Grant Cardone Character Should Supercede Talent

Over the weekend I started watching some Grant Cardone videos, particularly one that's sort of a fact "The Apprentice" show called "Whatever It Takes." For 90+ minute episodes, it show showed me a lot of how Grant Cardone treats people and from what I saw, it wasn't good.

Let's get some of the preliminary things out of the way like who is he: He is a Bestselling author and expert on Sales. He also runs his own digital media platform where people can view videos and read articles. He makes lots of speeches and appears on business TV shows quite often. He is a HUGE Scientologist, which wouldn't matter, except that he expects others to live by it's principles and pushes some of their books at times.

Back to the program. The premise of "Whatever it Takes" is for him to hire someone to work as a telemarketer for his business. They would be cold calling businesses trying to sell Cardone University, which allows a company to train their people via the Website instead of sending them in training. I find zero wrong with the product, it could be helpful.

What turned me off was I saw a man who publically humiliated people for entertainment. The reasoning may have seemed sound, but the execution was way off.

First, he would have some guy yelling at them to to get in a line and dump all their content into a bin. Then they would go through their phones looking at pictures and commenting on the pictures of women, and asking about their sexual orientation, and marriage status. Based on information he received from consumer reports, he would then put individuals on blast for defaulting on loans, arrests, and if they had medicine in their bag (this is where the Scientology came in, if you needed it, he didn't want you). He forced a young guy to cut his age appropriate hair because he thought he was too high maintenance and not manly enough (he was a flight attendant).
In one case, a young man had bought a program from Cardone, and was not able to pay for it, so he put him on blast, made him pay the $1500 he owed him, and then sent him on his way.
You would think with all the weeding out that he would find the perfect candidate, but in reality, only 2 people of 8 worked for him, and apparently they didn't make it 90 days.

This brings me to why his character and style is probably the issue. His company has a 90% turnover rate. If you look at some of the videos of how he cold calls, it makes sense. He has three complaints just within the last year on BBB, in which the company's responses are confrontational to say  the least.

An example,
One guy doesn't want them to call or contact and has stated as such, which they are legally required to comply with. Instead they sent him this response:


It's like Snake oil salesmen tactics, and the attitude is coming from the top. Grant Cardone may be a talented salesperson, but that does not mean he, nor his staff, should treat potential employees and clients like trash. It reminds me of the old saying about if you want to know the true character of a person, see how they treat those who can do nothing for them.

Do I have a problem with Cardone's content? No. Some of it is a little outdated, but for his generation, it could be effective. If this show had been my only knowledge of him I would have just wrote him off and let it go, but this is not about his business content, but how he treats people. I don't care how much money you have in the bank, if you treat people badly, you are bankrupt. Please show me the memo where the more money you have in the bank it gives you an automatic pass on character? I think people get blinded by the dollar signs.
In many cases, he humiliated the job seekers, and I think that has more to do with why the majority of people he picked, did not work for him. Of the two who did, they did not last. There is a line from a story I read by Dorothy L Sayers where she states, "A person will suffer a disappointment, but they will not suffer a humiliation."