Grant Cardone was not supposed to be part of the story. But when the real estate mogul posted a widely circulated tweet on X suggesting that 10 AI consulting clients at $8,000 (£6,320) per month was the route to a million-dollar income, self-taught investor Chris Camillo had a pointed response about where that idea originated.
Camillo says he said it first. On a 24 May episode of The Iced Coffee Hour — the podcast hosted by Graham Stephan and Jack Selby — Camillo described an almost identical blueprint before Cardone published his post, generating what he claims were four million views on X in two days. His version sets the earnings target at $500,000 (£395,000) a year, not a million.
'That's maybe where Grant got it from. He stole it from me. I think he stole it from me,' Camillo said on air. He called the situation 'messed up.' Cardone has not publicly responded.
Chris Camillo reacts to Grant Cardone saying you can make $1,000,000/year as an AI consultant
— The Iced Coffee Hour (@TheICHpodcast) May 24, 2026
“I said the same thing on your show and got 4,000,000 views in two days on X.”
“He stole it from me. I think he stole it from me. Because what I said was that you can make $500,000 a… pic.twitter.com/xbl5UIIMBt
The Six-Month Blueprint
The model Camillo describes is deliberately straightforward. Spend six months becoming genuinely proficient in AI tools — not as a developer, but as a problem-solver. Then find where business owners congregate and offer to fix one specific operational problem with artificial intelligence.
'If I was just a regular person, I would spend six months becoming a top 1% person in AI, just by self-learning. Then I would go to where wealthy business owners hang out,' he said.
His practical example: a plumbing or HVAC company that closes at 5 or 6 p.m. misses calls and loses those customers to competitors overnight. An AI agent set up in around 24 hours can answer those calls, generate automated responses, and have a qualified lead sheet ready by morning. Revenue lifts by 10 to 15%, he said. Put that service on a monthly retainer across 10 clients and the math reaches $500,000 (£395,000) a year.
Critics argued that building agentic AI systems is harder than Camillo made it sound. He acknowledged the pushback but said it is exactly what drove the original post viral.
The Record Behind the Claim
The accusation carries weight partly because of who is making it. Camillo is not a finance media personality. His trading returns were independently audited by Jack Schwager, author of Unknown Market Wizards, who documented a 77% average annual compounded return across roughly 15 years. He began investing in 2007 with $20,000 (£15,800) and produced more than $2 million (£1.58 million) in his first three years.
His social data company TickerTags, founded in 2015 and later acquired by Jefferies alt-data division M Science, mapped social media keywords to stock tickers and became known for identifying Brexit-related sentiment patterns before the 2016 vote. That same method — which Camillo calls social arbitrage — underpins how he approaches both markets and, now, AI.
On the same podcast, he disclosed that the past three months had produced what he called his best trading stretch in 18 years: Amazon, Bloom Energy and Robinhood Markets together generating eight-figure returns, with a single-day gain of $5.5 million (£4.3 million) at the peak. Amazon alone accounts for roughly 70% of his portfolio through options.
The Broader Opportunity
The consulting play is, in Camillo's view, the accessible version of the same macro bet he is making in markets. Most small and mid-sized business owners are still sidelined on AI — intimidated by the technology and uncertain where to start. He sees a closing window for people who are willing to walk in and solve that problem for them.
He pointed to energy trader Bill Perkins, who used a network of 12 AI agents to completely rebuild a poorly designed website while sitting on a clifftop in Hawaii, working from a mobile phone connected to his home computer in Austin, Texas. The entire job took under 45 minutes. Perkins built the system himself and is not a developer.
'We are about to diverge into two sets of people,' Camillo said. 'Those that are continuing to believe that this isn't real or it's too hard. And those that are going to find a way.'
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