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Grant Cardone on Raising Capital and Real Estate

Summary

Richard C. Wilson hosts Grant Cardone for a conversation about capital, real estate and portfolio growth. Cardone describes why he prefers raising money from investors through social media and educational content, and why he favors long holding periods that give property income time to develop. He explains the limits of operating a real estate asset, including acquisition, management, operations and debt, and discusses combining apartment cash flow with Bitcoin liquidity. The discussion also covers location, scaling beyond familiar peers, and ways to evaluate a property after purchase, from branding and tenant relationships to removing unnecessary costs. For family offices, founders and investors, the conversation offers a practical look at how an operator thinks about capital formation, control, time horizons and risk. It can help readers assess their own assumptions about liquidity, investment structure and the work required to grow a portfolio over time.

Key Moments

Capital structure and time horizon shape what a real estate operator can do. In this Family Office Club fireside chat, I asked Grant Cardone how he approaches raising capital, apartment ownership, portfolio growth and Bitcoin. His answers give family offices, founders and investors a view into the choices an operator makes when building a portfolio for the long term.

Raise Capital Around the Investment Horizon

Cardone describes using social media and educational content to reach potential investors directly. He contrasts that approach with short-duration real estate funds, which can put pressure on a manager to sell at a fixed point in the cycle. His concern is practical: no one can know exactly where property values, interest rates or the broader market will be several years ahead.

For a family office, the lesson is to match the capital structure to the asset and the operating plan. A long hold can give rental income time to support the investment, but it also requires clear communication about liquidity, distributions and risk. Founders raising outside capital face the same responsibility. Explain how investors enter, how the business will use their money, and what conditions could affect the timing of a return. If you are evaluating a manager, ask how the fund term fits the underlying assets and what happens if the planned exit window arrives during a weak market.

Cardone also frames investor relationships as a form of partnership. Capital from investors can create a longer connection than a one-time sale, but that depends on sound operations and honest expectations. Family offices can consider how alignment works across the full term, including the manager's incentives and the investor's ability to understand the plan. For more on this relationship, see our guide to raising capital from family offices.

Know Which Parts of the Deal You Can Control

Cardone names acquisition, management, operations and debt as the main levers in a real estate deal. The economy is outside an operator's control, and rent growth does not follow a perfectly even path. That perspective is useful when reviewing a business plan. Separate assumptions the operator can influence from market conditions they can only respond to.

He puts strong emphasis on location because it is difficult to change after purchase. He also describes focusing on the existing property before adding features, looking for costs or items that can be removed. Those ideas point back to disciplined underwriting: know why the asset fits, understand the operating assumptions, and test whether the plan still works if rents, expenses or financing move differently than expected.

Family offices considering a direct property investment can use this framing to structure diligence around the sponsor's actual control. Review the acquisition rationale, property operations and debt plan. Ask how the manager will respond if income stays flat or expenses rise. The family office due diligence guide covers the questions that can help make this review more systematic.

Think Carefully About Liquidity and Portfolio Growth

Cardone discusses combining apartment cash flow with Bitcoin, describing real estate as difficult to sell quickly and Bitcoin as available to trade at any time. He also makes clear that he does not know what Bitcoin is worth. For an investor, that distinction matters. A liquid asset can move sharply, while a property may take time to transact. Each has different uses and risks, so a portfolio plan needs to account for both.

He also talks about moving beyond familiar peers to learn from operators managing at a larger scale. For founders and investors, that means being willing to examine how the business needs to change as it grows. Growth can require new capital, better processes and additional people, along with a willingness to revisit assumptions that worked at a smaller size. A family office asset allocation discussion can help frame those choices across a portfolio.

My framing for family offices is straightforward: connect the time horizon, the capital source and the operating plan before committing. Cardone's experience raises useful questions about who controls the asset, how investors stay aligned and which beliefs deserve another look. If the conversation involves tax or legal structure, talk with your attorney or CPA.

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0:00 you know, 67 years later, that that $100 is worth 11 bucks today. I've never trusted money ever. Cash. I think the most important thing in real estate that you've heard over and over and over again is the location. Raising money has been the best thing I've ever done in my career, not just for me financially, but for the other people financially. >> We're going to have the one and only Grant Cardone on stage. Um, it probably doesn't need much of an introduction, but Grant owns and operates multiple companies, including Cardone Capital, a private equity real estate firm with a multif family portfolio of over 5.3 billion. He's raised over $1.8 billion in equity while expanding into Bitcoin. lately as part of his wealth strategy. He's an 11time New York Times best-selling author, leads the global 10X movement, hosts major business and wealth buildinging events with over 10,000 people, many times filling arenas, and he gives back to the Grant Cardone Foundation. So, let's welcome up to the stage. Thank you, GRANT.

1:00 Thank you for being here, Grant. Uh, what did I leave out in the introduction you'd like everybody to know? >> Uh, you know, my most important achievement is my kids. So, we homeschool our kids. And uh not only do we homeschool them, but they actually like me. So that's a big deal. We I I I talk I spend time with them every day. If it's not here in town, I'm on the phone with them and checking in with them. So probably the >> Awesome. Great. Um you're a relatively polarizing individual. I don't think on accident. You're not afraid to have an opinion and a sense of humor, which I appreciate. Um but what do people misunderstand about you if they only see little clips on Instagram? They don't really know you. Well, social media is a platform that I'm competing with. I'm not competing with other real estate people on social media. I'm competing with billions of people that are dropping content.

1:51 Uh I'm 67y old white guy. So, a lot of competition out there. You know, you got you got 19year-old kids trying to get that that audience out of Tik Tok. I'm trying to get the plumber, the chiropractor, the HVAC. Like, how do you get people's attention on on a social media platform? many of you aren't even on it. So then I have to come off that platform and come to something like this and I need to go to some other event. We raise we raise uh the the reason I use social is because I don't want to go to JP Morgan and get money from JP Morgan. And the reason I don't want to get money from JP Morgan if the terms were different I' I'd take the money. But the problem with the terms particularly if you're buying real estate is it's going to be a three or four or five year fund. It's probably going to be a three plus two two one-year extensions. And I I don't want a gun to my head. And if you have a gun to your head in a real estate deal, you can't buy great real estate because nobody nobody in this room, nobody outside this room can predict in five years whether that piece of real estate is going to be up in the cycle, down in the cycle due to interest rates.

2:52 So because I can't predict that, I don't take that money and I use social platforms to basically say, "Here's my deal. I don't know if they have a picture of that deal we're doing in Bokeh right now. Here's a deal we're doing in Bokeh. It was $235 million. We took it out of bankruptcy from Blackstone. and it was 350 million bucks. We stole the asset. Blackstone wanted the asset back. They were the debt. Uh I went in 10 days. I I put it on my balance sheet, closed the deal for $235 million. It's in the Bokeh papers, the Miami papers. We did that this year. 10 days later, uh finished it out and then went to my audience and said, "Hey, would you guys like to be part of this deal?" Okay. Because I'm trying to expand my portfolio. I can't. No, no one can buy everything off their own balance sheet. And so that's why I use social media. Now, now the reason the reason I get involved in in things like the Trump campaign or um you know, boycott JP Morgan, which I did this week, or like like the reason I do I get involved in some of this radical stuff is because it it it has noise.

4:00 And it's not always because I'm just interested in that topic. It has noise. It has interest. People are looking at it and I can ride that wave. >> Sure. I would guess um from what I've seen that Instagram has been the most productive social media platform for bringing in investors and attention. Or is that is that not right? >> Probably not. Probably YouTube has probably been our our our best platform. We have about 3 million people that follow YouTube. So we do educational stuff there. We don't do entertainment stuff there. We do all education there. All the platforms are different. And like the this is a very traditional way to raise money, right? Family offices come together. They talk about money together. You guys all have the same little language. It's a small room, folks. I mean, no offense. He did a great job of getting you here. Give him a big hand for putting you in the room. If I go do a If I go do a Zoom call this morning, I do a Zoom call this morning and say, "Hey, on Instagram or YouTube, I'll have 30,000 people on it from all over the world." Okay? If 1% of those people are are are interested in anything I'm doing, that's 300 buyers, 300 investors I get to pick. Okay, when you're doing a room of 500 people, you're not all qualified to invest today because maybe you're qualified, but you don't have the money, you're not liquid, you're not ready, you're looking at something else, you got your mind on other projects, you're closed out for

5:17 the year, whatever. When I open my audience to 8 billion people, uh, it just becomes massive opportunity and I get to set the terms. I get to say, "Hey guys, we're doing 10 years." All real estate syndications should be done for a minimum of 10 years. I would never put my money in anything, any real estate deal where a guy said, "Hey, you can get out in three years." No offense to anybody in the room if that's your fund. I would never do that to the investor. I would never put money with you because I know you can't tell me what the marketplace is going to be in 3 years when Trump's out. You can't tell me that 10 years from now. If you're buying this apartment building right here in in this neighborhood and you're telling me we're going to exit in 10 years in 2035, I know you have an exit between now and then that's going to be profitable because rents will carry that building uh over a decade. So uh what are your top one or two mental models for massively scaling uh while others think and stay small? Usually >> you know the my my first one is man you I I have to get away from people that are doing what I do. I have to I have to go I have to go study people that are doing, you know, well, while my portfolio amounts might sound impressive at $5 billion, I need to go I need to go find somebody that has a $25 billion

6:35 portfolio and then and then figure out how to buy that and and so I would flip my whole the little guy would eat the big guy. So how do you do that? You stay away from your own level of thinking. You have to get away. You have to elevate out of your own audience in your own neighborhood. Every every everything that's happened to me that's been good in my life required me to leave what was good in my life. I had to leave my family, my friends, my education, whatever whatever success I had at this level, I had to leave this which is extremely uncomfortable. It's very very uncomfortable for for to to finally get something and then say, "Okay, I have to leave the thing that I have and then that that I'm comfortable with." Uh so so I can get information from from other people. How many how many real estate investors are in this room? Look, real estate's a hard thing to invest in. Like like no matter how good an operator you are, you're only so good. Okay? No matter how good a manager you are, you're only so good. No matter how good a buyer you are, you the the you you you get debt. Your debt can only be so good. Like at some point, the acquisition, the management, the operations, and the debt, those are the four things that control this little game. You can't control the economy. So,

7:52 there's only so much you can do to push the rents and the value of the property. And um you tap out. It's heavy. It's a very heavy heavy product. So, I'm always looking for new things in in even in other industries like AI or like Bitcoin or crypto to figure out how could I add that to my already successful business and get something to punch up. >> What are you doing with Bitcoin lately? I've seen you talking about it a bit more, but I'm not informed on that. >> So, so, uh, I've been I've been very interested in Bitcoin ever since it came out. Uh, I was always interested Well, I've always been interested in getting rid of cash. Okay. I've never trusted cash my whole life. Uh, I remember saw saw a $100 bill. I was eight years old. My dad showed this to me. This is when $100 was a lot of money, okay? And I was like, "God, $100." And then it had on the back, "In God we trust." And I asked my dad, I was seven or eight years old.

8:46 I said, "What does God have to do with this?" And my dad was like, "Hm, good question. I'm not sure I can answer that." And here we are. Here we are, you know, 67 years later, that that $100 is worth 11 bucks today. I've never trusted money ever, cash. So, since I was 28 years old, I would earn cash. I know how to earn it. I know how to get it. And I would convert it to apartment buildings. Short story. I would just go out and buy apartments, uh, 48 units, 52 units, 32 units, anything that had any kind little bit of scale in it. And where I thought the rents over time would go up. Well, again, I'm back to this this conversation about I can only make them do so much. At some point, you can only fix the kitchen so many times. you know, put in a new refrigerator, uh, bring in some technology. You can change the rents, 14 bucks. Uh, you know, let them keep their dog there. They'll keep their dog there longer than their girlfriend. Charge them 20 bucks for that. You can't get anything for the girlfriend.

9:47 And if if I could, I' i'd be like, "Hey, she's sleeping with you. I need 20 bucks a month." you know, I'm I'm trying to figure out how to raise the rents because if I raise the rents, the NOI go up goes up and and and keeping cash on my operating agreement. It's not going to do anything. So, we started add Bitcoin. We started playing with it. What what if I converted part of my cash flow, my monthly cash flow. We we we don't build anything. We buy everything we buy, we have cash flow in the first month. I build nothing. I would never hate to say I'll never, but I'll probably never build anything. This was Sam Zel's model, by the way. He never wanted to be the first person in a building. He would wait for you to build it. Any builders in the room? I'll buy from you. Just tell me, "Hey, man. This is what I got in it. This is what I want to make. I'll buy it. I don't want to build it. You You look 20 years older than me for a reason.

10:41 Okay? Cuz you're built, you're a builder. And builders builders go bust in every cycle because you don't know when to stop building. When it's good, it's good. And when it's bad, it's terrible. And so I just wait, you build it, and then we have cash flow. Well, out of that cash flow, I started looking at models where rather than distributing all the cash the way the REITs do, which I believe is the biggest real estate opportunity in our lifetime, okay? And and I and I'll hit hit that in just a second. But rather than distributing all the cash to the investors, squeeze some of the cash out of that, convert it to Bitcoin. If id have done that over the last 12 years, okay, with just a portion, let's say a quarter of my my cash flow, I'd be worth $12 billion if I would have done all of it, which I didn't need any of this cash flow. I have four other uh very profitable functioning cash flow producing companies. If I would have converted the entire 12 years of distributions that I just distributed to me and my family, I would be worth 42 or 43 billion this morning. So why why why is that important? Okay, what I'm doing is I'm combining a we we just started tinkering with this. Uh then I got a meeting with Mike Sailor. Me and Mike sat down, talked about something, a

11:58 couple things, and then I had another meeting with him and another one and and and um and I'm like what what if I blended these two things together? What if you took a real asset that's heavy and you cannot move it, real estate, and you you you put it together with a digital asset that you can't really explain. I'm like, is that real or is that a scam? It could be a scam. Okay, it's a $2 trillion right now. The only thing that gives me hope that that Bitcoin's not real because I can't see it, okay, is that it's$ two trillion dollars. Okay. And if you're a scammer, two trillion's enough. The Satoshi guy would have would have been like, "Give it give me the bag." So that that that's just I'm just a common sense person, right? If it was actually a scam and Bitcoin's worth nothing, and I'm sure there's somebody in the room that thinks it's worth nothing. Look, I'm telling you, I don't know. I don't know what it's worth what it's worth.

12:55 But I also don't know why why the guy that built that Bokeh deal uh took 17 years to complete it. I don't know why he put so much debt on it. I don't know why Blackstone didn't didn't figure out how to buy it from themsel. I don't know how I ended up getting it. I don't know why anybody pays $4,500 a month there. Uh I don't know why they sold it to me for 235 when I know for sure it's worth 350 right now. So I there's a lot of I don't know. I don't know how my kids I don't even know if my kids are mine, but I know they like me, you know. So So So, so when you guys are like, "Oh, I I I can't understand Bitcoin." I'll tell you something. I can't understand. Gold.

13:43 I don't understand why anybody would go go think that gold that we've got all the gold that somehow it's scarce and that there's not more gold on this planet. So, we haven't even discovered most of planet Earth. We probably discovered more space than we have Earth and uh or outside our atmosphere. My point is, my point is this digital Bitcoin thing, when you combine something that's illliquid, the real estate, very illquid. You're not selling it. If I wanted to sell a building today, it would probably take six nine months to close that building out. The Bitcoin's liquid 24/7, 365. It's so liquid. Yesterday, it moved 6,000. It went up $4,000. Bam. Ran down 6,200 bucks, ran back up. That's somebody liquidating in in 60 minutes.

14:33 Okay? You can't do that with the real estate deal. My real estate cash flows. The Bitcoin does. My real estate has a real use. The Bitcoin, we don't know what the real use is yet, right? Totally. Uh Sailor often says like, "Well, should I get into Bitcoin mining?" It's like, "Well, your core business is the Bitcoin mine, and you just convert that into the Bitcoin energy if you want to." And that's essentially what you're saying. Um All right. So, I know you're a fan of five minute quick phone calls. What are like one other times saver that helps you be super high velocity? >> What was that? So, you're a fan of doing like five minute really quick phone calls instead of 15 or 30 minute phone calls. I know you've said in some of your books. So, what else do you do to move quickly, get more done per day than most? >> Well, most of my phone calls don't last 5 minutes because I'm like, I'm not taking that call. That's a ridiculous call. I want to know what I'm taking the call for. Now, if it's a good call, then I'm going to be in the call and we're going to do the deal. And but what I'm trying to do is reduce the number of those things that happened to me. Um my my you know my my phone numbers got leaked out on the internet. So people I get a lot of um unwanted phone calls where the it even says on there likely a telemarketer. You guys get that phone call.

15:41 >> I always answer it. Okay. I always answer it because I think it could be somebody giving me money, right? Somebody might be calling said, "Hey, I want to invest in your deal." So, if it says cold call, telemarketer, uh, unknown caller, I'm going to be like, "Hey, you got $2 billion." And they're like, "No, I don't." Click. So, uh, what do you almost never say out loud or never get asked in interviews, but it's the number one most powerful habit, action, or strategy that you use in every business that you build? >> That's pretty complicated. Um, what is it I don't get asked in an interview? Um, the thing I don't get asked is, uh, how the the thing that I referenced earlier, how hard is it to get to a place and give up on the place? Like that's the hardest thing. Like this the hardest game in success and nobody ever talks about is like how do you get to a certain level? I remember when I said I'm going to get a 100 units and I'm done. and I had 500 and I wasn't satisfied. Everybody always asks the other question. When are you ever going to be satisfied? That's the that's the normal go-to loser question, you know, because if you're on a run,

16:59 dude, why would you be satisfied? You're winning, dude. Like, you're winning. You're making shots. You wouldn't be like, "Okay, I've made enough shots. I'm happy with shots." Like, if you're doing something you love to do and you're winning at it, you want to keep adding wins, right? because it's a fun thing and more people are benefiting and you're scaling and um I think I think I would just people would say well you know maybe hey why'd you start taking money from investors that would be a question I didn't I didn't want to take money from investors uh any anybody here I'll tell you guys right now like if you're a good person you should take money from investors if you're a good person if you're an ethical person and if you know how to manage money better than most people you should absolutely disregard what your parents just told you uh and raise money. Okay, raising money has been the best thing I've ever done in my career. Not just for me financially, but for the other people financially and most importantly for the glue. Okay? It makes us partners, not customers. It's not a it's no longer grants the seller, you bought my book, you didn't read the book, you bought it.

18:06 83% of the people never finish it. Okay, that's not a good exchange for me. I got the $25. That's cool. You I hit the bestseller list. That's great. But guess what? You didn't finish the book. So that we never consummated the the the the relationship when when you invest with me. You invest with this Bokeh deal and you give me a million dollars in five years from now give you back 4 million plus I paid you the entire time and I got you in an opportunity. Dude, we're friends for life. Okay? You're going to defend me in public. you're going to be like, I don't care what people say about him. He pays me. I have 20,000 investors that we pay every single month. We sent out uh $8.3 million last month. These people are praying for me. They're praying to I got Muslims praying for me, Jews praying for me, Baptists praying for me. I got agnostics praying for me. I got atheists. I don't know if I believe, but take care of Grant Cardone.

19:00 >> Awesome. Um, two quick questions. one the number one way that you force appreciation on multif family assets you buy obviously you buy them at a great price but is there like a go-to model plan that you use >> I I look I don't I I can't say that we buy real estate at a great price >> so I I I don't you know I've been accused of paying too much for real estate I've made money on all of them so I don't know how much too much I paid um I think the most important thing in real estate that you've heard over and over and over again is the location. But you wouldn't say location, location, location. They always say it three times. You should say it like 13 times. That's how important it is because you can never ever unwind it. Okay? It's only going to get better if you picked correctly.

19:47 >> Got it. And uh to end, >> but can I just add the second thing we're going to do is when we move on to that property, we're we're not thinking we're going to be me better managers ever. If you look at when I buy something and I bring it to Fanny May and say, "Hey, I'm going to do 10 years." And they're going to be like, "I need your schedule for 10 years." I'm like, "Bro, you run the schedule." Okay, I'm a I'm not I'm not I'm My performance is going to look like this. Rents are going to go like this for four years. That's my performance. I have no rent increases for four years. Somewhere year five, six or seven, I'm going to get a big spike in rents. But I can't this this BS that you're going to grow 3% every every year is ridiculous. No, that's not true. They don't grow like that. They go flat flat flat down and then they spike. And so I'm not going to suggest that I'm going to raise rents. Third thing I'm going to do is brand the the building.

20:38 I'm going to brand it 10x Cardone Capital. Fourth thing I'm going to do is allow the inves. The first people to get a shot at investing in in the fund that we put together and wrap around that individual asset is to go to the 336 people at Bokeh that are paying me 4500 bucks a month and saying, "Hey, if you invest a million dollars in this project, you'll be an owner in it, not just a user of it. And by the way, the million dollars will pay your rent." Okay? And also, I get policemen on the property now. You know, the investor becomes a policeman. They start saying, "Pick that up. I own part of this building." Okay? And then the fifth thing we're that we're going to do here is we're going to start looking for very smart ways. Smart ways are on the forced appreciation portion is we we we don't add stuff first. We remove stuff first. So I look for things to take off the property on day one.

21:34 Landscaping, furniture, remove something. Do not buy something first. Just take something off the property. Um and and it will show the tenants that you're going to make a move. >> Got it. Any last comments for like Deca millionaires sent to millionaires in the room like in like larger investors here like an insight for them or last comment before we close this out? Uh yeah, I would I would I would really challenge everybody going into 2026 like re re reconsider everything you know about money and finance and investing and and maybe just write down on a sheet of paper at the top of it. Hey, what is it? What do I I do this a couple times a year. What do I believe to be true that may not be true? What what is what story are you telling yourself over and that that and there's so many things that people that that I meet with these similar beliefs that we have that I'm like that ain't true that's not true you know and so you know just maybe look at the things that you you you you believe to be true. I think Mark Twain was the one that said that it's not what you don't know that's your problem. It's what you believe to be true that you know to be true that's not true that could be the problem.

22:53 >> Right. Awesome. Great. Let's give Grant a big round of applause. Thank you. Thank you, Rich.