Host: Natalie. For my viewers that have just clicked on this conversation, what is the reason that you think it's important for them to stay and listen to what we're going to talk about today? and all of the things that you've spent your career understanding.

Natalie: If you are somebody who has really struggled with working hard and putting in the effort and the energy, but you don't actually have wealth to show for it. This conversation is important because wealth should come from hard work on the right set of problems. And so you have to ask yourself the question, what problems do I work on every single day? And whether you're a team member in an organization, whether you're a leader in an organization, a business owner in an organization, you should be able to objectively point at my work here generated this result.

And so if I'm upset with this result, meaning I haven't made the wealth, I haven't created the income that I want, it would make sense that where you're spending your time and the problems that you're solving are not tied to your actual goal of increasing your wealth.

And when it comes to wealth, I do think that we are in a wealth crisis across the globe. I think that there is so much confusion and misunderstanding about financial literacy and what's actually happening with who is making money, how they're making money, what they're spending their time on. And so this conversation I'm very much looking forward to unpacking what are the strategies that people use the 1% for their time, for their investments, for their skills, for their mindset that are just different than 99% of people who can't seem to get ahead and create the wealth that they've always wanted.

Host: And so as you sit here now, what is your business? What's the scale of the business? And uh what does it do?

Natalie: Yeah, over the last six years, I co-founded two businesses that are both nine figures today. One is a management consulting investment firm. It's called Cardone Ventures, and we help small business owners grow and scale their organizations. So, I work with business owners on a daily basis who will be doing $3 million in annual revenue. They want to know, how do I become one of the fewer that is able to have a $5 million a year business or a $10 million a year business? because they really realized that $3 million a year doesn't actually create financial security. And that business was started in 2019.

And then our second business, 10X Health, we purchased a health business back in 2023 and today is helping people all over the world and it's a nine figure business.

Host: So you're on that first business. How many business owners have you worked with?

Natalie: Total business owners that have come through our programs would be over 15,000.

Host: what what are the range of things you're helping them with?

Natalie: Great question. So, there's education. Yeah. There's consulting, there's services, and there's investing. So, think of us like the McKenzie for small businesses. We reverse engineer their current market, what they're doing, what their products, services, offerings are, and we give back to them either in the form of actual services where we will do their marketing for them, we will recruit people for them, we will do their bookkeeping for them. But then we also have a massive events component of our business where we train business owners on how to hire, how to recruit themselves. So they don't need to hire us to do it. I actually prefer it when people don't hire us to do this because I think it's so important for business owners and the leaders inside those teams to actually get the competence in that skill.

If if business owners don't understand how to read a P&L and the importance of a balance sheet, they're always going to abdicate that work to somebody else. And at some point, that is not going to work for them any longer because I don't actually know what that skill is. So, I'm trusting that Steven can come into my business. Steven seems great. I know him from church. I'm just going to let Stephen do this. But, I don't know that Steven only knows how to do this to a $3 million business. And I need it to be a $10 million business. there's no education system that exists for business owners to help them identify that today.

Host: So if I jumped back to 2019, what is the difference like fundamental difference in the principles of how to be successful in business that you know now that you wouldn't have known then? Like what are the glaring principles? I often think that like the further you go down any path, it becomes more and more clear what the like fundamental rules of the game are. And at the very beginning, those are just hypotheses. So, what are like the fundamental things you've learned about what differentiates those 15,000 people that you've interfaced with that are business owners um makes some of them successful and the others unsuccessful?

Natalie: I ultimately think that this comes down to the character of the person that is doing the business. Because if you look at people that you can partner with in business, it is incredibly challenging to make something truly successful. Even if it's the best business model in the world, you figured out marketing, you figured out operations, you can scale it. If the person is a piece of [ __ ] and if the person is not somebody who is ethical and is somebody who's compliant and isn't somebody who wants to win, to me those three things go hand in hand because it to me it doesn't matter what the business model is.

The principles that I thought to be true, many of them have held true over the last six years since 2019. Many of them are still very applicable around standard practices for accounting and how you recruit people. Certain tips and tools help with different platforms that you can use for these things, but for the most part, those things actually haven't changed. But what I've learned painfully over the last 6 years is everything is about the people that you do business with and the partners that you choose and the people that you allow in your inner circle.

And I can watch the most incredible business owner come into our organization. She's wanting to win. She's excited about what the future can look like. She's going to take all of the notes and actually go home and implement those things. But if she has somebody in her life, say it's a spouse, say it's a kid, worse yet it's an employee that she's paying to help her. Like that's the irony. You pay people to help you and yet when they're actually on your team, they do things that detract from your ability to achieve your goals and to reach your potential. That's where I find doesn't matter what the business model is, doesn't matter. You can give all of the books, all of the training, the full playbook to somebody, they're going to fail because either they aren't that person or they've surrounded themselves inside their business with people who will just be stops to them and continually stop their ability to grow and to reach for more, reducing that person's confidence in themselves and their business stays stuck.

Host: If people are the most important thing for long-term success and for business, what are you looking for in people? What makes someone an A player in your view? And how do you how do you filter them out? Because a lot of people go off their vibes and if I've learned anything over the last 10 years is that we're all riddled with our own biases and insecurities. So we end up aiming in a certain direction whether that's for better or for worse. So what's your process of finding exceptional people?

Natalie: I use a three-step interview process. So the three steps for me is a first a cultural interview. I want to understand more so than me trying to get into the technicalities of can they do the work. Are they aligned with our organization? Are they goal oriented? The best question that you can ask somebody inside a business before you hire them, what are their five-year goals and actually get a real answer. I don't really care what skills and experiences you have. If you don't have goals, you're I'm not hiring you.

and then I move straight into a technical interview where I want to get the person as close to the work as possible. So if you're going to be a salesperson, I want to see you make a a sales call. I'm going to give you a list of 50 people to call. I want to listen to you call those people. If you are a graphic designer in our organization, we do not do briefs. We are not the type of people that are going to say you get all of this time to be able to think through this whole process and this whole journey and we're going to give you two weeks to do this. For us, we are turnurning content constantly because that's the world that we live in for the amount of ads that need to be created, presentation decks. It can't take a bunch of time. And so if the person when I do a case study interview and I have them actually make a presentation in front of me says that they need two days to think about this and they can't assemble some form of a presentation or a graphic for an ad. They don't know how to use Adobe or Canva or whatever the platform is, I I can't really hire the person because I know that they don't have that skill.

And then the final one is a core values interview. And for me, our team's ability to demonstrate ahead of time, ahead of joining the organization that they actually understand and are in alignment with our core values is essential.

Host: How do you test someone's core values?

Natalie: Well, I asked them to give me times where they have exemplified the core values that we have and they present it to our leadership team. For the first 100 team members at Cardone Ventures, I listen to every single core values presentation. the person can't demonstrate and actually say, "Oh, I was able to generate x amount of leads and convert them at y percentage." They probably don't know what they're talking about and they're gonna have a really hard time in the environment. And I do believe that this is the business owner's responsibility. You have to own your culture and your environment.

Host: But if someone at home isn't quite clear on their goals, what what should they be doing?

Natalie: I have a three-step methodology for goal setting that I have rolled out to thousands of people. And this three-step framework has really transformed my life because it allows me to create buckets for goals. And the process is called personal goals, professional goals, and financial goals.

And after having over a thousand of these conversations personally where I've interviewed team members and business owners and team members of business owners about their goals, what I can say is I've never found a goal that is outside of those three buckets. But the challenge many people run into is on New Year's Eve, they start to list out all of the a lovely things that they would like to accomplish and who they want to be. And it becomes this very esoteric conversation. Instead of really prioritizing personally, what does success look like? Professionally, what does success look like? Financially, what does success look like? And what would those targets be in one year from now, 3 years from now, and 5 years from now?

Because those three buckets become easy to think about in the short term. One year for most people, super straightforward. They're like, "Oh, I'd like to make an additional $10,000. Maybe I'd like a promotion here." Three years starts to get a little bit more nebulous. And after having over a thousand of these conversations, 5 years for most people they have a hard time thinking with. But the one constant is in 5 years from now, guess what? We're going to be 5 years older. I am 32 years old today. In 5 years from now, for certain, I will be 37 years old. And so, who is Natalie at 37?

Host: Who is she?

Natalie: She's a [ __ ] badass. Natalie is in control of her environment. Natalie is able to make a lot of financial investments that I'm not in the position financially to make today because I want to be able to write a million dollar check to charity just because I can. I'd ideally like that check to be 10 or $50 million.

Host: And when you say PPF, personal, professional, financial, is there any specific way that I should write this down? Is it just do I just think about in 5 years from now, what are my personal, professional, and financial goals? And then I write that down on a piece of paper, for example.

Natalie: Great question. Ideally, personal is at the top, with a bucket for one year, three year, and fiveyear. Then the next is professional, one year, three year, 5 year. Financial one year, three year, five year.

Host: And you know, you use the word badass. What is the mindset of a badass? Like, have you always been like this?

Natalie: I always wanted this, but today I am this. At 20 years old, I was crippled with anxiety and fear about what others thought of me, about this decision that I made to be in a relationship with somebody who was older than me, and thinking that for the rest of my life, somebody was going to think that, oh, she just married her way to the top. She slept her way to success. She's not actually very smart. She's just a gold digger and she took the easy way out. And so 20-year-old me was actually terrified of being in front of people, was terrified of the future judgment that would come if I was successful. Because I think there was a part of me that thought to myself, well, what if I am only successful because I married somebody who is successful?

Host: What changed? What happened? How did you acquire such an aura?

Natalie: I think the aura came from targeting, getting stats that I could prove that let somebody not see me and my life choices, but actually let them see an outcome. So that first outcome was being able to recruit people. I wanted to actually have a stat that I have recruited x amount of people. Therefore, I know how to hire people. I know how to interview them. I know how to onboard them. I know how to create a successful culture because a result shows that. So whether you like me, don't like me, think that it was him, you can't take away the stat. And I became obsessed with not getting things or doing things that took me away from stats.

Host: What would you say to those people from your experience?

Natalie: Go all in on yourself. go all in on that weird thing that you're interested in. If it's scrapbooking, if it's social media, if it's recruiting, if you like reading business books, go allin on that thing. And social media has never created a better time for people to actually create incredible things based off of their own interests and get those things out to the world. So 20-year-old anybody anybody who is 20 years old should say this is what I'm interested in. It is one thing. It is not 12 things. And I'm going to go all in on myself with this thing and become completely obsessed and create my environment around becoming the best at objectively the best at this thing.

Host: Does it matter how I look? I've I've heard you talk about this in a video you made in April where you're talking about seven steps to transforming yourself and you say that you should rebrand your look. Does it matter how I look?

Natalie: I'm a huge believer in the process of be, do, have. It is not have before you actually be that person and you do the things in order to have the stuff or have the the identity or have the whatever it is that you're looking to create the being a professional golfer, the scrapbooking business, the $20 million organization. And so the first step really is becoming that. And if I really want to change what my external environment is, I need to get in those rooms and I need to start to understand what those rooms look like. And the fastest way for me to actually be able to do that, as long as it doesn't compromise my moral code, would be to start to look like, dress like, act like that thing that I want to become.

Host: How important do you think communication is in terms of like the way that you show up here and the way that you talk? Do you think that's important?

Natalie: Of course, communication is the most important thing. Next to being successful, actually, I would say in order to be successful, you have to be able to communicate your ideas and your thoughts and who you are and your point of view.

Host: What are some of the things that you've learned over time that are effective to make people take you seriously to to hear you and to persuade people?

Natalie: The more frameworks somebody has to frame their communication, I think helps them land their point. So there's no shortages of frameworks on the planet. My framework is vision, commitment, execution. I use three steps in every communication that I'm really intentional about and wanting to land. And that three-step framework can be used for getting a promotion. It could be used for laying people off. It could be used to figuring out where you're going to go to dinner that night and persuading your significant other.

So the first step of the framework under VCE is vision. And it's important that vision is first because if you can articulate to somebody the intention and the why behind whatever it is you're communicating, you're going to get much further than just going into tactics. And if it's tactics that you go into, people forget it. People don't remember tactics. They they like the tips, but do they actually implement those things? oftentimes not because it's just tactics. So why is this thing important for the individual?

Host: So give me an example. I'm on your team and you're trying to persuade me to launch a Twitch channel to do live streaming. How how would you go through this framework to accomplish that goal?

Natalie: Card Ventures. Our mission is to help business owners achieve their personal, professional, and financial goals. And we're on a path to impact a million business owners. We've only done business with a handful of thousands. We have a long way to go. And one of the things I was researching is Twitch because our impact could be greatly amplified by us having our message be to this audience to this crowd using Twitch vision commitment.

Commitment. There's two steps. First step, what is my commitment? I will provide you whatever training is the best training to get you set up with an account to get you the knowledge and education of people who are crushing it in the space. introduce you to those contacts in order for you to be able to fully launch this and be responsible for it. Commitment part two. What I'd ask for in return is you take that very seriously and with the contacts that you're going to be meeting, you follow up with them. You ensure that they understand that your intention is to be the best of the best, to learn from their mistakes, but to do this in a way that represents our organization at the highest level possible.

Execution. So, what I see this looking like is we're going to get you an account. I've researched this platform. I know nothing about Twitch, but I've researched this platform, and here are the three people that I'm going to invest $5,000 for you to go and learn from, be mentored by, and over the next 8 weeks, the target has to be we're going to go from zero Twitch subscribers to 10,000 Twitch subscribers. and we will check in every single day in order to remove any roadblocks in order for this to be a successful initiative.

Host: And where do people go wrong here?

Natalie: They start with the execution. They're like, "Oh, we need to be on Twitch." This is what business owners do to their team. They're like, "I came home from this conference. We need to be on Twitch. So, figure out what Twitch is going to look like. Figure out what the plan is. We'll meet back. Talk about it. Just like handle this. I'm super busy. I have to do this thing over here." instead of really tying whatever the thing is that you're asking somebody to why is this important? ... But so often we drop right into execution without first getting the commitment from the other person that they're even interested. And then we wait 4 weeks or 8 weeks or 12 weeks thinking something is happening when it is not happening. and we lose time, momentum, excitement, enthusiasm about growing and our confidence in people that we can actually trust them goes down.

Host: You talk about mastering your calendar as well being central to transformation. Why is why is this so important and what does that mean?

Natalie: Well, if you want anything in life, you actually have to spend time to get that thing. things don't just magically manifest into people's lives despite what the internet tells you. So, in order for me to have the relationship that I want to have, I actually have to invest time with my significant other. ... And so your calendar is a reflection and a representation of what you find to be important and is in alignment or out of alignment with the goals that you have every single day. So if I have zero time being spent on generating revenue inside my business, it shouldn't surprise me at the end of the year that I'm doing the same amount of revenue that I did last year. Why? I spent zero time on the one thing aka revenue generation in order for it to grow.

Host: What about hard work in this equation?

Natalie: Working hard is the most important thing. You cannot get to where you want to go if it's truly something that is unusual or out of the ordinary without working hard. And you could try to hack it. ... I've met those people and those people have crippling fear and anxiety because they don't actually know what their place is and they don't know they didn't do what was required to have the thing. So going back to like be do have ... And when you are able in life to have things that you want because you did it in the right order, you don't have this anxiousness, you don't have this anxiety, you don't have this worry or fear that someone's going to take it from you. It's all going to come crashing down because you know that you could redo it.

Host: So, how hard do you work? If we look at an average week, why are you smiling?

Natalie: I'm never not working. So, however many hours are in a day, everything in my life is optimized to the work that I do. Every single thing. Because the work that I do is important to me. And I'm in a phase of my life where I really do believe that the work that I'm doing can change my life. It can change others lives. So, it would be selfish of me to not spend every minute thinking about what I can do in order to help move the work that I do that I'm passionate about.

Host: Burnout then in your view, why do people say, do you know, I was doing this thing and I got burnt out so I had what is that?

Natalie: and never burnoutinducing though and I think that that's a misconception about hard work. I don't know successful people who are still in the game who are burnt out by a long day. ... My business partner Grant Cardone who I am obsessed with and that was one of the greatest partnerships I could have ever done in my entire life. He says, "You're not a candle. You can't burn out. A human being cannot burn out because you are not a candle. So, can you feel moments of pressure, stress? Yes. I don't take any of those moments as being a bad thing. ... and you only really get burnt out if you don't see how the sacrifices that you're making are actually going to lead you to the six-pack.

Host: What matters more being in your view being happy and content with your life or being successful even if it comes at the cost of contentment?

Natalie: They are the same thing. They're not different. I do not find success and happiness uh on two polar opposites. I am happy when I create things and when I can see in the physical universe that I've done something that I wanted to do whether that's driving revenue, hiring people, helping a business owner, that is when I I am the happiest when I am doing the things that are part of becoming successful.

Host: So if Sarah who's scrolling on Netflix is is content and happy,

Natalie: she's not content or happy though.

Host: How do you know?

Natalie: Because what is she watching? Is she watching Selling Sunset and watching other people live their lives and touring these gorgeous homes and having these fancy things that Sarah would would love to have? If she really thought she could have those things, if she really actually believed that for a second and these are the steps that are part of getting there, I do believe that she would choose actually having it versus watching it. ... I think that there is a deep sense of insecurity and lack of contentment that's guised as I'm happy and that's guised as or covered of it's almost like a a facade. I'm going to say that I'm happy. But the realities of our economy and the realities of her financial situation create dependencies for Sarah. It creates dependencies and with those dependencies what I found is that the things that you are dependent upon at some level you will end up resenting.

Host: What would you say they should do to to earn people's respect?

Natalie: The first thing somebody has to do in order to earn respect is to decide that they would rather be respected than liked. That trade-off is made too often. We're in a situation when the right respectful thing to do is unlikable. We don't choose the right respectable thing to do. We prioritize being liked.

And so when you make that decision to be respected and to not prioritize what everybody thinks about you, you can then transition into the second step which is you have to get stats in the area that you want respect in. ... What is the area of your expertise that is undeniable? It's proof. It exists in the physical universe. It's not just because you had an idea or you think you can be an entrepreneur or you'd like to be someone who gives people relationship advice. I'm sorry, but if you're not in a relationship and you don't have a stat of being able to have a good relationship and you can't have a spouse that's like, "Wow, this person's great. I love being around this person." You probably shouldn't be giving that advice. And that's why you don't have respect in that area.

Host: If I'm thinking of starting a business in 2025, you know, you've spoken to thousands and thousands and thousands of business owners online, probably many millions of business owners. When we think about that initial period of like coming up with the idea and picking what to work on. Is there any advice you would give people based on the success and failure you've seen about what they should aim at, what they should work on, especially in the context of like 2025 when so much in the world is changing so quickly?

Natalie: If they could use the frame, if any business owner or potential business owner could think about starting a business from the standpoint of where is there the greatest chance for me to be successful, that is the best frame to use. Unfortunately, most do not use that frame and they base it off of their existing experience and the skills that they have. If it was not based off of existing experience or skills that somebody has, I think great AI is going to be the great leveler because nobody has a lot of experience in AI.

And so if I was starting a business in 2025, I would absolutely look at how do I help business owners who have an infinite budget for things that actually work to make them more money solve problems that are real to them. And the problems that are real to the 35 million business owners in the United States of America is that they don't know how to use AI. they are terrified of AI and they're going to either put their head in the sand or assume that somebody who is young is going to create the solution for them when somebody instead who is experienced could have a eight maybe even a nine figure business over the course of the next 18 to 24 months really figuring out how to help solve these problems because it makes the business owner to that business incredibly sticky.

But I'm also very excited about service-based businesses, roofers, plumbers, electricians, HVAC, all of those businesses. The core of the business doesn't get disrupted by AI until robots. But those business operations are ripe for somebody to come in, I don't care if you're 15 years old or if you're 50 years old, and get paid tens of thousands of dollars per client to implement very simple solutions that really do solve problems for those businesses using AI.

Host: so many small business owners will come up to me and say that they are they won't say it like this but what they're describing is that they're a bottleneck in their own business. They're at maybe I don't know a million in revenue. ... what would you what do you say to those people when you've encountered them in your your company?

Natalie: Welcome to being an entrepreneur. This is not a unique set of challenges. This is an expected set of challenges. The statistics show that the challenges that business owners face at that break point of taking what they are doing that is working and transitioning that to having other people help them is part of the process. And so there is nothing wrong with this business owner. It's just that they don't technically know how to train somebody to do what they do well that then allows the business owner to focus on the business owner's primary role. And that primary role should be to generate revenue.

And what is that skill? What is the core skill there? It's a tactical skill. And the skill is opening up their calendar, looking at what they do every single day, duplicating through process creation what it is that they do that makes them a special snowflake in their mind. Because every business owner thinks that they are the only person that can talk to their customer. ... they create those conditions instead of saying, "No, I'm going to objectively look at where I spend my time, and out of all of the things that I do across a 50-hour work week, there are specific things that are not the highest value for me to continue to do, but I would have to train somebody how to do that thing flawlessly."

I like to call this the four M. Model, mimic, master, multiply. The business owner can first create the model of what they are doing today that's generating the $800,000 of revenue in their plumbing business. I take a model. I have the model. This is what we are doing for email marketing inside our business. Then I move into seeing if they can mimic what is the behavior to then move into mastering it. And once somebody is at mastering something inside a plumbing business for $800,000 a year that it's generating, they can then start to tweak and add things and and maybe we're going to also try one other thing. ... At which point when a team member can go through those first three M's, model, mimic, master, then they're in a position to multiply their role.

Host: Earlier on, you mentioned um this this phrase which I've not heard before and it was just before we started recording you talked about a woman's wealth transfer. ... What is this?

Natalie: The women's wealth transfer. between 2025 and 2030 looks like just these are US stats 10 trillion dollars are in the hands of women right now and between now and 2030 that number is going to go up to $30 trillion. So this wealth is going to balloon. And when you think about the implications of how this wealth transfer happens, it's not just cash that is given to women all of the sudden because they're making more money. There's a transition because of differences in life expectancy in partners. A man and a woman, there's about a on average men are going to die first. Yep. And it's about five and a half, six years. So women are left with assets, not cash, like homes, businesses, portfolios, investments, bank accounts that often times they were left out of the conversation with the financial adviser. And they don't actually know how to operationalize, how to manage

But women today feel less financially able due to content creation. There was recent study done by a company called Elvest where they analyze the amount of manifestation content on the internet created by women creators. There's 12 times as much manifestation content from women creators as there is investing and equity content. Or 70% of women feel more overwhelmed with financial information after consuming the content because it's a tip or trick or hack that is being shared instead of a real system and process

Host: What is the edge of the future in your view? What is the edge? What is the skill I should double down on that the robots and AI aren't going to steal from me?

Natalie: I think the only skill that we can actually double down on in a world of AI is the skill of learning and adapting because we cannot predict what the world is going to look like in 2040. We do not know what robots are or aren't going to be capable of. ... And so the only hedge that somebody can have is the ability to adapt and learn.

And what AI should be used for with every individual is the ability to learn. Acknowledge what you don't know. That is the greatest strength somebody has. Really be comfortable saying, "I do not know how to read a P&L. I don't know how to read this legal contract. I don't know anything about AI and what I've heard LLM. Uh I don't really know what it is or agentic. What's the difference?" And be able to convince yourself why that is the most important skill for you to push past that barrier of learning something new. That is so uncomfortable because the the names are new and you feel like a freaking idiot and then you think everybody is smarter than you and that you're just some fraud. To push back on that and to have some resilience through it to say, I'm going to adapt through this. I'm going to get to the other side and learn so that I concretely can have confidence that I can change in any environment based off of what's needed of me in that environment and I will add value to that environment regardless of whatever the external circumstances are. That is the only choice. There is no alternative choice.

Host: Are you scared about AI?

Natalie: I'm not scared at all. I'm pumped. As you can tell, I'm really excited because I used to feel dumb. I used to feel like there were things that these smart people knew that I didn't know. And my entire outlook on life changed a handful of years ago when this got launched because AI has taught me in two years what I would have had to go to school for and would have had to get a degree in still to just find out that most people who went to school for those things and had degrees in them missed something critical and important. And so for me, and I think people like me, and I don't think there's anything particularly special about who I categorize as people like me, it is a unprecedented time to lean into this reference of information that can specifically tutor you on what you don't know, to actually equip you.