The latest episode of 'Undercover Billionaire' saw Grant Cardone, Monique Idlett and Elaine Culotti dive headfirst into their respective business plans, hoping to come out on top. While Culotti scored her first big investment, Idlett has begun her round of angel investing, open to friends and family.
While the ladies on the show are ready and raring to go when it comes to their new ventures, Cardone has been falling behind, since he had to leave Pueblo on account of Covid-19 and then later ended up contracting the disease himself. Although under quarantine, this did not stop him from piecing together three unique business plans to pitch to his key investor and business partner, Matt Smith.
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While in quarantine, Cardone was restless and unnerved, making it plenty clear, that for him, business has always been about going out there and networking in order to make money and not sitting behind a screen like he currently was. It's this monologue that led him to open up about how he became this version of himself, which is vastly different from the man he was when he was younger. A lot of this had to do with his father and the way his mother raised him.
Here's what we learned about the Cardone family.
Who were Grant's parents?
Cardone has always been fairly candid about his struggles; his childhood is a topic he spoke about extensively in his book 'Be Obsessed or Be Average.' Cardone's parents Curtis Louis and Concetta Neil Cardone are both children of Italian immigrants, who came to the USA in the early 1900s. Curtis Louis was the first from his family to go to college. In fact, Grant attributes his drive for success to his father, seeing that Curtis Louis had the same hunger and passion for success that his son had.
He was also an entrepreneur. He started his own grocery store and a life insurance company. He even went on to become a licensed stockbroker. The Cardone had five children together. In fact, Grant has a twin brother named Gary. Although a first-generation immigrant, Curtis Louis was able to buy his family a beautiful house by a lake, in a nice neighborhood. However, a sudden heart attack left the family and a young Grant without a father that the age of 10.
The family was forced to sell their home and move into a much smaller one. Seeing that her husband had always been the provider, Concetta found herself in a role that was unfamiliar to her and children to care for. Her style of parenting, which dealt heavily with the fear of scarcity would later go on to define a lot of Grant's attitude. Concetta resolved to various means to keep her family afloat and feed, something Grant would later refer to as a 'middle-class mentality'.
He has never let his failures define him
However, just when things seemed to be settling down and working out for the family, 10 years after his father's death, Grant's older brother, Curtis Cardone, passed away at the young age of 25. He revealed that his brother went to release the pressure on a gas valve and the pressure hit him; his brother died instantly.
The family went from finally achieving some form of stability to square one all over again. It's around this time that Grant began abusing drugs, at the young age of 16, right up until he was 25. At 23, he began working at a car dealership, but the job was a dead-end one, due to his increasing personal issues. When Grant showed up to his mother's home slurring, she gave him an ultimatum: "Don’t come around here until you get your life together."
It's then that Cardone finally checked into rehab.
Cardone was in rehab for a month — 29 days to be exact — seeing that his insurance ran out. His then counselor told him that he wouldn't make it on the outside world. While those words would have set up most people for failure, they proved to be a turning point for Grant. As he mentions in his book and a LinkedIn article, he decided to use his 'addictive personality' for good.
It's at this point in Grant's life that he began to seek opportunities and challenges to focus his energy towards, refusing to settle for mediocrity and not allowing himself to be defined by his past mistakes. It's the version of Grant Cardone we know today and the one we see fighting despite all the odd on ' Undercover Billionaire'.
This episode, in particular, did seem to bring back a few of those rather unpleasant memories for Grant, but he was determined to work through them and get back on his feet. With three unique ideas, a marketing agency, a health food franchise and a real estate deal, Grant was ready to pitch these ideas to Matt Smith, who welcomed his infectious energy enthusiastically. We can't wait to see Grant kick-start his businesses.
'Undercover Billionaire' will now air exclusively on Discovery+. New episodes stream every Wednesday.
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