet as a team every day, your team will soon devolve into a bunch of people going in different directions. Over time you will not maximize the success you deserve, and you will fail because of lack of confidence and lack of activity. This is especially true in sales. Sales gets a bad reputation because it's filled with uncommitted amateurs who are never held accountable, aren't properly motivated, and are insufficiently trained. Your daily sales meeting reinforces who you are, what you do, what you want from your team, what you expect from them, and what you provide your customers. All these things feed the beast.

2 here is a good question. other peoples lives.

Anytime I had a blowup, my mom (and later my girlfriends and friends) would always say the same thing: "But we have it so much better than others." Second, anytime I compared myself with others who had more—people who were really living the life—my mom, girlfriends, and friends would come back with "Don't compare yourself to others." There was no winning.

why is grant the happiest

Anytime I have allowed myself to be influenced by others, to compromise my vision of success, to settle for less than what I am capable of, to somehow convince myself I have done enough and settle for something less than having it all . . . I have become unhappy, irritable, bored, discontent, depressed, even angry. When I'm striving to achieve my full potential, I am at my happiest. I am happiest when I'm closing monster deals, solving big problems, making connections with giant players, and doing things I myself doubted were possible. When those things happen, I become a better father, husband, friend, employer, and contributing member of society: a better me.

DOMINATE THE MONEY THINKING OF PEOPLE AROUND YOU

As important as it is to dominate your own money thinking, you'll never really get ahead until you get the people around you to see and treat money the way you do. If your obsession involves building a great organization and not just working by yourself your whole life, you must become obsessed with making sure money is a friendly topic in your company. This is true for management, sales, finance—all of it. They need a proper understanding of money that matches your own. Because face it: If you aren't influencing the way your people think about money, someone else is. This is why your presence and the example you set regarding money are key. Your ability to pick up a phone and produce money is an inspiration. Making great financial decisions over and over is what winners do, and everyone wants to be on a winning team. You are an example for your people: Look at the financial condition of those who surround you to see the results of the example you have set. Be obsessed about your people doing well, and you will become a giant in their lives. Show a man or a woman how to produce more money than they ever dreamed while pursuing a greater purpose, and they will become loyal and dedicated.

PAYING ATTENTION TO PHYSICAL HEALTH

As important as it is to keep my mind sharp, I also believe that I need to be in good physical shape and health in order to achieve my potential. You can't be obsessed if you are overweight, you have no energy, and your body is aching because you spend too much time in a chair. That said, I am not good at working out just for the sake of working out. But give me short windows with specific targets and I get very excited about getting myself in great shape. I try to hit a certain number—of reps, of pounds lifted—in a given week. I am an immediate-gratification guy and I want to see results—and if I have to work out twice a day for a week to see those results, that works for me.

"What you resist will persist"?

At that moment I realized drugs had become a problem for me not because I was obsessed with drugs but because I had given up on the things I had been obsessed with at an earlier age, particularly success. You know the old saying "What you resist will persist"? When I had resisted my call to greatness and suppressed my obsession, the energy had gone into destructive behavior. I made a decision that night to never again fight my desire to be successful and to help other people too.

what is grant telling me?

Because you picked up this book, I already know you're a big thinker, a big dreamer, and someone who wants to be a huge success. You're also probably extremely frustrated. You know you can do more. Every time you see others achieving greatness, you wonder, Why am I not doing that? Those succeeding aren't necessarily smarter than you. They don't work harder than you. So why them and not you? Even if you are a multimillionaire, you know the truth: You could be a billionaire. Or maybe you are an artist and your work sells, but you know you should be recognized internationally. If you have this gnawing desire to be great, if you have a big dream and the talent—and I believe you do—then you should be frustrated!

DOMINATE YOUR AREA OF EXPERTISE

Become an authority on something and get your message out there. What do you do better than anyone? What are you passionate about? What do you have strong opinions about? What is it important for the world to know? A few years ago I realized it really bothered me that there were guys in the sales industry who were better recognized than me. It killed me that my name wasn't up there with the sales greats like Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, Og Mandino, Napoleon Hill, and Zig Ziglar. Where was my name on that list? It irked me that people were interested in their information and not reading mine only because they had not heard of me. But that was my fault—I had not been obsessed with worldwide expansion and had settled for the success I had achieved. To combat that and to figure out how to become known as an expert the way that they were, I created this exercise. Take a piece of paper. Draw your face in the center of it—that personalizes the exercise and reminds you who is at the center of all of these things. Then draw two columns, one labeled "professional life" and the other "personal life." In each column write down what you have expertise in and what traits mark you. Once I completed my chart, it gave me the ammunition to make a list of everywhere I could start to get my message out—this is how I began to dominate my brand (more on that in the next section). But the process of writing out what my expertise was and why helped me push myself to the next level. Be relevant and obsessed. Use the little exercise above to clarify what you are the best at and what you are an expert in. But remember: This will keep changing and expanding throughout your life. Revisit this exercise and run it again to give you the fuel you need to tackle any industry you're in.

MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER THE WINNER

Before presenting your product to a potential client, remind yourself of how your offer is worth more money than you are asking for. That is what makes it the best deal anywhere. Always make sure the buyer gets more value than the money exchanged. If a company invests $1.7 million in a customized sales training program and makes $15 million in sales the first year, who got the better deal? The customer. People don't buy price: They buy the product, the solution, the people, and the company. Price is just a piece of the puzzle used to evaluate a product or service, and this is true with all your other value offers. In the end your value is what's best because it makes your pricing better, your warranty better, your financing better, your terms better, your product better, your service better. And then there's the ultimate value-add: you. No other deal will come with you. When I was selling cars, whether I was selling Toyotas, Pontiacs, Renaults, GMCs, or used cars, the deal was rarely the car—the deal was me. A customer, Warren, once told me, "I can get the same deal down the street for less." I replied, "The deal down the street doesn't come with me, Warren. Sign here." He bought the truck and then bought another eleven vehicles from me. I assure you that he paid me more than another dealer would have charged—and I promise you he still got a better deal buying from me. Because I didn't just sell Warren cars; I serviced Warren and his family constantly. I became friends with his family. I treated him and his family like VIPs, always stopped whatever I was doing to give them attention. Tell the world you are the best. Sure, it is going to cause people to think you are "too this" and "too that." But just as you never take advice from people who have quit on themselves, the person who says you shouldn't brag has nothing to brag about. Tell the truth about how awesome you are. And then deliver on that truth.

CHASE THE TALENT—AND PERSIST TILL THEY'RE YOURS

Before she worked for me, my chief operating officer worked for a major celebrity in Los Angeles. I had heard about her and tried to hire her for more than two years before I finally got her. She now helps me oversee Cardone Acquisitions, Cardone Training Technologies, and Grant Cardone TV.

ONLY YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR SUCCESS

Being obsessed is the only way to create enough success today to ever be an inspiration to others and actually make a difference on this planet. Being obsessed is required in order to have enough significant bandwidth to provide guidance and support for all the people who need help. After I had become successful, I used to tell my uncle Vince my dreams of doing even bigger things, and he would say, "If you can, you must."

OBSESSION FOREVER

Buying a jet was something I never even dreamed of when I was young and broke, or even a few years ago. But after writing The 10X Rule, something changed in me. I always write books to solve my own problems, and with The 10X Rule the problem I was trying to solve was figuring out if my purpose was in line with my potential and if I was really doing everything in my power to be true to my obsession. In doing that, I compared the almost endless list of expenses it took to run my businesses with what I needed to achieve my purpose. I was flying all over North and South America, speaking and working. That costs both money and a lot of time, and it took me away from my family when I wanted to be with them. After thinking about it, I looked into buying a private plane—which would give me greater control over my schedule and, ultimately, how I could live out my obsession. My accountant did the math and I did the math, and no matter how many times I went over it, the jet just did not pencil out. In my research everyone told me the idea was ridiculous, except for two people, who are both financially more successful than me and who both own aircraft. One told me, "It's the best investment I ever made and I cannot make sense of it no matter how many times I run the numbers." The other one told me, "It is the single best thing I have ever bought." In the end I invested in a midsized jet—a Gulfstream G200. I had "10X" painted on the tail and "365GC," the registration number, stenciled on both engines (a reminder to be myself 365 days a year). The first week I owned 10X Airlines, I visited four customers in four different cities in the same day and was back with my family that night. Not one person in my space can get to a customer before I can. I don't call a charter company and get booked into the schedule; I just call my pilots and off we go. As Elena reminded me, "It doesn't need to make financial sense if it makes your life mission possible." And it does.

CREATE COMPANY MOTTOS'

Come to my offices in Miami and you will see our company mottos everywhere. I surround my people with my beliefs and sayings. Every door to every office has a sign that speaks a particular message to that department. "We're in a hurry to serve." "Success is my duty." "I refuse to let the customer not do business with us." "No one can buy a lower price." Bury your employees in sales messages and feed them whatever they need to have the energy, motivation, and confidence to make that extra sales call. Instill in them what you are so aware of—that in each moment they can be obsessed or be average, and that it is, in fact, a choice. Now that we've looked at how to feed the beast, personally and in your organization, we need to address the other side of the coin: starving the doubt.

BE OBSESSED WITH DANGER AND DISCOMFORT

Commit yourself to this feeling of discomfort. I've become obsessed with the idea of being uncomfortable, because I know it leads to success. I guarantee that you will not find the path to your purpose inside your comfort zone. The greatest you will be discovered far outside your comfort zone. BE OBSESSED WITH DANGER AND DISCOMFORT Take a hard look at how committed you are to your success, because you might be on the edge of a cliff, in danger instead of dangerous. Try this exercise to see where you are: Are you expanding and re-creating who you are? If not, you are stagnating. Are you reaching for new audiences? If not, you are becoming obsolete. Are you creating new products? If not, you are uninspired. Are you developing new streams of income? If not, you are on your way to losing money. Are you the biggest fish in a small pond? If so, you are getting lazy. Are you the smartest person in the room? If so, you are asking for boredom. Are you always worried about one client? If so, your pipeline is not full enough. Are you scared at this very moment? If you aren't, then you aren't doing the things that are worth doing. Stay hungry, stay dangerous, stay obsessed—and win.

ONLY AVERAGE PEOPLE REFUSE TO ASSUME CONTROL

Control is a good thing. Just because others try to make it bad doesn't mean it is. The fact is, out-of-control people have given control a bad name. Remember, what others criticize are the very things they have given up on. The people who complain about control are the same people who refuse to exert control over their environment and then resent their environment. People who have misused control in the past refuse to take control because they don't trust themselves to use it for the good of others Those without control have refused to lead and refused to be responsible for controlling their environments. If you refuse to control, someone else will. Media, your spouse, the nei ghbors, politicians, Twitter, Facebook, big pharma, and on and on all make huge efforts every second of every day to control anyone who will pay attention. Every day you and I are given an opportunity to grab the reins and ride the beast, to control our own environment. I wake up and try to beat the sun up every day because I want control. I get to the gym because I know control is important. I exceed targets and deadlines because I demand control. I fire someone who is late more than twice because I know I have a better chance of success when I am in control of the office culture and work ethic. I make tough decisions because I exercise my control. So many defer opportunities to be in control by saying "No thanks" or "Let me think about it." They'd prefer to sit in the backseat and tell you, when it's too late, that you missed the turn. Or worse, they sit at your side and try to navigate your direction, adding what-ifs and doubts but never being willing to take a stand. Most managers don't want to be the boss. Hell, most bosses don't even want to be the boss. Bosses and managers who have an all-in obsession with success, who will do whatever it takes to see things through—even if I die—are difficult to find. The norm is that people are satisfied with having "VP" put on their card—and then turn down true responsibility because they refuse to exercise control. When it comes down to it, control is not bad—being out of control or having no control is the issue. Society complains about the control freak when the problem is the millions of managers, executives, business owners, politicians, and parents who refuse to be in control. Managers have to check with their people to see if they will "buy in" before instituting an initiative for the company. Sad. Trust me, if you come across people who struggle with the idea I am sharing here, you don't want to hire them—and if you already have, get them out of your life. Those who resist control are those who have some thing to hide. Those who resist or speak badly about control or even micromanaging are low performers and are surrounded by people operating below their potential. So many people don't think enough of themselves to believe they can control their environment, their kids, their finances, their time, or their results. It's an epidemic maybe born out of all that psychoanalyzing that was so popular over the last twenty years. Well, that's not ever going to be me, because I am obsessed with avoiding the problems that come with losing control in the most important parts of my life. If that means you call me a control freak, bring it on. From ensuring my family's personal safety to looking after my finances, I want control!

what did his coworkers say to him?

Coworkers were saying, "Life isn't all about work." Even the guy who owned the car dealership said, "I think you should relax a little bit and take some time off." My family was concerned about my burning out and relapsing. Sorry, but no. I had been in very low places—and I wasn't going back. Hitting that massive bottom in my life had given me something to bounce back from, and I wanted to bounce back as high as possible. If I could go that low and survive, I thought, how high could I go in the other direction? No matter how troubling it was to others, it was this obsession with success that had given me a new lease on a new life. I was really beginning to understand its power and possibility.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE COMPETITION'S LOUSY DELIVERY

Customer service is what you offer clients before, during, and after a purchase. For a customer to perceive these interactions as success, you and your employees must adjust to the needs of that customer. Most people and most companies, however, are unable or unwilling to do this. The customer-service industry has terrified businesspeople with statistics that promote underpromising. Here are some of them: An American Express survey done in 2011 suggests that "78% of consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience." I assure you that number has not improved. According to a 2014 survey by Ebiquity, nearly three out of four consumers say they have spent more with a company because of a history of positive customer-service experiences. Per Ruby Newell-Legner, it takes twelve positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. The White House Office of Consumer Affairs says that reports of bad customer-service experiences reach more than twice as many ears as praise for a good service experience. You can make this reality work for you. Look at what other companies in your space do, and take a look at what they will not do—then exploit those things. Over the years, every company accumulates its list of policies about things that it will and will not do in certain circumstances. The company creates policies to prevent things that happened a few times from ever happening again. For example, an executive throws up his hands and declares, "That's it! We have a new policy: Salespeople can no longer contract the customer without legal looking over the agreement first." You can exploit policies like this by being responsive, amenable, and flexible. As someone competing against that executive Mr. Penalize-All-Because-of-One-Situation, I will expedite deals by freeing my salespeople up to contract, without the added time our competitor needs to have legal review their agreement. I once called a large real estate company in the Southeast about a listing it had available. I asked a veteran agent, "What is the cost on a deal that size right now?" She said, "Sorry, our company has a policy: We aren't allowed to discuss interest rates or mortgages." She had been doing multimillion-dollar transactions for thirty years and she couldn't discuss rates? I hadn't asked her to lend me money. I wasn't asking her to commit to a rate. My question was about moving my interest in the purchase toward the goal line. I was passing the ball off to her so she could move it toward the end zone—and she effectively said, "Do not pass me the ball. From this point forward, I cannot help you, I will not help you, I am not allowed to help you. You are on your own." This was ridiculous to me. But beliefs like this are rampant in the marketplace, and it's up to you to exploit policies that cripple your competition like this. Look into it. You will be shocked how many companies today still, with customers who have access to boundless amounts of information, refuse to discuss critical elements necessary to push a deal to closing. Plumbers and other contractors refuse to quote a price for their services over the phone because they're terrified the competition will beat it or that they will be unable to deliver at the stated price. Their web site might promise, "We have the best pricing anywhere—call us!" But when you call, they refuse to give you the price or it takes two days to get it. Exploit that! No wonder Internet sales are exploiting the limitations of mom-and-pop shops. People don't have to endure the negative experience of wanting service that can't be delivered because of some dumb policy that was created long ago. I do a show each week from my studio at Grant Cardone TV in which I call businesses and search for these neurotic weak points. I say, "Tell me about your offer." The things I run into are sickening. Here are some of them: I called a major retailer. No one answered the phone after twelve rings. A CrossFit business refused to talk to customers at lunch because that hour was "sacred workout time." A law firm wouldn't start any work until it received the retainer because it had been stiffed one time by one customer. A real estate broker refused to show property or tell me anything about his offering until I signed a confidentiality agreement because he had heard a story about a buyer who went around a broker, directly to the seller, in order to save 3 percent. A boutique watch store wouldn't give me a price over the phone. Their excuse? "We don't want you to shop our price." People are so busy trying to solve some problem from the past that they miss the opportunity in the moment. I've seen this happen in my own company. My VP of sales wrote a letter to my Internet department, stating that anytime a customer with a title of VP or higher attempted to buy our Online University offering at our web store, his or her order should not be processed and that instead the lead should be sent to the sales department to handle. Was he for real? Just imagine you are a VP of a company and want to purchase a program available online without talking to a salesperson—and can't. I reamed my guy and told him, "Never stop an order, ever." My VP was trying to do the right thing, knowing these customers were probably buying the wrong product, an individual program when they needed a corporate account . . . but it is never right to inconvenience the customer. If this can happen in my company, you can bet other companies are behind with bad or outdated policies, rules, and beliefs. Look for them and you will find opportunities. Get obsessed with exploiting every weakness of your competition. Use every possible advantage to separate yourself from the mass of average, where businesses are indistinguishable. Do whatever it takes, within legal parameters, within what is ethically and morally sound, to deliver in ways that exploit others' weaknesses. If they won't do it, whatever it is, I might offer it to my clients. If they take too long, I will do it now. You don't want to be doing what everyone else is doing; do what they won't do and offer what they won't offer. Break the rules to make a new game.

THERE'S NO EXCUSE FOR NOT PERSISTING

Dogged persistence in the face of setbacks, challenges, crybabies, quitters, disappointments, mistakes, distractions, crises, and petty bullshit is part of the game for everyone. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, quit complaining, and act like a boss. Persistence is the characteristic of legends, greats, and geniuses who were called crazy because they didn't quit when the average person would have. When you persist long after others quit, regardless of the outcome, your power, confidence, creativity, and genius automatically light up. This happens because in the face of all these difficulties you learn how strong and resilient you are. This is essential. Every time you persist, you have another story to tell—a story of who you are: someone who is a little closer to their full potential. When you're in the trenches, remind yourself of how valuable and precious these stories will be in the future. In the movies no one wants to fight the guy who keeps coming back and can't be killed. How much success you have in the future may verwell be determined by this one thing: how much you persist through the hard times.

HIRE SURPRISING PEOPLE

Don't be afraid to look outside the usual channels for new hires. Great people might have really surprising backgrounds. We hired a graphics pro who did not yet have his American citizenship when he replied to our craigslist ad. He has been with me for three years and is like family. He never misses work, is always on time, and does an unbelievable job. (He also just became an American citizen.) We posted another ad online for a "personal video genius." The guy I ended up hiring was working at Banana Republic when he saw the ad—not exactly where I thought I'd be hiring from. He's been with me for almost three years, travels with me around the world, and is one of our top income earners.

BEWARE OF WHERE DOUBT GROWS

Doubt grows in areas of our life where we think we're taking care of ourselves. I know because I've been there, done that, and suffered for it. I've tried the conventional wisdom, and I know it isn't a good idea for me to avoid burnout like the plague, to take lengthy vacations, and to always seek balance in life. My experience in life has turned all these notions on their heads.

ENCOURAGE THROUGH ATTENTION

Either you or your manager needs to walk into your sales office every hour to make sure that the team members aren't off doing their own thing again. I don't care if you simply walk through the room and touch a couple of people, saying "Good job today" to one and "Get on the phone; we're in a hurry to help people" to another. Let them see you paying attention. While I am walking through our sales department, I might even intervene on a call and show them how it's done. Most of the time, just your presence will get them back to the goal discussed in the sales meeting.

what did grant done to help himself out of poverty and into success ?

Even though I hated the job, I decided I would throw myself into my sales job 100 percent and use it as my jumping-off point. I committed to learning everything I could about sales and the automobile industry and using any free time to help others know the truth about drugs and how destructive they are. I resolved to take all my obsessive energy and redirect it toward rebuilding my life the way I wanted it. I went to bed after writing my new-life manifesto feeling inspired and clearheaded for the first time in years.

how did he change when he became 28 years old

Every month I was better than I had been the month before: I was selling more, I was making more money, and I was rebuilding my self-esteem. And every month I was one more month removed from my past. Months added up to years, and by the time I turned twenty-eight, I wasn't the kid with the drug problem anymore. I was a solid sales professional in the top 1 percent of salespeople in the entire auto industry. I was starting to think bigger too, even entertaining grandiose ideas of one day becoming a sales legend like the guys I was studying every day, someone who was known for sales worldwide and taught millions of others about sales and maybe even wrote books and programs to help other salespeople.

ALWAYS RAISE AND REFUEL YOUR OBSESSIONS

Fire needs wood, a car needs gas, a computer needs electricity, and your obsessions need to be constantly fueled as well. The ultimate fuel to help you stay obsessed with your obsessions is your maturing and changing purposes throughout your life. Maybe you are just about the money at one point in your life. Well, good. Get that right. Or maybe you don't care about money and just want to help people. Then get that right. Maybe you want to do it for self-esteem or for respect in a community. Then accomplish that in a massive way. Or you could decide to feed them all and compromise nothing. Being obsessed with your sense of purpose across all the parts of your life will allow you to accomplish all the things you desire and become aware of those things maybe you couldn't see before. Remember, when clarifying what you should be obsessed with, the following should be true: It improves the outcome of your life and others' lives. It moves you to reveal more of your potential. So what is your potential? That's a powerful question to keep in front of you because it inspires more questions, like "How much am I capable of?" "What do I need to fulfill my potential?" and "What would it mean to me to fulfill my potential?" Continuing to reach toward your full potential is the kind of fuel that will allow you to avoid getting lost, complacent, and satisfied and dying prematurely. Some other great questions to ask of yourself include: Who am I doing this for? How many will benefit from this? What's going to keep me fueled to do more? What if anything were possible? When I accomplish this, what is next? What am I doing that is not purpose driven? What else am I capable of doing that I haven't done? What have I always wanted to do that I have forgotten about? Are those around me on the same page? Who is encouraging me to live a life of purpose? Who is a good role model for what I am attempting? Who around me is not living a life of purpose? What can I do to help others achieve their purposes? I talked earlier about writing my goals down on a daily basis. In addition to that, at least once a month I sit down with a legal pad and pen to revisit my purposes and match them against my revised potential. I often do this with my wife and top executives so we don't become complacent with our victories and so we keep our attention on our possibilities. I can't express this enough: Your purposes will continue to grow, mature, and evolve as you do. Regardless of how big your dreams are now, other possibilities within your potential will be revealed to you that will make previously out-of-reach targets look small. The moment you stop looking forward to accomplish the next level is the moment you are at risk. I hope you'll continue to be obsessed with always uncovering more of your potential, even as you take your last breaths.

how is grants sucuessfulness mean?

For me success is defined as the attainment of my potential. My assessment of this potential has changed over the course of my life. At twenty-five I thought my potential was just to not use drugs on any given day. A year later I was focused on paying off $40,000 in debt and getting my income to $60,000 a year. By the time I was twenty-nine and starting my first business, my goal was to match the $100,000 a year I had made in automotive sales. All of those achievements, looking back, were way beneath my potential.

what does grant want

For me—and, I would expect, you—success is about being great at many things. I certainly wouldn't be satisfied with just being rich. I want it all: health, wealth, family, love, recreation, spirituality, community, and time to enjoy it all. Why settle for one color when you can have the rainbow?

what was his daily routine and his outstanding thing that he does?

For the first time I was doing what I had said I would do. I would wake up in my little apartment, feed my dog, shower, and watch a sales training video while I ate breakfast. On my drive to work each day, I'd listen to self-improvement and sales training tapes with the commitment to become the best of the best. In the first year I probably spent seven hundred hours just improving myself as a salesperson. I arrived an hour before everyone else, and many nights I was still there after ten o'clock. When I wasn't working in the dealership, I was trying to help other drug addicts.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOOKED ON SUCCESS AND OBSESSED

Getting hooked on the idea of success and actually being obsessed enough to pursue it are two completely different things. Just wanting to be great isn't enough. I've shed sweat, blood, tears—and put my ass on the line more times than I can count—to get to where I am today.

GET BEYOND THE ONE-MAN SHOW

Great organizations are never one-man operations. There are 22 million licensed small businesses in America that have no employees. Forbes suggests 75 percent of all businesses operate with one person. And the average income of those companies is a sad $44,000. That's not a business—that's torture. That is a prison where you are both the warden and the prisoner. What makes a person start a business and then be the only person who works there? Are they committed to staying small? Or maybe an entrepreneur decides that because the talent pool is so poor, they can't hire anyone who can do it as well as them, and they give up. My guess is the latter: Most people have just given up and said, "It's easier if I just do it myself." I know, because that's what I did—and it was suicidal. Because my business was totally dependent on me and only me, I was barely able to survive, much less grow, for the first ten years. Instead I contracted another company to promote my seminars. When I hired just one person to assist me out of my home office, I thought I was so smart: Keep it small. Keep expenses low. Run a tight ship. Bigger isn't always better. These were the things I told myself to justify not growing my business. I did this for years and even bragged about how well I was doing on my own. Then I started a second company with a partner, a consulting business that ran parallel to my seminar business. This consulting business quickly grew bigger than my first business because my partner hired people to work for us. But even then I resisted bringing other people into the company I know that a lot of speakers and business gurus run their companies as one-man shows. Which means that while they are giving advice to others about how to grow a business, they may have never grown one themselves! Their one-man show is simply a guy or gal going out, collecting a fee, selling time and a few books. And when they are out speaking, the business terminates all activity. I started studying other people and companies that had made it big and discovered they all had lots of employees. The reality is you cannot have a great business if it's just you. You need to add other people. If you don't believe me, try to name one truly great business that is successful, ongoing, viable, and growing that doesn't have many people making it happen. Good luck. Businesses are made of people, not just machines, automations, and technology. You need people around you to implement programs, to add passion to the technology, to serve customers, and ultimately to get you where you want to go. Consider the behemoth online company Amazon: It has more than 220,000 employees. Apple has more than 100,000; Microsoft has around the same number. Ernst & Young has more than 200,000 people. Apple calls the employees working in its stores "Geniuses." Don't you want to hire employees deserving of that title too? Think of how powerful they could make your business.

cardone

Haven't you tried "self-development" their way long enough? Stop looking at where you've been and what happened to you. Make it clear to everyone you are done with assigning blame and with the kind of self-discovery that leaves you powerless. Remind them not to fight your genius but to get behind it. Encourage people to see what you see, sell them on the concept, convince them it's better, or demand that they get behind and away from you. Yes, you are fanatical, and yes, the mission is impossible, and yes, you know no one has ever done exactly what you want to do before. But none of those conditions are cause for doubt! Respond with determination and go all in.

LOOK FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE MOTIVATED BEYOND MONEY

Hire people who want to make money and make a difference—not just people who have bills to pay. Look for those who want money so they can make a difference in their lives and hopefully in the lives of others. Look for what might drive people at work each day, beyond the desire to simply make a paycheck. Money should not be their all-consuming obsession. When you hire people who are just trying to make ends meet or buy enough stuff to live a somewhat comfortable life, this often creates a recurring problem for them and for you. People who have minuscule financial goals are constantly faced with living problems—the unexpected little problems in life that can turn into larger problems because of poor planning. Everything is all right because they have a job—but then something happens and suddenly they are not being paid enough. You then inherit their money problems. You cannot and should not take care of other people's financial problems. If the person whom you are considering hiring or who works for you does not find money valuable enough to be responsible for it, trying to solve their money problems will only cause you problems. I never solve someone's money problem—never. Because if I take care of someone's problem, they will never learn to take care of their own problems. I don't care if you're hiring a receptionist or a C-level executive; look for people who are properly motivated about money and then give them an opportunity to produce and earn bonuses. Three times a week I talk to my staff about the importance of getting their financial house in order. I once interviewed a promising individual for an executive position who said he could grow my business. But he kept pushing to know how much he would be paid rather than to learn more about the opportunity. I asked him in the interview, "What's more important, the opportunity or the salary you start at?" He replied, "At this time I am going with the company that can pay me the most." We passed on him. Truly talented people know the opportunity is always more important than "How much?" The entrepreneurial employee will always focus on the chance, not just the money. Take my graphics guy, Paul. When we met, he said, "I want to work with you because I know you are going places. Don't pay me anything; let me just prove myself." I hired him on the spot. Paul has turned out to be an almost perfect hire for my company. He recognized there was opportunity and believed in his own skills enough to not worry about the money in the short term, knowing he could show value in the long term and would be rewarded. Last year Paul made over six figures working at a job that would typically pay $65,000. Ask yourself: Is the person in front of you focused on the icing or the cake? People who are into immediate gratification, promises of advancement, and bonuses based on tenure and are more concerned about time off than about how they can contribute just don't work out in my companies. I'm looking for people who don't merely want to do their job but want to help me make more money, help with my company's expansion, knowing they will benefit. The morals the person in front of you practices in their personal life are the same ones they'll bring to work. Yes, you are hiring from a planet of broken people with good intentions, most of whom are not fit to work for the obsessed. Don't feel bad about it. Your job is not to take care of other people's confusion. Your job is to keep the confused out of your organization.

DON'T JUST HIRE—BUILD A CULTURE

Hiring and finding quality, hungry people is just stage one of the challenge. You have to then create the company culture you want. What is the culture you have created? What do you want your company to look, act, and sound like? Does it look, act, and sound like that? And do the people you hire know what that culture is? Personally, I want my business, my house, my car, and what I own to be extensions of me and my ideas, not extensions of someone else's. Here are some examples from the company culture I create and work to maintain: I demand order and expect that from others. I work hard and I expect that from others. I work fast and I expect that from others. I take time to invest in myself to become more competent and confident, and I expect that from others. I dress a certain way at work and I expect others to also dress for success. I can't make others do these things—but they can't make me keep them around either. I spent too much of life being reasonable, not knowing I get to have things the way I want. Come to our offices sometime and you will see an extension of me. I am constantly reinforcing the culture I want. I fought hard for my success, and I know I have to fight to keep it, starting with the culture. One day in our offices I saw a sales guy taking notes on a sticky pad. I went over to him and asked, "What is that customer worth that you were just talking to?" He told me he thought the account was worth $80,000. "Then why have you reduced an $80,000 customer to a sticky note?" I said. "I'm not short on paper or technology." I went to my office and outlawed the use of sticky notes in the sales department. I'm enforcing the culture I want to create. Similarly, I had a guy walk into my office for a job interview wearing cologne. I said to him, "If you get the job here, don't ever come into my office wearing cologne again." I don't like cologne—and it's my company so my way goes. By the same token, if you smoke cigarettes, use drugs, drink, have marital problems, have money problems, and live in drama, you can do it on your time, not mine. Don't bring it to my office. We live in a world today where business owners feel bad about getting what they want in their own company. It's crazy! I am doing whatever it takes to get what I want, even if it takes telling someone the hard truth. I attempt to dominate the thinking of my employees every day. My people spend eight hours a day with me and then are influenced by their surroundings for the other sixteen hours. I don't know what they are reading, listening to, watching, practicing, or thinking about in those sixteen hours, what their basic moral code is, or what they do in the privacy of their home. But I know each day I have to work very hard to protect the "Grant Cardone" culture. At my companies every day we create, narrate, and disseminate the success stories of the companies. Two or three times a day I text staff about breakthroughs, accomplishments, and client successes. I've got posters of inspirational quotes around the office. No one doubts where they are, whom they are working for, or why we do what we do. Start every day with a meeting talking about your successes, and continue to disseminate success stories throughout the day. Plaster the environment with your mottos, your mission, and the things you believe in. Keep people busy running from task to task and keep their attention on achievable targets. It's going to take some effort to get them on board with your brand and keep them there. You, as the leader, must be the most obsessed person on the team and have people around you who believe in you and your mission. At the end of the day, though, if you don't provide the structure and invest time, energy, and resources in keeping that there every day, everything else will fall apart. If you want spectacular people, it starts with your being spectacular by example. You need to be great before they will. You have to be the obsessed in order to get them obsessed. Until you show up early and stay late, don't expect others to. If you do it the way I have, one day you will look up and see others doing what you have been doing better than you!

DO INTERVIEWS YOURSELF, AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

Hiring isn't just a matter of reviewing a résumé and checking LinkedIn. It involves an instinctive feel for another person. There is a lot to consider, not just the candidate's ability to do the tasks required for the job, but also how he or she will establish and encourage the company culture you want to create. Your brand is your baby, and you need to guard against letting in any doubters who will contaminate it. Be involved in interviewing as much as you can. At the very least, show up when people are being interviewed to shake their hand. As everyone in business knows, a handshake and a greeting leave a big impression.

control vs leadership

I am constantly asked about my leadership style. I don't really think about leadership; I think about control. I know "leader" sounds more inspiring and that the business world wants to talk about leadership—but when thing go wrong, I don't care about leadership; I want control, or at least to know someone is in control. I want answers, I want to solve problems quickly, and know I have the ability to deliver solutions and get the scene back under control. Am I a leader? In my own organization, with finances, with my family, church, and community, yes, I am a leader. In business, social media, and the sales arenas I am a leader. But when I go to work for another company or support the military at the Pentagon, I am not the leader in that situation. I am working with others who are leading—but I still want control. Maybe I am splitting hairs here, but I don't care about the title; I just care about whether I have the power to determine, predict, and influence outcomes. If you look around, you'll see that we have a lot of people calling themselves leaders who don't have any control. I played baseball when I was younger, as a catcher. And as catcher it was my job not just to catch the pitch but to guide the team from behind the plate. While I wasn't the best athlete on the team, I knew how to get others excited and focused because I was able to exert control. I was willing to use my voice, my energy, and my confidence to build up the conviction of others. It is my belief that all true leaders are willing to take control. It takes guts to stand up and exert control over their environments, their people, and their futures. It's a good thing. The willingness to exert control takes courage and confidence. It's amazing what you can accomplish once you clear up any negative connotations you have about control, make a decision to exert control, and then get used to using control to improve conditions for those around you. This third point is especially key. By pushing people to levels they never thought they could achieve, you will do something for them that their parents, teachers, siblings, and peers did not. You will show them how to make the most of their life and pass on to them your gift of obsession If you haven't been called a control freak at some point in your life, then you have a problem. Those who don't like control are the ones with the problem. It's time to fall in love with control and learn how to use it to improve your surroundings and make your dreams a reality. Be willing to be a control freak. The haters and naysayers are going to hate it, but we've already covered their motivations.

HAVE A SALES MEETING EVERY DAY

I don't care if your sales meeting is a virtual meeting online, a conference call, or in person—it must be done daily. If you expect your people to be a obsessed with sales and new revenue as you are, meet with them daily and feed their vision. If you work for yourself, you should still have a sales meeting every day, even if you're the only attendee. Write down your goals. Keep track of your metrics. Use CRM software and keep track of your contacts, your calls, everything. Analyze your data and use the math to fuel future actions—just as you would if you had a roster of people behind you. Fifty-two percent of sales managers claim they don't have time for sales training. So while you can keep it short, you need to do it before every shift. How much time you spend in your meeting isn't as important as simply having it. Your goal in this meeting is to get your team focused, motivated, and off to a good start. Before they start making calls, go over your basic sales presentation. Go over the pitch. Work it out. Have your team perform the pitch, not just tell you what it is. "Bob, my name is Mike. Grant Cardone wanted me to personally call you and show you something he created that will increase your sales 20 percent in under thirty days." Have everyone repeat it. Then cover the three or four biggest objections they might hear that day, so your team isn't hearing them for the first time with a live customer, and talk about how to address them. Go over the same thing each day until your team members perfect it before you move on to something else. My goal every morning is to get my sales team doing one amazing thing, not a hundred half-assed things. I'd rather get them in the groove of one great thing because this builds certainty. For instance, a theme at my sales meeting might be "We increase sales 20 percent within thirty days." That's our big claim. Now, my job in this meeting is not to simply give my people the claim but to show them we are achieving it. My job as the owner is to ensure that the claims my salespeople make come true for the customer and then share that with my team to grow their confidence and fuel their purpose and obsessions. Every day we share success stories. My goal every morning is to get my sales team doing one amazing thing, not a hundred half-assed things. #BeObsessed @GrantCardone Other companies run sales meetings in different ways, with video, audio, guest speakers, music, reports. But regardless of how they run it, the best sales organizations out there have a meeting every day. Personally, I lead by example, so when I am in the office, I run the meetings. If you leave your sales team to their own devices, they'll be corrupted by their own doubts and insecurities. Get your team energized and on your page every morning.

cardones responies

I find myself feeling like an outcast talking about wanting more, having it all, and constantly pushing toward my potential. I have been heavily ridiculed by many who say I'm greedy, selfish, egotistical, and never satisfied.\ Many of those things are true. I can be greedy, selfish, egotistical, and never satisfied—so I can take care of my family, my dreams, my church, and my community.\ Since you picked this book up, I am going to assume you already know you want it all (even if you've maybe been told that's a pipe dream)—and you want me to wake up and inspire the obsession freak in you. Just to be sure, see how many of the following questions you answer yes to. Secretly or publicly, have you always wanted to do unbelievable things? Do you dream of doing something that will make the entire world stand up and take notice? Have you considered what it would be like if you became a household name? Or wondered what it would be like to be famous? Would you like your name to be synonymous with a breakthrough that changed the world for the better? Would you love to walk into a crowded room and have everyone know your name? Have you ever imagined what it would be like to fly in a private jet or own your own? Come on, admit it: You want it all. And you deserve to have it all. You are capable of more. You deserve massive success so abundant it can't be disrupted, taken away, diminished, or stolen.

part two THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOOKED ON SUCCESS AND OBSESSED

I hate to break it to you, but you'll need to do the same. There's no such thing as obsession lite. There is no such thing as part-time obsession. If you want to lead the pack, you need to abandon the idea that some other, milder version of obsession is an option. "Sometimes obsessed" or "only obsessed on weekends" or "obsessed between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m." is a fantasy. There is no sense of balance for those bitten by their obsessions and doing something spectacular. Regardless of your industry, obsession is mandatory for the kind of success I'm talking about. The obsessed know that if they aren't all in on their venture, they will get rolled over by others who are. Go ask those who live in Silicon Valley how they feel about immersion, hundred-hour workweeks, and borrowing money from family and friends to get to market. Then find someone who is obsessed with creating an amazing family and notice how passionately they talk of family first and love of family and how dedicated they are to their families. Talk to an artist or athlete, someone who is obsessed with and constantly improving their particular talent, and see them come alive talking about that thing they do. You have to embrace this die-trying mentality. There can be no choices and no options. Yes, victory comes at a price—so does settling. Sure, you might be totally and completely insane. But you're not going to stop. Because history shows that only the obsessed make it—people like Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, Howard Schultz, Oprah, Vincent van Gogh, Steve Jobs, Christopher Columbus, Charlie Chaplin, Mozart, Michelangelo, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Jay Z, Beyoncé, Serena Williams, and on and on. There is no shortage of these people, and like them or hate them, admire them or detest them, we all know them! Whether or not you agree with their missions or how they got there, you can't deny that they were obsessed—and that's why you know their names. These are people who fought against all odds and were unwilling to settle. Sure, none of them created the exact life I want or you want, because they had different dreams than we do. But you can use what they have done to fuel your own obsession. Because they gave permission to some fanatical, unreasonable, obsessed fascination with their dreams, you and I know their names. Is there a single person we both know the name of who wasn't obsessed? I doubt it. Now let's get our names on that list.

REWARD PERFORMANCE

I have a policy that is announced to every person when they are hired: "You will never be given a raise because of how long you work here. If you want a raise or a bonus, earn it! The responsibility to earn more money is on you, just as it is on me." I don't give employees bonuses just because they have been at the job for a year or because it's Christmas. Years ago an employee came to me and said, "I have been here twelve months. I think it's time for a raise." I said to her, "I was hoping that after twelve months, you would be doing more for the company than just the job we hired you to do. You want more money? Get me more money. Don't just do your job— I already pay you fairly for that." I don't hire people to just do their jobs; I hire people to help me grow my company. If you want a raise, increase the income of your department or reduce the cost of the operation of that department. It's that easy. Produce more than what we pay you to do and you can earn a bonus. I will not give you a bonus for being loyal, a good communicator, a team player, organized, and punctual or because you've been at the job a long time. I expect all those qualities and have paid for that already. And furthermore I will fire you if you can't deliver those expected qualities. People are being set up for failure in life when they are given raises for the wrong things. I pay a bonus when you get the company a bonus, the same way the world pays me. And it's not any different for other departments. The top executives in my businesses get fair salaries (not high) and are then rewarded based on the combined bottom line of all departments, paid quarterly. Managers of departments are paid bonuses each month on net income for hitting targets in excess of the cost of running their departments and what I could achieve without their efforts. I do this for all people across all departments, including those departments that would otherwise be completely disconnected from revenue creation. For instance, the technology department is filled with people who have never earned commissions. I have completely changed how they see their department and earn money. They are now more interested in net income for that department than in gigabytes and coding. Now rather than slowly doing their tech functions, they are motivated to use technology to produce income.

SHOP OUTSIDE YOUR REACH

I have been shopping for homes and toys outside my price range my entire life. Right now I am looking at a $40 million home in Coral Gables, a $280 million apartment deal in Miami, and a new Gulfstream at $65 million—none of which I will buy (except maybe the apartment deals). At twenty-five I was living in a place that cost $275 a month, and I was late on rent almost every month. Ever since then I have been shopping for luxury homes, cars, watches, and amenities way outside my financial reach as a way to keep myself motivated. When I lived in Houston, I looked at homes in River Oaks. When I lived in Los Angeles, I looked at homes in Beverly Hills that were way beyond my reach. When we moved to Miami, I continued the same hack, looking at $200 million yachts, with no intention of ever buying, just allowing my mind to be blown and fueling my obsessions. Maybe it seems like a silly, immature game, but it works for me.

ROLL WITH TURNOVER

I know everyone hates turnover, and there is so much data suggesting high employee turnover is a terrible statistic. A 2012 Forbes study found that the average employee stayed on the job 4.4 years. A PayScale report found the median tenure for a millennial employee was just two years, compared with seven years for a baby boomer. A 2013 survey by Millennial Branding and Beyond.com, a career networking site, found 30 percent of companies had lost 15 percent or more of their millennial workers within the previous year. A 2014 study by CompData Surveys suggests that your turnover rate is going to be one keeper for every seven hires. Those are depressing statistics—but they don't tell the full story. It might surprise you, but it means almost nothing to me that we turn over people. I understand the reality. I am a hard guy to work for not because I am tough or unfair but because working with me is many people's first experience working with someone who really pushes them. I have to recruit constantly just to keep finding people who might fit in with my companies. Maybe more important, I have to keep recruiting so I can get rid of people I am not happy with. Most new hires will not be great hires. There will be many disappointments. I've been let down so many times—so, so many times—by people I've hired, including: the "perfect" hire who proved to be otherwise; the hire who I just knew in my heart was wrong, but I gave them a shot anyway; the good one with the great résumé and pedigree who fell flat on their face; the liar; the criminal; the vanilla, honest guy who didn't steal anything but who never gave me everything either; the "detail-oriented" one who spent time on the details only because they didn't actually know what they were doing; the one who thought they knew everything but really knew nothing about what the organization needed. Every time we let someone go, I consider that a good thing. It means we are not settling and won't be held hostage by average. We are taking action to get rid of those who don't fit. I know companies that brag about having the same people work there for twenty years. But are they really productive or just hanging around? Think about pro sports. NFL and NBA teams don't hire like that. They say, "Produce or we're trading you to someone else." They are constantly recruiting and making room for new players. You should too. Companies that never fire anyone, that do everything possible to have no turnover, are holding themselves back. I don't like it when people quit my company because it means we didn't get rid of them first. It means that the company is playing defense, not offense. Let's say you have someone working for you who has been secretly thinking about leaving the company. Do you think he actually quits the day he first thinks about leaving? Hell, no. While he decides to leave in March, he doesn't quit until December. In the nine months before he finally has the courage to walk out, he pumps his doubts into your organization. Through his very presence or lack of total presence, he brings doubt into the group. It affects not only his production but also everyone around him. I expect to lose people when I hire them. I tell my wife, "People come and go. You should assume that the only people who will be left in this business at the end are us." That's okay. Don't let this get you down. Hire, hire more, and hire again. You will not wreck your business by losing people; you will wreck it when you quit recruiting. You deserve to grow your business and make it a household name, and you can't do so without others helping you get the word out. You need people who will run through walls for you, themselves, and their families to grow your business and their income, people who will die for the cause. That does not mean you can expect everyone to do so. You need to be obsessed with finding unbelievable people, and you need to borrow, spend, and even steal from other businesses to get them. Then do whatever is necessary to get them to buy into your culture, get rid of those who don't, and repeat.

THE MYTH OF TIME OFF AND VACATIONS

I know it's popular to think you need a vacation, time off work to relax and unplug. In reality, though, most people aren't in a position to take a vacation long enough to really unwind anyway. And while a vacation can feel like a relief, the point of getting away is to rejuvenate not just the body but also the purpose. I believe that when you are full-tilt obsessed with achieving your full potential and making a monster contribution to the world, you will naturally regenerate and create energy. I know I've been on vacations that took more energy than work itself. How much golf can you really play? How much time can you spend in the sun? People are vacation starved because they believe "time off" is going to renew them. The only thing that is going to ultimately renew you is getting reobsessed with your purpose. This is why so many successful people do not see work as work. I also think free time is one of the bigger threats to your success. I have a saying: "If you want to meet the devil, have white space on your calendar." Taking time off early in my entrepreneurial career almost derailed my life. When I had steeled my determination to go out on my own, I made the mistake of, once again, listening to friends who said I'd been working too hard. They said that a break would be good for me. So instead of running headfirst into the new venture and new obsession, I slowed down. I bought a house in Houston; I got a girlfriend. I spent $2,000 on a new computer. I would go to my little executive office and spend all day planning, organizing, writing, and learning how to use my new computer. I took my time.

YES, HIRING IS WORTH IT— EVEN IN THE CULTURE OF AVERAGE

I made the mistake of staying small because I thought it was just too hard to find good people and even harder to keep them. I don't want you to make this mistake. You must grow and you must grow through people. More important, you must become obsessed with idea that good employees are vital to your survival. Anyone who gives up on people is guaranteed to not have much of a business. But hiring anyone, much less attracting and retaining great people, is a monster problem today. It is such a problem that most employers, business owners, and even corporations have thrown in the towel. Why? Because they are recruiting from a culture of average. According to Gallup's 2013 study "State of the Global Workplace," only 13 percent of employees worldwide are engaged at work, while 24 percent are actively disengaged, indicating they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to coworkers. In rough numbers this translates to 900 million not engaged and 340 million actively disengaged workers around the globe. I actually think it's worse than this. People are not simply disengaged at work. They aren't even at work! Yes, they are in the building. Yes, they clocked in. Yes, there is a body in the chair. Someone may appear to be sitting in front of the computer, maybe even with a phone in hand. But that is it. Many people are doing only what is expected of them and no more. The majority of employees are filled with resentment toward their managers, have an inflated sense of entitlement, and operate at levels of incompetence that border on astounding. Most know more about the most recent celebrity scandal than they do about their job. But that doesn't mean there aren't great people out there. I know—I've hired the good and the bad. What this means, though, is that you need to be really tough in hiring and really diligent. You're going to need to look through a lot of garbage to find the people you want to work with you. It's frustrating but important. Because while you are the designer and driver, your people are the engine, transmission, and wheels. Your company can't drive forward without them.

people who are satifised

I never believe anyone who says they are satisfied—the guy who says, "I'm living the dream." Really? I hate that saying. Guys who are making dreams a reality never believe they have done enough or accomplished enough; they are obsessed with the next level. Those who believe they are satisfied are either very confused or extremely dangerous, because they will try to persuade you to stop trying and be "satisfied," the way they are.

PUSH YOURSELF AND OTHERS WITH ACCOUNTABILITY

I recently saw a survey by the Bridge Group suggesting 50 percent of salespeople don't hit their quotas. Is that because the quota was too high, or do they fall short because no one pushed them to achieve it? I believe people set their targets too low most of the time and then don't push their staff hard enough. First off, you should never, ever lower a target—that is the definition of failure. Instead, push yourself and others to increased action. I don't lower my dreams, goals, or belief in myself; I increase the pressure I put on myself. Demand that sales quotas be met by holding yourself and your people accountable for them. If one of your salespeople fails to close, ask him or her: "Did you present an offer?" "Did you present terms and figures?" "Did you back off from the close?" "Why did you fail the close?" You can also hold the salesperson accountable by going right to the source—the person he or she failed to close. Pick up the phone and call a customer who didn't buy, and ask: "Why didn't you buy from my guy today?" "What happened?" "Did he ask you to buy?" "Did he present the product?" "Did he present a proposal to you?" I do this all the time. Push and hold your people accountable. This will create a culture of obsession, where accountability is normal and exceeding quotas is expected. You might be wondering, Isn't "pushing" also micromanaging? Well, maybe so, but think about it this way: When you're in the hospital, the doctor monitors your body every second. They're looking for even minor changes so they can administer the right medicine immediately. Do you mind being micromanaged so the doctor can get you back to work? I will micromanage someone until I don't have to. If a manager says, "I don't want to have to babysit my team," I know that this person will come up with every excuse in the book to explain why the team came up short on their quota. Next thing you know, your business will be laid out on the emergency-room table with a weak pulse. If you don't hold people accountable, I assure you that someone who doesn't have your best interests at heart will corrode your efforts. Make sure your team is working toward their targets and don't let them off the hook. Reward those who achieve and penalize those who do not. Hold managers and executives—including yourself—to ever higher levels of production. If you're at the top of your organization and you can't be your own boss, if you need someone to hold you accountable, then join a mastermind group or get a personal coach to report to. Don't ease off your sales efforts for even a minute. I would consider it treasonous to myself, the company, and my family if I allowed people to work for me and represent me who did not either make sales, assist in sales, or attract new customers to the company. To make sure this doesn't happen, we keep statistics on the contributions and production of every single person in the company. If people can't handle the pressure or refuse to contribute, we ask them to leave. You should too.

how to treat your companies

I treat all my companies like produce stands. My thought is What do I have to exchange with the marketplace today that might be spoiled or no good tomorrow? I do this with my real estate business, my technology business, and my consulting companies. What apartments do we have that we can fill today and turn into money? Do I have coaches and consultants not working this month whom I can get into the marketplace, earning dollars? Do we have products sitting on our shelves that we need to get into the market, providing cash surpluses so we can continue to grow?

BE A CONTROL FREAK

I was recently asked in an interview, "Do you consider yourself a control freak?" "Without a doubt," I responded. "I love control, demand control, lust for it, and make sure I have it. The only people who don't like control are those who don't have it or who have misused it in the past." All of my role models growing up were outgoing, aggressive, charismatic, and willing to exert control. I was attracted to the idea that the person who was in control had the power, called the shots, and made the decisions. Who doesn't love and admire the person in control, the superhero who puts himself at risk in order to solve problems, protect people, and save the world? James Bond, for example, has all the great equipment, slick suits, and hot women. He is also always in charge, willing to disregard authority to do the right thing, and more dangerous than the bad guys.

SELL BY EXAMPLE

I will often walk into the sales office and ask to see a list of people who will not buy our product. Inevitably the salespeople have a list going. I'll then pick up the phone and start calling those people. Regardless of what happens with each call, I'm showing my salespeople how to be persistent. It's vital that you teach people how to keep going in a world that has basically made quitting okay. You need to show your team that you can take on an impossible task and confront the things that normal people quit on. The thing is, you can't teach this with a lecture. We've all had enough of those. You have to demonstrate it. With your team watching, call everyone who has refused to buy from you or your team and say, "I'm calling to find out why you have not bought our product" or "I've been put in charge of following up with you until you change your mind. We refuse to quit on earning your business." When you are willing to demonstrate how to properly use pressure and close a deal, you will demonstrate to your sales team what is necessary to keep up. Find the time each day to make an extra sales call for your company. Show the sales team by your actions that you are obsessed with sales.

WHAT TO BE OBSESSED WITH

I've been there. Throughout my life, for different reasons, I have asked myself these questions again and again: Why am I doing what I'm doing?'' What's my purpose? What is going to get me excited? When you identify why you want to achieve something, you can fully and completely get obsessed with achieving it. This obsession is what you need to blow away any barriers or opposition you run into on the way to your goal.

OBSESSION HACKS

I've shared with you my philosophy of obsession and made the case not only for why it's been the factor that changed my life but also for how you can implement this mind-set and these practices in your own life. As we end, I want to share some ultimate final tips on how to keep living and working toward your obsession.

INVEST IN EDUCATION

If I have done one thing right to keep fueling my obsession, it has been continuing to invest in my own personal education and development. When I was twenty-five, I invested $3,000 in learning how to become a sales professional. That decision was responsible for my first business. Today I spend almost 10 percent of my time and income on training programs, conferences, coaches, books, and more. It might seem like a lot to invest thirty-six days a year and 10 percent of my income in making myself better, but I think not; I am worth it. I refuse to be stupid. I refuse to not know. I refuse to make excuses that I don't have time or I am too busy. The best make time to ensure they continue to be the best. Regardless of how well I do in life or business, I know I can always learn more. Most people don't make time for more learning because their previous educational experiences proved to be a waste of time. Education has a totally different outcome when you get to choose what you are learning and know what you need to learn to improve yourself. And remember, time is no longer an excuse, because the obsessed make time, not excuses.

commited big MAKES YOU DELIVER BIG

If you never overcommit, neither you nor your people will ever overdeliver. If you don't push for performance at higher levels, you will never know how great you and your company can be. The more I promise the marketplace, the more attention I get, and because of all my screaming about how great my offering is, I am forced to deliver. Overpromising allows me to establish and then exceed exceptional levels of delivery. If you're short on creativity, it's only because you aren't committed enough. When I am not finding creative ways to expand, I look at my commitment level and the commitment levels of those around me. Then I make it a point to raise my game. I demonstrated this with my sales team recently. I walked into their offices and said, "Give me everyone you are working right now, and I guarantee I will close a deal in under twenty minutes." Everyone got excited and started throwing phone numbers at me. On the first call an assistant referred me directly to the decision maker. I got his voice mail: progress, but no close. On the second call I was able to get the customer on the phone. I asked him why he didn't do anything with us. He said, "We weren't planning on doing anything until the next quarter." I made a big claim, telling him, "That's a shame, because I am 100 percent confident we could change your entire year in that first quarter. And if you are going to do it sooner or later, why not get started sooner?" He said, "Send me the contract. I'll get it back to you today." My staff was shocked. I hung up the phone and thirty minutes later we received the contract. I made a call, made a big claim, and we closed a deal. Two things to consider here: (1) We earned the business of a customer, and (2) my team benefited by watching me in action. I told my team I was going to kill it, and sure enough, something good happened. I put the future into my current environment by taking action. Once you are fully committed and quit hedging, creative solutions will show up, I promise you. When you commit completely and have no other option than to deliver at that level, you will figure out how to get it done—regardless of how impossible it seems. You are creative to the degree you are committed. And you are successful to the degree you make that commitment known to the world. Put yourself and your product out there, over the edge of small thinking, and go big.

CONSTANTLY CONNECT WITH NEW PEOPLE

If you're not constantly connecting with new people, who are more influential and smarter, you are putting yourself in harm's way. There is no glory in living in one of the greatest countries on the planet and spending all of your time on the couch, or at the club, or even with the same people. If you're not constantly connecting—with new people, more influential and smarter people, online, in person, over the phone, at conferences, through mentors, and everything in between—you are putting yourself in danger. Do you want to know what has terrified me? Speaking to five salespeople in Rockford, Illinois, when I was twenty-nine years old The first time I did a radio interview with Adam Carolla My first TV interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News Speaking to a thousand top agents with Northwestern Mutual, all of whom earned $1 million a year Speaking at the Pentagon to generals, colonels, and troops in transition Speaking to four hundred people at a church in Nashville about economics and spirituality I was terrified in every one of those situations. They were all uncomfortable for me. Still, I stayed dangerous by reaching out of my comfort zone and meeting new people who could be helpful to know then or at some point in the future.

DEVELOP A REPUTATION AS A PLACE PEOPLE WANT TO WORK

If you're pumping out excellent products, making sales, reinvesting, and getting to know people, you are going to get a reputation for doing great work. Let that work for you. If you are doing great things, other people who want to do great things will find you and want to work with you.'' The current vice president of my sales team came to us because a customer, his father, was turned on to our Sales Training University. He told his son: "You need to try to work for this Grant Cardone guy." At the age of twenty-six this son started making cold calls, being paid $2,500 a month. Now he runs the entire sales department at my company. I am so busy making noise people want to come work for me and find me. Steve Spray drove from Indiana to Miami to beg us to hire him! Dave Robards relocated at his own expenses from Vegas. In fact, my most productive people came from around the country, not from the local market.

feed the beast with great people

If you're really obsessed with feeding the beast and being successful, it's important to surround yourself with great people who respect and understand this. In all five companies I own, I have created cultures of success focused on feeding the beast together. We do this with lots of urgency and deadlines, becoming single-mindedly focused for short periods of time, ignoring all but our successes. We become obsessed with projects. There is no tolerance for counterorders, alternative ideas, watered-down versions, "yeah buts," or introduction of new themes. When an order is given to do something, it needs to be crystal clear, simple, measurable, and achievable, and then executives should reinforce it until it is fully executed and results are achieved. Every order should come with a target and a deadline. The more important this target is, the more often you should get a report on it. The first time I asked for hourly reports on the sales a department had made, I had to repeat my request for days because it was so unreal to the team leader that anyone would check something every hour. But I wanted the reports so I could tweak the program and ensure we succeeded. If that meant getting a report on our sales every single hour, that's what I would have to do.

what was grants problem all this time?

In my life being obsessed with success has never created problems for me. Denying my obsession is what caused me problems. The drugs came as an alternative at a time when I was squelching my ideas and dreams of doing great things. In fact, every time in my life when I denied my desire to create an amazing life, I found myself being seduced by activities that caused me trouble. When you learn how to control and focus your obsessions, you will become a powerful and unstoppable person capable of making all your dreams a reality. You can create the life you deserve, free of all the neuroses and destructive behaviors most often confused with what I am promoting here.

DOMINATE YOUR BRAND

In the past few years I became one of the leading authorities on social media. Actually, I am being humble when I say that. Last year my online presence hit almost 200 million people. When I started using social media, someone asked me, "How do you calculate the ROI (return on investment) on your social media?" I looked at him and said, "I am not doing social media for customers. I am doing it because I am obsessed with owning my sector and making my name synonymous with everything sales. I want every sales organization in the world to know me. And I want to dominate my competition and put them on their heels. I want to incite fear in my competitors and kick them into complete submission until they admit to themselves, Cardone will outspend me and outwork me." I became obsessed with communicating to the world my ideas, my solutions, and my opinions, and I found every outlet possible to push my content through. If content is king, I became a content factory and used every possible means to communicate with the world. I put out 78,000 Twitter posts in forty-eight months and nine thousand videos in sixty months. Is that too much? Not if you want to dominate your brand. Did it bother some people? Maybe, but my competitors gave me space to conquer. The reason so many people fail with social media, marketing, and even traditional advertising is that they underestimate the effort required to dominate their niche. You can make positive changes to dominate every sector of your life starting today. You can do twenty push-ups right now and start to change your physical condition. You can get on the phone right now and make a sale to improve your finances. You can send a video to one of your kids or your spouse while you're at work, letting them know you want to set aside quality time. You can combine, feed, and strengthen multiple areas at once, as long as you are obsessed with them. The rising tide of your effort can lift all the boats of your life, if you choose to dominate.

FEED THE BEAST OF YOUR OBSESSIONS

In this chapter I want to load you up with tools you can use to feed your beasts. Then, because doubt is your biggest threat and therefore your biggest enemy, in the next chapter we'll look at how powerful it is to deny something your attention, to make it so weak it loses any hold it once had on you. When you are truly obsessed with things that are good and you constantly feed them, all those things yanking at you—self-esteem issues, introversion, disability, fear of success, fear of failure, or any form of neurosis—fall away. Why? Because you don't care about them. Your attention is fully on the good stuff. I will never tell you that anything's impossible, and you should never decide anything's impossible. A total stranger came up to me recently and said, "I understand your goal is to have seven billion people know your name. You know that's impossible, right?" I thought, This guy isn't talking to me. He's just trying to make sense of all that he has given up on. I don't need anyone to remind me how difficult, unlikely, or even dangerous my goals are. I know all that. And I'm still going to go for it because the alternative is too painful. I will judge myself less for coming up short than I would for never going for it. You need to face, master, and channel your obsessions into an engine of massive, energized momentum for the success you desire. Set your course of possibility. And then fuel your engine with the highest-octane stuff you can get your hands on.

OBSESSED WITH PERSISTENCE

It has become acceptable for people to quit and not see their goals through. This is happening in the face of all the great stories we have about the importance of persistence, one of the great characteristics of success. Here are some examples of people who persisted longer than anyone thought reasonable: Walt Disney was turned down for financing 302 times. His first animation company went bankrupt. Stephen King's first book, Carrie, was rejected thirty times. He even threw the manuscript in the trash. Oprah Winfrey was told she was unfit for television. Fred Astaire was told during his first screen test, "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald." Lady Gaga's first record deal was dropped after just one month. Howard Schultz's employer had no interest in his coffee idea and sold him the brand name "Starbucks." Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and his first company, Traf-O-Data, went nowhere. Henry Ford's first two car companies failed and left him broke. Mark Cuban failed as a carpenter, a waiter, and a cook. When people quit, others comfort them with condolences: "You tried." "It's all right, it just didn't work out." "Why don't you find something easy, where people don't mistreat you and value your service?" "Just be happy with what you have." People will give you permission to quit. You don't need to be comforted when things don't turn out right. Sympathy is not what you need. Comfort doesn't pay the bills. Because, as I've emphasized in other chapters, you are at your best when you're outside your comfort zone, pushing yourself and pushing limits to make the impossible possible.

the naysayers

It would be one thing if critics were just evil, mean people who meant nothing to you, but sadly they also include people who love and care for you. And while the naysayers' intent is not necessarily to cause you harm, their comments can stop you, at least for a moment. Who might launch a surprise attack? Surprising people: a parent, sibling, lover, spouse, child, best friend, employee, employer, manager, coworker, stranger, board member, teacher, investor, even guru or life coach. The naysayers all sound the same. Any of these sound familiar? "Be careful." "Watch yourself." "Be patient." "Go slow." "Why take the risk?"

what happened to his haters

It's interesting to me that years later I realize that almost all of the friends and philosophers who so generously shared their concern for my life and well-being a decade ago have long since moved on with their lives and out of mine. Many filed for bankruptcy or lost their jobs or struggled mightily to hold on to their assets and their homes. Many went underwater on their mortgages. Customers who had suggested I slow down and take it easy all went out of business. The psychologist and counselors who diagnosed and labeled me with an endless list of problems—and never solved any of them—all canceled their office leases. In the fallout I even discovered that the promoter of my seminars had been stealing from me for years. Despite that, he still had to file for bankruptcy; his company was in shambles, and all the people he employed were suddenly out of work. Me, I survived. I rebuilt my hustle muscle, rediscovered my purpose, and refueled my obsessions in some of the worst economic conditions this country has experienced. I had bought the bad advice, I had started resting on my laurels, and on some level I knew it was bad going in. I can now recognize the signs that I'm getting complacent and not being obsessed with my obsessions. No one who has made a great contribution on this planet rests on their laurels. I know guys who are worth ten times what I am worth. I know billionaires. And not one person who has proven more successful than me has ever once suggested that I do less or work less. The only people who have suggested I not be so obsessed are ordinary people committed to average lives. That ain't me, and after the 2008 collapse, I will never again be defensive about my obsession. I will always remember to stay ready to strike—staying dangerous and never complacent.

what is grants version of sucessful.

It's not just a steady job, the respect of your peers, and a nice little nest egg for your retirement. I've always wanted—and still want—to be massively successful.

MENTOR UP

It's worth it to work with a coach or someone who can take you to another level. I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a year buying someone's time to help me get to another level and push me to reach my full potential. At this time I have two coaches, one whose job is to get me connected with other big players and another who is able to point out my blind spots in my career and life. I need to surround myself with people I trust and respect who think large and who can help me get to where I want to go. You think you can run only so fast, but get a stopwatch out and get someone pulling for you (a cheerleader), and you will do more than you thought possible. It can't hurt to have someone else pulling for you and rooting for you and, yes, even pushing you. My mentors and coaches have been invaluable to me.

THE MYTH OF BURNOUT

Just prior to my fortieth birthday, I started experiencing what others described as burnout. I was losing my luster: I was tired, irritable, angry, and I was becoming demanding like those divas you hear about. I didn't like the way I was acting. I saw a nutritionist and tried meditation. People were telling me I was looking tired, that I was working too hard and that my life was out of balance. I had heard it all before, but this time I bought what everyone was telling me and I started telling myself the same. I decided to take a hard look at my current situation to see what I had to do to get myself back to being obsessed and in love with what I was doing rather than feeling burned out. It didn't make sense to me that I could simply be tired because I was working and traveling too much. This was the easiest job I had done in my life. I was standing up and talking to hundreds of professional salespeople about how to grow their sales! I was young, had plenty of energy, and didn't mind working hard. I sat down with a piece of paper and took an inventory of my life. What is my purpose in life and what am I currently doing? I asked myself. If I get back to my purpose and clarify my goals, I thought, I will get back on track. As I wrote, it hit me, just as the truth always does, immediately and clearly. I had lost track of my bigger purpose; I was no longer obsessed with the big goals and had settled for simply being busy and having some modest financial success. None of this was in any way in line with what I knew I was capable of. The "burnout" had started because I was no longer obsessed with fulfilling my monster purpose and continuing to build on what I was doing. The seminars had become repetitive. I was a public speaker with a rote delivery: same thing, different audience. But my purpose had never been to just travel around talking to audiences and collecting money. Yet somehow I had gone from a someone with a dream of being a serious businessman to just another speaker. Once I realized this, I started to ask myself, What do I need to be doing to be obsessed with what I am doing again? I had been fascinated with the idea of creating a new way of selling that would change the world, not just change one industry (at this time I was speaking to just the auto industry). I also reminded myself I had always wanted to have a big real estate company. I decided I would split up my company. I'd create a consulting company for the auto industry, expand the brand of my speaking career to serve other verticals, and step hard into my real estate business. As it turns out, I wasn't burned out after all. Once I reaffirmed my purpose, I immediately felt rejuvenated and excited. I quit asking average people for advice, quit questioning myself, and went full bore toward my purpose. I refocused on my obsession with fulfilling my complete potential, not just being financially successful. Now the challenge was to make this obsession public and acquire help to get me there. In a couple of months I had a promotional company promoting my seminars, a partner picking up the automotive sector, and a sweat equity partner to help me acquire and manage the real estate. Soon I found myself back on track and moving faster than ever. When you are clear on your purpose, you will never burn out.

ROAR TOWARD THE FUTURE

Keep your attention constantly focused on the future rather than the past. What will you create? What can you do that has never been done? Look at what's in your windshield and disregard the rearview mirrors. Feeding the beast will keep you locked in on your future and the discovery of your potential. For instance, as I write this, I own almost five thousand apartments that are probably worth around $400 million. When I was starting out, I couldn't imagine owning that much real estate. I remember thinking, If I could get twenty units, making me a little extra money every year, I would be thrilled. That's all I could see then. Now, because I stayed with it and allowed my goals to mature and expand as I achieved my targets, I am able to think with more of what I see as my full potential. Today that twenty-unit goal I had years ago has become forty thousand units and a $4 billion real estate fund. Now, when I make this new declaration, I become temporarily overwhelmed. How can I do that? I've never done it before. I don't have the staff, the money, the know how or the connections yet. Wall Street guys are going to kill me on fees. I'll have to deal with lawyers, regulators, and investors. And on and on. When I think of all the reasons I can't accomplish this goal, the beast goes into hibernation. At that moment, rather than going along with the fears, I write down my goal of having a $4 billion real estate fund that gives a 20 percent return to investors. I think about how I can provide great housing for tens of thousands of families, not to mention great jobs and salaries. When I feed the beast, something almost magical happens. I suddenly find myself seeing how I can do this rather than how hard it is. Almost out of nowhere, I find myself in different meetings and having different conversations with people who can get me there.

MAKE GIANT CLAIMS

Look at what works in the world of the giants: giant claims. Here are some big ones: Driving down the road, you see a billboard with a forty-foot Coca-Cola can and a fifty-foot straw, massive ice cubes, and fizzy bubbles so big you can't help but get thirsty. The claim? "Happiness in every can!" Wow. How about hamburger ads? Perfect sesame-seed buns, double sirloin patties perfectly grilled, shiny tomatoes, onions, pickles, and lettuce Then they add bacon, which could make a vegetarian want to be a meat eater. Or what about wrapping the entire side of a twenty-four-story office building to announce the release of an upcoming blockbuster summer movie? Now compare that with how you market your products and speak to your clients. Making giant claims that can be substantiated is not unethical. Having a great product and not properly pitching it is unethical. Never getting and maintaining someone's attention is treasonous, especially if you have a great offering. I have a great company, superior products, unbelievable ROI, and exceptional people, so we overpromise and then we overdeliver. In start-up or restructuring phases, you need to have an embellished image of yourself, your company, your people, your environment, your offer, and your value proposition. Maybe the world doesn't know you yet. Maybe your idea is new. Take the time to really look at what you offer. Make a list of every benefit your customers will experience. Take each product and make a full list of all the miracles it will perform. If you are not the greatest out there, you need to become the greatest. If your name is mentioned to competitors, you want to make sure that the blood will drain from their face. Here are some claims I can genuinely make, and you need to be able to make them too: I don't have competition; I have imitators who don't have the bandwidth, guts, resources, energy, persistence, or leadership to deliver at the levels I do. To do business with anyone other than me is a mistake of massive proportions. I offer the lowest cost and the highest ROI of all the companies in my space. You can shop, evaluate, and compare, and you will find the same thing. The value of what I offer is so high that when a customer tells me I am double the price of a competitor, I know I am still eight times cheaper. I show them why, even though I am double the price, I offer a better deal by eightfold. When the competitor asks my new customers why they did business with me instead, they say, "He had a better price." Become obsessed with being the best. Then when you overpromise, it's not bragging—it's the truth. When you are a legit company, you will always rise to the commitment and deliver. It is not overselling when you can deliver. No one wants average. No one values average. No one will stop for average or exchange their time and money for average.

STAY LASER FOCUSED ON YOUR GOALS

Lots of people talk about goals as a good idea, a nice "to do." But not me and not any successful person I know. Goals aren't a New Year's resolution or a journal entry or a bumper sticker; they are critical to your life's happiness and fulfillment. I can't stress this enough. Don't write goals down on a Post-it note and look at them once in a while. Eat, sleep, and breathe your goals. Not just because you "should" but because you can't not. Feed the beast so that it becomes so powerful there is no room for doubt. Because the moment you divert focus from your goals or take your eyes off them, you get lost in all the noise of your mind and the world. Wake up and go to sleep focusing on your goals. Write them down every morning and read them every night until they become a part of you. Once you internalize them, you will see everything around you as a means of achieving those goals. The moment you quit this practice, you will find yourself falling into the repetitive cycle of work without purpose. And don't forget that goals will continue to mature and change. You will not write down the same goals five years from now that you write today.

DOUBT AND BLAME ARE DEAD TO YOU

Make it known to all who need to know—family, friends, employers, employees—that you are prepared to go all in on your obsessions. Tell them, "I am addicted to, obsessed with, and committed to my future, regardless of my past." Let them see that you have removed your foot from the brake and are stepping only on the accelerator. Make it clear that you will not tolerate doubt from anyone around you either, that you have no time for blame, and that you expect complete and total support to move forward with life. Doubt will be treated like an enemy.

TAKE RISKS WITH YOUR INVESTMENTS

Middle-class Americans have been brainwashed to diversify their investments. We were taught to play the long game and be safe. But the legends of investing tell us otherwise. Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban has said, "Diversification is for idiots." According to him, you can never get rich by spreading out your risk until it's paper thin. His philosophy echoes that of the great Andrew Carnegie, who said, "The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket." The reason you are taught to diversify is because "experts" assume that you are lazy and that you will never do the necessary homework to properly invest. Plus, if you diversify, you will need professional help to do so—and will need to hire that "expert" as well as mutual-fund managers, financial planners, banks, stockbrokers, bond traders, and other capitalists. Shift your energy into offensive spending and investing. Be obsessed with putting every ounce of your energy, time, money, and other resources into the accumulation of new income. Put your money on the line to get your income high enough so that you can take 30 percent to 40 percent of your income and reinvest it back into business expansion. Be willing to risk waste to grow. And invest knowing that not all of your investment will have returns visible to you. There's not one ad, marketing campaign, branding campaign, or social media post I have done where I regret spending that money. You always need more exposure. I never stop and regretfully say, "Oh, I didn't get a return on that investment." Return on investment is a lie you tell yourself so that you don't think you need to spend money. It's a justification for not spending. Return on investment is a lie you tell yourself to justify not putting money at risk. #BeObsessed @GrantCardone You must spend, and continue to spend, while you focus on growing your revenue. You need to make enough money, raise enough money, or borrow enough money to expand. Especially when you are just starting out in your business, focusing on revenue that you can then reinvest is more important than getting good margins. Your top line must be the priority. When you invert the traditional "savings first" mentality and start obsessing about how much money you can reinvest, something magical happens. You are forced to go out and create, to think of new ways you can build your business up. You start to conquer new markets to get new income. It takes guts and courage to make money today. If you don't invest in yourself, don't expect customers to invest in you. Put your money at risk and into the marketplace. Invest money back into the marketplace to earn even more, and you will see soaring levels of success.

DOMINATE MONEY

Money is a major area that you absolutely have to dominate. For most people money is a constant concern, whether they are discussing it or not. Every time they go to the doctor, they fear the deductible. When they go to the grocery store, they have to make decisions about what they can and can't buy. Every time they get a check they are reminded of the way they think about money. But the lives of people who are barely making it financially cannot be fixed by just giving them more money. Most of us are brought up poor or middle class and then left to live the rest of our lives with the foundations and beliefs of the poor or the middle class. We emerge full of doubt and confused about our finances, because we grew up with overwhelmed parents, clueless teachers, and an irresponsible government. Still, even if we are dazed, confused, apathetic, and even resentful about money, each of us can work to overcome the money mentality we inherited. Your job is to first get your own head right about money. Once you have that under control and you're dominating your personal finances, you can work to remove all financial doubt from the heads of your family, friends, business partners, employees, and clients. Answering these questions is an exercise that will reveal how money confident you are and whether you're dominating your money: What is your money mantra? What do you think about money? How much is a lot of money to you? How much is too much money? How much is too little money? What are your negative ideas about money? Do you spend most of your time trying to save money? How much time do you spend connecting with new money? How do you act when you see the price of something in a store or at a restaurant?

DOMINATE YOUR MONEY THINKING

Most of us have been taught that money is the root of all evil and one of the things you do not talk about. In society it seems like it's all right to tell people you are broke or middle class, but get rich and you can't talk about money anymore. For most people it's like hearing nails on a chalkboard when someone talks about their Rolls-Royce, their jet, and their country club. Why? I want to give you permission to talk about your financial success. Instead of being offended by those who talk about money, you should avoid those who don't. And be wary of those who can't make money, who spend all their money, or who can't pick up the bill. You can't learn anything from penny savers and misers who can squeeze a quarter until the eagle cries. It's not true that it takes money to make money. The truth is that it takes courage to make money; 80 percent of all millionaires today are first-generation millionaires. They didn't inherit their money or start with money. You have to be courageous to connect with new customers, get more attention, and dominate your customers so that they can think of no one else. Making money, keeping money, and then multiplying money requires a monster commitment, dedication, and an obsession with growth. If you work for someone else, take responsibility for growing the company, not just earning a paycheck. That will stack the deck for both your employer and you. Don't be a mere spectator when it comes to making money. Be sure you are on the field trying to score. There is so much money on this planet it is mind-boggling, yet most people have next to none. Most people don't have money because they believe there is a shortage of money, or they believe they don't deserve it or that it's hard to get. I take the attitude that money is everywhere. Everyone has money, and if they are treated right and provided with what they asked for (and more than that), they will happily give me their money. My battle cry is "Who's got my money?" When I was a young salesman and I needed new shoes or a new suit, I would show up to work and ask myself, Who's got my money for my new suit and shoes? I would look for a customer to buy my products or services to get money for the products I, in turn, needed. You want revenue? Instead of being obsessed with never having enough, focus on how much money there is and on getting in front of those people who need what you're offering. Money is everywhere and my goal is to get mine. Because of this mind-set, money comes to me easily, effortlessly, and abundantly. I can spend a lot of it and give it away and still have plenty.

PERSIST UNTIL THE MIRACLE HAPPENS

Most people quit right before a miracle takes place. One day I was sitting at lunch by myself at a popular healthy restaurant (basically a place that served wheatgrass and bean sprouts) in a hip part of Houston. I had just returned from another city that had offered me nothing but failure. It was about one o'clock in the afternoon and I was taking a break from the phone. I remember it like it was yesterday: I was tired, whipped, terrified, and out of juice. I was on the verge of quitting for real, and that morning I had even told the girl I was dating, "I don't know if I can do this anymore." While I sat at lunch in total defeat, I thought to myself, I just need a sign. Something to tell me: Either quit or go on. And if I go on, where do I go next? I need a clear sign of what to do. I don't even know whom I was addressing. Was I praying? Begging? Or just talking to myself? I still don't know. I do know that I was in total doubt and at a very low point in my life. I was so lost that I was starting to look to horoscopes for direction and guidance that might determine my future. When you start depending on horoscopes, you know you are in trouble. After making my plea for a sign, I got in my car to go home. I started driving and saw that the license plate on the car in front of me was from Salt Lake City. I had never been to Salt Lake City, and I took this as a sign that I should go there and promote my next seminar. I know this sounds crazy, but at the moment I felt it was the sign I had asked for. In that desperate state I was in, I just needed a tiny little push to keep me in the game. Sure, it might sound woo-woo, but I was looking for anything to give me a cue about what to do next, where to go next—something to keep moving forward, because forward movement is critical to staying obsessed. I drove back to my little 125-square-foot office and I got on the phone and started calling businesses in Salt Lake City. I did that for the next three days. The calls were hard, as they always were, with the same types of responses: "Not interested," "Don't call me back again," "Never heard of you." Then, finally: "Sure, come by. If I have time, I will talk to you." The same day I bought my plane ticket. The following Sunday I flew into Salt Lake City. Over the next few weeks my miracle happened, and I made more money in two weeks than I had made in the past two years. Something clicked; I figured things out, all of a sudden, in a way that forever changed my life, my career, and my future. That trip made it possible for me to not just pay my bills but fund the rest of my career, live my purpose to help people, and become a star in the sales arena. I had refused to quit, and that was a good call because my miracle was just around the corner. If you refuse to quit, I don't care what you are trying to create, you will not fail. It is just a matter of time before you figure it out. While I had not been successful up until that point, I was learning what did not work, so I knew what not to do until I knew just what to do. From then on, I was rocking. Was the license plate a miraculous sign? Of course not! It's just that I didn't quit when I thought I wanted to. I gave it one more try—and my best try at that. This is your "miracle moment." This moment when you think you have gone beyond every limit you have and then you go beyond them one more time. When you do that, everything turns around. Those who are truly obsessed are willing to persist when it no longer makes sense. Become obsessed with developing persistence as one of your power weapons and one of your great assets. Because your movement forward during the hardest, most soul-crushing times, the times that are filled with impossibilities, guarantees your success. When all the average people would never continue, put one foot in front of the other and refuse to back down, knowing that when you quit you just have to start over again.

deliver confidence

My business exploded when I started making big claims that forced me to show up big, not conservatively. By doing that over and over again, continually pushing into new levels, I have gained total confidence. Here are some statements I now use to express this confidence to potential customers: I can handle it. I can fix it. I can get it done. I guarantee it. We have the solution. I will figure it out. Leave it with me. Robert Kraft bought the New England Patriots for $172 million in 1995 with profits from his paper-manufacturing conglomerate. He makes the team start every season with a total commitment to dominate the season and win a Super Bowl ring. No one on the team is shy about declaring their goal or promising an incredible viewing experience watching them battle to get there. Whether you like the Patriots or not, look at their position, their stance, and their commitment. Is the team delivering a great service to their customers? Absolutely. Should they start the season out by underpromising? Absolutely not. If they started the season underpromising, in hopes that they could overdeliver, they would never sell $500 tickets and $500,000 corporate box seats. What would the PR team say to the public? "We don't expect much out of the upcoming year"? "We hope to be competitive and give our fans a good season if no one gets hurt"? No, what they say is "We have invested in the best talent money can buy so we can bring New England another Super Bowl." Today the New England Patriots are worth $3.2 billion. And Kraft has been known for going all in—committing to doing whatever it takes to win. It pays off for him financially, and you should go in with that same confidence. Deflating your pitch (pun intended) is costing you money, fame, and a future

REACH UP FOR NEW FRIENDS

Nothing inspires me more than surrounding myself with people who have achieved more than I have and meeting new people. Whatever you have to do to make new friends and new connections, just make sure you are reaching up—not sideways and not down. Don't just be friends with a banker in your town—make sure you know the most successful banker in your town, and the most successful lawyer, the most successful insurance guy, the most successful businessperson, the politically connected. And then keep reaching up. Know the woman who is called the most successful Realtor in your city or the guy your city newspaper calls "entrepreneur of the year." These are the people who must be in your network. Also, leave your home and join new clubs. Get involved with charities and give to them at levels that make others take notice. And attend events where power collects. I recently went to a J.P.Morgan conference in Miami. The net worth in the room was one quarter of a trillion dollars. I knew I was in the right room; just being there over lunch opened me up to new possibilities and fueled my obsessions. It is so easy to hang with the same people and justify it ("They're like family"), but it is vital to keep evolving. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets bored with the same old people and their same old stories (and I am sure they get sick of hearing mine too).

QUANTIFY YOUR SUCCESS

Numbers don't lie; people lie. I asked one of my guys the other day, "How many people did you call on today?" He said, "Three or four." I replied, "Which was it? Was it three or four? Because there is a big difference." I found out it was actually only two. Show me the numbers. The more important the number is, the more often I want to see it. I have some sales reported to me every hour. The obsessed sales manager wants to keep track of and see all activity: sales attempts, sales contacts, presentations, phone calls, contacts made, proposals, appointments, decisions, and closes. I collect stats on everything important to me in the sales cycle, from proposals to pricing and terms to the contract to the data entered into the customer relationship management (CRM) software. Success needs your constant attention. Ignore it and you will not get it. If you funded a $200 million blockbuster movie, on opening day you would want a report every hour. You would be hungry for the reports on ticket sales. Not on scripts and actors, not on awards, not even on reviews, because at the end of the day a movie is rated by how well it sells. If your business ever goes public on Wall Street, you'll be watching that stock price every minute. Your livelihood depends on being obsessed with results so that you can predict income, expenses, and cash flow. And the best things to measure your success by are new dollars and new customers. Your hopes, aspirations, and security are tied up in your ability to make sales—so stay informed. Get obsessed with having reports sent to you throughout the day. The more important the number, the more often you should have it sent to you. Everyone will get that you are serious about growth. Get obsessed with "Show me, don't tell me." I don't trust what people say—I trust what they can show me. Get obsessed with "Show me, don't tell me." #BeObsessed @GrantCardone

what is obsession?

Obsession itself is not a deficit or a character defect; it's a gift! The next time someone starts labeling your obsession an illness, a problem, or some aberration, tell them, "I'm not afflicted, I'm gifted." Your obsession is the most valuable tool you have to build the life you deserve and dream of. Unfortunately, most people never figure out what they are really obsessed with, because they've been taught to deny their obsessions. Don't let that be you. Find something, anything, that you are obsessed with. It doesn't matter what it is right now, because you are just going to take the urges, momentum, and fixation on that thing and redirect them.

CELEBRATE SUCCESSES

One day I received an e-mail from a client saying that they had invested $22,000 in one of our entry-level training products and made $3 million in ninety days. Not a bad investment. I grabbed my phone, recorded a quick video in which I read the e-mail and congratulated the team responsible, and then e-mailed it to the VP of sales to play to the team. f you don't have time to celebrate your staff and their successes, then you have your priorities wrong. A business depends on new and existing customers, and the energy necessary to get and keep those customers is vital to your growth. You better get obsessed with your team's success, or your people will soon slack to below average. Remember: Out of sight, out of mind. The fish stinks from the head down. If you act like successes are not important, your team will act like they are not important.

BE CHARITABLE

One of the reasons I push so hard in my real estate business, in my consulting company, and on the books, audio programs, crazy motivation merchandise, and speaking is so I can use the money to make a difference for the better. My friend Forbes 400 CEO Bob Duggan said to me, "Grant, giving money to charity is an investment, not a contribution." This year I have given almost 30 percent of my gross income to charities. Being charitable isn't limited to giving money—it also means giving your time, energy, intelligence, and inspiration. I make a point of speaking to high schools, colleges, churches of any faith, and the military as much as possible. I recently spoke to a church congregation about the importance of financial literacy and solvency. As soon as I finish this chapter, I will fly to Guatemala, at my own expense, to speak to that country's Department of Education about how to get CardoneU to millions of people in Central America. Look for problems on this planet you can help with—and go help. I am super passionate about getting the truth out about drugs, not just street drugs but prescription drugs. So I use my time, energy, and platform to increase awareness about this epidemic and work with great groups like the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) to raise awareness and combat it.

what is the reason grant is sucessful

One of the reasons I'm successful is that I've always been obsessed with taking care of my finances and made money a priority. I have always been transparent and open about wanting more money, ever since I was a little kid. A lot of people would tell me—and they still do—that it was wrong to want so much and even more wrong to talk about it. "Never talk about money," my mother said to me so many times. Most people are taught not to talk about money, so it's no wonder they don't have any or have just enough to constantly fret about it. I will never apologize for wanting to get my financials stable, secure, and indestructible. I make it clear to my family, my employees, and my customers that I want lots of money. I remember working with a customer who was complaining about the price I was offering. I said to him, "Money is important to my ability to succeed and service you. You want me to do well, don't you? Great! Sign right here." I didn't apologize for my price or the company's need for money. I will never apologize for wanting money—and I am going to talk about it.

some bullshit qoutes

Over the years it has become popular to throw around so many useless sayings like "Life is meant to be lived," and "Success isn't everything." I find myself feeling like an outcast talking about wanting more, having it all, and constantly pushing toward my potential. I have been heavily ridiculed by many who say I'm greedy, selfish, egotistical, and never satisfied.

people are lazy

People are lazy because it is tolerated. People accept the idea of average because their parents and peers told them it was all right to settle for less rather than become obsessed with their dreams. If knowledge is power, and I believe it is, then the issue is that most of us are getting the wrong knowledge. People are being encouraged to be happy, and they spend their lives trying to buy happiness with borrowed money from credit cards they must pay off with money they earn from a job they hate. People are sold on the idea if they finally get into the middle class, they'll be better off than 80 percent of the world—only to find themselves dumbfounded as to why they have no time for their families and no money left over for pleasure.

DOMINATE YOUR TIME

People constantly ask me, "How do you get everything done?" Easy: I write down the parts of my life that I want to be great in, and then I become obsessed with making time for them rather than making excuses. Case in point: I am committed to making time for my family. To pull this off, I have to be smart about it. I get my young children up each morning and we go for a drive to the local coffee shop, where the three of us hang out together. After fifteen to thirty minutes of quality time, they're done with me. When we return home, they eat, and then we all get ready for school or the office. Kids don't need hours of your time; they just need some of your time. By being both committed to spending time with my kids and creative about how I do that (by hanging out with them in the mornings instead of at night, for example, or taking them to the gym with me), I make my time fit my needs. I don't manage time—I make time. By the way, it's not just about what the kids need—their parents need time together too. My marriage doesn't exist in a vacuum, either; running businesses, a marriage, a family, and the rest of life is a challenge. My wife and I do as much as we can together at the business; we look for opportunities to work together and grow the brand. We take what each of us is good at and then each invest energy in that. I don't ask her to make sales calls; I let her do what she is good at, which includes producing projects with Grant Cardone TV and more. One way we optimize time is to spend time together while building the business. For example, we typically don't go out to dinner just the two of us. Instead we invite employees or customers to join us, so we optimize that time too. I don't see a point in spending money on a nice dinner for just the two of us. I'd rather spend four times the amount on a dinner that will produce more opportunities for us and our business. And honestly, one date night once or twice a week won't build a strong marriage. We have a strong marriage because we're on the same page 100 percent of the time, including in how we view time.' As I mentioned earlier in the book, blank space in my calendar leads to boredom, which has gotten me into trouble in the past. To avoid that, I fill up my time with appointments and activities. Today, at fifty-eight, I literally run from one meeting to the next. When I fly into a city to do one meeting, I will stack my calendar with other meetings in that area. Also, stop wasting time on tasks that don't matter and don't fuel your obsessions. For example, someone else should mow the lawn and wash the car, if those chores don't get you closer to your goal. Pay someone else to do tasks that aren't a part of your obsession. Your time and your focus are precious, so treat them that way. There's time to do it all—when you make time and quit managing it.

FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR PURPOSE IS part 2

Personal Interests What excites me now? What is so exciting to me that I would do anything to accomplish it? What bores me? What is the thing or things I have always wanted to do? What don't I want to do, no matter the payoff? What do I do that causes me to forget to eat? What have I been interested in since childhood? Money Motivation What am I willing to do for no money? What would I like to do for a lot of money? If money had nothing to do with my life, what would I do with my time? What amount of money would give me the security I need? What amount of money would I need to have choices? What amount of money would I need to have financial freedom? What amount of money would I need to really make a difference for the better? Skills and Talents What can I do better than anyone? What are some of my native skills? What have I always been good at? What have I always been bad at? What skills or talents do I have that I ignore? What am I terrible at and should not be doing at all? What do I do that is a complete waste of my time and talent? In what areas do others think more of my abilities than I do? What are the skills I need to develop? Market Research What is a product or service that I have complained about repeatedly? What great idea have I had for starting a company or inventing something that I haven't followed through on? Legacy What do I want to be remembered for? What contributions can I make to society that I would be most proud of? What do I want to make sure people never say about me? Inspiring People Who are five successful people I admire? What are those people doing that I admire? What do those I admire have in common with one another? What quality do I wish I shared with those people? What do I have in common with that list of people? If I could meet anyone, who would it be? Who is the most supportive person in my life? Lifestyle What makes me feel good? What gives me energy? What activity bores me and doesn't make me feel good? What things am I doing that I regret later? What bad habits do I need to stop? What good habits do I need to start? What do I need to do more of that would make me feel better about myself? What If . . . If I were going to write a book, what would it be about? What inspirational lessons would I draw from my life? If I knew I couldn't fail, what would I do? If I could be known for one great thing, what would I want it to be? If I could be known for one great thing, what would I want it to be? I'm not asking you to put together a statement of purpose from this exercise. In fact, I think trying to boil it down to one sentence or one idea of your purpose is way too narrow. You have the capacity to be obsessed with many things, just as you may have many purposes in your life. But asking yourself these questions will help you identify positive obsessions that will lead you to your purpose. All together, your purpose is composed of what constitutes a complete life for you. Once you know what your purpose is at this time, you can stop your little acts of denial and self-sabotage that are keeping you from going forward. You can give yourself permission to be obsessed with your true obsessions—that's the first step.

OBSESSED WITH SALES

Sales is not a department, a career, or someone's job. Sales is the god of any business (no disrespect intended). Sales affects everything: every person, every company, every industry, and entire economies. Companies die because they are unable to sell products in quantities great enough at prices high enough. Sales is not just important to your organization—it is the lifeblood of it. It is everything. If a company does not continue to grow new revenue, it will only shrink. A business does not depend on manufacturing, research, or ideas—it depends on sales. Whether you're a manager, running your own company, or just getting started, you need to understand that the most important line on the financial statements of every company is the revenue line. People spend time writing business plans and forget to figure out how to sell the product or idea. Yes, you need a mission statement and you need product development, but you'd better figure out just how you're going to get customers to buy from you and how you're going to generate new revenue. It doesn't matter if you run a consulting business from home, have a hair salon, or are the CEO of a multinational corporation—you have to have a product or service to sell, you need to get attention for it and sell it in the market, and you need to expand your customer base. Sales is the only thing a person can do to guarantee that they control the top line of their business. It is impossible to make anything happen without sales. If you say, "I don't like sales," or "I am not a sales type" and decide you're not going to participate, you are not obsessed enough with your dreams. Anyone who says they don't like sales is really denying the holy grail of business. I didn't get into sales because I liked it. I got into it to survive. The viability of any ongoing organization depends on new sales and new customers. Any company dependent upon only a few customers becomes too dependent on too few customers. You need lots of customers paying prices that have high margins. You need to become obsessed with making new customers and bringing in new money

so much average advice

Society has always had a problem with people like you and me. We see ourselves as entrepreneurial, scrappers, competitors, hard workers, risk takers, and committed. Others see us as abnormal, problematic, driven, greedy, never satisfied, overly demanding, tyrannical, self-serving, unreasonable, control freaks, and so on. Those who don't get it—including your friends, family, employees, and colleagues—will tell you things like: "Slow down." "Life is to be enjoyed." "Don't work too much." "Don't work too hard." "Take it easy." "Be grateful—someone else is worse off than you." "Life is short." "Money isn't everything." "Bigger isn't better." These folks, spellbound by their belief in work-life balance, fitting in, getting along, and fairness and equality for all, make up reasons for you to abandon your dream. Obsession, they say, is unhealthy. But what about their obsession with comfort, with being normal, with having no drive and no purpose? What about the plague of doubt billions of people have contracted, which makes them settle into average lives? Think about the mom who gave up on writing a book, the schoolteacher who gave up on his dream of owning his own business, the businessman who gave up on his desire to be an artist? All of these people refuse to take risks so that they can have order. Have you ever noticed that the person who shouts out "Success isn't everything" is the guy or gal who has none? These mottos are freely dispensed, and very few ever take the time to even lightly inspect their veracity. All these people are going through life spouting off to others, "Abandon your dreams of fame, fortune, and power because you might not make it!" Remember: People who try to persuade you to give up are not trying to help you. They are trying to make sense of why they gave up. The reality is none of those people ever make anything more than excuses. Doesn't mean they are bad people. But they aren't going to change the world and they won't support anyone else in changing the world.

another wise qoute

Some say life is about the journey, not the destination. I disagree. I love destinations because once I reach them, they teach me something new about my potential.

YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS YOUR DREAMS

Steve Jobs said: "I want to put a dent in the universe." Martin Luther King Jr. said: "I have a dream. . . ." Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world." Bill Gates said: "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." Muhammad Ali said: "I am the greatest." You know these people and their words and their work because they were obsessed. They stayed obsessed long after others had dismissed them. Sure, people tried to get them to just enjoy life a little more. They were called crazy, arrogant, troublemakers, insane, wacked, fanatics, and more. In the end, though, they each changed the world. These people weren't superheroes; they didn't possess any special powers. They were just completely obsessed. This led to their unshakable dedication, unreasonable efforts, and enduring commitment to go far beyond what any average person would do in order to make their dreams a reality. They didn't simply play in the game; they were obsessed with shaping it. Stand up and claim your greatness. Because no matter how much concern or love another person has for you, they don't have your dreams. Those belong only to you and they make you unique. Most likely you had your dreams before you had most of the people who are in your life now. Your friends, kids, spouse, and family may love you, but that doesn't mean they share your dreams and desires. They have their own. Rather than taking advice from them, lowering your standards for them, or giving up altogether for them, see if they pursue their dreams with obsession, using every waking moment to realize those dreams. Because you will. You will do everything to make them a reality, and it will require many choices and sacrifices. If they are not willing to do that, it is clear that they themselves have given up on their dreams and desires. Don't be surprised—most people have. So be sure you never take advice from them. They will try to persuade you to do the same as they did—and live a smaller life.

I had an understanding that my potential was greater than my achievements.

Still today I have both sides of this: the awareness and the gnawing drive to do more. And to be completely honest, I have never thought much about past success. I always have my attention on what is possible.

what became his new drug?

Success became my new drug. I finally began to understand how to make my obsessive nature work for me, not against me. I thought this was a great change in mind-set—so I was surprised and upset when the people who believed in me and worked with me every day reacted badly to my new philosophy. I remember a friend grabbing me and saying, "You are replacing one addiction with another." I couldn't believe anyone would compare what had taken my life from me with the commitment I had made to creating success for me.

ALWAYS BE HIRING—NOT JUST WHEN A POSITION IS OPEN

Super businesspeople make recruiting one of their top priorities. In Larry Van Tuyl's case, he saw everyone he met as someone he could possibly recruit to grow his companies. If you fill only positions that are open and that you have created from within your own one-person vision, you are limiting yourself and won't find great people. One day I got to watch Larry work to recruit someone: me! He peppered me with questions: "What are you going to do with your life?" "What's your biggest dream?" "Are you married?" "Do you have a family to take care of?" "When are you going to get off the road?" "Do you want to run one of my deals?" I took it as a compliment that Mr. Van Tuyl thought enough of me to ask me to work for him. He knew after meeting me for the first time that I was trying to do the same thing he was doing in a different space. Those obsessed with growing their businesses know they must be recruiting constantly, not just when it's necessary or the economy is good.

what is thanks to his dad?

Thanks to my dad, I have never been stuck believing that I had to like something in order to commit myself to it. When I was nine years old, I remember watching him working in the yard, picking up pecans, sticks, and leaves and stuffing them into a trash bag. He was doing it so attentively and precisely that it appeared to me that he loved every second of it. I asked him, "Dad, do you like doing that?" He replied, "You don't always need to like what you do to love what you do." My father was obsessed with taking care of his family and attaining success so he could provide for us, and that meant doing things I am certain he didn't like or want to do. Simple as that. I remembered that when I committed to being a great car salesman. I acted like I loved it, even though I didn't particularly like selling cars. I put a smile on my face when a customer wouldn't even shake my hand. I sat making endless cold calls to people who hung up on me or told me to never call them again. When everyone else went home at 6:00 p.m., I was still there at midnight making deals. As you find your purpose and identify those things worthy of becoming obsessed with; remember that you don't need to love your job or even do what you are passionate about to get obsessed enough to be successful. That said, we don't want to leave it at that. It's important to figure out what those obsessions are that are worthy of your attention.

GET OUT OF YOUR HOMETOWN

The best moves of my life have been when I left familiar and comfortable settings. Comfort is the enemy of the obsessed. To be dangerous, force yourself out of your comfort zone, literally—try a new city. The first move I made away from my hometown, a small city in southwest Louisiana, was for a new job in Chicago. Then I moved to Houston. It was a good move but not the right one—I moved where I knew people (my brother and two sisters were there), as opposed to where I really wanted to live. After that I moved to La Jolla, California, where I knew no one. I lived there for twelve years before I found myself too comfortable again. Every one knew me, but that meant I wasn't meeting new people and growing anymore. Also, I wanted to find my wife and start a family, and it was clear that this wouldn't happen for me in the San Diego area. Being the biggest fish in the smallest pond will be the death of your ambitions. That's one of the reasons I believe that moving out of your hometown and moving often are worthwhile risks. There is no growth in staying where you are. There is no opportunity in comfort. To pursue my goals and continue fulfilling my potential, I have had to remove myself from what I know and what I am comfortable with in search of the unknown. When I do that, I reawaken my obsession with fulfilling my purpose.

CONTROL THE PROCESS, CONTROL THE RESULTS

The control freak is like an IRS auditor—a stickler obsessed with seeing results. You can demand results and demand to see those results at any moment of any day. Show me the numbers, show me our successes, show me the money, show me where you put the money, show me what custom ers said, show me the statements, show me how you closed the customer. Listen to the calls. We record all the calls in our sales department so I can review them later if I need to. Even better, sometimes I listen live during the call without anyone's knowing I am on the call. Better yet is interjecting myself into the call and taking it over in real time to save the close. I want to see things for myself—what is happening, how it's happening. I want to always be feeling the pulse of what is going on. Can't I trust my people? Aren't they capable of holding themselves accountable? Didn't I hire the right employees? Aren't the right systems in place? I refuse to assume anything, because anyone who does will be sorry later. What's the old saying? To assume makes an ass out of you and me. No thanks. I can find better ways, faster ways, smarter ways to do business only when I confront and control myself, my environment, my people, my business, and ultimately my own obsession.

OBSESSED WITH LEARNING

The easiest way to feed your beast is to spend time learning something new or learning how to be even better at something you're already doing. Make the super successful your mentors. Buy their books, go to their conferences, read their interviews. And turn your travel time into learning time: Load your phone with podcasts and audiobooks that you can listen to while driving to work and home. The point is to immerse yourself in knowledge. Don't just drink the Kool-Aid—swim in it. Then make sure the people who live in your home and work at your company are reading the same material.

how to loook where your money is

The first thing to do is to look at where your money is. If you have accounts with money in them, put that money to work. If you have assets or inventory that are worth money, put those assets to work making you money. Also, cut whatever you can cut and be quick about it. Once you're done with those cuts, you can spend the rest of your time expanding and monetizing the valuable things in your life and in your company.

THE HATERS

The haters are much easier to identify and understand because they really don't want the best for you. They will lie and cheat. Your job is to not cave in or become distracted by their efforts. The only thing they produce in life is hate. Because they can't create anything, they spend their time trying to stop those who do. Haters are going to hate, while the obsessed are going to create. The football players who beat me up in high school The manager of McDonald's who fired me when I was fifteen The counselor who told me I would never stay clean The sales manager who tried repeatedly to fire me early in my sales career Haters are always saying more about themselves than they are saying about the person they are hating on. "He is so cocky, showing off on his Gulfstream!" really means "Why don't I have a jet?" "He talks about money all the time!" means "I'm trying to make sense of why my money isn't right." "He promotes himself so much" means "I don't promote myself enough." When they hate on me, they're trying to make sense of why they quit. If you don't have haters, you are not obsessed. If you don't collect haters, you are doing nothing.

STAY IN POSITION TO STRIKE

The legends of success know how to go all in when the moment presents itself. They step into dangerous environments and take advantage of them. During the 2008 economic collapse, Warren Buffett stepped in and loaned Goldman Sachs $5 billion in a killer deal that ensured his group a 10 percent return and full protection with preferred shares of Goldman Sachs stock. He did this while the banks were barely paying one quarter of 1 percent on money. Who gets the kind of a deal that pays you 40X on your money? The most dangerous person in the space.

END THE EPIDEMIC OF AVERAGE

The middle class is failing to provide real freedom for anyone and only ensures that you live a life of fear and constant worry. To understand how deep this epidemic runs, consider the following:\ Studies by Bankrate.com suggest that somewhere between 62 percent and 76 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, including many with what used to be solid, reliable middle-class jobs and middle-class incomes. According to a 2012 Washington Post article, over half of the U.S. population is on some form of government assistance. According to Forbes, there are currently over 28 million small businesses in America, 75 percent of which are run by solopreneurs who, by definition, work alone and have no employees—which means they do everything themselves. This same study shows that of all small businesses 92 percent make less than $250,000 a year and 67 percent break even or lose money. According to MarketWatch, in 2015 Americans had over $1.3 trillion in college debt. That is more debt than all their credit card debt combined. And what did all that college debt produce? According to a study by CareerBuilder, over 30 percent of college graduates do not work in the field they studied in college. We finance "American dream" homes with thirty-year mortgages that have barely gone up 1 percent per year (adjusted for inflation) since the Great Depression. According to Gallup polls, the average American works under thirty-five hours a week and almost 70 percent of Americans are disengaged at their jobs.

COMMIT FIRST AND FIGURE THE REST OUT LATER

The obsessed are willing to be reckless. They are willing to create and manage chaos in order to get growth. They are geniuses only because they are courageous. Ask them about their courage and they will tell you, "I find my genius when I am completely committed." Commit first and figure the rest out later. In the beginning your need to have order and have it all figured out is going to kick you in your teeth. The fears get unleashed: "How will I get it all done with everything I have going on?" "Is it a good deal?" "What if I make a mistake?" "How will I get the financing?" "What if I can't get financing?" "What about the holidays?" "What if I can't do what I have promised I can do?" What if the world gets hit by a massive comet in the next twelve hours? This deal will be the least of your problems. Hell, the world might explode before the day ends. So don't sweat the little stuff. Do not allow yourself to get caught up in details. And do not be afraid of venturing into new territory with your money. Everything you've ever accomplished started with a "first time." When I got married, had a baby, handled an IRS audit, started my first business, had my second kid, and responded to a lawsuit, I just figured it all out as I went along. If you don't figure things out along the way, it's likely because you didn't fully commit. A few years ago my company invested in all the technology needed to do a live webcast from my studio. We set an airdate and started talking about the programs, and seventy-two hours later we went live. We had never delivered a live webinar before. Almost ten thousand people logged on from all over the world, and our servers overloaded and crashed. My staff thought I was going to be furious. Instead I was gleeful. I had so much traffic hit my site that it crashed! That's awesome. I was running around the office like a kid, chanting, "I broke the Internet!" We rebooted the site and delivered almost five hours of content, without a break, to our audience that night. We made almost $1 million too. One month later we did another webcast, this time preparing for all of the things that had gone wrong the last time. We had more than ten thousand people attending, and our servers held. Still, we had new problems and made new mistakes. At the end of that five-hour event, we again took note of what needed to be changed. Even though we were imperfect, in both cases we actually overpromised and overdelivered. We promised a two-hour event and delivered a five-hour event, promised a thirty-page e-book and delivered eighty pages. But you can only overdeliver when you fully commit. I will sell a product before it's finished to raise money—I don't want to wait for the income until my team is ready or the product is completed. This isn't so crazy: Software is sold before it's complete every day and problems are fixed with updates. One of the most successful products ever sold, the iPhone, always comes out before the latest version is perfected. You need to think and operate based on a goal of selling your product and generating income, not wait forever for every piece of your product to be perfect. Those who commit to an investment are crazy enough to see a future that others cannot yet see. Muhammad Ali lived this philosophy. He said, "I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." Whether you can win the fight or not, it won't hurt you to sell out every seat and do your best to terrify your opponent before you get into the ring.

STARVE THE DOUBTERS AND STAY ON TRACK

The real danger haters and naysayers bring is the possibility of going off track. If you do not push through all the doubts and confusion they throw at you, you will lose. You must be willing to cross the safety line in life and in business. Governors are put on engines to keep things running nice and steady, so that the engines don't go too fast and blow up. But the obsessed are willing to redline the engine, and that scares the general public. The obsessed are not interested in popularity contests or any majority-rules approach. The obsessed are monster dreamers who are confused by the fact that so many people think so small. They don't understand when it became popular to not dream big and would rather be disappointed by not reaching a massive target than never try to reach it at all. Haters and naysayers don't reach; they just talk. No one creates an explosive business or the next big thing by staying inside the lines of what people expect of them. The naysayers will warn you and the haters will scream. Let them. Sure, you know that your goals will irritate the average people who love you and drive the quitters insane. elling the naysayers you're no longer listening to them is no easy task. But you have to get so comfortable with and sure of your obsession that you don't listen to anyone who tells you it's better to doubt and be confused. Use the naysayers as guides and the haters as fuel. Do not fight them, and certainly never attempt to tame your obsessions. Obsessed people aren't looking for permission or approval. They don't need anyone to tell them that their ideas sound "okay." Instead, their inner resolve makes them solidify space, explode ideas, and trespass boundaries. They create new environments because they invade conventional reality, entering with neither permission nor approval and exiting having redefined everything.

the best way to keep being obseesed

The secret to sustaining the obsession is straightforward: Focus your efforts on everything that will fuel you for the long run, and ignore, eliminate, or block out anything that drains you or causes you to doubt. Take responsibility for what you pay attention to—and remember that what and whom you pay attention to is worth more than what you spend your dollars on. Money, power, fame, and success all follow attention, so what gets the most attention is what will grow. The problem with these things—money, power, fame, and success—is they are like jealous lovers: They need constant attention or they will leave you. They are all worth investing time into cultivating. But remember, time is the only truly nonrenewable resource we have. How you invest your time is more important than how you invest your money. That is why refueling is a major hack for the successful. Sustain your efforts by knowing how to get re-energized, re-excited and jacked at ever higher levels, how to keep gunning and running at full steam, all the time, and what to do when you run out.

THE MYTH OF BALANCE

The whole concept of having balance in your life is ridiculous. I am not trying to balance my life—I am trying to blow it up. People often think if they become completely obsessed in order to be great and dominate, something must be compromised, be it time with their family, a good gym schedule, hobbies, going to church, reading books, or whatever. Wrong! Obsession isn't about settling or sacrificing things that are important to you. Obsession is about having it all: health, faith, family, career, money. You don't need to ask, What would I rather have, money or health? "Both" is the only answer. You don't need to choose between this and that, between success and a good life. That's for average people who have lost control of their futures. Obsessed people demand it all and get it all. They're not preoccupied with "balance." Take advice from those who have figured out how to do it all, not just part of it—and definitely not from those who have quit on the dream. The people who suggest you live your life by making trade-offs and seeking balance don't know anything about achieving extraordinary lives. They aren't trying to build legacies or change the world, and they proudly admit to whoever will listen, "I don't need all that," "I am happy with a normal life," or "I just want to be happy." I don't even believe these people know what they are talking about because, to me, they are not "balanced"—they are half alive.

what does the world need

The world needs more people who are obsessed: passionate, driven, dedicated, all in, committed, relentless, and alive. You can't buy those things at the grocer store. Having a great life is not going to be easy. Having a great life takes effort. But it feels great to know where you are headed and why and that any achievement means you're one step closer to your ultimate potential.

the people who make you want to settle?

Those who suggest you should settle for less than your potential are doing so because they are trying to make sense of a decision to settle for less in their own lives. Actually, they didn't settle—they quit. They quit short of their potential andnow are trying to make sense of why they did so. There is no exception to this. The super successful will never tell anyone to do less, to settle, or to be satisfied. Those who have actually made it big would never tell you it's a pipe dream and will always encourage you to do more. Prepare yourself: When you commit to this obsessed thing, you will be labeled an outlier, a freak, and a weirdo. Remind yourself you aren't the problem. The problem is the world we've living in.

value money

Though people talk about how important money is, most spend it on stupid things that in no way fuel their obsession. And then they hesitate when it comes time to invest money in things that will create more money. Is it any surprise that those with the smallest goals in life have the biggest problems with money?

how to get to your path.

To get you started on the path to thinking big, then bigger, then massively as you move toward your purpose, I'll tell you that just because I started this road of obsession doing sales at a car dealership doesn't mean I loved it. It wasn't my dream job. It wasn't even what I was passionate about. The first two years I sold automobiles, I absolutely hated it. But I became obsessed with making myself great at the job and eventually I fell in love.

LET THE WORLD KNOW YOU'RE HIRING

To start you need to hang that "Help Wanted" sign on the door. With social media it's never been easier. You have every online outlet available to let the world know you're hiring. Post on Facebook, Twitter, your web site, LinkedIn, craigslist—post on every possible online forum every day so people get the message: "Grant Cardone Enterprises is expanding again, and we are hiring." Don't forget about old-school practices either. Place ads in local newspapers, local magazines, and national magazines, and get your people to tell their family and friends. Get the word out anywhere you can think of, because for people to find you, they need to know you want great people to come work for you.

how to get your money right

To understand and feed the economic beast, you need to get obsessed with getting your money right, in your life and in your business. When your money is wrong, you worry constantly about shortages. If you aren't making money or are just making enough to barely get by or don't have enough to dominate the competition, you are doing money wrong. Money is funny, kind of like a jealous lover. Pay attention to it or it will leave you for those who will.

FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR PURPOSE IS

To understand what my purpose is and to keep fueling it, I constantly ask myself questions. These questions have opened my mind up to so many directions, inspired me to accomplish great things, and kept me alert to opportunities in sync with my obsession. When you start answering these questions, do not second-guess yourself. Answer the question with the first response that comes to you—without any judgment and without trying to figure anything out, especially how you are going to arrive at the answer. You don't even need to decide to follow through on something, unless you want to. Just ask yourself the questions. Then, at the same time tomorrow, do it again. And then do it again the next day and the day after that. Over time you may notice that you come up with new answers or that the same answers keep coming up. You may see surprising patterns or be reminded of a dream that was buried long ago.

STAY DANGEROUS

Trying to avoid danger in a world that is filled with it is impossible. Bad things happen to good people every day. Good employees get laid off. Companies treat their employees well and lose them to other companies offering better perks. Sometimes you lose money before you make money. Customers betray you for the competition. Your spouse leaves you. Employees screw up. The stock market will not coddle you and the economy punishes good people and bad people alike. By being careful and trying to avoid danger, people actually spend their lives in danger. Avoiding danger makes sense only if you want to make cents. The only way to reduce risk is to take risk. The only way to guarantee your safety is to become obsessed with being the most dangerous person in your space. If you aren't dangerous,The only way to guarantee your safety is to become obsessed with being the most dangerous person in your space. If you aren't dangerous,

PEOPLE JUSTIFYING THEIR AVERAGENESS

Understand that naysayers are trying to protect themselves from being reminded that they have relegated themselves to an average life. They cannot afford for you to do something big because it will challenge the justifications they made for their own decisions. You are a threat to all things average. You remind the average that they have settled!

what is your way of knowing?

Unfortunately, most people never figure out what they are really obsessed with, because they've been taught to deny their obsessions. Don't let that be you. Find something, anything, that you are obsessed with. It doesn't matter what it is right now, because you are just going to take the urges, momentum, and fixation on that thing and redirect them. Maybe you're obsessed with fantasy football and spending too much time on it. Okay. Or maybe you are obsessed with one particular relationship that is destructive. Fine. This only goes to prove you could be obsessed with something else too. Maybe your obsession is Candy Crush or online poker or playing chess on the street with old men. Even if you are obsessed with things you know can in no way produce greatness in your life, it doesn't matter at this moment. What matters at first is realizing you have the capacity to be obsessed. Your obsession means you have the juice to do great things. Your obsession can get you out of the culture of average (more on that in the next chapter). Now you just need to channel the monsters and redirect the energy to something positive and constructive. Don't try to stifle or reduce the obsession. Instead, give yourself permission to use it and redirect it.

UNSOLICITED AND UNTESTED ADVICE GIVERS

Unsolicited advice givers are people who know about everything but have never done anything. Regardless of their intentions, the advice they offer inflicts doubt upon you: "Can't you just be happy?" "When are you going to have enough?" "That's great, but you know, we love you just the way you are." "Don't you have enough Twitter followers to get your message out?" I have had to listen to unsolicited advice and useless yet popular little sayings from countless people my entire life. Who are these people talking to, anyway? Are they trying to convince me or are they convincing themselves that having less is better? Whether the advice comes from family or business "experts" you hired to help you, take it with a grain of salt, because if you take it seriously, you will feel the sting of doubt.

HATERS GIVE YOU GREAT IDEAS

Use the negative energy haters provide you to fuel something creative. Someone once wrote an awful, nasty blog post that claimed I was completely selfish because I waited until fifty-one to have children. Not only was that the most insane thing I had ever heard, the truth was that I waited until fifty-one because my wife didn't get pregnant until then, though we had been trying.' My response was not to block this person, retaliate, debate, or defend myself. Instead I was inspired to create The G&E Show with my wife. Each week we sit in front of cameras talking about the challenges of marriage, kids, and business. Let your haters help you be a creator

NEVER REST ON YOUR LAURELS

Warren Buffett stayed dangerous during the economic collapse of 2008. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for myself. Years before the crash, when my successes were accumulating, I started to ease off on setting new goals. I stopped rebooting my purpose, and because my obsession was beginning to soften, I was much less busy. I was watering down my successful creed of relentless push, total commitment, and demanding work ethic in favor of finding time to "relax," to step off the playing field, to take it easy during "reward yourself" weekends, five-hour golf games, dinners out, "quality time" at home, and more introspection. Had I not been seduced by the popular and unwanted advice of so many, had I just kept feeding my obsessive pursuits, I would have been in a completely different position when the markets collapsed. I would have been able to buy competitors for nothing, take market share that I used to have to fight for, and buy real estate for pennies. I would have had the courage and the cash to expand my empire a hundredfold. Yes, there could have been great opportunity in those times. But because I'd been operating at less than obsessed levels leading up to it, I had to start over again in many instances: rebuild my business and my brand and operate every day with financial fear, scratching and clawing for survival. I had put my new wife and baby, my employees, my brand, and my dreams at risk. I was forced to reconnect with my obsession again, though now it wasn't a choice—it was survival.

NOTE ON STAFFING AGENCIES

We have used ten different hiring agencies—in an effort to save time—and they have all been total disappointments. They send people who don't even have enough confidence to shake my hand and maintain eye contact. While I confess that I do use them, I don't like them. My COO might default to them, but if I know someone came through a hiring agency, I almost know for sure they won't work. That's because no one knows your business or brand like you do. No staffing agency can make the pitch to work for my companies—or figure out who will really fit in—as well as I can.

YOU CAN OBSESS ABOUT ANYTHING

We've already talked about negative obsessions, including drugs, wasting time on social media, and other activities that produce no constructive outcomes. Then there are the positive obsessions. You can be obsessed with spin class, losing weight, getting in shape, or doing a cleanse. You can be obsessed with supporting a charity, helping an ill parent, or conceiving a new baby. When I talk about obsessions, I am talking about those obsessions that are worthy of your attention because they support your purpose. The two are related but not the same: I was obsessed with getting rich because my purpose was to make sure my family never had to worry, scraping and struggling in the middle class like I did as a kid after my dad died. Purpose is the holy grail of the obsessed. I see purpose as a person's reason for doing something or the reason for which someone or something even exists. It is the "why" of all whys and the fuel for your obsessions.

FEED THE BEAST

What you pay attention to is what you get. And the more attention you give something, the more you feed it, the stronger and more powerful it grows. In life and business it is vital to pay attention to the things and people that are working for you and ignore the things and people that are not. Success feeds me. Winning feeds me. Production feeds me. Reaching my potential feeds me. I make lists of the things that make me stronger and those that don't, and I use those to feed the beast and starve anything that causes me doubt. Many people admire my drive—my constant, nonstop push, my ability to stay the course long after others would have taken time off. They ask me: "What drives you?" This might be the most important question for anyone to answer. For me it's an ongoing, moment-by-moment effort to feed the beast and starve the doubt. Actually, we're not talking about "beast" singular—at any given point in your life, you'll want to feed multiple beasts at the same time. These are goals that want to be attended to, fed, honored, and exercised. Some of my beasts are being the most successful guy in my space; getting my money right; being a great husband, father, and philanthropist; and setting a great example for others. If you feed the beasts, your dreams have a chance of becoming reality. Ignore them or deny them and you will end up with weird, destructive obsessions rearing their heads. At the very least, when you sit on them and suppress them, they will almost surely contort into envy, fear, doubt, and regret. Stay focused on what allows you and your business to grow, and invest no time, energy, or resources in those things and people that don't.

PLAY THE ROLE UNTIL IT'S REAL

When I do something for the first time, I remind myself to take chances, get known, have an opinion, make something happen, inspire people to remember me, and be dangerous enough to get whatever the biggest outcome can possibly be for that situation. I make a decision to own the place, the stage, or the interview. I decide what I know, what I can offer and gain, and I live and die by that. In other words, I always play the role of someone who knows what he's doing and who is massively successful, even if I'm not yet. I become the guy who acts as if he knows what he is doing, talks like he knows what he is doing, and knows that he can sell anyone on anything. I tell my wife, who is an actress, "You know, I am really an actor playing a businessman." Here are a few of my credits: One night I had to walk through what was considered to be a very dangerous part of New Orleans to get back to my hotel. I acted as if I were the most dangerous person on the street. No one bothered me. When I was pitching my show Turnaround King to National Geographic Channel executives, I told them, "I guarantee this show will be the most successful show you have on NatGeo." They bought eight segments. In my first real estate portfolio purchase over $50 million, I faced thirty-eight other bidders and I didn't even know where I was going to get the money to invest. But I called the sellers and the brokers and told them, "I am your only buyer. I guarantee you will not be disappointed: I will close faster than anyone else because I am the only decision maker. I know you have never done a deal with me and I am not your highest bidder, but I give you my word I will close this deal." Forty-five days later I closed the year's biggest private acquisition of real estate in Florida. That was four years ago. I paid $32 million, and the property was just valued at $108 million.

what did he do to help himself?

When I finally quit fighting my obsessive mentality and started to nurture my obsessions, everything changed for me. When I quit defending, drug ging, and diminishing my obsessions and dreams of success, all my energy was renewed. When I started studying other obsessive types who were super successful and stopped seeking advice from those who were settling for average lives, average results, average money, average everything and who were never obsessed with anything except defending average, that's when I began to really live.

BUILD AN OBSESSED TEAM

When I met a business owner whose main mission in life was to scour the earth for top-notch talent, it changed my perspective on what it means to run a business When megasuccessful businessman Larry Van Tuyl, who just sold one of his companies to Warren Buffett for $4 billion, meets new people, he shakes their hand, pulls them toward him so they are inches from his face, and says, "I want you to come work with me!" This guy is intense about recruiting. Everyone is a potential recruit: customers, vendors, strangers, waiters, waitresses, doormen, kids—anyone, everywhere. Larry runs a multibillion-dollar company involved in real estate, insurance, technology, and automotive. He doesn't think small in anything and operates with an almost incomprehensible work ethic that exists in some state well beyond enthusiasm. Larry spends most of his time recruiting obsessed, all-in, great people who could become extensions of his own all-in, obsessed mentality. He searches for hungry people who have an inner drive to show up early and stay late. Ask any great businessperson how they built their business, and somewhere in their answer they will credit having surrounded themselves with great people. Simply put: To be the best, you must surround yourself with the best. You want people on your team who will do anything to see your business succeed: jump off a building for you, run through walls for you, and believe they can fly because of you. If you don't have anyone like that working for you, shame on you. You can't grow a business without surrounding yourself with people who have that kind of commitment. You can't be the only maniac. You can't grow a business without hiring people who share your obsession. And there are other obsessed people out there whom you should be hiring. @GrantCardone You need to make the obsessed mind-set a part of your business culture from the top down. All great organizations have great people! All of them.

LOOK AT MORE RÉSUMÉS THAN SEEMS REASONABLE

When I moved my offices from California to Miami, we looked at eight hundred résumés to hire four people—and we were wrong on two of those we tried to work with. When it comes to hiring, you need to be recruiting, looking, hunting, marketing, and being obsessed at a massive level. That means looking at massive numbers of résumés.

ONLY QUITTING IS FAILURE

When I started my first business, I was out pitching a new idea that I was super jacked about—a proprietary sales training program called "Information Assisted Selling." I just knew everyone was going to listen to me and want to buy my product. I had put together a business plan and figured that if just 10 percent of the people I pitched to bought from me, I would have a great business. I knew the idea was solid, the technology was effective, the market needed something new, and I had a good track record. My potential market was huge: Almost 28 million businesses in America depend on sales. After all, I thought, who doesn't want to increase sales? Within twenty-four hours of setting up shop, I was ready to quit. For the next two years I wanted to quit every day. I was making cold phone calls and so many people would hang up on me, curse me out, tell me to never call them again. Once in a while someone would say, "Sure, come on by." Then I would get on a plane, fly to their city, and present my product. I'd also use the rest of my time in that city to follow up on some more cold calls by showing up at the same companies that had said they weren't interested. I was trying to sell successful businesses and established millionaires on how to make even more money and teach their salespeople how to make even more sales. I thought it would be easy. It wasn't! I wasn't pulling in enough money to pay the bills and was going through cash fast. I was terrified, I couldn't sleep well at night, and I was experiencing monster amounts of call reluctance. Three weeks past most people's breaking point, I was still making hundreds of calls a day and visiting businesses in person, but no one was biting. No one around me had ever done what I was attempting. I had no role models to look up to—no one to show me the way. The people who loved me were encouraging me to quit. I hated losing 90 percent of the time. At my wits' end, I seriously considered quitting—really quitting—and returning to a job doing sales for someone else. #BeObsessed @GrantCardone What I held on to was all the stories of successful people who refused to quit. Disney, Oprah, Ford, and on and on. The obsessed refuse to quit. The super successful don't just overcome their failures—they use them as fuel to persist. I took inspiration from their ability to stick with their obsession in the face of failure. J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, talked about the importance of failure for success when she spoke to the graduating class at Harvard in June 2008. "You might never fail on the scale I did," Rowling told that privileged audience. "But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default." This is why it's so important to be clear on your obsession and why I have focused on that in this book. Your obsession will keep you going when you need bank loans from lenders who initially said no, when you want to buy at prices that the seller refuses to even counter, and even if you wish to marry someone who will have nothing to do with you. Prospects will say no. Investors will laugh you out of the room. Banks will not even see you. Employees will quit, disappoint you, and maybe even steal from you. Your family and friends will tell you that you are crazy. You may have to go into debt. You will have to put up with stuff that makes you feel like you are selling out. You'll be underpaid, overworked, exhausted, and you will think that giving up is your oasis. Well, it ain't. The obsessed keep going. The difference between success and failure is staying in the game when others throw in the towel. Notice how many professional ball teams win in the last minutes of the game. They never quit and even if they lose, they suit up, show up, and play like champions. You need the drive to see something through, all the way, no matter what. Don't worry if you don't have it now, because it can be developed. Here are some ways to exercise your persistence muscle: Complete every task, finish everything you start, and quit walking away from unfinished projects in your professional and personal life. When you hit the wall, don't focus on the obstacle. Look for creative ways to take another run at it. Expect others to quit; while persistence begins and ends with you, be prepared for people around you to quit and try to persuade you to do the same. Use yesterday's successes as fuel for persisting today. But don't get stuck in them. Instead, stay interested in the next success and the one after that. Stay busy generating interest or income or learning something—doing things that help you keep going—because a rolling stone gathers no moss. Never settle, never be satisfied with your triumphs, and instead use them as fuel to move you further toward your full potential. When it comes to success, as my mom used to say, "Stick and stay. It's bound to pay." Hang in there no matter what. While there are probably a number of things in your life that would be convenient to quit on, your success is definitely not one of them. Stick and stay. It's bound to pay.

OVERPROMISE, OVERDELIVER

When I started my first business, I was working hard but had not figured out how to get people's attention. I was missing something. I finally figured it out; it was not the price, the offer, the product, or the service that was the problem. The problem was that I wasn't making my claims big enough. Once I realized that, everything became possible. I used to say to prospects, "I can help your people make more sales." And my results were horrible, even though it was true. Then one day, on a whim, I told a prospect, "I guarantee you that I will get you one extra sale for every two salespeople by noon today after spending only thirty minutes with your people." He said, "Let's go." Though we didn't hit that threshold, the company did have its single best day in months. I realized then and there that if I didn't believe in me, why would anyone else believe in me? I had to make big claims to succeed. At the next place I walked into I introduced myself to the guy running it and said, "How many salespeople do you have?" He told me he had twelve people, so I said, "Let me talk to them with you in the room for thirty minutes. It's nine a.m. I guarantee I'll get you six deals by noon today." This was a big deal to him, as he probably hadn't gotten six deals in the last three days and I had promised to do that in three hours. He gave me the thirty minutes and I sold the entire company my product. They got five deals by noon and two more by 2:00 p.m. All of a sudden I was getting people's attention. I was overpromising, making monster claims. I wasn't lying; I believed I could do what I was promising. When I told someone what I could do in a short period of time, it forced me to operate at that level. Because I'm an ethical person, when I overpromise, I am obligated to rise to the occasion and deliver. Only criminals don't deliver on what they promise. In the most valuable part of the equation, my offering got better and my delivery got better. The rest of this chapter breaks down how this works and how you can make the most of it.

DOMINATE YOUR LIMITED THINKING

When I started my first sales training business, I was the only employee at first. I wore every hat in the company, from accounting to shipping. My life revolved around finding out what worked, repeating that, consolidating the successes and energy, and repeating again. Even though I was obsessed with work and it was financially starting to work for me, I was neurotically and uncontrollably compelled by pain, loss, fear, scarcity, and insecurity, certain the success would last only so long. I was driven to work nineteen-hour days not by my purpose but by necessity as an owner and sole employee. I was being driven by fear. While obsession was working for me in some areas, the reality was I had not yet given myself full permission to go big in this space. You don't want issues beyond your control steering you, because you don't—you can't—control them. If your problems own you, it's only a matter of time before they lead to tormenting destruction. Until you learn how to get rid of the negative and to focus completely on your potential and your goals, somehow you will always feel you are falling short. But when you define your real obsessions and make them the things you invest all your time and energy in, everything will start to change. You will be obsessed by choice, not by pain. Until you figure out how to get rid of all that limited thinking, focus on reining in beliefs or behaviors that harm you, set you back, or distract you. If you know you're weak in a certain area, move to dominate the problem so that it is no longer an issue. If alcohol is a problem for you, get it out of the house. If smoking pot is your vice, flush it down the toilet. If strip joints are not the place where you are going to meet your mate, knock it off. There is no domination without discipline. Similarly, be careful about whom you spend your time with. The people in your life are either a good influence or a bad influence. There is no gray area. If you don't know what side they are on, you should not spend time with them. I won't and don't. Fill your time up with the ones who are supportive.

what did grant dream about?

When I started to own the fact that I was obsessed with personal fantasies of indestructible wealth and fame and the desire to create a legacy that would outlast my time on this planet, the world looked different. I seemed to get younger overnight, my creativity seemed endless, my genius was awakened, and I started to attract other people more like me. Opportunities started to present themselves that used to never come my way.

what is so ironic about money?

When I was working at an oil refinery field in Lake Charles, Louisiana, I would watch guys work dangerous jobs, putting their lives at risk for twelve-hour shifts. And as soon as they would get their paychecks, they'd blow through all the money they'd earned in one Friday night. It was amazing. These guys would always talk about how they should be paid more and would work overtime to get paid time and a half. The same people would then sit in a bar, complaining about being underpaid and overworked and passing their money across the bar as if it meant nothing to them.

SAY YES TO NEW TECHNOLOGY

When new and unfamiliar technology comes out, hop on that bandwagon immediately. Learn how to use it and start to wield it—until something newer and better comes out. When Periscope and Facebook's video-streaming service launched, I immediately downloaded the apps. I started streaming live to people every day whom I didn't even know and who didn't yet know me, and I used the new technology as it could best support my goals. Within three months I was among the top five streamers in the world. To continue to grow your company, your network, and your dominance in the marketplace, you have to embrace and become obsessed with every technology that can introduce you to unfamiliar people, strange environments, and new things. Become an early adopter and take the leap into the unfamiliar.

DOMINATE YOURSELF

When you neglect to dominate and control yourself, you can waste years of your life. This is where the military would benefit us all: with its structure, ethics, rules, orders, and unquestioning task execution. In civilian life most people don't operate under a culture or mind-set where you must show up on time, dress in a certain way, operate at peak capacity, and follow orders. Because no one is setting a clear course, your energy goes everywhere and nowhere. I have felt the most confused in my life when I had more choices than I could handle. What I realized is that it is ultimately up to you to set rules for yourself. Develop the capacity to break down and analyze each area of your life so that you can dominate those that are most important to you. Turn them into vital fuel for your obsessions.

what is wrong with our generation

Whether you are one of these statistics or not, you know someone who is. Consider all the college kids who took on student-loan debt, only to have to move back in with their parents. What about home ownership, which has gone down from almost 68 percent to the lowest levels since the 1950s? You and I are living among these people even if we are not them, and we are therefore seriously influenced by their mind-set and their actions. People are failing because of how they think and how little they can do. There's a popular saying that you are the composite of the five people you spend the most time with. Look around: If the people you see aren't screaming success, they are validating average.

DAILY GOAL PRACTICE

Writing goals down daily is a great tool for staying focused, recommitting, and rebooting, because the destination will be changing a lot. It will also help you keep track of how far you have come from when you first started this practice—and learn a lot about yourself as well. First, though, let's clarify what I mean by goals as opposed to purpose. Goals are something you seek to achieve, whereas purpose is the reason you do something (your North Star, the reason why you do what you do). In order to stay obsessed with your true purpose, you need to be obsessed with setting and hitting your goals and continuing to feed your future. I started writing down my goals the night I returned from rehab, in order to get focused on what I would create in my life. Since then I have written my goals down every day. And not just at night but also first thing each morning and then anytime I am feeling a bit down or lost. What I write is not what you would find on a "to do" list. When I talk about goals for the obsessed, I am not talking about achievable activities. I am talking about wins that are out of reach at this time. I am talking about creating a powerful future that pulls you forward constantly. This morning when I woke up, I rolled over to the legal pad I keep next to my bed and wrote: "I have $4 billion in real estate holdings." Currently I have about $400 million in holdings, so that number, ten times the current amount, seems a long way off. In fact, it's so far off as to seem unachievable. But every day I just keep writing it down. And I write it down in the past or present tense—not in the future tense or as a desire but as something I've already accomplished. I don't write down, "I want $4 billion in real estate holdings"—that would be all about desire and not about action. I assume my mind accepts everything as reality. When I started this daily ritual of goals over twenty years ago, I would write, "I own twenty apartments or more." At the time, I hadn't even bought one apartment and didn't know anything about apartments, management, financing, or even how to find an apartment deal. I was completely clueless about the space but knew innately I wanted to own apartments as an investment. I had no idea how I would accomplish this goal; twenty units seemed as unreal to me then as $4 billion worth does today. Still, I wrote this down every day for years until, almost five years later, I made my first multifamily real estate deal, for forty-eight units in Vista, California, just outside San Diego. Boom: A goal I had been obsessed with and fed daily had been achieved. This isn't to say I simply wrote something each night and did nothing else. Because I was writing down this goal every day, I also started to look at properties, make connections, and learn everything I could about the space. I shopped every weekend for over five years, until I bought my first deal. And as soon as I closed that deal, I rebooted my goals and started writing "I own more than 100 units that present cash flow over 12 percent per year" on my pad instead. Within ninety days I had already achieved that, and within the next three years I owned 500 units. Today I own more than 4,500. People have laughed at me for keeping my little legal pad next to my bed all these years, but it has always been a way for me to keep focused on where I am going. I remember when a girl I was dating asked me about the legal pad next to my bed, "Do you write about me in that book?" I didn't. In fact, when I wrote about the girl of my dreams and my future wife, the mental picture looked like someone completely different from the girl asking me this question. After I realized that, I never saw her again. If I had stayed with her, I would have been treasonous to my goals. I'll give another example to show you how this works. I've always enjoyed writing, and since I was a little kid I've dreamed that one day I would write a book. One day I wrote down on my legal pad: "I am a best-selling author who has won many awards for my books." I wrote this daily for years. One Sunday afternoon, years after I started writing that, I sat down in my office and wrote Sell or Be Sold in three hours. The book went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies and earn multiple awards. Since then I have written three more books plus another dozen or so e-books that have gone on to sell tons of copies, land on best-seller lists, win awards, and even make me a little bit of money. Use this daily goal practice to remind yourself of where you're going and why. Write your future in order to achieve it. Other successful people do this. Comedian Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for $1 million when he didn't have $10 to his name.

GET OBSESSED WITH YOUR PRODUCT

You and your employees need to be engaged and passionate about what you are selling. To make sure you are continuing to be engaged with sales, ask yourself: Is what I am doing every day making a difference for the better? Do I love my product? Do I love selling my product? Do I own my own product? Have I insisted that my family buy my product? Should people go into debt for my product? Do I continue to call people back after they have told me they are not interested? Could I charge double for my product and still make sense of the cost? If you answered yes to every single question, you are pit-tested and ready to race around the track. If you can't say yes to each of those questions, you are not completely sold on your product. And if you and your employees don't believe in what you are selling, your efforts will break down and you will miss sales unnecessarily. Since driving around a track with a malfunctioning engine is simply not an option, the decision comes down to this: Either commit yourself to loving your product or service until you actually, truly do—as I did when I was selling cars—or change your product offering. Just don't wait for the market or your customers to tell you what to do. You've got to take initiative and do it yourself.

DOMINATE TO WIN

You can have boundless energy, an intense, white-hot drive, and dreams so big they wake you up in a sweat every night, but if you don't dominate all areas of your life, you will collapse under the many forms destructive forces take. Dominating your space starts with you and spreads to the people who work for you, then to your customers and competitors. Becoming the overwhelming presence, the example, means you must be the leader in all areas. If you can dominate your own thinking, your employees' thinking, your competitors' thinking, and the public's thinking, then you own the space. I first wrote about the concept of domination in my book If You're Not First, You're Last. Most people misunderstood what I meant by "domination." They thought I was talking about overcoming the competition. But true domination—and true obsession—starts with dominating yourself. It might seem easy, but many people never master this concept: You can't dominate your business or life—hell, you can't even create a corporate or family culture—unless you dominate your own mind-set. You do this by learning to control your thinking, your actions, and your choices. It's a bad idea to ignore your ambitions, your energy, your obsession, but it's even worse to let them take their own course. They can be like wild horses, running full speed in every direction, wasting energy and resources with lots of effort that produces nothing. Confidence is vital not only to staying on course but also to setting the course, reinforcing that course for everyone, and then making sure you win. The best way to gain confidence is to dominate your space and everything in it.

IT'S OKAY TO BE UNPOPULAR

You can look like everyone's favorite uncle and still be the most dangerous person in the space. You can be nice to everyone, respectful, and have good manners, but success is not a popularity contest. I was working on a huge $32 million real estate deal recently in Savannah, Georgia. All parties had agreed on a price, and we were moving forward. But toward the end of my due-diligence period, I realized it was in my best interest to renegotiate the price. I knew everyone was going to freak out; not only did I want to renegotiate, but this was in December, so all the buyers were already in holiday mode, thinking about time out of the office for Christmas and New Year's. I called the listing agent and said, "We have to pass on the deal. It no longer makes sense at the price we agreed on." Everyone got very tense and very emotional. The broker immediately started to worry about his reputation with the seller, not to mention his commission. Also, by asking for a discount I risked being labeled a "retrader" (a buyer who gets a deal under contract and then renegotiates the price after the property has been removed from the market). No one wants to be seen as a retrader. But if I stayed in the deal at the already-negotiated price, I'd be guilty of practicing bad business. I knew I needed to renegotiate despite everyone getting upset. Either way, I thought, I am in danger. If I buy at the price we previously agreed on, I am in danger. If I renegotiate, I am in danger. I'd rather be dangerous than be in danger, I decided. I got on a very tense call with the people involved in the deal. A few moments into the conversation the broker said to me, "How much money do you need to make sense of closing the deal?" I called him again and said, "$29.2 million." This turned into three weeks of cursing, threats of lawsuits, hostility, and uncertainty. But we closed the deal at $29.2, saving me $2.8 million. My wife asked me, "How can you do this? Everyone is going to hate you." And I said, "I would rather others think less of me than think less of myself. I would rather a broker, agent, and seller think less of me than put myself, my business, my future, and you in further danger by playing the 'nice guy.'" I know what it takes to make $2.8 million, and as long as I can make sense of why I am doing what I am doing, I am willing to put myself into three weeks of emotional danger and unpopularity to avoid years of economic danger.

DO MORE THAN READ THIS BOOK

You can read this book—or any business book—and get excited for a moment. But being obsessed is not a small idea, and you will meet resistance. This is not a weekend conference where you walk across a fire, bend arrows, or break boards. This is obsession. You are being given permission, probably for the first time in your life, to go all in and be a freak. To sustain healthy, voluntary obsessions, to have it all and do great things, requires more than a book. It requires tremendous commitment, clarity, confidence, sacrifice, and persistence and a willingness to be in the minority, even unpopular. No matter what's going on in the outside world, with the media, with politics, your obsession will have to continue to fuel you long after the disappointments, and even long after the successes are yours. Day after day, week after week, quarter after quarter, year after year your obsessions can continue to fuel you. Use this book to undo the average thinking of those you live with, those you work with, and even your customers. Because after seriously resolving to be obsessed and clarifying your obsession, it is vital you get those around you to support you. Your partner might want the white picket fence, the golden retriever, and you home at 5:00 p.m. to watch weekend television marathons, and may talk constantly about simply being happy. Getting your partner on the road to obsession is tough. It requires a plan and a sit-down talk with this person. This may be the biggest challenge of being obsessed, and you must prepare for the sale of your life. Obsession isn't just a mental game, either; it's a total game involving the physical, spiritual, emotional, familial, and financial. You have to be in great shape in every respect to play this game and stay in it, because the evil forces of average, entitlement, normalcy, and complacency are working against you. Also, use this book to get those around you on the same page with you. If you want to discover who is capable of being on the same page with you, have them read this book. Most won't be able to get through it. But others will be woken up and converted. Use the book as a filter to find out if people are up for being part of your team and your life. Most will not take the challenge—this is not for everyone. But it is for me and I expect it is for you.

DON'T WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO GIVE YOU CONTROL

You don't have to be given responsibility or promoted to a leadership position to exert control. I have never been "given" control—I have just taken it. I exerted control because I trusted myself to get the job done. It wasn't a matter of anyone's giving me permission. If you see an obvious problem and you've got a solution, it's your responsibility to exert control, to step up and lead. Declare: "I got this!" As the old saying goes, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. In the cutthroat world we live in today, you can't wait for the authorities to provide for your future. If your boss isn't around and a high-level client needs servicing, are you going to tell them that he'll call them back, or are you going to provide the service? So what if you make the wrong decision? Make a decision, be dangerous, and if your boss doesn't like it, come work for me! I believe I know best in everything I do, and if I don't, I get trained until I have complete confidence and competence in whatever I am doing. Whether it's making a sales call, handling my four-year-old, or operating a firearm, I want control over all my various skill sets so that I can lead in all the different areas of my life. I don't need to be the smartest person in the room—I don't even need to be right—but I do need to be willing to control things.\ I have a real problem with people who equate intelligence with leadership and control. It's not about just being smart or even being right. If someone is right but doesn't have control, they will ultimately be unable to prove themselves right . . . and will therefore be wrong! I own five companies. I don't manage those businesses; I control them. I hire managers. I hire department heads. I write the checks, I take risks, I make decisions, and I put myself and my business into dangerous situations in hopes of a payoff. I am a boss, an entrepreneur, so while I need managers to make sure we get things done, I control the environment to get what I want. And I give up control to others only when they have proven the environment is more successful under their control.

what are the three postion grant things im in?

You got off track from pursuing your big dreams because society told you your plans were too unlikely or too audacious. As a result, you've toned down your message and belief over the years, buying into the idea that obsession is unhealthy. Maybe you've been conditioned to fit inside a box instead of breaking out of one—and you're trading in your dreams of greatness for a cute house, a 401(k), and a two-hour commute. Business ideas that used to keep you up all night have been shelved in favor of weekends on the couch in front of the TV. It's not that you're lazy; it's that you've been told too many times by your friends and family that this obsession of yours is unhealthy, that your dreams are unattainable, and you've bought it.

FEED THE ECONOMIC BEAST

You must become obsessed with feeding the beast of economics (money) so that it is not a constant and recurring problem dominating you and your company.

my own personal doubt

You must make sure you aren't one of the many haters and naysayers. You have to handle any self-doubt you have going on inside you. Get ahead of that self-talk with this exercise, which focuses you on your massive goals. I have huge, crazy ideas. They are so out there that even the obsessed think they're over the top. If they're crazy to me, what might the average person think or say when they hear of these ideas? Seven billion people will know my name. I am going public with a $4 billion+ real estate fund. I am producing a hit television show. I am running for president in 2020. Now it's your turn. Make a list of some of your crazy goals—or better yet, grab the goals you've already started writing down from the exercise in chapter 3. When you were reading these goals, did you hear that voice in your mind saying, No way? It will start offering a running commentary about how impractical, ridiculous, and impossible your ideas are. That voice will say things like: Where are you going to find time to do this? What are you doing this for? You are too old for this or You are too young for this. Notice how even you have an internal critic putting you down, discouraging you, and making you miserable—and you are supposed to be on your side! What can you say to you? When I doubt whether I can, for example, build a $4 billion real estate empire, I quickly take out a pencil and write down the number $4,000,000,000. Then I think about how close I am to this goal and write that down ($400 million, where I am at this time). I also think about who else has done it and how many times has it been done. With that, I am immediately back on track with the possibility of my goals rather than the doubts I have about them. Get out of your head and onto paper, and focus on how you can rather than how you can't. There are plenty of naysayers and haters. I can't afford to be one of them and neither can you.

KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR

You're obsessed with success—but can you sense that same quality in others? What other qualities are important to you? I look for a few important things: willingness to do whatever it takes compliance with orders ability to see an order through without drama speed of movement willingness to die for the cause possession of a book of businesses (customers who need our product) Train yourself to detect the qualities that will create the culture and environment you want. When you look at a candidate's track record or listen to them during an interview, here are some revealing questions to ask yourself Have they hit their targets repeatedly? Exceeded them, even? Are they involved with their families, community groups, and churches? Do they have reasons to do well in a job, like a family to take care of? Do they just want the job, without caring where they live? Have they won awards or received recognition for their work? Have they read a book recently? What was it about? Did they show up early, on time, or late? Did they do any due diligence on the company, the owner, the executive? Do they speak positively about their work experiences, or are they just negative about all past employers? Do they ask you what you want and need or take the time to show you what you are doing wrong? Do you want to be around this person every day, giving them orders, working with them, and spending time with them?

VACATION ABUNDANCE

You've read about my problem with the way most people take vacations. So you might think I'm totally against any vacation time. Not so. If you're going to go on vacation, overdose on it. Go for a long, spectacular trip, stay in the best hotels, fly first class (or better yet, fly private), eat at the best restaurants, and treat yourself like royalty, sparing no expense. If you can't afford to do it first class and for an extended time, you aren't ready to go. Because vacations are also an opportunity to grow yourself, your business, and your network. You need to be in places where other obsessed people gather. And sorry, but if the hotel you are booking offers free breakfast . . . that's not the place you should be. Elena and I recently rewarded ourselves with a trip, without the kids, to Paris and Barcelona after a speaking tour through Eastern Europe. We did it right—and put ourselves in position to not only enjoy ourselves but also make valuable connections. We stayed at the best places, ate at the best restaurants, and gave ourselves a chance to refuel, reboot, and overdose on a vacation so we didn't come home wanting more.

HOW TO FIND THE BEST

Your people are your power. If you don't surround yourself with the best, if you don't create a culture in your company that is as obsessed as you are with getting you where you want to go, you are not extending your power. If you don't continue to recruit, you are left to manage with what you have. And the people you depend on today can disappoint you tomorrow. So invest in people and keep investing. To do any less means you're not obsessed with the well-being of your business. There are lots of ways to go about hiring people, and I share some ideas below. But first I'll share something I did that was totally out of the box. I produced a show called Whatever It Takes. We put more than 250 people through an interviewing process and recorded it all. We looked at their Facebook pages, in their phones, and in their cars and then put them through grueling tests—all with cameras in their faces to document everything. With their approval, we made it public. The biggest reality we demonstrated by doing that was this: You have to go through a lot of people to find a few good ones. The first season we hired ten people and kept six. In the second season we had a better group of people, hired fourteen, and eventually lost them all. Regardless of all the failures, our efforts have allowed us to create a very strong team. Here's how we did it

KEEP REVISING YOUR PITCH

Your pitch can always be improved on, shortened, made to hit harder, to get more attention and be more effective. Do not underestimate what I am telling you here. As the executive of your own life, you need to learn who you are, what your value-add proposition is, and how to pitch yourself. If you don't have clarity on who you are and what your value-add is, then no one will. The saying "Don't toot your own horn" is another lie spread by the average. Why have a horn if you aren't going to blow it? Most people have not given themselves permission to blow their own horn and therefore never take the time to work out their pitch. The reality is if you can't pitch what you do, who you are, and what you offer, no one will get obsessed with what you do and who you are, much less what you have to offer. If you have an established product, spend time listening to, even recording, what your people are saying to potential customers about your product, the offer, and the company. I assure you they are underpitching, underselling, underpromising, undermarketing, and not being honest with themselves, your company, or the customer. Hell, you're probably underselling yourself too. The only one that benefits from that is your competition. Create a pitch that makes your value scream; don't just talk about it mildly. I am trying to get you to be more outrageous and break your conservative tendencies. Think about what you would say if you were given thirty seconds of Super Bowl commercial time. Make the pitch that huge. Start by making a list of what makes your offering great. Tell the world why you are amazing, why you are the greatest, the best. You have just manufactured the excuse you need to perform at much higher levels. All you did was create a pitch that promises you will

starve the doubt

doubt is the dream killer. Most people are so filled with doubt they are unable to believe in themselves enough to become obsessed with their own success. Instead they let their fear lead the way. I believe that your fanatical, all-in mentality, which everyone has caused you to doubt, is not the problem. Doubt is the problem. Doubt is the most dangerous and insidious form of mental terrorism on this planet. Doubt damages people, organizations, marriages, and dreams. It's certainly been the biggest problem in my life. I am describing this so you can understand what you are going against when you commit to your obsession to be successful. When I first began to turn my life around, I was surrounded by a whole industry that told me I was emotionally scarred, powerless, and an addict of every variation. I was told that my obsessive nature was part of my genetic makeup, that I had no control over it and no chance of ever being free. This caused me deep confusion and doubt. They were obsessed with their problems, while I was obsessed with success. It took me a long time to wake up to this, but eventually I realized you don't fix problems with problems—you fix them with success Today I let myself absorb advice and help only from people who are doing better than me. I believe in the saying "If you are the most successful person in the room, you are in the wrong room."

LEARN TO LOVE FEAR

fear is an indication of what you should do, not what you shouldn't do. I have been scared most of my career, and if I am not scared, I start to worry that I am not challenging myself with new things. When the economy collapsed, I was so massively scared that the fear converted into creativity, inspiration, and power. Everyone was scared, but most people's response was to pull the covers over their eyes. You have to convert your fear into power. I did this when my wife turned to me at the start of the recession and asked, "What is going to happen?" I told her, "We are going to die—our world as we know it has come to an end. And I will get us through this. We will be different; we will be better. But for right now you will not see me around here much. I commit to you that I will never again relax. I will never again allow my commitment to my dreams and to my family to be watered down by those who have no clue. I have failed you as a husband and our kids as a father, and I will never allow this to happen to us again. When my back was up against the wall and virtually all of my projects and income were completely frozen, my biggest fear had come to life. The fact that this happened was one of the great gifts of my lifetime, because the immediate danger got me completely outside my comfort zone. It forced me to do what I should have been doing all along. I should have been marketing and expanding, introducing myself to more verticals and industries, writing books, appearing on radio and television. The world thought I had been obsessed before? No—now I was obsessed. I was alive again. I was on fire again. I was 120 percent into my businesses, pushed by the threat of not surviving. I was back at the beginning and there was no sense of entitlement. Instead I was waking up every day with an "Eat what you kill" mentality. Seize all of the business; take no prisoners; be ethical but never fair; push, shove, and knock down walls if necessary. As I accelerated right through the fear, I felt I was alive again for the first time in a long time. This is when I have always done best: when I am on the move, putting myself out there, meeting new people, and learning new things. If you do this often enough, you'll convert fear into power and confidence. That said, don't expect fear to go away and don't try to eliminate it. Use it. The obsessed life is not about reaching a state of peace and balance. It's about constantly moving in the direction of your fears and possibilities. Fear will always be there, so the question becomes what you will do with it.

obsessed with the wrong things

he did drugs in high school etc.

1. REIGNITING MY OBSESSION FOR GOOD

he started to write down what he wanted to do with his life. he wanted to become a member of society Everything just started flowing out of me as I gave myself permission to write about my new life. I wrote more: about wanting to write books one day, about becoming a master salesperson. I even wrote about becoming a husband and a father.

how did his forst day back to the car dealership work

he was embrassed,self conscious, short on confidence, and not know where to start he actually sold something. I stayed at work later than everyone else, probably scared to go home. Free time was a threat to me because I knew when and if I got bored or didn't have something productive to do, I was at risk of returning to my old ways.

what happens in six months?

he was still clean The "secret" was that instead of being obsessed with horrible habits, I allowed myself to become obsessed with success again with the same innocence and energy I had as a kid. Rather than denying my obsession with success, I gave myself permission to embrace it.

what was his early obsession?

his family was in good places but that soon fell apart

what happen to him after 6 months

his self esstem returns.

very important tip.

only listen to people more sucessful than you, not the people arent sucessful.

haters and naysayers

they are there , but just ingore them. You'll be surrounded by both if you want to be successful. In fact, the more successful you become, the more haters and naysayers you'll attract.

what is the first step in gettign back on track to sucess

was to help myself. I couldn't start helping others until I got my own life in order. I had to rebuild my sense of self before I could ever get others to believe and trust me. But where could I start? I had no friends. My ex-girlfriend, also an addict, was now sleeping with a drug dealer. All I had was my job at the car dealership.