May
9, 2019

7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

This is a guest post by Steve Costello, head of membership and co-founder of The Oracles, a mastermind group composed of the world’s leading entrepreneurs.

Grant Cardone is a top sales expert who’s built an $800 million real estate empire and teaches the 10X principles that led to his own success at the 10X Growth Conference, an event that brings together some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs to share their top strategies for massive growth in business and in life.

But Cardone doesn’t just preach the concept of 10X. He’s not afraid to take the plunge—literally—when it comes to 10Xing everything he touches.

Grant Cardone is the founder of the 10X Growth Conference and best-selling author of “The 10X Rule.”

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

On the first day of the conference, held in Miami in early February 2019, Cardone literally skydived into a stadium packed with 35,000 attendees.

Over the next three days, the best-selling author and business celebrity shared the stage with an impressive speaker lineup—collectively worth billions—including Spanx founder Sara Blakely, Skinnygirl founder Bethenny Frankel, social media master Tai Lopez, rapper Snoop Dogg, Shark Tank’s Daymond John, and more.

Here are some of the top lessons I learned at the event about sales, marketing, and execution.

1. Keep your sales simple.

Everyone is in sales, no matter your job or business, Cardone told attendees. And many entrepreneurs and professionals overcomplicate it.

Sales is a contact sport. It’s about finding the person who can buy, who has the power to decide, and who’s interested. Then you approach them with an offer, talk price, and make an ask. It’s really that simple, though not always easy. The most successful salespeople focus on simplifying their sales process.

2. It’s all about the prospect.

Sara Blakely started women’s foundation company Spanx with just $5,000 and grew it into the global brand it is today, making herself a billionaire in the process.

Clearly, she knows a little bit about how to sell.

Her advice to attendees?

Focus relentlessly on the person on the other side of the table. This encompasses everything from what a prospect says to how they say it, to the body language they use.

So, in any pitch, communicate as quickly as possible what’s in it for the other person—and why you can deliver what they want better than anyone else.

“Focus relentlessly on the person on the other side of the table,” advised Spanx founder Sara Blakely.

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

3. Pressure is a privilege.

Blakely’s husband, Jesse Itzler, also a successful entrepreneur, sold his company Marquis Jet to Berkshire Hathaway/NetJets. He then invested in ZICO coconut water, which he and his partner sold to The Coca-Cola Company. He’s also the best-selling author of “Living with a SEAL,” a book about his experience enlisting Navy SEAL David Goggins as his live-in life coach.

Itzler says that one of the best ways to succeed in sales is by putting more on yourself, not less.

“Pressure is a privilege,” he emphasizes. “It forces you to work faster and better.” Itzler talked about how he once used the principle to train for an ultramarathon in 90 days—an accomplishment that for many takes at least a year.

For instance, if your sales quota is 20, double it. Then figure it out. You’ll be surprised by what happens. Pressure has a strange habit of turning coal into diamonds—and it’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself if you want to sell more.

Entrepreneur Jesse Itzler said that putting pressure on yourself “forces you to work faster and better.”

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

4. Your biggest problem is you.

To crush your goals, Itzler said, you need to crush your fear of embarrassment. Self-imposed limitation is the No. 1 thing holding back entrepreneurs and salespeople.

Often, people think they need more experience before they can tackle big goals or take their businesses to the next level. Experience is overrated, Itzler told the crowd. He needed no prior experience to start any of the successful businesses he sold.

Blakely echoed this, pointing out that we often sabotage ourselves because we’re too self-conscious. She recommended entrepreneurs ask themselves a simple question:

“Do you feel you deserve to be successful?” Your answer should give you a gauge of just how much you might be holding yourself back.

5. Money follows attention.

Who knows you is more important than who you know, Grant Cardone told the crowd on the second day of the event.

In fact, money follows attention. Your parents taught you never to talk to strangers, but strangers have everything you want. Learn how to get, keep, and multiply their attention, and expect to get rich, Cardone said.

Cardone advised that it’s impossible to spend too much on marketing and advertising because you can solve almost any business problem with attention. Cardone himself spends $1 million a month on ads alone; and he showed the crowd how his income rose in correlation with his ad spend, topping $55 million a month in 2018.

However, too many people don’t invest in marketing because they’re trained not to, their goals are too small, or they don’t know how to convert marketing into sales.

Don’t be one of them.

6. You’re probably making digital marketing mistakes.

Not investing enough in marketing is a cardinal sin, but even when you do invest, you can make some serious mistakes.

Tai Lopez is an investor, partner, or advisor to over 20 multimillion-dollar businesses—and he has a social media following in the millions across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. In the process, he’s seen exactly what works in digital marketing and what doesn’t.

In a talk to 10X Growth Conference attendees, Lopez analyzed individual and company websites and dished out some tough love. Entrepreneurs and businesses, he said, are making basic mistakes when it comes to digital marketing.

These include not putting all the best content “above the fold” of your website—meaning it’s immediately visible. Websites, he said, should also be fast; so make sure you speed test.

He recommended you add a video to your site explaining why someone should work with you. The more complex your products, the longer the video should be.

7. Work on yourself daily.

To 10X your life and business, Cardone said, you are required to work on your life every day. That means demanding you and your team improve daily through skills training.

Once you have a target for yourself or your employees, then you must insist on reaching it. If the target seems too high, raise your energy. Never lower the target. Target attainment is the one thing that will make you happy.

Skinnygirl founder Bethenny Frankel said that most people don’t work hard, are entitled, and complain and worry about what everyone else is doing. Simply work hard and be better than the person next to you.

Skinnygirl founder Bethenny Frankel reminded the audience of the importance of working hard.

Image credit: 10X Growth Conference

Most people also have the wrong types of role models. Pick role models based on where you’re going and where your role models are in their current cycle.

For instance, Steve Jobs said money wasn’t important, but he was already wealthy at the time he said it. When he was starting out, his priorities were different. Choosing him as a role model when you’re starting out may not serve your goal to grow a business.

The lesson? Choose your role models wisely based on what you’re trying to attain.

Then don’t stop until you get it done.

That’s the 10X way.

Get the official recording of the 10X Growth Conference 3 here or register to attend the next 10X Growth Conference here.

May
8, 2019

2 min read

What’s in a name? When you’re trying to capture the attention of new customers, everything. Here are six cannabis-branding moments we loved — and that consumers won’t soon forget. 

Canna-Daddy’s

Canna-Daddy’s familial name helps it stand out in the competitive Portland, Oreg., dispensary scene, and so does its relationship with growers. Customers praise it as their trusted source of cannabis in a soothing setting. “I’m agoraphobic and only leave my house when my wife makes me. I love to go to Canna-Daddy’s,” reads one customer review.

Pipe Dreams Dispensary

While some fret about the stigma around marijuana, Pipe Dreams Dispensary goes straight for the opium association. Loyal customers of the Lincoln City, Oreg., brand are very fond of the daily specials, with quality flower for as little as $3 a gram.

Starbuds Dabuccino

This isn’t a dispensary sign, but we had to include it. In 2016, Starbucks, revealing it has zero sense of humor, won a judgment of nearly $500,000 against Oregon artist James Landgraf, designer of the Dabuccino. Knockoffs of the Dabuccino remain defiantly for sale online.

Herbal Outfitters

This play on the Urban Outfitters name is doubly fun because Herbal Outfitters (a.k.a. “The first pot shop to open in the Last Frontier”) is in Valdez, Alaska, population 3,936, which is not very urban at all.

High Q

High Q has two Colorado dispensaries — one in Silt, the other in Carbondale — and both offer half-priced grams on Mondays. A half-gram is plenty for a pleasant afternoon of contemplating whether the name High Q is a play on IQ or haiku. Or both? 

The Higher Path

Apparently, medical marijuana can’t cure generations of rivalry between L.A. and San Francisco. Higher Path’s website describes owner Jerred Kiloh as hailing from Northern California and attributes Higher Path’s success — it was named Best Dispensary in L.A. in 2016 — to “a very different mentality of medicine” Kiloh brought “with him to Southern California.”

May
7, 2019

10 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

He lived in a tropical paradise. Surrounded by coconut trees and white sand beaches, 20-year-old Andres Pira seemed to be living a life most his age could only dream of.

But sand doesn’t make a comfortable bed, and palm leaves don’t provide much shelter. The truth is, Pira was homeless. He slept on the beach, with a towel for a blanket and his clothing as a pillow. He was in a foreign country, didn’t speak the language, and he owed money to almost everyone he knew.

Starving and angry, Pira called one last friend at home in Sweden. He asked for money, but the friend sent him a book instead — and it changed his life.

Today, the 36-year-old is a real estate tycoon who develops some of the most luxurious resorts in the world. Not long ago, he was a high school dropout and gang member who didn’t think he would see his 20s, let alone Thailand. But anything is possible when you find your “secret.”

Waking up dead.

Pira is named after San Andres, the Colombian island where he was born. His Swedish father and Colombian mother met there before moving to Stockholm, Sweden when Pira was 3 years old.

Four years later, his parents divorced. Pira drifted between their homes in one of the worst suburbs in Sweden, where segregation was strong. “Growing up in that environment made me believe the world was cruel,” says Pira. “Youth like me didn’t have a future. I was consumed by the idea that I had no control over my life, confident my parents would never be proud of me.”

Pira and his siblings as children in Sweden.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

Pira acted up as a teenager, with stunts like hiding dead fish in the school’s air duct. The smell was so strong they had to cancel classes for days.

When he was 15, he started partying hard. He dropped out of school and spent his days drinking in the streets of Stockholm with other dropouts. “I didn’t know who I wanted to be, so I chose to be destructive,” he says.

Partying turned into fighting, and Pira joined a gang. “There was one rule: never show weakness or fear,” he says. “I earned my street cred by landing punches. My knuckles were shattered from hitting bone over and over.”

Pira was arrested several times for assault. “I was on my way to becoming an alcoholic, always one mistake away from going back to prison — or worse.”

One day when he was 18, Pira woke up on the steps of an abandoned building, lying in broken glass with a hangover and no idea where he was. “I thought I was dead.”

Waiting for ‘them.’

“When I got home, the look on my mother’s face was indescribable,” says Pira. “It hurt more than any punch ever did.”

He decided to turn things around. He got a job with a telemarketing company and separated himself from his friends on the streets.

Pira was making hundreds of calls a day — and he hated it. He skipped work so much, he was finally fired. Isolated from his friends, with no education and nothing to do, he spiraled into a deep depression.

His doctor prescribed several antidepressants, but the medication made things worse. “I became paranoid that someone was coming for me. I’d stand by the door for hours, waiting for ‘them.’” It was a complete breakdown.

Pira was close to his grandfather; so when he passed away suddenly, Pira realized he needed to do something before it was too late. With the $2,000 his grandfather left him, he decided to leave Sweden and start over. A travel agent recommended Thailand, where the cost of living was cheap. Pira booked the flight.

“How do you tell your parents you’re leaving and you might never come back?” Pira was sick with anxiety about telling his mother, but her reaction was just what he needed. “She told me to follow my heart and do what I felt was right,” says Pira. With her blessing, he left.

Finding ‘The Secret.’

Five days after buying the ticket, Pira boarded a one-way flight to Bangkok with $100 left and dreams of white sand beaches. But when he landed in the busy city full of skyscrapers and smog, there was no beach in sight. Pira realized he didn’t know anything about the country, and he definitely didn’t speak the language.

He spent $50 on a bus ticket to the holiday island of Phuket, where he found a job distributing hotel flyers to tourists. He made the equivalent of around $20 a week — just enough to pay for a small room and a daily serving of noodles. But he was happy.

It wasn’t long before Pira fell into the island’s party scene and started spending money on alcohol instead of rent. He soon owed everyone he knew there, lost his job, and was kicked out of his room.

Pira had started drinking at age 15 and soon fell into Phuket’s party scene.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

With nowhere to go, Pira wandered to the nearest beach, which became his home. He got up at 5 a.m. every day so no one would find him sleeping there. “Some nights I cried myself to sleep, and others I seethed with anger,” he says. “I blamed everyone for my problems but myself.”

Pira was too embarrassed to ask his family for help, so he started borrowing money from friends back in Sweden. One day he called the last person on his list. The friend refused to send him money but offered to email him a book instead: “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne.

Pira was angry. “I’m homeless, and you offer me a book?” he thought. But it distracted him from his empty stomach, so he read it. The book talked about the Law of Attraction, the idea that you can attract what you want in life through actions like visualization and affirmations.

“I thought it was ridiculous, so I set out to prove the book wrong,” says Pira. He started visualizing a cup of coffee. “I felt stupid, but I kept at it. Eventually, I could see it and smell it.”

Two days later, one of the beach employees approached him. “I’ve seen you here for a while,” he said. “I thought you could use a coffee. You look tired.” Pira couldn’t believe it. He decided to try his luck by visualizing a meal. After a few days of this, he ran into an old colleague from the hotel — who offered to buy him lunch.

Still unsure what to think, Pira decided to try getting a job. He started asking around town and landed a job handing out brochures for a real estate office. Soon he could afford to rent a small house with a garden. For the first time, Pira felt like he had control over his life.

Making sales on a scooter.

Over the next year, Pira incorporated affirmations, visualization, goal setting, and other principles from “The Secret” into his daily routine. He plastered his walls with his goals and photos of what he wanted in life.

One day he gave a brochure to a businessman who was interested in seeing one of the properties. But the man was flying home that afternoon, and all the sales agents were already away giving tours.

The man agreed to hop on the back of Pira’s scooter to go and see the property. Pira showed him around, and he decided to buy it. “My manager couldn’t believe I closed a sale in an hour, on a motorbike, with no training. That was the first time in my life I felt proud of myself.”

Pira was promoted to sales and worked his way up to sales director over the next three years. When he’d saved enough, he launched his own real estate agency — but he had a lot to learn about running a business.

Several months into the business, he started to struggle. Sales were down and debt was mounting. Pira had to declare bankruptcy.

He’d made poor decisions, like renting a big office right away instead of focusing on sales. He’d also lost the habits that made him successful in the first place. “I stopped doing affirmations, meditating, and learning, and started worrying about losing everything I had built,” says Pira. “I focused on scarcity instead of abundance.”

Pira restarted these habits, and things began looking up. He was once again closing sales, and he soon built a network of buyers and investors, who convinced him to become a property developer.

Finding success in the Land of Smiles.

Pira built several successful real estate companies in Phuket over the next few years. By age 28, he reached multimillionaire status in the local currency. At just 32, his net worth had catapulted into the billions.

Today, Pira is a serial entrepreneur who owns 19 companies with more than 250 employees. Blue Horizon Developments, one of his main property firms, is alone worth billions in Thai baht. In addition to real estate, Pira’s investments include a fitness club, law office, gas station, several coffee shops, and an events company. He is expanding his business globally, starting with New York City and Los Angeles.

Pira often brings employees on adventures like spelunking.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

Despite his successes, Pira says he doesn’t want to be remembered as a serial entrepreneur, but as a force for good. He supports Phuket Has Been Good to Us, which improves economic opportunities for local young people. Pira also sponsors other organizations around the world and drove a rickshaw across India for three weeks to raise money for Cool Earth, which protects endangered rainforests.

With his latest company, Success Events, Pira is on a mission to bring others what he calls the most beautiful gift in life: belief in themselves. Headliners at the inaugural two-day event in Bangkok included boxing world champion Mike Tyson and best-selling authors and success coaches Dr. Joe Vitale and Jack Canfield.

Pira’s story came full circle when he met Dr. Joe Vitale from “The Secret” movie.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Andres Pira

Pira’s story came full circle when he met Dr. Vitale, who appeared in “The Secret” movie, which is based on the book that changed Pira’s life. Vitale convinced Pira that his story could inspire others and helped him release his own book in 2019, “Homeless to Billionaire: The 18 Principles of Wealth Attraction.”

“I’m a high school dropout who has been homeless, bankrupt, and clinically depressed,” Pira says. “I came to a country without speaking the language and with no money. If I can change my fortune, anyone can.”

When he isn’t traveling for business or visiting family in Sweden, Pira still spends most of his time in Thailand. With warm weather year-round, unmatched hospitality, and delicious food, Thailand is precisely the paradise Pira dreamed of as a troubled 20-year-old. Now he speaks Thai fluently and lives every day like he’s on vacation — enjoying the beautiful beaches he used to sleep on.

Connect with Andres on Facebook or read his new book, “Homeless to Billionaire: The 18 Principles of Wealth Attraction.”

May
6, 2019

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Remote work is a force that you, as a business leader, should be reckoning with. After all, there are a lot of perks with letting your workforce go remote; not only do you save on the costs associated with a physical office but you avoid the dreaded daily commute. More important: You can improve company diversity. Going remote provides a seamless way to open your company up to a workforce that’s varied in gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity and ability.

Related: The Secret to Retaining Productive Remote Workers Is Remembering They Are People

In turn, diversity offers potential benefits to your business as well, including improved creativity, a wider range of skills, increased employee engagement, improved company reputation and even financial benefits.According to research from McKinsey & Company, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 21 percent more likely to experience above-average profitability tcompared to companies in the fourth quartile.

With more and more companies going remote and thereby increasing their diversity, it may be time for you too to join the movement. Here’s how going remote can actually improve your company diversity.

Hire top talent from across the world.

One of the biggest benefits of being a remote company is the fact that you have access to a wider pool of amazing candidates to choose from. Think remote workers are few and far between? Not so. Today, more people are searching for remote work. Data from Indeed shows that the share of searches for flexible work arrangements is up 32 percent year over year. Simply adding the word “remote” to your online job listing will introduce you to global candidates you wouldn’t have previously discovered.

For example, at our company we have remote employees in the United States and Canada, as well as India, Singapore, Ukraine, Nepal and more.

Image Source: Awesome Motive 

So, instead of just searching your local area for candidates, using remote work communication and collaboration tools, you can directly hire the talent you want, regardless of their location. As long as they have an internet connection, they can bring their skills and expertise to your business.

Hiring talent from other parts of the world will also allow you to better serve your diverse customer base. For instance, if a large portion of your customer base is located in China, you can hire remote employees in China who can better communicate with those customers. Hiring remotely may allow you to capture new markets you never thought possible.

Look at work before the person.

The hiring process for remote jobs can also level the playing field among your candidates. This is possible because you have the ability to look at the work before you look at the person by asking applicants to first provide examples of their previous work. Alternately, you can assign them a project to complete (that you’ll pay them for).

In contrast, a face-to-face interview leaves you open to the chance you’ll have some bias against a candidate’s age, gender or ethnicity. Hiring remotely, insteads, helps you focus on the quality of candidates’ work, whether that means designs they’ve created, copy they’ve written or apps they’ve built. Pick your top finalists based on the quality of their work; afterwards, you can set up an interview by video call.

Promote flexibility and inclusion.

In order to attract more diverse candidates to your company, promote flexibility and inclusion. Promoting people’s ability to work from home or a coffee shop, to work during the day or night or  on weekends instead of weekdays, will open your company up to a more diverse pool of workers.

Related: The Secret to Retaining Productive Remote Workers Is Remembering They Are People 

For instance, some parents struggle with having to choose their children over their careers due to having to deal with long hours at the office and with limited sick days. With flexible remote work, however, parents can choose their own hours, working when they can, in between child care and daily tasks. This allows parents to better advance their careers. In fact, according to a study conducted by Remote.co, remote companies are more likely to have women in leadership roles, including CEOs and founders.

Provide open communication channels.

For a lot of business owners, a major concern regarding remote work is communication — due to the time zone issue. But, there are many online communication solutions your remote company can utilize to not only foster effective communication but make your team more inclusive as well.

As in the example below provided by Slack, remote workers can keep in touch with one other every day in order to track work progress as well as keep up with international holidays or just chat.

Image Source: Slack  

One of the great things about online chat is that nobody hears your accent. Typed words are read the exact same by everyone. This makes communication easier and more comfortable for international employees whose first language isn’t English.

Related: 6 Characteristics of Successful Remote Employees

Over to you

Transitioning your team to remote work isn’t difficult, given  all the technology available to us today. Furthermore, the benefits of remote work are many, for your business and for professionals worldwide. Remember, diversity isn’t only important during the hiring process, it should be integral to your company culture all of the time. So, be sure to provide diversity training. Weave it into your company mission. Make a point of educating yourself about its benefits. And actively seek out new perspectives and ideas in the big wide world out there.