Grant Cardone Foundation’s Business Pitch Off Competition

Adam Torres and Philip Farinacci discuss the Grant Cardone Foundation.

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Show Notes: 

Grant Cardone Foundation’s Business Pitch Off Competition supports young entrepreneurs. In this episode,  Adam Torres and Philip Farinacci, Director of Philanthropy at The Grant Cardone Foundation, explore the Grant Cardone Foundation’s pitch competition and prizes awarded. 

About Grant Cardone Foundation

The Grant Cardone Foundation is an international non-profit organization invested in helping youth in their communities reach their full potential. Entrepreneur and best-selling author, Grant Cardone, created the foundation as a result of experiencing the traumatic loss of his father when he was only ten-years-old. Growing up without a father figure in his life affected him emotionally, socially, and academically. so he has made it his mission to help young adults, who may need life and career guidance, just as he once did. The foundation partners with community organizations, municipal agencies, corporations, and other non-profit entities to help deliver energy and educational resources to kids in need.

Full Unedited Transcript

 Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have on the show, Philip Farinacci, and he’s the director of philanthropy over at the Grant Cardone Foundation.

Phil, welcome to the show. Adam. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. All right, so, so we got a lot to talk about, man. I’m really excited to bring this content to my audience. We’re going to be talking about the Grants Cardone Foundation’s business pitch off competitions that they’re holding and really how they’re helping our youth really in entrepreneurship and otherwise, we’ll get into that and more and talk about the foundation overall, but just to get us kicked off, Phil, we’re going to start this episode with what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute.

So, Phil, at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to elevate the, and the stories of entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do. That’s our mission. Phil, what mission matters to you? So the mission of the Grant Cardone Foundation is to provide financial literacy education to at risk youth.

Specifically those without a father figure. Many of your listeners probably know who Grant Cardone is. You know, he’s a big celebrity now. He’s a real estate investor, salesman. But when he was young, at about 10 years old, he lost his father and he went through 15 years of really immense struggle.

He dealt with drug addiction and some other problems and at 25, thankfully he got his life back on course. And through that time, All he ever wanted was a support system, you know someone to reach out and provide a little bit of help. So what we do at the foundation is we are trying to provide kids that are suffering from similar things that Grant went through provide them with support in a variety of different programs and systems that we have in place.

So that’s truly the mission of the foundation. We get to work with some of the best kids in the world. These are kids who grew up in situations that. They didn’t do anything wrong , to be involved in. They simply were born into them. We’re trying to give them opportunity to just like the rest of us.

Yeah. It’s amazing. And , love the story and great to have you on. And I guess just to get us kicked off here, how did you originally learn about the Grant Cardone foundation? And like, how, how did this opportunity , come your way? Like how did you first get involved? So I’ve been in non profit work for most of my professional career.

I actually worked with kids with intellectual disabilities for many years. And that was very gratifying. It was something that I enjoy doing every day. But you know how life goes. Opportunities come your way and sometimes it’s time to close one chapter and start a new one. So a few months ago I was the Grand Cardone foundation interviewed for this position and really fell in love with not just the work, but just the environment the culture we have a meeting every morning that gets everyone riled up.

I compare it to kind of being in a football locker room before a game. Every morning, nine Oh five, we had that meeting and it really gets you set for the day. So , it’s. Really cool to be a part of the organization. And then I get to do work that I’m still impacting those who are less fortunate.

I love helping people. I love doing the right thing for people and showing these kids that there is so much opportunity out there. Just because they’re surrounded by situations that are not ideal doesn’t mean that they can’t be wildly successful. Yeah, I think it’s amazing. And I know I had Sherry on here in the past, and we were talking about one of the upcoming crews and some other things that were happening for the grant Cardone foundation.

And that’s where I got to learn more about it. And also more about like, and some of the very specific things like the pitch competitions, that are coming up. And I said, Oh my gosh, we gotta get some more people on here. Cause I want more of our audience to know as well.

Yeah. Maybe talk a little bit just before we get into the pitch competition, maybe talk a little bit about, cause , I’ve been through the website. Of course, there’s just some extremely impressive numbers. Talk a little bit more about the education part in general and how the foundation is impacting the lives of, our youth.

Prior to us going to the pitch competition, let’s maybe set the table with just some of the overall work before we focus in on the program, please. Yeah, so we are really lucky that Grant has been doing a lot of the legwork for about 40 years, putting together , these programs and these systems and we get to kind of, ride the coattails of what he’s already created.

And then now I get to provide the same services as Grant. And educational opportunities to at risk kids, right? So we do that through a variety of different programs, one of which is the pitch off, which we’ll get into. But we have our 10 X kids book, which is a kidified version of Grant’s 10 X rule book.

So within that book, it’s , much shorter, it’s a little simpler. There’s area for the kids to write down their goals , and things like that. It’s interactive. We also have a 10 X kids university, which is the online platform for the book. So the kids actually get to go through an interactive online system that teaches them about.

Making money, being successful, having the right friends, things like that. And then we also do mentor workshops. So we work with Title I public schools and charter schools, as well as other foundations that are supporting at risk, underserved communities. And we actually bring those groups into our office in Aventura.

We host them for about a four hour day. We cover the cost of the bus, the transportation related to coming in. And we also provide breakfast and lunch while they’re here. So we try to remove any barrier that could possibly be there as well as making sure that , we’re feeding them because a lot of the kids that we work with.

They don’t get nevermind three square meals. They might not even get one meal a day. So these are kids that are, , some of them are homeless. Some of them are in foster care. Some of them are experiencing food insecurity. And then when they come in, we show them immense success, right?

We want to get them just so involved. And , we walk them through our office. They get to see our sales floor where they hear from our sales people about money that they’re making and success that they’re having. We go to our studio and obviously, , show social media these days is huge. So they get to learn about creating content.

Building a following and then our client relations space, which is kind of the catch all of the organization. And they do just such an excellent job. All three of those areas, talking to the kids, providing insight and, being relatable, right? A lot of the kids , that come in, they don’t feel that they have this chance or this opportunity.

To be successful. But when they hear stories from people that work in our organization that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that tell them the stories of where they came from these are people, not fed with the silver spoon. Many of these people come from communities similar to the kids that are coming through our program.

So when these kids see it, a there’s a twinkle or a sparkle in their eye because they realize in that moment that they can be just as successful. What are some of the age groups for this and , what you’re describing that you’re serving here, like for example, in this program, what are some of the age groups?

Yeah. So we mostly go from about eight to 21 and we try to keep each group within three grade years or four age years, just because obviously if you’re speaking to an eight year old versus an 18 year old, the communication is going to be just a little bit different. So actually today we had a group in we had 30.

Eight to 12 year olds. This would, we were a little bit bigger of a group. And , these are kids, many of them that came over from Haiti to escape what’s going on over there. We donated a 6, 000 to this camp so that these kids could learn English literacy. Cause they’re all Creole speakers.

So part of that donation is we wanted to bring them here to show them what we do to, , teach them about the financial side of things. And they were a beautiful group. They were so incredible. They were so engaged. You could see that they’re really learning the English language. They understood what we were talking about.

10 X concept. It really wasn’t awesome. Awesome day. Yeah, I love it. I love hearing stories like that. And I can tell you, I can attest. Like, hearing a stories about like, when you’re able to get out of your environment, maybe some of the people listening to this may not understand what that is that some people, , they, especially at that age, depending on where they’re from, depending what their parents do depending their socioeconomic status, like they may never even have been.

been in a building like the one that you’re mentioning, Phil, like they may have never seen a new computer or, a bunch of individuals that are working there that are, dressed professionally, like that in itself, the air, like being in full air condition, like maybe other than maybe for some places, a school setting for some, maybe not.

Right. Right. So these are all experiences, even just exiting the bus. , and going to see and walking into a professional building like that inspires people. I can think about when I was, and it was one of the things I was talking about with Sherry, was that where I came from in Detroit, it wasn’t, it was definitely not a nice area.

I didn’t realize that until I was an adult, but when I was growing up, , you’re a kid, you don’t know, but my parents, They did know that and they provided opportunities for me to go into other places and to have internships and to meet others that were successful in business. And that like opened my eyes to like what’s possible.

So when I think about like the lives , that’ll be changed and the things like we have no idea, like, but I can tell you that many years later, Yeah. Like many, many kids that go through those doors are going to remember and relate and be like, man, the first time I ever seen this, the first time I ever did that, or I even heard somebody, you know, look me in the eye and treat me with respect, it may have been in your office and they’ll remember that.

It’s amazing. Absolutely. It’s all about exposure. These kids, they are surrounded oftentimes by, negative situations and when you grow up in those environments, you’re far more likely to suffer from the same things that you’re going through or anxiety, depression and all the other, things that go along with it.

So when they come in here, you’re 100 percent right. Just the exposure, just being around this environment is something that can change lives and does change lives. Okay. Yeah. let’s jump around a bit here. I do want to spend some time on the pitch competitions and how those work. So do you want to start with that one, Phil?

Yes, I could just get right into it. So, our pitch off competitions are modeled similarly to shark tank. You know, most people know the show shark tank person comes up and they present their business ideas. The difference is that we have partner groups that we work with. These are groups that are around the country or local.

So we have the one that’s coming up next week, July 10th, we’ll have seeds of fortune, which is a nonprofit based out of New York that works with girls across the country to educate them on building businesses, as well as going to college for business related degrees. Wow. So yeah, it’s, it’s amazing.

And then what will happen is they have their, Preliminary competitions internally so maybe they’ll have 50 students that start out in their program and they will dwindle that down to 10 and we are the final competition. So they’ll come down. The Grant Cardone Foundation covers all travel related expenses.

So that’s, you know, flights, hotels, travel while they’re here and then we feed them, obviously, while they’re in the office. So they come in, these are girls that may have never been on a plane before, may have never been to their city or state, you know, we talk about experiences, that alone, just flying is an experience, right?

Absolutely. So. So they come in here for a full day. They get in early at 8. 30. They get breakfast. And then they do a tour. They learn about Grant. They meet some of our staff members. And then at about 10, 11 o’clock they get to the pitch competition. Wow. They have about 3 or 4 minutes on stage in front of a panel of really important judges.

People who important to the organization. publicly important internally to our organization coming from a wide variety of areas. So this upcoming pitch off competition, it will include Elena Cardone. Grant’s wife will include Claudia and Hibbert, who is a board member of the Grant Cardone Foundation, as well as a local celebrity.

And he’s known very, very well, , around the world, even a DJ. I re he’s the former DJ for the Miami Heat, so he’s also part of our board. So these 10 students will pitch their businesses, they’ll get feedback from the judges, they’ll answer questions on stage, and then the judges decide who’s taking first, second, and third place.

The importance of that is we do give out seed funding to these students, so they will get money that will go into an account that’s monitored by Seeds of Fortune to ensure that the money is being used for either business related expenses, or Or they can put the money towards scholarship for a college degree if it’s entrepreneurial based.

So that’s the stipulation with that. So at the end, we, commit that we are giving 3, 000 to FirstPlace, 2, 000. to second place and 1000 to third place. And we have a surprise for them when they come up on stage, we increase those numbers just a bit. We, I don’t want to give it away, but we we do make , the very big smiles, we give them , the publishers clearinghouse style checks, the big so it’s a really beautiful experience.

then not only do those three winners get, actual, financial support for their businesses, but all 10 of the competitors for that, day, they get one year to Cardone university, which is something that people pay thousands and thousands of dollars for to access for their businesses.

Oh yeah, no, I can definitely attest that. That’s amazing. So there’s, let me make sure I have this right. are brought in for the competition. We have judges and we have some celebrity judges Shark Tank style and then it narrows down to the three winners, the first, second, and third, each one of those are getting some funding which put some big smiles on their face and when did I miss anything?

I think I got it. Yeah. That is yeah, that’s a good overview. I’m in, this is amazing. And I took a look at the website just, and I saw some of the decks that were on there and I was just so impressed. So two part question on this. What are the age groups usually , for the entrepreneurs that are entering this competition or if it varies, and then what are some of the businesses that you’ve seen in the past that may be stuck out just to give the audience a bit of, breadth of like an idea of what’s actually taking place?

Yeah, so the age groups is going to be your high school age roughly from 15 to 18. Anything before that is probably a little bit intermediate , for what we’re looking with this. , so it’s going to be more high school aged. And then as far as some of the businesses, so some of the winners that we’ve had.

We had a gaming competition company, , esports is huge right now. Oh, yeah it’s one of if not the fastest growing man. I just literally did an interview an hour ago with the ceo of m80 Speaking of esports and esports like they’re amazing. Go ahead continue. I love it. I love you sports So we had two young gentlemen.

They actually pitched together and they won first place They took 10, 000. That’s what we gave them that day. 10, 000. Imagine at 15 years old being handed a check for 10, 000. Man, hand me one right now for 10, 000. Yeah, right. Exactly. I’m not gonna turn that down. Go ahead. So they turned around and they used that to do , their first competition where they rented a gaming area.

They had different gaming stations. They did shirts. They did. Winner prizes, things like that. They had a great time. We also had a mobile nail salon where she actually used that money to file for her LLC, and then she bought all the equipment that’s related to running a nail salon. So that’s something like the nail dryer, the UV light, things like that and she won 5, 000 and she used that money to cover, like I said, LLC filings and then just the related expenses to her business.

We’ve also had a media and film company that won Ian won 10, 000 and he used a lot of that money to get equipment that was appropriate. So he actually bought a drone because he’s really interested in the drone videography. And there’s big money in that. You know, you can turn around and take recordings with those drones, and those are expensive, those drones.

So he got that. He got a camera, really high quality camera that he was able to purchase. And then we also had a mobile babysitting. And learning enrichment kind of program called every child’s garden. , and Janae, she purchased some materials like a Mac book and an iPad, things that were appropriate to help her get that , off the ground.

She also used that money to, to do her LLC filing. These kids are smart. You know, they realize that they can just buy stuff, obviously that’s appropriate for the business. And then once they’re ready to. Sell their product or do what the work is that’s appropriate. They need to have the right filings, the paperwork, the tax, all that stuff’s important and it costs money.

So many of these kids are using that. The seed funding that we’re giving them to do to knock out all those early stage expenses to just get them to the next level. And I want to highlight something for some of the people that are listening that maybe didn’t quite catch this. Like what sounds like, Oh, filing fees or this or that.

And maybe you’ve had, and I’m not saying everyone, but maybe many have had parents along the way that have helped them. And you think, Oh, filing fees, that could be a couple hundred bucks here or there, this for many of the individuals that are participating, like that could be the difference between them ever being able to realize this dream , of launching a business.

They don’t necessarily always have that type of financial support on the back end. So something like getting a Mac book or getting something to actually start creating on, like that could be like that thing that never happens. Am I off on that still? I just want to make sure you’re a hundred percent correct.

We don’t like, I assume like my parents, they weren’t wealthy, but yeah, they would have paid for a laptop if I wanted to start a business, no matter if they had the ability to for sure, but they had the ability to like some of the individuals, like not everybody has that ability. So this is really like getting entrepreneur started on dreams that can happen that maybe would not have been able to like just period.

It’s amazing. No, we take things for granted sometimes a couple hundred bucks here, a couple hundred bucks there,, maybe , to some people , that’s, oh, of course we can do that. These kids that we’re working with, that’s just not the reality. These are kids, we had a young gentleman who came through our program a few months back and he had never been on the highway.

These are kids that we’re working with that have never been out of the city, and when I say city, I’m not saying, you know, Miami, Chicago, New York, I’m saying like a small area of Miami. Right. So they’ve never been out of their few blocks. , and, , highly intelligent, smart kids with motivated personalities that want to build things and have great ideas.

They just don’t have the means to bring it to the forefront. Yeah, it’s amazing. so Phil with some of the time we have left here how do people get involved? How do people get involved with the Grant Cardone foundation, whether it’s a time money, like, like just in general, how do people connect?

How do they get involved? The best place to start is gonna be Grant Cardone foundation.com. Mm-Hmm. that’s gonna have everything you could want as far as information regarding the foundation, whether it be to do a donation or to look at our program, some of the things we’ve supported. So the grant cardone foundation.com is gonna be the best starting point, and then for a direct line of contact info at.

The grant Cardone foundation. com is going to be the best email. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put the links in the show notes so that you can just head right on over and check out the foundation and get involved. Like seriously, like the things that are taking place, especially for those , that want to support entrepreneurial endeavors, I mean you’ll see when you get into the website, you’re going to be like, Holy smokes.

I did not know that this even existed. And when you see it, you will want to support. That being said, again, we’ll put the links there. And , if you’re a new listener and this is your first time connecting with Mission Matters, this is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new entrepreneurs, new organizations, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration that can help you along the way in your journey as well.

Thank you. If you think that’s interesting or sounds exciting, then hit that subscribe button because guess what’s going to happen tomorrow. I said it a daily show. There’s going to be another episode. So I definitely want you to catch that. So again, hit that subscribe or that follow button and Phil, man, thank you again for coming on the show and spreading the word, we’re going to continue to do all we can to spread the word of how these kids are being helped and to support.

So again, thank you for coming on the show. And thank you Adam. I’m really excited to work together and get this stuff blasted out there.