How I Invest with David Weisburd
E315: Why Quantity Beats Quality (Why Van Gogh Proves It)
02 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main premise of Grant Cardone's 10X Rule?
This idea that quality is senior to quantity is wrong. Quantity is senior to the quality. It's so arrogant to think that anybody's going to get one quality painting. I don't know how many pieces Van Gogh did. I think he only sold one piece his whole life. He did hundreds and hundreds of pieces. When we first started doing social media, I was 52 years old. This is 2012. I saw the internet.
I saw social media and I'm like, oh my God, dude, this is, this is, I'm going to get known.
Chapter 2: How did Van Gogh's quantity of work influence success?
He joins me now. He's the international sales expert and the author of the 10X rule, the only difference between... I told my wife, she was an actress. She came back from an audition one day and she was crying. She's like, oh, it was terrible. It was terrible. I'm like, baby, I'm gonna make you famous. I discovered YouTube today.
and we're gonna get millions and millions of people to know our name, and you'll never have to do another audition. I didn't see the quality first. We would take a phone, turn it sideways, no lighting. We didn't have the little O-rings. We didn't have Zoom calls. We didn't have setups, dude, nothing. I had an iPhone 4 or something, just one video at a time. I still have that first video up there.
I think it had like 85 views over like 13 years. We do this 3-3-2 rule. You call me today, you're interested. I'm calling you three times today, three times tomorrow, and two times on the third day. We know that formula.
Chapter 3: What strategies did Grant use to dominate social media marketing?
Now you're going to be like, oh my God, bro, don't call me eight times. Yeah, I'm going to call you eight times. How did you become such a dominant force? I became that because I was terrified to be ignored. You created the 10X rule, which says that people underestimate by 10X what it takes to succeed. Why do you think people so systematically underestimate how hard it is to succeed?
If you underestimate the initial goal, you're going to underestimate how hard it's going to be. Nobody would ever write a business plan and include COVID. You know, you wouldn't write a business plan and include madami raising property taxes in New York City. But I just I was just buying an apartment complex there back in November.
And then we're going to end up with a new mayor that says we're going to raise property taxes on everybody. Or you go to California and they're going to, you know, raise a wealth tax and drive billionaires. Who would include that in a business plan? You would never do that because if you did all that, you would never do anything.
So I think the reason people underestimate how hard it's gonna be and how much work it's gonna take is because they go in idealistically saying, I'm gonna call 10 people, Half of them are going to buy from me. Or maybe David, the business is a trillion dollar industry and I'm going to get 1% of it because it seems like such a tiny number and you're going to get rich.
That's not how it's going to work. You're probably going to get 0.00001% of that industry. And the people simply underestimate. So the 10X rule was basically like whatever you think, and this is an arbitrary, by the way, completely made up. It's not science. A 10X rule sounds a lot better than the 1,000X rule, but it's probably more like 1,000 times.
If you think you need to call on 10 people, you probably ought to multiply it times 10, and it's going to be 100. If you think it's going to be 100, 10X it, it's going to be 1,000. It's going to be harder, and it's going to be better than you ever imagined, by the way. That's the upside of the 10X rule.
Whatever you think, your dream, when you hit your dream, if it's a real dream, if it's really, really impactful, not only will it be 10 times harder, but it's going to be 10 times better than you thought. Is this because the schooling system doesn't prepare you? Is it lack of role models?
What specifically creates this gulf between how much people think they need to do and how much they actually do? You have a seven-time better chance of becoming a millionaire in America than you do of having abs. I happen to have both. It's because people underestimate everything, all the way from our schooling, our parents. We go to school for 12 years. By the way, that was dumb.
We had to check off our little test and get our little A. And then you think you're going to go into the marketplace and be a success. You're not. They're not even teaching success there. There's no classes on examples of billionaires. Why isn't there?
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Chapter 4: Why do people underestimate the effort required for success?
You know, catch me on a public flight going across, you know, flying from Miami to Dubai. I'm going to sit up there. I'm probably not going to talk to anybody for 11 hours. So I think that school is just not teaching people how hard it can be. And this is the problem in America, too. Americans are entitled people. And you see it across the spectrum.
That's why immigrants do so well in this country. A guy comes here and just scorches America, just like does so well because he's so hungry, one. And number two, and probably his superpower is he has no issues with entitlement. He thinks he deserves nothing. where Americans take for granted almost everything.
They take for granted a 40 hour work week, air condition, heaters, a car, a garage, days off, President's Day, Christmas, a bonus at Christmas. It's so much bullshit that we take for granted in this country that has made us lazy. And then we pass that on to our kids. You know, why aren't kids going to school on Saturdays and Sundays and getting out in eight years rather than 12? They should.
I homeschooled both my kids. My first kid was out of high school just at her 15th birthday. To play devil's advocate, these skills like extroversion, dealing with the rejection, could they really be taught in the classroom? 100% they can be taught. You know, here's a phone. Here's a phone. Raise money for the school. We're raising money for the football team. Start calling.
Yeah, you can teach rejection. Most painful thing you'll ever learn in your life, by the way, is somebody not answering the phone. Forget them hanging up on you. Forget them not saying, never call me again. I've already given enough money, okay? My kid didn't make the football team. Whatever the kid has to handle, that's nothing compared to them simply not picking up the phone and being ignored.
But these are the kind of things that kids could be taught. Like we do internships here at Cardone Capital, 10X Health Systems, our education company. And we have people intern. We had two kids in this week from a family in Chicago. And I'm like, pick up the phone, make the call. You got to make 85 phone calls a day.
The most painful thing is going to be not what they tell you, but the fact that they never pick up the phone, never answer your phone call, never call you back. So even just being those practical, David, those practical things, pick up the phone, easy the first time, but on the 12th call and nobody's answered, that phone becomes heavier and heavier.
It becomes more and more difficult to literally just be ignored. And I've heard people say this. I don't like that game because of the rejection. The rejection is not the issue. Being ignored as a human being, as a spiritual entity, as a person trying to add value in the marketplace, being ignored is probably the most painful thing.
And anybody that's ever done a startup and had a great idea, you know what I mean. I've interviewed eight billionaires. You're now the ninth billionaire. And one of the things that they all have in common is they have extreme strengths and they also have extreme weaknesses. Have you found that to be the case in the top performers? I would agree with that with everybody.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of combining Bitcoin with real estate?
I appreciate your curiosity of the subject and what drives a person like curiosity is so important. Look, I just know from marketing, I grew up in a time, I grew up in one without any money. And two, I grew up in a time where the only marketing you could get was to buy ads. There was three channels as newspapers, billboards, maybe, and TV and radio. And I didn't have any money.
If you don't have any money, And the only way to get your message out is to buy an ad or direct mail. You had to fund it, right? So now here, fast forward, here we are today in Instagram and TikTok and you don't need money now to market. But if you market once, if I market today and don't market tomorrow, the world will know me today and forget me tomorrow. So the only way you have to dominate
Sir Hant, you've had him on, Ryan, you've had on the show. All these guys are doing a great job of dominating their space. They're number one. I wrote a book called, If You're Not First, You're Last. And that book is not a, it wasn't a Ricky Bobby book, okay? Which by the way, I didn't know about until I wrote the book and everybody's like, you're knocking off Ricky Bobby.
I'm like, no, I didn't even know who Ricky Bobby was, even though I'm from the South. If You're Not First, You're Last was really about, you have to be first on the mind of the consumer. The consumer does not buy the best product ever. The consumer buys the best known product. The perceived illusion of what's best or what's most known.
Power tends to be assigned to that thing that's most omnipresent. So whatever bank is most omnipresent in your marketplace is the most trusted bank. If it's Wells Fargo and you see them on every street corner, it's the most trusted. If it's the Starbucks, Starbucks does not spend any money in advertising, but they'll have locations that are very concentrated.
So you're going to move every six blocks where there's a lot of free money, a lot of easy money to get, you know, where there's you know, people have an extra $8. You're going to see a Starbucks, a Starbucks, go to New York city. You'll see one on every, you could see one on the corner of every block of one block because they're seeking dominance and omnipresence.
And they're also trying to hit you knowing if you walk another block, you're going to see us again, even though you rejected the first store, the second store, boom, third store, you're buying a coffee that you didn't even need. It's the rule of seven, which is you need to see something seven times before you buy. Unpack that a little bit more, this perceived illusion.
What are the components of that? How did you become such a dominant force? Break that down. Well, I became, if I'm a dominant force, I became that because I was terrified. to be ignored. I was terrified of being ignored, dude. I had these good ideas. My whole career, I come up with these good ideas every like eight or 10 years.
And then you got to push a new idea into the marketplace and nobody wants to hear it. And nobody's going to hear it because nobody's thinking about your great idea. Look, Jesus was ignored. I mean, Muhammad Ali was ignored. Donald Trump was definitely ignored. I mean, the impetus and energy behind Donald Trump today is the fact that he was ignored by the New York elites.
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Chapter 6: How does illiquidity provide an edge in investing?
I have to climb into the tree. I have to yank on the branch. I have to use tremendous amounts of effort to pull that apple out. OK, otherwise, like if I just wait till it falls out of the tree, it's on the ground and I might not be there this weekend to pick it up and then it spoils. So unless you're a monster company, unless you're lucky enough to be connected to the CIA and be meta.
or Amazon, or Tesla, and you got your funding from those guys, okay, well, good for you. I don't have that, okay? Mr. Beast, he can do quality because he's got funding from Silicon Valley. I do not have that. I have no funding, so I have to use more effort. And so that's what I would tell people. I'll get back to the 10X rule.
You're underestimating the amount of resistance you're gonna get in the marketplace. It goes back to this axiom in sales, which is somebody's getting sold on the phone call. Either you're selling them to buy or they're selling you why they shouldn't buy. There's a sale made on every call. Even when they don't pick up, nah, I'm not going to take this phone call. That's a sale. A sale was made.
We believe that every customer is qualified. There is no such thing. If you remember the Glenn Ross, these leads are bad. There's no such thing as a lead. There's just leads. And all leads buy something. All leads buy something. And they're going to buy water. They're going to buy food. They might not buy your product, but all leads are buyers.
So there's no such thing as something a buyer not qualified or they don't have the time or they can't make a decision. That's not true. I made a decision to take a breath of air. I took the time to take a breath of air. And like something's being sold at every moment. The person you're talking to is doing something when they hang up with you or don't answer the phone call with you.
I asked Ryan Serhant this very question, which is how long do you follow up? And he said, until you die or until they die. That's right. Yeah. And it better be, it better be when they die because I'm coming back. So if you ask me, you know, I'm like, dude, I'm coming back. So you better hope that you better hope you die because I'm coming back and I'm gonna call you again.
Like we've actually, we have, we have list. We have 7,800,000 people on an email list. We'll make, we'll send out 420 million emails to that list this year. Okay, do the math on that. And we make 8,000 outbound phone calls a day. This is one department in our education business. And so about 18% of our email list, David, unsubscribes every year because of too many emails.
Now what's crazy is, okay, when we analyze the 18% that fell off, 65% of those are our best customers and buy our most expensive products. So you would think without all that data that the people that are unsubscribing or not buying, the truth is the unsubscribed are our best VIP customers. They're just like, dude, I don't need the email anymore.
Oh, by the way, as soon as they go to their Instagram, they're going to see me again. Remember, I was emailing him and he's trying to get away from me for a moment. But then he sees me on Instagram or then he sees me on YouTube or then he sees me on TikTok or sees me on Fox Business or he sees me on David's podcast. but you're not getting away from me, okay?
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Chapter 7: What lessons did Grant learn from raising capital from retail investors?
Mr. Beast has got a multi-billion dollar business, gets billions, billions of views, you know, in a week, like none of this was happening. Okay. So I got a little company in here. I used to work in the automotive industry and one of my mentors, he sold their company. They had, I don't know, about 60 or 70 car dealerships and they got a billion dollars for it. They spent two legacies building it.
I have a company that has no inventory that's probably worth, the multiple companies probably worth 10 or $12 billion today if we put them all together. And I have no inventory, no cars, only two locations, no debt. It's a different game today, man. If people can use AI today in social media and be curious, and surround yourself with great people that believe in anything's possible,
and filter out all the other negativity that's going on right now. All the noise, the amount of noise is crazy. And you haven't been priced out. Inflation's not the boogeyman. The US dollar's not gonna go away. There's never been a better time, David, in my mind for people to get rich, for people to have freedom, and for people to do it their way. Said another way, traditional media is dead.
People sitting around in a boardroom picking who's going to be the next star, that's dead. Media is now democratized. If you could be good, which is extremely difficult because you are competing with everybody, but if you could be good, you capture all the upside that before was captured by a few celebrities. Yeah, 100%. And I would just say that you have to be exceptional.
If you're going to be satisfied with good, you're going to be lumped in with everybody else. And exceptional takes, you know, it probably takes seven days a week and 80 hours a week. It's not gonna be a 40 hour work week. It goes back to this 10X rule. And I just had a guest that wrote me this really nice note, which is like, you're a phenomenal podcaster.
And I turned to my friend and I'm like, I'm a phenomenal recorder of podcasts. Because we're producing five episodes a week and we've been doing this now for half a year. And we realized that the only way, you say be exceptional.
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Chapter 8: What timeless advice would Grant give to his younger self?
Who doesn't want to be exceptional? Everybody wants to be exceptional. Even mediocre people want to be exceptional. But the real advice actually goes back to this 10X rule, which is do more reps, do more, and you will become exceptional. You get quality through quantity.
Now, if you're one of those people that somehow figured out how to get a quality viral video one time, you keep your one viral video and I'll take my 15,000 attempts at video over your one viral video every day. Like if you ask me, hey, Grant, you want one viral video that gets a billion views or you want 15 or 20,000 video? I want the 15 or 20,000 videos, okay?
Do I want 10,000 customers or do I want one customer? One guy to give me a billion dollars or do I want... you know, a hundred thousand people to give me a billion. I want the a hundred thousand people to give me the billion dollars. I want quantity. Okay. Because here's the thing that comes with quantity.
If you do quality, if you just do quality one time, even if let's say it's not quality and you just got lucky one time, dude, you don't have the reps. Okay. If I do something 15,000, now I have the success. I have the billion dollars and I got the 15,000 reps. Like the guy that only got, he got it out of his first score. He does not have that. And he wonders if he was lucky. Okay.
So, so you don't, you don't, you don't want the, you want the self-esteem builder. I mean, the greatest superpower a human being can have is tremendous self-esteem, belief in self, regardless of how you look today or how your hair looks today or your shirt or whatever you like. I believe in me and I don't need to look at this. I don't need to look at my trophies.
I don't need to look at yesterday, have belief in myself. Okay. Those are the people that They're threats, like Elon. Elon is a massive threat, okay? The amount of self-esteem this individual has. Donald Trump, okay, his self-esteem borders on insanity, okay? Because it's like, how does this guy believe he can do this? I don't get it.
And now some of you are going to say narcissism and then you're going to say, oh, he's deluded and whatever, dude, you could turn it to whatever level of mental illness you want to or wrongness or evil or whatever you want to do. But like if you take all that bullshit out and just look at the admiration point, you know, like how does a guy believe in himself? Is he crazy? Maybe, maybe.
But dude, I want some of that crazy, you know? And unfortunately or fortunately, When you get to the top of the food chain of exceptionalism, however you guys define that, Barack Obama was exceptional. He was an exceptional human being, like the way his orator skills, his delivery, his pulling people in. Clinton, unbelievable orator. It's not just Trump.
You could go over the history of Democrats, Republicans, white, brown, male, female, unbelievable orators and delivery people. And Conor McGregor, he's got a lot of problems in his life right now, but unbelievable when he walked in that ring and controlled the UFC. I'm just looking for that greatness piece, not the neurosis part. And I'm like, how can I rob that guy? How can I rob that piece?
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