If You’re Not First, You’re Last by Grant Cardone – BOOK REVIEW

Rating 4.5 / 5

My love affair with Grant Cardone continues. This is the second of his books that I have read and whilst it deserves a good rating, there needs to be at least a point differential between this book and Sell of Be Sold. But because he’s Grant, I gave him an extra 0.5 – just for being awesome!

The book was structured like a learning program with questions at the end to ensure you understood what had just been said and would implement the suggestions. I didn’t do the exercises as I was listening on the go but I took a few notes, as always:

Many people don’t finish things they start because:

• They only made a small financial investment so they don’t feel as though they are wasting much by not taking action.
  
• They don’t give themselves deadlines.
  
• They don’t understand something that is being said in a program or disagree with it so much that they get separated from the plan or program that they have set.
  

A sure-fire way to ensure you never get to first place is to compare yourself to losers! That is, people that are less capable than you. You have to take massive action to succeed.

We’re socialized to be average, conformist and not to take grand actions. However, if you want above average success you need to:

• Be unreasonable.
  
• Take extreme action.
  
• Be illogical, i.e. go against the logic of the masses.
  
• Be contrarian – I love this statement because my husband is always saying to me, “Why are you so contrarian?” – I never had an answer to this except to say, I was contrarian before you married me and you still chose to! But now, I’ll add that, “Grant says contrarian is good.” – he’s already getting used to the “Grant says…” statements.
  
  

Grant went on to say, we’re not encouraged to do whatever it takes; society says don’t be too pushy, don’t be too aggressive – so this is what we do, we conform.

More notes:

• Wow! The customer, especially in a recession.
  
• It’s never about the price. 
  
• The second sale in a transaction is key, upsell!
  
• Act hungry. Many people in the West have lost their ability to do this. I agree. It’s so rare to find people with fire in their belly. Real go-getters. 
  
• Aggressively and effectively market yourself. In a downturn UP your marketing budget.
  
• Time x action = advancement / progress
  
•  Most of the middle class ARROGANTLY refuses to take any action that won’t lead to an immediate payment. However, making money usually involves a lot of necessary unpaid tasks before you hit “pay dirt” as Grant calls it. I love that phrase.
  
• Poor people waste time, rich people buy it
  
• Pack your day like a sardine, tight! Really pack it in.
  
• It’s frequently not even about the product: Vincent Van Gogh one of the best artists of all time sold just ONE painting his entire life.
  
• Don’t waste time dwelling on failures or successes; cry or celebrate then move on: FAST! There are more opportunities to be taken advantage of out there.
  

Finally, the placebo effect pretty much proves that what goes on in your mind can have REAL effects and consequences. Thoughts and beliefs massively impact outcomes. So the stories you tell yourself CAN and in fact, DO, become self-fulfilling.

The book concluded by stating that your financial situation is the sum total of the action you took yesterday. Indeed, I have been a firm believer in this kind of thinking for decades: I honestly believe my results at A-level and indeed in university were the sum total of dedication and hard work that I had put in since I was 11.

After a certain point, when we compare ourselves to someone and want to replicate their success don’t look at what they are doing now, look at what they were doing 10 years ago (or even further back) and start doing all that stuff too. Current actions simply reflect the cumulative effect of previous actions: big and small.

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