Grant Cardone was born on March 21, 1958 in Lake Charles, LA. His father was Curtis Louis Cardone (Deceased February 1968) and his mother was Concetta Neil Cardone (Deceased May 26, 2009). He is the fourth out of five children. His eldest sister, Pam Scott is an educational fundraiser in Cyprus, TX. His next oldest sister, Diane Cardone, currently resides in Lake Charles, LA and is self-employed. His older brother, Curtis Cardone (deceased 1978), was a petroleum engineer. Grant Cardone has a twin brother, Gary Cardone, who is five minutes younger than Cardone.

Grant Cardone graduated from La Grange High School in Lake Charles, LA in 1976. He then went to McNeese State University from 1976-1981 where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting. Cardone was recently awarded the McNeese State University Distinguished Alumnus Award 2010.

Cardone moved from Lake Charles, LA in 1987 to Chicago, IL, working for a company that did sales training. Although he technically lived in Chicago, he traveled all over the United States, living in different cities. Grant briefly returned to Lake Charles, before moving to Houston, TX, where he lived for the next five years. He then spent the next 12 years in La Jolla, CA before finally moving to Los Angeles, CA where he has resided since 2003. His home was featured on “How’d You Get So Rich?” where Joan Rivers toured the home and talked to Grant about his story to success.

Cardone is married to actress Elena Lyons. In his book, Sell to Survive, Cardone describes how he met Lyons on the set of a commercial. He also titled the chapter   “The Biggest Sale of My Life.”  Cardone says he immediately fell in love. Lyons on the other hand didn’t reciprocate the feelings. Cardone describes how he pursued Lyons (in his book he describes it as having to sell himself to her) for thirteen months before she finally agreed to go out with him. They were married a year later. Cardone and Lyons gave birth to their first child, Sabrina, on May 21, 2009.

Early Tragedy

Cardone talks about how the loss of his father at the age of nine and the loss of his brother at the age of 20 were huge influences for who he was to become. Cardone saw his mother struggling with limited savings to raise five children as a single mother. Cardone says that when he had to deal with the death of his brother it only served to cement his resolve to ensure that his family would never have to deal with the insecurities that he watched his mother struggle with.

Grant Cardone started out working various part time jobs in high school. He was fired from his first job at McDonalds. He worked next at a country club as a bus boy. He describes how he hated this job, not for the work, but for the experiences he had while serving the well-to-do members of the club who would completely ignore him because of his position. This played a huge influence into a philosophy he describes in Sell To Survive: “Treat Everyone Like a Millionaire.” Cardone describes this as a philosophy geared towards having a great attitude when talking to people.
Cardone then worked for a plant blowing coal. He described this as “dangerous and dirty work.” Working with water pressure of 1400 lbs, Cardone escaped injury when his boot was sliced off in an accident.

Selling as a Career Path

Cardone got his first taste of selling while working in a clothing store. However, it wasn’t until he experienced working on a supply boat in the Gulf of Mexico that he got hooked on selling.

''The experience I had coming back from the offshore trip where I sold fish that we caught [was a huge influence in getting into sales]. We caught a couple hundred pounds of Red Snappers and we didn’t know what to do with [them]. So I decided to buy all the fish from everyone, load them into my truck, along with the remaining ice we had. On the way in, I sold the fish throughout southwest Louisiana, an area called Cameron Parish. I stopped in businesses and sold the fish where I could, going from neighborhood to neighborhood, until I managed to sell all the fish before the ice melted. I realized that I had made more money selling the fish than I made in the two weeks I was offshore. And I was like “Hey, Man, I am hooked on this selling thing.”''

But not all sales came as easy to Cardone as with the fish. Cardone talks about how he went into furniture sales, which “was a disaster.” Cardone then got into automobile sales out of college, where he struggled for two years until he devoted himself to studying the science of selling. It was through this experience that he would later become involved in sales training.

Information Assisted Selling

More of a technique than a particular piece of technology, Information Assisted Selling is a method developed by Grant Cardone for dealing with customers who have evolved from relying on sales people and companies to give them information, to being able to do all the research about a product before they even enter the store. Initially Information Assisted Selling was considered a radical and dramatic change for automobile dealers. Instead of trying to hide information, automobile dealers were told to give as much information as possible in order to better assist customers in the sales process. Information Assisted Selling was later adopted by Saturn and Lexus and has since become adopted by automotive dealers, automotive manufacturers, and several public and privately held companies, such as major furniture retailers, mortgage industries, financial service industries and telecom corporations.

Epencil

A software program designed by Cardone to automatically negotiate deals for salespeople and customers. It allows data to be entered (such as product, payment information, terms, etc.) and then computes various scenarios based on changing the variables a certain degree. This software program was created out of Cardone’s theory about negotiating with inventory and not price. Epencil has been implemented in hundreds of automotive dealerships, and has since been copied by other software programs.

Grant Cardone owns and operates three successful, multi-million dollar companies. Cardone Enterprises (CTTI: Cardone Training Technologies, Inc.), The Cardone Group, and Cardone Real Estate.

Cardone Enterprises

Cardone Enterprises is the business Grant Cardone started specifically to do sales training. This business was initially based on seminars where Cardone talked about his Information Assisted Selling technology. He quickly began doing over two hundred and fifty speaking engagements a year. While Cardone Enterprises was extremely successful, the material itself was either loved or hated.

Cardone Enterprises is currently based out of Los Angeles, CA. Cardone still delivers seminars all over North America and, in conjunction with a branch of Cardone Enterprises, Cardone Training Technologies, Inc., provides materials and sales training to various industries and businesses. Their most recent project is an online sales training program that features Grant Cardone delivering short and on demand video presentations of his techniques and materials.

The Cardone Group

The Cardone Group was a spin-off corporation that Cardone started with partner Scott Morgan. The Cardone Group deals almost exclusively with automotive dealers. The Cardone Group developed the Epencil software program. They work with retail automotive dealerships to install and provide training to integrate the program into the dealerships’ daily operations.  The Cardone Group also runs the Cardone Institute, which is an in-house sales and management training center. Cardone credits the creation of the Cardone Group as freeing him up to reach audiences outside of just the automotive industry and to relate his methods to everyone, no matter their position in life.

Cardone Real Estate

Cardone Real Estate was started with a small multi-family apartment complex in San Diego, CA. Over the course of the next year and half it quickly expanded to more than 500 multi-family apartment units in San Diego and Texas. Cardone Real Estate sold those properties and quickly bought 2000 units in Tuscon, AZ. The company still holds many apartment units and shopping centers in San Diego.

Brownback Amendment

The Brownback Amendment was an amendment that was being passed to protect the financial branches of an automobile dealership. Cardone answers why he supported this Amendment in an interview:

Before I talk about the Brownback Amendment, I need to talk about the Bank Reform. Congress right now is pushing on this Bank Reform as a result of what happened in the 2008 economic meltdown. That meltdown was caused by Wall Street, mortgage back securities, derivatives, and home mortgages being made to too many people who didn’t qualify. That has absolutely nothing to do with automobile dealers.

The Brownback Amendment basically says “keep car dealers out of this Bank Reform thing.” The Bank Reform should not include one of the three legs that a car dealer offers a customer. Those legs are sales, service and finance. The finance department of a car dealership is really there for the consumer and it makes banks and credit unions competitive. The finance department of a car dealership should not be included in this bank reform. If there’s going to be reform, it should be about reforming that which caused the economic crisis.

Automobile dealers do not sell homes, they don’t acquire mortgages for homes, they sell automobiles and they provide 0%, .9%, 1.9% [etc.] financing. They can get money from your bank cheaper than you can get money from your own bank. If they don’t have these choices consumers would end up with fewer choices and higher interest rate. So I supported it because car dealers, regardless of whether they’re my clients or not, provide:

1. [A] tremendous amount of jobs in the U.S.

2. Every city, county, and state depends on car dealerships for the tax revenue and at the end of the day, car dealers didn’t have anything to do with the banking problems.

Books

Cardone is the author of 3 books: Sell To Survive (2008), The Closer's Survival Guide (2009), and is most current book If You're Not First You're Last (released June 1, 2010).  If You're Not First, You're Last immediately hit The New York Times and The Wall Street Journals Best Seller List and made #1 on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles.

Sell to Survive — Grant Cardone's first book. In this book, Cardone advocates that selling is the only way for an individual or business to prosper when times are tough. He discusses specific strategies for people to employ in order to improve at selling. The Closer’s Survival Guide — Grant Cardone’s second book. This book talks about the specific point in the sales process called “The Close.” Most people know this as the point where the contract is actually worked on and discussed. In the first part of the book, Grant talks about the importance of knowing what to do during the close, and the second part of the book focuses on various “closing” strategies. If You’re Not First, You’re Last — Grant Cardone’s third book. This book was on the NY Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller’s list. Cardone discusses specific strategies of how to make sure someone is the first in their market and customer's minds.

Audio Programs

Sell to Survive — The audio book program of Sell to Survive

The Closer’s Survival Guide — The audio book program of The Closer’s Survival Guide

Rules of Success on CD — Grant Cardone’s personal rules of success. He talks about what it takes to be successful and then gives strategies for the listener to utilize. He also provides many examples of how he has used these rules in his personal life to achieve his success.

85 Closes — 85 of Cardone’s closing methods. First the exact “closes” are given then an explanation of why they work and when they should be used.

Control Without Confrontation — This program is aimed more towards the automotive sales industry. It speaks about making clear decisions to maintain a positive attitude and how to walk through a sales process from beginning to end with control of the situation but not pressuring the customer.

Grant Cardone Live — This is live recording of Cardone’s automotive seminar.

Maximizing Every Opportunity — This is a live recording of Cardone’s Maximizing Every Opportunity seminar.

One-A-Day Audio Program — Daily strategies to increase deals. Geared more towards the automotive industry.

DVDs

Rules of Success on DVD — Set of six DVDs of Grant Cardone talking about his personal rules of success. He talks about what it takes to be successful and then gives strategies for the viewer to utilize. He also provides many examples of how he has used these rules in his personal life to achieve his success.

One-A-Day Program — Videos of daily strategies to improving attitude and sales.

Seminars

Selling in the 1990s — One of Cardone’s first seminars. Cardone talked about how the automobile industry was changing.

Selling in the 21st Century — Cardone talking about how sales were shifting and changing from the old approaches and processes, especially in regards to the internet, social networking, and information being available everywhere. This seminar addresses how sales people have to adapt to more informed customers to be able to still make the sale.

Sell to Survive — The importance that selling has to anyone. This seminar is for all business people and entrepreneurs.

The Closer’s Seminar — This seminar is on how to go through the final stage of the sales process.

Maximizing Every Opportunity — Cardone talks about how to get in front of as many people as you can. It’s about prospecting and lead generation and how to get your product or services to those people.

Media appearances

Grant Cardone is a regular contributor on Fox News and an established writer for Business Week and The Huffington Post. Cardone's work has also been covered by CNBC, CNN, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and over 700 radio shows nationwide.  He was recently featured on Joan Rivers' Show, How Did You Get So Rich, in June 2010. A few clips of Grant’s media appearances can be found at http://www.grantcardone.com/news.html