EXECUTIVE TEAM

CO-FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN
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Grant Cardone is a New York Times Bestselling Author, the #1 sales trainer in the world, and an internationally renowned speaker on leadership, real estate investing, entrepreneurship, social media, and finance.

Grant urges his followers and clients to make success their duty, responsibility, and obligation and to rise above outdated, unworkable, middle-class myths and limitations in order to achieve true freedom for themselves and their families.

His straight-shooting viewpoints on leadership, the economy, small business, retail sales, employment, and headlines have made him a valuable resource for media seeking commentary and insights on real topics that matter.

Beginning with his bestselling book The 10X Rule in 2011, Grant then launched the 10X Growth Conference beginning in 2017. This three-day event has quickly become the world’s largest business and entrepreneur conference. His third annual event drew in over 35,000 people with some of the most prestigious speakers in the business world.

Grant created the 10X Growth Conference to be a place where people come to learn strategies from the most successful entrepreneurs in the world to 10X Your Business, 10X Your Income, and 10X Your Life.

CO-FOUNDER, CEO & MANAGING PARTNER
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Brandon Dawson is a scaling and turnaround expert, business leadership mentor, and serial entrepreneur whose mission is to help business owners, their families, and their teams achieve their personal, professional, and financial goals through the growth of their business.
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Brandon learned the power of scale when he was just 16 years old, working on his parent’s walnut farm. He learned that people are the foundation of business, and dedicated his life to perfecting the art of scaling through leadership and proven strategies in the areas of operations, finance, marketing, belief, strategy, execution, and team alignment.
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Brandon founded his first business at the age of 26 and was one of the youngest people to ring the bell on the American Stock Exchange. With zero debt and no outside capital, he founded and self-funded Audigy Group, ultimately growing annual revenue to over $35 million through organic growth. He exited the company at 77X EBITDA for $151 million. He’s achieved numerous awards in business, and his companies have been recognized on the Inc. 500 and Inc. 5,000 Fastest-Growing Companies list five times.
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Today, Brandon coaches Cardone Ventures’ clients on how to use his proven leadership and business strategies as the foundation for strategic growth so that they can follow in his footsteps and create their own legacies.

EVP, Finance

Jeff Jessen is a financial executive with diverse experience in all aspects of building businesses, including private equity and MNA. His experience spans industries such as health care, information technology and software development, professional services, construction, and real estate.
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Jeff started his career with Moss Adams in their corporate office in Seattle, Washington, rising to Manager from 2000 to 2004. Starting in 2005, Jeff performed advisory services for clients, such as for PricewaterhouseCoopers, working for The Siegfried Group. He then joined MINCA, a portfolio management company with $500 million in assets under management. At MINCA, he held various roles, including Chief Financial Officer, Controller, Managing Director, and Board of Directors Member, Treasurer, and Secretary.
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Jeff joined Cardone Ventures in mid-2020, where he specializes in creating and executing strategies to deliver exponential (10X) growth and maximizing the valuation upon exit to companies between $2 million and $500 million in revenue.

EVP & CMO

As Chief Marketing Officer, Buck Wise is a master of marketing and innovation, with experience spanning across media, content development, sales, and distribution. Buck’s mission is to help individuals and business owners attain their personal, professional, and financial goals through digital ingenuity.
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Buck’s experience includes leading global teams responsible for driving innovation for brands such as Google, Starbucks, and Nike. Buck cofounded his own full-service digital agency whose clients included Chevrolet, Valvoline, Major League Baseball, and the North American International Auto Show. Additionally, Buck was an executive within the world’s largest advertising group, WPP.
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Buck’s focus is planning, developing, implementing, and monitoring the marketing strategy for Cardone Ventures and its clients, helping business owners get out of obscurity and build lasting relationships.

EVP OF OPERATIONS
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Natalie Workman is a leader and expert in developing teams and people. She has interviewed, hired, trained and managed hundreds of employees; thus, allowing her an expansive knowledge on how to build and scale teams.

Natalie believes in the power of aligning people with business goals through operational and financial integration. She's devoted to showing business owners how to create a culture that engages employees while simultaneously ensuring the business mission, values, and goals are shared and aligned.

The foundation for Natalie's ability to execute is her desire to continually apply her insights gained through both her work experience and formal education. Her studies at  London School of Economics focused on Organizational Development and Macroeconomics.

Since then, Natalie has been building a strong following with the nation's most business savvy executives. A strong prowess for leadership and expertise in communication, process optimization with measurable returns on investment, Natalie's ability to identify and execute strategic business priorities has led to her role as Vice President of Operations for Cardone Ventures.

She also has a podcast, WorkWoman, a no-nonsense guide for ambitious women in the the workplace.

VP, LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
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Heather joined Brandon at Audigy Group in 2009 as a learning and development professional. She helped build and deploy their proprietary sales process, focused on best practice approaches to building customer relationships for effective conversion and quality retention, providing consultative contract services to hundreds of private practice owners and their teams. In 2013, she helped create a shared service model focused on content development and deployment for Audigy Group, Audigy Medical and Stratus Dental.

Heather assisted Brandon with organizational development and operations implementation for Stratus Dental from 2015 - 2016. She moved to CallSource in 2017 as the Vice President of Healthcare Sales for the audiology and dental industries and has since rejoined forces with Brandon in 2019 as a Certified Behavioral Consultant, with a specializations in learning, development, leadership and operations.

EVP, STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATION & PARTNERSHIPS
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Dwayne Baker is a leader at helping clients develop and execute strategies to transform their businesses and create long term value for their customers, employees and shareholders.
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He excels at helping our partners assess their current capabilities relative to future aspirations, clarify strategic priorities, and build a concrete action plan to achieve the next level of success.
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Dwayne brings market leading business insights to Cardone Ventures having served over a dozen Fortune 100 companies in technology, healthcare, financial services and consumer products during his 13 years in EY’s business consulting practice.

RESEARCH & DATA OFFICER
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For over 20 years, Ndaba Mdhlongwa has been a business plan and strategic planning consultant. In addition to writing and/or contributing to hundreds of business plans for companies nationwide in diverse industries, he has conducted business seminars and workshops, taught courses at various colleges and universities, and published a three-book entrepreneurial series.
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Ndaba’s experience also includes ownership in various businesses, including a staffing company that obtained and maintained multimillion-dollar contracts with the Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of State. In 2016, Ndaba added the role of franchise consultant, guiding individuals to business ownership through the purchase of a franchise.
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Today, Ndaba uses the most current data and technology available to provide Cardone Ventures’ clients detailed and personalized strategies for expansion and operational effectiveness, ensuring they take advantage of every opportunity in their market.