Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, I take questions from Grant Cardone live from Vegas about entrepreneurialism, building Turning Point USA, my daily routine, honoring the Sabbath, and more. That's at Grant's 10X Conference. You're going to love it.
00:00:46.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:54.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:06.000Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:01:16.000Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:03:32.000I convinced my parents, hey, I'm not sure if I want to go right into college.
00:03:35.000I'd like to take a gap year before I go to college.
00:03:38.000And the idea I had was, hey, I want to start an organization from nothing to try to reach the next generation around first principles of liberty and freedom and that our country is a great nation and is worthy of preserving and protecting.
00:03:51.000Well, one gap year turned into 13 gap years.
00:04:58.000Once you solve a problem, people will give you value.
00:05:00.000And when you solve a problem over a period of time better than somebody else, then you have a market differentiator.
00:05:06.000Well, I saw a very big problem, which was that the nation's youth were dramatically going to the left, that our college campuses were not places of free speech and free dialogue and open discussion.
00:05:18.000And so I decided to start an organization that would address that.
00:05:40.000We experienced the most amazing journey over 13 years, where I have been able to not just make an impact in the culture and politics, but build something of value and of great substance and depth.
00:05:54.000As you mentioned, we have over 1,000 employees at Turning Point.
00:05:57.000We have well over $150 million in revenue between all the different entities.
00:06:03.000We have over 430,000 people that donate money to Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action.
00:06:10.000But as a nonprofit, we do have a for-profit arm, which is my show.
00:06:14.000But as a nonprofit, our customers are actually the students, are actually the target that we are trying to reach every single day.
00:06:23.000And so it's just been an amazing blessing.
00:06:25.000And as an entrepreneur, I'm always looking at new problems to try to solve and new ways that we can try to bring an innovative, passionate approach to try to make America a better and stronger country.
00:07:21.000It was a zero-to-one story, but it was also this idea of, okay, the hardest part, believe it or not, was not getting to the billions of views that we now have or nearly 5 million people on X or 6 million people on TikTok, whatever.
00:07:36.000The hardest part was actually getting to 10,000 followers.
00:07:38.000The hardest part was getting to 10,000 followers or 500,000.
00:07:43.000Once you get at scale, it is the Pareto principle, which is that And so, and then you just apply the same success formula over a period of time, and you apply that, and you realize that there is a rhythm to how God designed the universe, and the rhythm is very similar.
00:08:04.000I believe that also the scriptures give us an idea of how we can succeed as business people, entrepreneurs, husbands, wives, and one of the ways that we are told is, Because, look, here's the thing.
00:08:49.000But you treat people with value and reciprocal.
00:08:52.000The worldview that I bring to a lot of students as well, though, as a tangent, is that we believe market principles, not Marxism, but market principles, demand you to treat other people well because you're both getting value in that transaction.
00:09:54.000He's getting people to do something even harder, which is to invest.
00:09:57.000And an idea and a concept that hadn't actually produced itself yet.
00:10:01.000So I've watched you like, dude, that guy is a monster marketer.
00:10:05.000Where did the original messaging come from?
00:10:07.000And then how long did it take you to craft the message to find out what was actually people's buttons?
00:10:15.000Yeah, and that's the beauty of social media, that if you really know how to use it, and this is very important, that you should be...
00:10:29.000And a really good content creator understands the needs, wants, the emotions, and the inclinations of the audience, and then also tries to anticipate what content that the audience will want before they can even actually ever verbalize it or vocalize it.
00:10:46.000So as an entrepreneur kind of in the social media space, I had a very difficult job.
00:10:51.000It's easy to kind of look now in 2025.
00:10:53.000Oh, yeah, of course, Charlie, you have all these followers.
00:10:55.000I want you to think of how difficult my job was even eight years ago.
00:11:43.000Outwardly, they wanted just free stuff for their flesh, but also deeply they realized that gives them misery and not a life of prosperity or excellence or flourishing.
00:11:54.000When our job was how do we get the audience or the customer to try to reach to business And we saw this, quite honestly, post-COVID was a great tragedy.
00:12:08.000And we also have to be very morally clear.
00:12:10.000There's COVID and our reaction to COVID.
00:12:12.000Our reaction to COVID was far worse than anything COVID actually ever did to our society.
00:12:20.000That the lockdowns, the masking, and what our reaction to COVID did is it created a generation that was so angered.
00:12:30.000That was so depressed, that was so drug addicted, that was so searching for answers, that we were able to come by with a very compelling message and be not just viral, but also very appealing to a generation that was drowning in The nonsense of the modern zeitgeist.
00:12:54.000Not to mention, you had an entire generation of young men that were being told that it was a problem that you merely even existed, that if you're a young white man, you have to apologize for just breathing at some of these schools.
00:13:07.000And so what we were able to do, and we're very thankful for it, was really fill that vacuum and fill that void.
00:13:48.000I have to give you a compliment, Grant.
00:13:50.000I'm giving you a hard time, of course.
00:13:51.000It's that when you walk into a room, there's a magnetism, there's a life force that if even 10% more of humanity had it, the world would be a much better place.
00:14:20.000So I'm just telling the audience, you just want to talk about in the beginning that your imagination is probably limited to the possibility.
00:14:28.000This is a very important point, that even though your imagination is limited, I could not even grasp the concept of what does it mean to cash a check from a donor.
00:14:39.000Understand, I was a recent high school graduate who did not know the difference between credit and debit.
00:14:44.000That barely knew how to open up a checking account, but all of a sudden wanted to start an organization.
00:14:50.000Like, what does that even mean, right?
00:14:52.000But in entrepreneurship, there are steps and there are sequences.
00:14:56.000And eventually, you get to a place where you realize what you are doing is working, making the world a better place.
00:16:57.000But for entrepreneurs out there that might not be able to even see that horizon, understand that there are chapters and there are sequences in this kind of growth journey that you're on.
00:17:06.000Did you know back then that there was a sequence or a system?
00:17:09.000No, I will say, though, that Are you just, like, paying attention to the mistakes?
00:17:22.000This is okay, and it makes you stronger, and it makes you better.
00:17:25.000And Grant, I know you will resonate with this, is that it was all survival mode for the first four to five years.
00:17:30.000It was running one check to the other, barely making payroll.
00:17:34.000I did not pay myself a salary for the first six years.
00:17:38.000And that's just, by the way, I was happy to do it because I was just pouring all the money back into the organization, pouring it all back into growth, growth, growth, growth, growth.
00:17:47.000And now I could sit 13 years back and, you know, enjoy and see what we've grown and really pick different areas that we want to continue to invest in.
00:17:55.000But I wish I would have had more people say to me, hey, when you're in that survival mode, You're not just going through a subsistence phase.
00:18:12.000And as an entrepreneur, you will become a stronger and grittier person in those chapters, in those phases.
00:18:20.000In fact, if you had to make me choose, Charlie, would you rather be, or would you rather have a founder that went to MIT with a great idea in AI and gets a hundred million dollar check immediately from private equity because he has a great idea?
00:18:35.000Or would you rather have a guy that had to work nine to five jobs and midnight shifts Everybody, too much investment capital early can be a burden, not a blessing.
00:19:00.000In fact, you'll be like, oh, you know, we're going to go have the nicest office and a ton of staff.
00:19:04.000It is a recipe for disaster for entrepreneurs and early risk-takers to all of a sudden be flush with capital.
00:19:11.000Being in those early stages at times can actually end up being a phenomenal upward blessing for you in the future.
00:19:17.000Yeah, so you're saying that the surplus of money Because if you didn't have money, you were going to come up with a solution.
00:19:37.000I would add to it, the incentive structure as an entrepreneur, I think the way that God designed us, that our best ideas and our best creativity is when it is musts, not wants.
00:19:52.000That if you have to go make payroll, and you have to go feed your family, and you have to make this business survive, and you have burned the boats, you are going to be more likely to be able to have that company be durable and anti-fragile than the company that just has Sequoia Capital come in and drop another $50 million check.
00:22:40.000that had some sort of relationship with me and either betrayed me or deceived me or said that I could not succeed, that is a whole different...
00:22:51.000Just like the random troubled person on a campus, whatever.
00:22:55.000So the obvious, I want to hurt Charlie Kirk, doesn't bother you as much.
00:23:00.000In fact, I actually believe that I am doing my job as a truth teller the more that those people are trying to come and murder me.
00:26:02.000I started to go to campuses with no cameras.
00:26:05.000And I would just set up a card table and I would talk to one student at a time and just have debates and try to start a club on that particular campus and find a student.
00:26:13.000And we'd have three or four kids and then we would start it, like at University of Wisconsin-Madison or University of Illinois.
00:26:26.000We'll replace grassroots activity and connection and hustle and relationships, especially in a world drowning with digital and AI and synthetic and inauthentic.
00:26:37.000Being in the grassroots, being connected with people is a defining characteristic for anyone that wants to succeed.
00:27:02.000And I don't know quite how to respond to it because almost every corporate advisor or consultant will say, you know, the problem is that you just have to be more authentic to Gen Z. I think that we solve this problem in one way.
00:27:17.000The most authentic way that our job was to get Donald Trump elected and help him with younger voters.
00:29:44.000And then how did you get the debate thing going?
00:29:47.000So, I started to realize, Steven Crowder was one of the first people that kind of got into this space, and then others were starting to go to campuses, and I would do evening campus events.
00:29:55.000I started to realize, though, that there was a great attention in the audience, or a desire, an appetite, a demand, if you will, for the least filtered conversations imaginable.
00:30:05.000Show me two human beings having unfiltered, unscripted, raw, and organic convos on things that I don't quite know where I stand on.
00:30:14.000I think I lean one way or the other, and let's just kind of have it up.
00:30:18.000And the internet at its best lends itself towards conversations that aren't censored.
00:30:54.000But I know what you're saying is that we are probably the most popular in this genre, right?
00:31:01.000The reason being also, and I think this is important, is that other content creators that might have had an opportunity to do this, I don't think wanted to do the work.
00:31:30.000I can likely tell you their three-letter call signal, the best place to get food in either the American Airlines, United, or Delta terminal, and the highly likelihood of how long you have to wait for your bag, an Uber, a taxi, and what time you need to check in at a 6 a.m. flight to get it right in time if you have TSA pre or not.
00:31:47.000If you guys want to know LAS, by the way, the 6 a.m. flight, it's a disaster.
00:31:51.000They only open one security line in advance.
00:31:54.000Make sure you get there about 440 in advance.
00:31:57.000They have that one train that goes right there, and you'll probably be able to board in time by about like 510, 515 in the morning.
00:32:02.000All kidding aside, that was thankless work for about 10 years.
00:32:29.000I think it like destroys your soul that like you have to Like, it's just, like, there's something really depleting about a red-eye flight.
00:32:37.000But at times, like, hey, I have a donor meeting in LA, and then San Francisco, and then I'm needed in New York, and you just gotta make happen what you have to make happen.
00:32:44.000And so it is And you have to understand the inputs that got us to this place and you have to want it.
00:33:37.000And then the word achra, which is when human beings create.
00:33:40.000So that word is used for when Abram created or Moses created.
00:33:44.000All throughout the scriptures we see...
00:33:47.000this idea that God rewards the creation of value.
00:33:51.000In fact, one of my favorite teachings is when Christ our Lord in the parable of the talents, and this is a great lesson for all of you that are entrepreneurs, it goes as follows, where there is a master and a couple servants, and he dishes out basically everything, You could use that, by the way, metaphorically or literally.
00:34:28.000In the telling of the parable, the one that did nothing with that talent was scorned and said, how dare you do nothing with what God has given you?
00:34:39.000God wants us to be fruitful and multiply with what he has given us.
00:34:44.000In the scripture, it says that we are made in the image of God, in his creator, in the image of him.
00:34:49.000Well, since God creates, we can also create.
00:34:51.000This is a uniquely Western idea that I believe has given birth to great modern scientific and innovations and the reasons why we have the greatest AI companies and the most wealthy and incredible people and why the fact we're able to send rockets into space and recover astronauts.
00:35:06.000Thank you, Elon Musk, for that, by the way.
00:35:08.000The fact that we have multi-trillion dollar companies.
00:35:11.000Why is it that America has this center of enterprise and ingenuity?
00:35:16.000Well, the Western idea, which is a biblical idea, that you are commanded to go do something productive with your life.
00:35:24.000That you are not commanded to go sit idly by and just receive.
00:35:28.000You are commanded to go give and to produce and to risk and to then go sow into other people.
00:35:35.000That is a biblical idea that has made the world a profoundly better place.
00:35:55.000You said something once, Grant, that I really like, which is that if you are either the smartest person or the wealthiest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.
00:36:07.000I try to surround myself with smarter people, more successful people, you are the So a good homework assignment for you is write down the five people you spend the most time with.
00:37:25.000If you are around people that are so ambitious they are willing to compromise their ethics or their integrity, then you also must detach from them.
00:37:34.000If you are about people that want to get rich quicker than they want to do good, then it's wrong.
00:37:40.000So you have to, both are equally important.
00:37:42.000And this is also, what I find, is that in order for you to 10x, you also sometimes have to delete certain people from your life to get you to that level.
00:38:09.000And yes, you can use it as like, okay, I'm going to show you and motivate you, but you have to be an exceptionally strong-willed person to be around that all the time and still be able to succeed.
00:38:22.000And so I recommend, if they're family members or parents, you should honor your parents, but you don't have to immerse yourself in that.
00:38:30.000Instead, find people that are coaches, mentors, cheerleaders, encouragers for the type of person and the type of We're honored to be partnering with the Alan Jackson Ministries, and today I want to point you to their podcast.
00:38:54.000It's called Culture and Christianity, the Alan Jackson Podcast.
00:38:58.000What makes it unique is Pastor Alan's biblical perspective.
00:39:01.000He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues that we're facing today, gender confusion.
00:39:06.000Abortion, immigration, Doge, Trump, and the White House.
00:39:51.000I'm convinced that COVID, while all the harm it did, it also created something good came out of it.
00:39:59.000And I think that people are still upset about COVID here four or five years later, whatever it is.
00:40:03.000And I think that they're actually looking at the system now.
00:40:06.000Like, it was a big lie perpetuated on a lot of people.
00:40:09.000Do you think that there was any positive out of COVID?
00:40:12.000Yes, and again, I keep rooting things back to scripture because it's, But yes, I mean, I believe what the enemy meant for evil, God will use for good.
00:40:20.000And I think regardless of how bad this thing was, that there's amazing good that came out of it.
00:40:26.000And I hope that, again, we all know the negative.
00:40:28.000But some of the good is, I think a lot of people are now taking their own personal health a lot more seriously than they were before COVID.
00:40:35.000I think people are asking critical questions about the food they're putting in their body, about what they're giving their kids, about the supplements that they're taking.
00:40:44.000We have Bobby Kennedy as the head of HHS, right, and the head of Health and Human Services, So there's plenty of elements there that I think are positive.
00:40:54.000But the one that I think I like the most, the greatest takeaway, is that it sufficiently, I think, began the end death march of the mainstream media.
00:41:05.000I think we are now finally seeing that people...
00:41:15.000That podcasting, places like all your amazing social media.
00:41:20.000is now becoming more trusted because what we saw during the reaction to COVID, which was so outrageous when they were saying that we have to close down schools of healthy, vibrant kids, when they were saying that we need to mask and six feet of social distance, which was a completely made-up thing, I think it has now resulted in a counter-movement of an enlightenment of humanity that the likes of which we couldn't have imagined 50 years ago.
00:43:06.000Everybody, this is such an important example, and we see this far too often in the Native American community in America and in indigenous communities.
00:43:13.000They've been treated terribly, obviously, you know, over 100 years.
00:43:36.000I don't know how much you want me to talk about Greenland, but they have unbelievable natural resources, gold, silver, aluminum, natural gas, and the young people of Greenland are starting to see on social media my content, your content, Tony Robbins, and they're like, we want to be rich.
00:44:10.000Well, first of all, I like things that, number one, can't be printed.
00:44:13.000So, I like finite goods, and so it's one of the reasons why I'm fascinated in Again, one person is about to become a billionaire because she's applauding me.
00:45:15.000So therefore, my hypothesis is that in an era of mass inflation where you have a more dollar bills than goods and services, it makes a lot of sense to all of a sudden invest and hold onto goods of which the money printer cannot Definitionally, there's only so much that can exist.
00:45:36.000Second, it is one of the few human necessities.
00:45:39.000Lodging and housing is something human beings need.
00:46:34.000But the lack of supply of housing is a serious major issue, especially in states like California, as you mentioned, that have been so onerous when it comes to environmental impact studies, NIMBA boards, stuff like that.
00:46:54.000I mean, you spend time with everybody, been on all the stages.
00:46:57.000Do you think a person could be more influential, kind of pushing the scene from the outside, like you're doing, or being in the politics, being in a position?