Elena Cardone – Build an Empire
The Queen of her Empire, Elena has designed, constructed and protected a life outside of the ordinary. She has inspired a legion of women and men to create their own empires; lives that are truly fulfilling and beyond the average. She counts her current job as her most important one – Chief Family Officer, where she is a loving mother, fierce wife and loyal friend.
Don’t be average give yourself a challenge and go create a dynasty. This is what you were born to do!
Elena Cardone Interview Miami
Elena what do you believe in?
I believe in Spirituality, and I believe I can not be destroyed even though this body can be destroyed. So to me, honor integrity, love; those are the things that I am bringing with me wherever I go next. That’s what I’m working on in this lifetime; setting myself up for the next lifetime. I think in the future. But these are conversations that not everyone wants to talk about..
You lived through a successful acting career. How did you transition from being an actress to being a spiritual individual?
In 1991 I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress and a model and mainly to escape New Orleans. I had kind of gone the wrong path so I went to L.A. to straighten myself up and become a better person. In the year 2000, I decided to give up the use of drugs. I was never a drug addict but I was a recreational drug user. So after a very successful acting career I decided to try something new and I thought to myself “What is life like without any drugs or alcohol, and who do I have to be or become; what is that person like that can get me to the next level? ”.
After this conscious decision life completely turned around because now I had the confidence in a social situation to be good enough; to just being me without having to depend on a substance to make me feel good. Now I just depended on me and who I am, and how am I interested enough and that’s how I began to grow into a spiritual being and started to figure out who I am rather than what I was avoiding and couldn’t confront; now I started confronting myself.
Who were the most influential people in your life to become who you are today?
There are three influential people in my life. My parents and my husband. My mother and father were my very first role models.
My mother was the breadwinner in our home so I learned so much about being a financially strong woman. She taught me about resilience and how even if everything was falling apart, you can still keep it together. My father opened up my tough side. It was no secret, I was a daddy’s girl from the very beginning. My father taught me how to shoot, and play sports. He taught me how to be active in this life. He taught me to never be intimidated by a man and that I can hold my own around men. My father is where I got my never settle mentality. His greatest lesson: challenge yourself and think beyond limitations for they do not exist.
Needless to say, my husband Grant Cardone is my biggest mentor. I am his biggest fan, he’s taught me so much. This man pushes me to my limits and it isn’t always pretty, but I appreciate it because he wants me to reach my full potential. I watch Grant every single day, and every single day, he influences me to be better, do better. He has earned my unshakable trust and devotion for life.
What’s the biggest challenge you have overcome to get where you are today?
So when the financial crisis and economic collapse happened in 2008 I asked my husband Grant “what does this mean?’’ and looks at me and says “this means we are going to die”. At that point I said “Excuse me? Do I look like death to you? I am pregnant with our first child. I was like “no, no, no, no ,no” wrong thing to say to me; I don’t die, so you go to your office and stay there until you figure this thing out because I’m not dying. So he went to his office and wrote his first book “if you are not first you’re last”. He wrote that book in three hours and after that he comes back and says “This is a book, it is not going to make us rich but I know what I have to do and I will never make you worry again.
At that moment it was like nuclear devastation going off in our house. We were under the biggest lawsuit we’ve ever been in. His business as he knew it was over, the economy collapsed and I’m pregnant with our first child. That’s when I had to look at the drawing board and make a decision and that’s when I decided to trade in my acting career in order to trade up. I decided at that moment I was pushing all my chips on him. He had a business that was financially buyable and I knew that if I could back him with my visions, my ideas, supporting him for whatever he needed to get this new thing up and running, I was all in on that, I was all in on us. It was the biggest risk I had to overcome as a woman in my life because you don’t think I had the thought “never depend on a man, oh, here’s the guy than in 10 years he’s going to cheat on you when you age”, you know all these things like you’re giving up your career, you’re such a sell out or now you’re a golddigger and you’re being taken care of! I had all that going on in my head! I had to just accept it and stood there knowing that I am strong enough, I’m powerful enough in any situation in my life to land in my own two feet.
It could happen that I could be extremely humiliated but no one is taking me down. I “always” win, excuse my language! I’m a winner and I will never be a victim no matter what happens to me, I am not a victim!
Now the irony of the entire situation is that my whole life I thought I had to be independent and never depend on a man, and now I depend on a man and he depends on me. And I have found more strength and power as a woman though a man! These same words would have made me want to vomit 20 years ago! And now I sit here and say them and own them and it is what it is!
How does building your empire and love correlate?
This is what I talk about in my book “Build an Empire” – Find the one you trust and build an empire. Love is not a given, love is something you create. I don’t have this “I’m madly in love with my husband feeling every second of the day. I don’t live in a fairytale, if I want that feeling I have to create it. So when that fairytale feeling wears off, you have to have the trust and then the love comes from hitting your goals and your targets and you fight battles side by side, and you have each other’s back and you accomplish victories together; that’s real love. Love to me is, you make me a better person, I make you a better person and we freaking conquer the world “that’s love”.
Elena Cardone – Author
Build an Empire – How to have it all.
