Adam Torres and Sheri Hamilton discuss the Grant Cardone Foundation.
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Show Notes:
Rick Ross & Fat Joe join Grant Cardone Foundation during their inaugural celebrity cruise on the Ritz Carlton Yacht Collection December 6 -11th, 2024. In this episode, Adam Torres and Sheri Hamilton, COO at Grant Cardone Enterprises / Grant Cardone Foundation, explore the inaugural cruise and how the Grant Cardone Foundation is focused on making an impact.
About Grant Cardone Enterprises / Grant Cardone Foundation
Built by the number-one sales trainer in the world, Cardone Training Technologies has become one of the most trusted names in the sales industry. For over thirty years, Grant Cardone has helped companies expand sales, increase transaction profitability, and reduce turnover all by disrupting the status quo by implementing his proven, industry-leading processes, through management, and training technology.
Founded and led by CEO, Grant Cardone, a New York Times bestselling author, international social media influencer, renowned speaker, trainer, and coach to fortune 500 companies as well as a real estate mogul, Cardone Training Technologies takes a cutting-edge, disruptive approach to sales, marketing, social media and consulting to give businesses an opportunity to increase their revenue and expand their market share.
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 is a very special episode. We have Sherry Hamilton on the line and she’s the COO over at Grant Cardone Enterprises and Grant Cardone Foundation.
Sherry, welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. Thank you so much for having me on. All right. so we got a big topic today. So I guess we’ll, we’ll kind of back into this, but the inaugural Celebrity Cruise on the Ritz Carlton Yacht Collection is coming up for the Grant Cardone Foundation. I guess first off, congrats.
That’s a big deal. Are you looking forward to the cruise? I definitely am looking forward to it. We have not done something of this magnitude and scale before. We have done a gala in the past, but this is really next level and we are super excited about it. Absolutely amazing. And I guess just to take a step back here, many people, of course, have heard of Grant Cardone and many of the business side of things that he does in real estate or otherwise, but not everybody’s familiar with the Grant Cardone Foundation.
So maybe first just talk a little bit about the foundation. Absolutely. It’s one of my greatest pleasures to be a part of this. People probably know, , if they follow Grant, that his dad passed away when he was just 10 years old, and Grant will tell you, he’ll be the first one to say he went down a completely wrong path of trouble and drugs, and it took him until the age of 25 to To come back from that and to really understand that he needed to buckle down, he needed to understand how to be productive, how to make money.
And once he did that, he really looked back and he said, you know, I wish I had someone. Somebody, an uncle or someone that would have said to me, Hey, Grant, this is the way that you do it. This is the way that you relate to people. This is the way you grow up and have respect for yourself. This is how you earn a living.
This is how money works. And that is why now that he has become a self made person of magnitude in the world, he said, you know what? I want to create a foundation so that people who are finding themselves, kids that are finding themselves without fathers or without a father figure, some of these at risk kids have parents and they are not the best examples even.
But the problem is, when you’re in that situation, and you’re in a place where you don’t have an example, you don’t know what’s even possible. If you were to apply yourself, you wouldn’t even know where to begin. Yeah. And that is what the Grant Cardone Foundation is about. Does we go into at risk communities and we find those children who need to just have a money, financial literacy mindset shift, and they need to see what’s possible and.
It’s just one of our greatest pleasures to see the look , in a young person’s face when they come to this, they come to this place and they go, wow, it’s a complete shift and , it’s a beautiful thing. Wow, that’s amazing. that’s one of the reasons why I was excited to pick up this story is because I wasn’t quite aware of the work that was being done.
And I just think it’s important, really, like, at the end of the day, like, making sure that some of the individuals that are, , underserved, whether it’s by society, by circumstance, by whatever, however, it got to that situation, to be able to have a foundation like this, that’s going into health is amazing.
Can you give like maybe some examples of the work that’s been done in the past just to give the audience just kind of like a flavor for what this means? Absolutely. We’ve reached over 300, 000 kids just in South Africa. Yeah. That’s amazing. Just South Africa. So we have , a very cool partnership down there with a company called Labit, and they help teach entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and mindset, exactly what, what we have in our curriculum, and we partnered up with them to start something called the 10x hub.
And , these students would go into the hub, you know, some of them don’t have even cars, some of them don’t have access to computers. And so the 10x hub is a very beautiful thing where we had given seed money to those who wanted to start businesses. We have one that is a food business, for example, cumin and cords.
And one who is a they do hair, hairstyling and nails, and these young people come in with these ideas and no way to achieve them. So they get , the education on how to be an entrepreneur. And then we provide seed money to those who. Qualify through various steps and competitions. And that’s just one of our programs.
We have something called the 10X Kids Pitch Off, and we have several organizations around the country Seeds of Fortune in LA, Tumani, DC, and they also teach our curriculum, which is 10X Kids and the 10X Kids book, the 10X Kids online program. Then , they run a pitch off contest. They teach them about business.
They teach them how to write a business plan. And then these kids compete locally. And the top ten finalists, we fly them in with their chaperones. And they get to stay in a hotel. Some get to ride in a plane for the first time. And they come into our classroom and we judge. That’s The final 10, and then we award seed money to the winners.
Can you imagine being one of those kids who are participating like at that age, right? Like I’m trying to put myself in their shoes and like, this is life changing. It’s life changing. Adam, it is unbelievable. You know, , we have them in the classroom and they are up there and they are nervous, and they are, we always, I to, I’ll be nervous up there, Sherry.
We all get nervous. And these are kids, this is life . It’s amazing, right? These, and they’re like, what is this place? It’s the 10 X universe. It’s this classroom. It’s we have 227 staff members here in our universe. It’s just here in Aventura. And so they get to see all of our staff and , it’s just a mind boggling experience.
And they go up there and let me tell you that if you were a judge, which by the way, we should talk about having you down at the next one, but when you’re a judge in those things and we have whole. Process that we go through to judge their presentations and the viability and you can see that they put their heart and soul into this.
And it could be anything. It could be babysitting. It could be playground. It could be. We had these guys that one day pitched cookware. Wow. These pitch cookware because they had invented this copper cookware and let me tell you, I wanted to set a cookware at the end of that thing. And I love it. And these guys are Beautiful, beautiful people.
And it makes me so proud to be able at the end of the day to say yes, your dream means something. It’s workable. It’s viable. And here is some seed money and go get it. The emotion that comes off these kids when they are holding, you know, those big publisher clearinghouse checks, we print them out real big for them.
And we’ve got the pictures of them with their checks. They are so proud and so thankful. And we’re grateful for our partnership organizations. There’s over 67 partnership groups like Tumani and Big Brothers, Big Sisters and 5, 000 Role Models. And they are reaching, they’re already in touch with these kids.
And so they provide that connection. We provide the curriculum and we bring them in. And it’s just a blessing. Beautiful, beautiful experience. Yeah. , and as I said, as I mentioned, like this life changing, I can think about it being from being one of those kids going through that and going through that program.
I know , when I was getting started, so I come from Detroit and in my particular area, when I was growing up, I know I didn’t have access to too many things like business wise. So my parents, they, they, Very smartly and when I was young didn’t give me advice that they didn’t really know about they instead They put me in situations and introduced me to successful business people and got me into the finance world and other things like that And so they so I could think about how much that changed my life growing up And gave me an opportunity to see other things So when, , as you’re describing this, I can tell you from a person that might’ve went through one of those , had this foundation been around back then , when I was young, then know how many business people like Grant when I was growing up.
Reach down to pull me up and to teach me and to give me resources and to give me opportunity really to learn and to succeed or to fail. Right? Like it’s a competition, right? So, so not everybody wins, right? Like , you got there that is winning in itself, but you know, it’s a competition still.
So all the life lessons and things I’ve, I’ve learned along the way in that manner to hear about this and this foundation and the way that it’s been able to, like, I already know like you’re like, , it’s really influence and changing lives on a mass scale like over time and then one of the things that I love about a program like what you’re describing Is that , not just the lives of the people that are there and that are going through it are affected They’re going back to their communities, after competitions like this and giving that knowledge and they’re also now that information’s being disseminated not just to the kids around them, but also to the adults so it becomes Cycle, it’s amazing Oh my gosh, how neat that you went through something like that, and how brilliant are your parents for making sure you got connected.
Wow! I didn’t know,, that, like, don’t have kids yet, but one day, , hopefully I do, and I’ll know. If I don’t know, get them some help, because you don’t know everything, so that was good about that one. That is so important. So important. So Sherry, I want to jump around a little bit here and let’s, let’s circle back to, to this cruise.
So what led to, you mentioned as we kicked off this interview, you mentioned that , you’ve done galas in the past and that , this inaugural celebration here, this is one of the largest for the foundation. So , what brought up the idea of the cruise? Let’s start there. How’d that come about?
It was actually because Mr. Cardone and Mrs. Cardone went on a charity cruise to benefit another organization last year. And there was a ship, and it was called Evrema, and they went on this cruise, and they said, Wow, this is the kind of experience that we want to bring people to, so that we can talk about what we can really accomplish together.
If we get like minded people, you know, just think about a person who will pay A large donation to go on that kind of an experience is a person who really has a philanthropic bent, and they really spend their time enjoying making a difference. And when he got on that ship. And he met the type of person that was on that ship and enjoying that and benefiting another organization.
Yeah. He said, these are the people that can really help scale out this foundation so that, man, we’ve got a lot of people to reach and this is the person, these are the people. So he started to talk to those folks from the RITs and they said, well, we are booked Way in advance. However, they said to him, we’re actually building our newest, most modern, biggest ship right as we speak.
And it will have its inaugural cruise in September, 2024. And we have a date available in December of 2024. So Grant calls me and says, Sherry. We are going to, we are going to buy out the brand new Ritz Carlton ship, and we are going to invite like minded philanthropic people on board, and we are going to do an amazing event for the Grant Cardone Foundation.
Well, I said, Grant, this sounds amazing. Well where is this ship so that I can go and scout it out? Oh, no, it’s not built yet. Okay. Okay, sir. Is this the point where you take a breath? You’re like. I say, well, this sounds amazing. Let me get in touch with the folks at RIT so that I can better understand how we can plan this.
Okay. And so sure enough, we did. And , we have just had the best experience. Of course, when you say the Ritz, you think five star, and this is got a Michelin restaurant on board. This has got celebrity chefs on board. This has got only 224 rooms on this massive, massive, it looks like a city. But, but it’s got, of course, everything’s synonymous with what you think of when you think of RITs, and we are only going to use half of those rooms.
So we are going to have an amazing curated experience for folks that want to come on board and help us with this Grant Cardone Foundation mission. Wow , that’s amazing, first off. And would expect nothing less. And then , you also have some celebrities coming on the ship, too.
I read about Rick Ross and Fat Joe. Like, how are all these partnerships happening? It’s absolutely amazing. We are so fortunate to have Fat Joe and Rick Ross agreeing to come and entertain on the ship. We Do an event annually that is called the 10x growth conference through Cardone training technologies, and it’s a big massive imagine the biggest conference that actually feels like a rock and roll concert Where we have the premier business experts come and we’ve had Usher and we’ve had Kevin Hart and we’ve had John Travolta and we’ve had the President of the United States and we’ve had just, , incredible Arnold Schwarzenegger and, It’s massive names, and we do a massive, huge event where we bring in people who want to improve their businesses, their careers, their lives.
They want to network with like minded people, and that’s how we get These partnerships formed because Fat Joe and Rick Ross have previously performed at our 10X Growth Conference. And so when we decided Mr. Cardone informed me, shall I say, that we are going to buy out this Ritz Carlton ship and we have to have control of it.
Everything perfect. Well, we said, Hey, , let’s call and see , if any of our friends that we’ve made along the way would like to help us with this cause. And that’s how we end up with these amazing entertainers. Yeah, I can see it. at the end of all of this, I know that, of course, we want entertainment.
We want, this experience, which it sounds like it’s going to be just amazing. So that’s the entertainment. , what’s on some of the rest? I see that the dates correct me if I’m off on this, but it’s going to be December 6th through 11th, 2024. So this December 6th through 11th, first of all, am I correct on that?
You are wonderful. And then talk a little bit more about like some of the other things that’ll be happening or some of the program what you can say right now. I know we’re pretty far out. So I’m not holding you to that, , but you’re the CEO. So I know, if anybody knows, you know, do have a little inside scoop.
We’re going to provide some amazing experiences and excursions, of course, and those will be surprises to come, but we are going to be visiting some beautiful Caribbean waters. We’re going to be going down to. San Salvador, we’re going to go to Nassau, we’re going to go to Bimini, and we’re going to sail out of Fort Lauderdale, which is really beautiful in itself.
And along the way, what we thought we would do is to bring in some really savvy business people that can do just a few workshops here and there. Nothing that’s going to interfere with The experience of the cruise itself, because we really want people to just enjoy as well, but we thought, you know, these folks are more than likely also working businesses and we want to provide value to them.
We want to give back to them. 10 times more than what their donation will be. So we want to help them with their business. We’re going to have a very likely Mr. Tim’s story, and we will very likely have Glenn and Mindy Stearns, and we will very likely have. The one and only John Maxwell, and will also, , Grant and Brandon Dawson and Elena Cardone and they will be providing some workshop type experiences for those who want to participate and scale their businesses and really talk about what’s next for them.
In that realm of their lives, because honestly, that’s what allows us and that’s what allows this type of person to be philanthropic. , we can want to be philanthropic as much as anyone else. But if we don’t have the means, then we’re limited. So we are pushing some envelopes here. Nigerian brothers will be coming on board to talk about trading.
And, you know, we want to provide. As much value as possible to these folks that, they could be going off on a cruise on their own. They don’t need to come on our cruise, but they want to help. And this is why we want to do everything we can to help them. Yeah, that’s amazing and it’s a great story and some of the names that you talked about like a Tim story he’s definitely a friend of the show and just some of the other Nigerian brothers like the experts that you’re bringing to the table But then again keeping in mind two people are on a cruise.
They want enjoy that amazing amazing Yacht and enjoy the voyage and everything else. So have zero doubt that it’s going to be an amazing Absolutely amazing experience. And of course, that a lot of good is going to be done through the foundation and all of the case studies and examples that you gave so far.
And then I know it’s just going to, I know what happens when everybody gets a ship like that, then what you thought was big just gets bigger. That energy, those people that come together, that like next thing that 10x becomes, whatever the 10x was, it gets that much bigger into what 10x is going to become for the foundation.
So Sherry, I’m just absolutely thrilled. So I love this idea. Thank you so much, Adam. I so appreciate you having interest in it and talking with me about it. If somebody is listening to this or watching this and they want to learn more about the crews do they do that or how to support the foundation in general?
Very easily, you can go to grantcardone. com forward slash cruise, grantcardone. com forward slash cruise, and you can learn all about what the cruise is, you can secure your cabin there, and if you’d like to learn more about the foundation, it’s very simply grantcardonefoundation. com. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, , we’ll put all those links in the show notes so that you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the listeners, if this is your first time with Mission Matters, this is a daily show each and every day we’re putting out. New content, new thought leaders, bringing you new stories so that you are in the know. If that sounds interesting to you, then don’t forget, hit that subscribe button so that you get the update each and every day.
And Sherry, really appreciate you making some time for us today so that we could bring this to our audience. Again, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Adam. Take care.