Brandon Dawson: 9-Figure Founder Reveals the Real Reason Businesses Stop Scaling | Entrepreneurship | YAPClassic

**Hala Taha** (0:00)
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Hey, Young and Profitors. When I think back to the early days of YAP Media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public Wi-Fi networks, and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress, because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients, and keep everything moving. And that's exactly why I wish I had AT&T Business back then. They're built for small business owners who need their internet to work, without second-guessing it. And once you've had that kind of reliability, you get real peace of mind. You can show up fully, close deals, serve your clients, and focus on growing your business without any of the stress. You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are, like AT&T Business. Built to work, get AT&T Business at business.att.com.

**Brandon Dawson** (2:22)
97% of businesses fail out of 34 million, and most of them stay at 3 million or less. If the business is going to grow and scale, the person in charge of the business must grow and scale.

**Hala Taha** (2:34)
Brandon Dawson is the co-founder and CEO of Cardone Ventures with Grant Cardone, and he's a serial entrepreneur who's built not one, but multiple companies into nine-figure successes.

**Brandon Dawson** (2:46)
I wouldn't raise my first million. I made 100 presentations, I was laughed out of most of them. I bought my first business, had no idea what I was doing between 26, 27

**Hala Taha** (2:55)
You ended up selling your next company for a lot of money, like 77 EBITDA. Why do you think you were able to sell it for so much?

**Brandon Dawson** (3:03)
Bootstrap your company, be in control of it, and learn to force the company to make money. If the company doesn't make money.

**Hala Taha** (3:10)
There's a bottleneck or a plateau at three to five million that a lot of businesses hit. How do people get over this?

**Brandon Dawson** (3:19)
You shouldn't be trying to push your business by spending more money and by hiring more people and by buying more assets. You should be trying.

**Hala Taha** (3:27)
Hey, Young and Profiters, there's a big difference between growing a business and actually scaling one, because sometimes what looks like growth is really just more people, more expenses, more stress, and a founder still carrying the whole business on their back. Today's YAP Classic is about what it really takes to stop chasing growth blindly and start building a business that can actually scale. We're bringing back my conversation with the brilliant Brandon Dawson, the co-founder and CEO of Cardone Ventures. Brandon went from being voted least likely to succeed in high school to building a multiple nine-figure company and selling one for over $150 million.
And in this episode, he shows us why your business will only grow as far as you do as a leader. So lock in YAP fam, if you're ready to 10x your leadership, your money, and your mindset, it's time to think bigger with Brandon Dawson. Brandon, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

**Brandon Dawson** (4:17)
Yeah. Thank you for having me on your show.

**Hala Taha** (4:19)
Yeah. I'm super excited for this conversation. And today, you are a scaling expert. You know, you've scaled multiple companies to over $100 million. You're the CEO of Cardone Ventures. But when I was doing research, I found out that in high school, you were actually voted least likely to succeed, which is really surprising. Considering how far you've gone in life, you're probably the most successful person that has come out of your high school.