Why You Need More Than One Purpose

You need more than one purpose because no single thing, not a marriage, not your kids, not one business, can keep you full for a lifetime. That’s what Grant Cardone told me, and it started with a quarter he lost when he was eight years old. Have several things you’re obsessed with, let them feed each other, and you stop being one loss away from zero.

This was Grant’s third time on the Addicted2Success podcast, and it went up in September 2016, a couple of weeks before his book Be Obsessed or Be Average came out. He asked how he looked on camera. I told him he looked like a million bucks. Then I corrected myself. A hundred million bucks.

He came back with a dark joke about what he’d do if he were only worth a million. I won’t repeat it word for word, but the point under it was clear. For Grant, enough is never enough.

The lost quarter: never have only one

I asked when multiplying money first clicked for him. He said there were two big events. The first was when he was eight. His dad gave him a quarter to go to the store and he lost it. When he got home and owned up, his dad told him never to play with money. His grandfather happened to be at the house that day. Grant described him as a gambler and an unbelievable character, a guy who was “either balling or broke.”

His grandfather grabbed him and said the problem wasn’t that he’d been playing with money. The problem was that he only had one quarter. Never have only one quarter.

Grant said he’s lived by it since. You’re going to lose a quarter one day. If it’s your only one, you’re at zero.

The second event was the 2009 crash. He said he was already in the top one or two percent from a wealth standpoint, and even people at the very top got hit. It cut things close for him. His explanation: the money had made him average. He’d lost his obsession with going out and expanding.

Then he said something I didn’t expect. When he ran into Addicted2Success, he asked himself what he’d been thinking. He had great books and programs, but he hadn’t gone wide the way we had.

Make it, keep it, multiply it

Grant said there are three things people need to learn about money. How to make it. How to keep it. How to multiply it. In his view most people never learn the first, fewer learn the second, and almost nobody learns the third.

On keeping it, he pointed at Kanye. Grant said at the time that Kanye was $55 million in debt and asked how many Bugattis anyone needs. Take the number as Grant’s claim in 2016, not a current fact. His bigger point was that money is meant to be used. He said money is going down in value, so it has to go out and produce “babies.”

I told him it’s not what you have, it’s who you become. People don’t just want Grant’s stuff. They want Grant. Too many people chase the things around them instead.

Can you have more than one purpose? Grant’s answer

Grant said he’d read The ONE Thing and liked it. Then he said he doesn’t have one thing. There has never been one thing big enough to keep him excited.

“I’ve never had one purpose. That was just a bunch of people telling me I had one purpose.”

He doesn’t think any single purpose can fill a person up, and he used his own life to make the point. He’s married to a great woman, and she can’t fill him up. He has two kids, and they can’t either. One business didn’t satisfy him. Neither did the second or the third.

That sounds cold until you hear the rest. He wasn’t saying his family doesn’t matter. He was saying no one person or project should have to carry all of it.

And the purposes pay for each other. Grant said his real estate business showed him what’s possible because it works when he isn’t working. He told me that releasing a book in a big way loses money, and that his real estate and his other two companies fund projects like that. Everything touches everything. Put real energy into each one and you lift all of them.

That’s the quarter story grown up. One quarter, one business or one purpose all leave you a single loss from zero.

I told Grant this hit home. When I started blogging and building Addicted2Success I went all in. Whatever it takes, laser focus, and I didn’t stop until I had a team. Then I moved to the next thing, and the next. People get confused and think it’s one thing for the rest of your life. I don’t buy that. We’re meant to grow. Look at nature. It grows.

There’s nothing between obsessed and average

All the greats did more than one thing, Grant said, and they all did things they didn’t want to do. He’s heard people say you should only do the things you want to do. Grant said he does things he doesn’t want to do every single day. If you don’t, you won’t grow your business and you won’t keep it.

His line was that an obsessed person doesn’t care if they have to clean a toilet. They might hate the task. They do it anyway.

So I asked him what gives him that constant flow of energy. He said it’s a choice. There’s nothing in between obsessed and average. You’re either all in or you’re not, so quit kidding yourself that there’s some gray in the deal. Steve Jobs, Mozart, Elon Musk: if we know the name, Grant said, they didn’t come from the average camp.

I see the same gap between being interested and being committed. People draw a line in the sand, which is still the halfway point. You have to draw it in cement.

Everybody is already addicted to something

Grant doesn’t think you need to become obsessed. He thinks you already are. Everybody has an addictive quality, he said. His were survival, talking and fun times. The question is what it’s pointed at.

Some people get addicted to information instead of execution. For Grant at 25, it was drugs.

He traced it back to denying parts of himself. He always wanted to be the coolest guy in the room, the James Bond guy, obsessed with success and money, and he was told not to be. By his late teens he was denying so much of himself that when someone offered him weed, he said yes. It went to weed every day, then pills, then cocaine every day. He said he’d been stuck in it for nine years.

What turned it around was a treatment center. He put the drugs down for 28 days, came back, and replaced that addiction with the things he said he should have been addicted to all along.

I mentioned someone I’d been coaching who wanted to give up drinking because of what it was doing to their relationship and business, but hadn’t made a real decision. Grant’s response was deliberately extreme. Either go all in on being a drunk, or make the decision to be the other guy: obsessed with your health, with being a great dad, with helping people not drink. Read that as Grant forcing a choice, not as advice to drink. If you’re dealing with addiction, get professional help. Grant’s own turn started in treatment.

Why Grant doesn’t love himself just the way he is

Grant told me his mom once said she loved him just the way he was, right after he’d been telling her about all his dreams as a kid. About 30 years later his sister said the same thing. He wondered how many times he’d heard it.

His pushback was blunt. So what? He didn’t love himself just the way he was. If you’re broke, not living on purpose, you can’t get away from a job you don’t like, or you’re stuck in a house you don’t like, why would you love that? His words were that you should become obsessed with hating it. Obsessed or average, pick one.

I think it comes down to the meaning we give it. How painful would my life be if I didn’t take the action?

Keep looking for the vein

Grant has a phrase for this. Keep looking for the vein.

Internet marketers tell him they tried. They hit the list, put the program out, ran Facebook ads. His answer is that you either found the vein or you didn’t. He compared it to a nurse who wants blood from your arm. She doesn’t quit after one try. She keeps looking. The obsessed person, he said, won’t get seduced by an excuse.

He used his own launch as the example. He said he was giving 30,000 books to schools and donating his book proceeds to charity. It was working pretty well, but not where he wanted it. A free audio chapter didn’t move it enough either. So they kept looking.

The day before we recorded, he said, he’d made a bigger offer: a store credit for anyone who bought the book and wrote a review, good or bad, a 10-hour video of him reading the book, and 13 coaching sessions after it shipped. He said sales went nuts. That was his 2016 launch play, not an offer you can take up today. The lesson is the behavior: working pretty well still isn’t the vein.

The purpose of money is that you can lose it to win

His internet team asked about the ROI on all that. Grant said money wasn’t his problem. The book was the target. Then he said this:

“The real purpose of money is that you can lose it to win.”

He thinks a lot of ROI talk is just trying to make sense of average. He pointed to the MyPillow guy. Grant had never bought one of his pillows, yet there he was talking about him. In his view the big players are obsessed with market domination, not this quarter’s spreadsheet.

I told him about someone I’d spoken to who was putting a little money into Facebook ads to dial in a new program. You’re paying for the data and the analytics, so you’re smarter on the next move. And say you drop 5K or 10K into an ad and someone who sees it pays you 100K to speak at an event. How do you measure that?

Grant told me about a Facebook campaign his team said didn’t work because it drew complaints. He called that awesome, because the feedback showed him how to communicate with people. Another ad, about drug treatment and switching one obsession for another, got more comments than normal and no purchases. People said he was just switching one addiction for another. He said that’s exactly what he was doing.

Sometimes, he said, you have to miss a bunch to figure out where the bullseye is. Take all of this as Grant’s view of his own businesses. Speak to a licensed advisor for financial advice.

Feed the Beast, starve the doubt

I asked for his favorite chapter. He said Feed the Beast. The question he gets most is where he gets the juice, and his answer is to feed the beast and starve the doubt. He called it feeding the darkness in you. Quit denying the part of you people told you to hide. Fuel it, and get the people around you to fuel it too.

He said he wanted to give everybody permission to find their addictive personality and refocus it. I told him a lot of people live in a fantasy of who they think they should be, and deny the parts of themselves they could be tapping into.

When I said thanks a million, he said a hundred million, and that he was hunting a billion next. Then he told me to come see him in Miami. I was in Venice, California, and he reckoned LA had plenty of ideas and not enough action.

Here’s my take. If one thing going wrong would wipe you out, you’ve got one quarter. Pick the second thing you’d be obsessed with, give it real energy, and let your purposes pay for each other.

FAQ

Can you have more than one purpose?

Yes. Grant Cardone told me he’s never had one purpose and doesn’t think any single purpose can fill a person up. Marriage, kids and one business all mattered to him, but none was enough alone. Several purposes can fuel and fund each other.

What did Grant Cardone mean by “never have only one quarter”?

At eight, Grant lost a quarter his dad gave him for the store. His grandfather said the problem wasn’t playing with money. It was having only one quarter. Grant took it as a lesson: you’ll lose a quarter one day, so don’t let it be your last.

What does “find the vein” mean?

It’s Grant’s phrase for refusing to stop at “we tried.” Like a nurse who keeps looking until she finds a vein, an obsessed person keeps testing until something clearly works, and doesn’t get seduced by excuses when results are only okay.

Is there anything between obsessed and average?

Not in Grant’s view. He said you’re either all in or you’re not, and calling it gray is a way of explaining average. He also believes everyone is already obsessed with something. The choice is what you point it at.

What are the three things people need to learn about money?

Grant says how to make it, how to keep it and how to multiply it. In his view most people never learn the first, fewer learn the second, and almost nobody learns the third. Speak to a licensed advisor for financial advice.