As the end of the 90-day challenge of Undercover Billionaire nears, entrepreneur Grant Cardone, aka Louis Curtis, is quickly working to ensure his business meets the million-dollar evaluation.
In this week’s episode, Curtis and business partner Matt Smith make more progress, and with only 16 days left, Curtis is scrambling to secure more clients, renovate the team’s newfound home-base, all while still forming a relationship with the marketing team.
To earn the team’s trust, Curtis writes a 55-page marketing manual that he says is essentially the Wake Up Pueblo bible. It tells the team exactly what his expectations of them are.
When Curtis meets with the team to give them the manual, a visible relief can be seen, and team member Mia Gilbertson said in the episode that this was the direction they needed from the entrepreneur.
“I had to call that meeting to order because there was such a giant disconnect,” Smith said. “Obviously now I see why, he was there to make money. But I was very, ‘OK how do we help our community? How do we grow?’”
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Smith noted that while Curtis was looking for more money, Smith’s focus remained on giving back to the community.
After Curtis put together the manual and had the vision on paper, Smith said the team responded well.
“I think the people that didn’t really understand what direction we were heading in, the people who were the backbone of this started to see where he was going with this,” Smith said.
Then, the team works on its first video for client First Oak Bank, and Gilbertson shines as she takes control of the shoot.
“From his standpoint, now that I know him, he comes from a pretty large marketing team,” Smith said. “But after he saw the team we have developed; he was like, ‘This is an amazing passionate team.’”
As far as securing a building for the team to work out of, in last week’s episode the two business partners found the perfect building. But this week, they find out that the seller has accepted their offer.
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The next step, one that Curtis said needs to happen immediately, is a complete renovation. The catch is that Smith is the only one fronting the money, and Curtis wants the building done in a matter of two weeks.
Luckily for Curtis, Smith against the objections of some parties involved, was set on making this building the new home for Wake Up Pueblo and was thrilled to begin renovating one of the oldest buildings in the community.
“I’ve built several buildings, so this stuff is fun,” Smith said. “I was excited, seeing something come to fruition and seeing an old building getting rehabbed.”
At this point, the team has secured three clients, an office space and are on their way to building a company with the hope of helping the community. Now, the biggest obstacle is getting an approximated $75,000 renovation done in two weeks.
Undercover Billionaire is available on the streaming service Discovery+ and is projected to resume from Episode 1 on the Discovery Channel in late April.
Chieftain and Pueblo West View reporter Alexis Smith can be reached by email at asmith@chieftain.com or on Twitter @smith_alexis27.
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