BigDeal - #82 My Billion Dollar Shark Tank Investment: Daymond John

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Join Codie Sanchez as she dives deep with Daymond John, the founder of FUBU and a star on Shark Tank, in this insightful episode of the Big Deal podcast. They discuss his journey from starting FUBU in his mom's house to building it into a $6 billion brand, his investment strategies, and valuable lessons from his successful career. Don't miss Daymond's unique insights on entrepreneurship, investment, and personal growth. Tune in for an episode packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories! Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠Click here⁠ to connect with my consulting team. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Daymond John 00:54 Daymond John's Journey and Shark Tank Success 01:44 Investing in Bombas: A Game-Changer 05:47 Entrepreneurial Hacks and Early Struggles 11:15 Raising Independent Children 13:15 The Reality of Flying Private 16:34 Clothing Brands and Business Models 27:41 Shark Tank Insights and Pitching Tips 32:35 Shark Tank Strategies and Fake Offers 32:53 The Ethics of Seeking Investment 34:50 Dealing with Investment Losses 37:21 Concerns About AI and Future Investments 43:32 The Importance of Brand and Community 47:51 CEO Access and Helping Others 01:00:56 Final Thoughts and Advice for Entrepreneurs MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: ⁠Our community⁠ ⁠Free newsletter⁠ ⁠Biz buying course⁠ ⁠Resibrands⁠ ⁠CT Capital⁠ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Why is your head in your hand, Damon? because AI is going to turn this country into a civil war. The guest today, who is Damon John. He is the founder of Fubu, which has done $6 billion in sales. He also is one of the most beloved members of Shark Tank, from somebody who had nothing to somebody who became one of the most successful CEOs of our time.

There's nothing new in this world. It's a new way to present it. The top companies in Shark Tank history, socks and a sponge. So would you rather be... hungry or rich as a young person? Hungry. It's all about understanding that you actually can do it. Stop taking getting all those things in your head. You need

money, make money. I have to have an education. No, you don't. No, you're why. If you're waking up every day because you're solving a problem for a person, you're bringing them joy, and you love it, and you can do that. Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez. The studio looks a little

different today, and that's because I am in San Antonio about to go on a stage in front of thousands of people. But right after the guest today, who is Damon John, he shares all the lessons learned from investing, from building big businesses, and from hustling, from somebody who had nothing to somebody who became one of the most successful CEOs of our time in a category nobody had ever done it quite like him before. I can't wait for you guys to hear this episode. He's a riot. And I took a lot of notes. Your career is incredible. You've been on Shark Tank, obviously. You've started a bunch of companies.

You've invested in even more. You're on the internet. You've got millions of followers. You speak all over the place. You get standing ovations. But I actually don't think very many people know that you invested in the most successful company that Shark Tank has seen thus far, bomb us, right? Well, I tell everybody whenever I can that I'm the lead Shark with the most successful investment

in history, Shark Tank history. on all the shark tanks that exist around the world. Who would have thought it was a sock company, too? I had to actually Google the valuation. Isn't that a boring company when you think about it? Yeah, $3.65 billion valuation. Yeah. And so I kind of wanted to start there with just,

what did you see? Because you were the only one that did it. Everybody else passed. I wish I could say that I was a visionary on these type of things. I wasn't. I saw great founders that cared. about what they were doing. And actually I went on to Shark Tank

because when they gave me the option, I would tell people it was 0708. I had 10 clothing companies, and eight of them were dead because nobody's buying clothing when they can't pay their mortgage. So I went on to diversify my portfolio and not get only pitched clothing company

because I was known as the clothing company guy. So the last thing that I wanted to buy was clothing. I invested in these guys, but I found that I had always had this theory that in business, you have to make it first, then you should master your crap, and then you can matter. I can't help anybody else if I can't help myself. These guys flipped me on the head and said, no, Dee, you can make it and you can matter at the same time. Because when we're buying, when we're selling a pair of socks, we're giving a pair of way to those in the homeless community because that's the number one request. clothing item and and what they did was show people that, you know, a kid and a mom and anybody

who's buying today want to know not only what did you do for me, but what do you do for somebody else? So a kid will sit across a table from a parent and say, you invested the office the end of the year. I invested 10 times this year. Every time I bought this, I cleaned up the ocean. Every time I bought this, I stopped human trafficking. By the way, I bought socks for myself and put my friend's birthdays, I bought them south to they're helping people. And it just changed my whole way of thinking. That's fascinating. What, I mean, I think it's hard to tell if a founder is worth investing in

or to know that a founder is going to be a winner or not. You know, we invest in a ton of companies. And I still, obviously, get it wrong too. What characteristics made you go, no, no, no, these guys are different? Humble. Did their research, did their homework? use what I call the power broke. You know, the founders that believe that they need a ton of money,

that's not the founder I want, because money's going to highlight your weaknesses. If you can't get the same customers with $200, then you ain't going to get them with $2 million, right? You're just going to get one customer at $200 and that amount at $2 million. So what I found was that what I loved about David and Randy, the founder is he basically said, here's how I started the company.

I had 50,000 people in my database that somehow had gotten an email somewhere or another from me in my Gmail or whatever the case is. I hit all 50,000. Hey, homeless, the homeless community needs socks and I'm thinking about coming out with a sock company after the Tom's model. What do you think? 50% of them said, you're spamming me. Who the hell are you?

Leave me alone. You know, another 50% kind of said, I'm interested. Send me more information. And five or six people said, hey, a whole, I'm your ex-girlfriend. hell are you spamming by you stupid-ass socks? Whatever the case may be, but they were, you know, real true entrepreneurs and founders, they're like Steve Jobs. They're the ultimate tweakers, you know, not twerking.

Tweakers. Yeah. Well, I mean, I remember that. I think I probably broke like a few GDPR email laws when I started my first company. I was like any person I met was on that list, you know, they were getting spanned. And I think you did some of that same stuff. Like, wait, to go way, way back. When you started Fubu, you know, your stories are pretty incredible about some of the hacky things you did in the beginning.

Like stuff that now I think kids who are more risk-averse, like increasingly they don't do as crazy of things. There's a lot of online interaction, probably things that, you know, you did. People think, oh, I would never do that now. Like, what were some of the craziest unhinged hacks you did to start? But remember when I started a fool with you, it was, that I sound like your grandfather. I ain't had no shoes. When I saw the fool, but there was no internet. And it was barely cell phone.

I had to stand outside the Apollo theater after those people got out in Harlem after watching the comedy show to Apollo. And my customer feedback was what they told me about my shirts and my mother. I had to come home like this. Yo, we got to make the shirts. We got to change the blue on that.

So, and then when I sold you a shirt, there was no internet. I had to find you the next day. I had to go to your house. So other things that I hacked, they use common sense, you use simple things. I happen to know a lot of artists, video artists, and music artists and various other things.

I knew their cousin, their brothers, their uncles. I would know where they would shoot videos. I took 10 shirts for two years, the same 10. I'd go to every video set I could. I went to 40 video sets. I got kicked off of 18 of them. But the 22 that I got on, I would put it on an artist,

and you shoot the video and I'd take it back. Put another artist, take it back. I remember I didn't have any money to advertise, but I remember seeing all those nasty storm gates outside the store they pull down. I go to every place I can. I go, hey, if you can let me paint a beautiful white sign of this company that I'm working with on the gates. Now, by the way, you have profanity on there and graffiti on there. If I put a beautiful white sign on there, when those gates are down, the kids are going to see it.

When you pull those gates up because you're supporting a local company, they're going to want to come and support you. I spray painted 300 gates from New York to New Jersey. the authorized Fulbu dealer. I didn't care that you were selling Chinese food. You were an authorized Fubu dealer. Later on when Nielsen ratings, you remember that Nielsen rating?

I mean, they're a big company called Nielsen and Kewenvarez. They were like, when I started making money, Fulbu had his first million dollars to spend. And that's today is like $10 million. They said, if you want to put on MTV, 30-second commercial, $6,000, because here's how many people watch this. B-E-T.

Thirty second commercial, $500. Okay, so you would think that I want to buy for more people. Common sense. Let me see, BETT. That's time I went to the project, there was no Nielsen rating box, and all the cable was hooked up to some illegal lines standing out there, and there was 15 million people sitting around one TV. I'm going to own BET for $1 million because it was just common sense.

Maybe common sense for you, but it does seem like your brain just kind of works differently. Like you looked at this market and said, no, I don't want the ego play of MTV. I'm going to actually go with where it converts. Like, I want to make money on this. I don't want to just be a big name. I think that being dyslexic, I always say eight of the 12 shots are dyslexic. And I think that it's the fact that I didn't know if I read anything,

if I was going to read it accurately, and that I'd have to go out and do it. And I think common sense is common sense. But people try, you know, I think my mother always said to me, you know, Damon, we're driving down the street and she said, you know, We live by JFK, and I saw planes, Empire State building all and stuff. And she said, I said, how do men and women build these massive machines, Mom? They said, what do you talk about? Everything that's created in this world, the car were in, the shoe were driving.

It started with one person with one idea that took one action. Okay, mom, well, everybody's rich. No, son, 65% of Forbes wealthiest 1,000 people are self-made men and women. They're not rich. Or somebody sitting here saying, you need money to make money. Well, if you need money to make money, the Fords of Carnegie's and the Melons, they've done such great things for this country, the Rockefellas. Their kids have money, but their foundation do great stuff. But why don't they own the Testers and the Facebooks and Instagram of this world?

Why? Because the first generation makes it the second and joys and third will destroy it. So it's all about understanding that you actually can do it. Stop taking all, getting all those things in your head. You need money, make money, you know, have to have an education. No, you don't. You don't need any of that stuff. You need to sit and listen to stuff like this and apply these simple rules every single day.

So would you rather be hungry or rich as a young person? Hungry. Because rich doesn't mean anything. You know, rich, there is no ultimate rich, right? A lot of people think, well, I'm rich. What is rich? You know, if Jeff Bezos woke up with Mark Cuban's money, he would jump out the window. And if Elon Musk woke up with Jeff Bezos money, he'd jump out the window.

there is no what is rich well what some working stiff who's working you know all day in an office and on his deathbed or her deathbed they're looking at a whole bunch of people who suck them dry and said man i should have lived a bit of life you have kids obviously um how do you make sure that they don't turn into that second or third generation that loses it all because i'm not leaving them anything you know i put it in my kids head every since i was young that and then that they were young that they were not going to get anything the same is Buffett and everybody else is done so what does that do i have two little girls well they're they're not they're little anymore but it makes that it first of all it stops all the scumbags around going let me let me uh try to become part of

their life because he's they're going to get something so first of all you stop 50% of the scumbags they also create in their head and it's true the narration of i don't need his money not only do they not need my money they don't even want to be part of anything i'm doing because they want to be independent people now my two oldest girls the internet wasn't around and social media wasn't around so they didn't have a camera on them all the time and the only time i ever interviewed which was my potential biggest break ever it was when Oprah's producers said we want to come into your home and see your family and i never wanted my girls to be under the pressure of being damon john's daughter and they're off with being great great human beings

And I think that that is one thing. I think other wealthy kids that I know have said sports has been great because a kid don't care who your mommy and daddy is when they want to hit you in the chin for a ball. And now today, my youngest one, that's going to be a different challenge. It's a different day and age right now. Yeah, that's the hard part. I think about that a lot.

I didn't grow up with anything. And so when my husband and I hopefully are blessed enough to have kids, you know, it's just a totally different equation. Like, if you fly private, do they have to fly a commercial? Like, how do you do that? You know, that's it. All of this is a challenge. You know, Liz Clayman said to me one day that she grew up in wealth and her father said,

the only thing I can't give you is adversity. And it's very, very hard. So I fly private some of the time. I don't fly all the time. And I remember my daughter when she, and I usually fly. When I'm with my family, I need to be someplace in time. By the way, I want to tell the rest of the world, lying private is a waste of. a time. Don't do it for other people's reasons. Man, that jet blue sleep down, laydown is fantastic.

If I go to California, New York, round trip is $100,000 privately. I got to go to Teterboro. I get there probably about two hours earlier than you. If I want to lay on the plane, while I got to go on the back and kind of buy the bathroom area, I got to see if I'm going to get a stewardess for the plane or not, it's $100,000. I saved two. I, uh, The only thing I'll do is save two hours. For those two hours, if I go commercial, I get paid $96,000 for those two hours, right, that I didn't get there on time with you.

You know what I can do with that $96,000? And the plane, the not the worst part about the plane. I'm a little bit of a tree hugger. I don't want to pollute the world for this stupid little plane. And those light jets, the light or mid, they can't take the wind like those big ones. But you know the worst part about the plane? it's like getting a free pet.

Now you got to get shots for the little thing running around here. You got to get diapers and you got to clean up this rug where it's scoots on the carpet. You've got the brown stain look like planes with chocolate wheels

are landing on your carpet. It's having the plane. Your friends are going to want to go on it and then you're going to go to Vegas and spend $200,000 on a Tuesday because you got a plane. Don't get any planes. That's why you see athletes

and lot of when there's a bankrupt three years after leaving the league or winning the lotto because they don't have, they don't know how to use the tool of financial intelligence because they, we got to get a plane. I made those mistakes. Yeah, I think it's really smart.

And it's, these days I think people want to look rich, not be rich. And what a dumb move, you know, way better. It is. But, you know,

we're all human. What's your why? You know, somebody said, well, Damon, you're famous. How many people are going to see you in the plane? I don't know.

I can wear a mask now. A hot 20 people. going to see me. Is my ego that big that I need to pay $96,000 so 20 people don't see me? Yeah. Well, plus, like, why is it a bad thing? I mean, I always, Mario Lopez is like one of my favorite

longtime actors. And he flies Southwest with his kid. And I think that is so fucking cool. Barbara, unless somebody's paying for her, she'll fly coach. Daniel Lubitsky, got a lot of money. He will never get on a plane with his kids unless

he gets on a plane coach. I'm a little bit of painting out, so I'm going to be first class. I'm not saying. I'm not going to be a coach. I was acting all cool just now. You know what? I started to get claustreful. I've traveled 250 days a year.

You know what I mean? I'm not, you know, listen, who was it? Bill Gates rode the train up until they said you just have to stop riding the train due to your, you know, safety. I'm a New Yorker. I'm used to hopping in cabs, trains, you know, so it's just, you know, I don't do it for the wrong reasons. do it for the right reading. If the check is bigger than that plane ride and for the right reason and time constraint, yes,

and if you're family, you know? Yeah, I think that's a good lesson for life in general. Like, if you can't really cash the check for a bigger reason, probably don't do it. You know,

I'm kind of curious. So you've been in clothing forever since Fubu and invest in a ton of other clothing companies. Are there brands today that you're like, God, this one's underrated? Like, These are sleepers.

They're getting it right. Yeah. I like a company called Actively Black. They're the new version of Fulhu to me where they had the license for like Marvel. They had the license for Tupac. So they had Black Panther and stuff like that. That's smart. You know, Nike still gets it right in a sense.

And I'll just say a reason why. You know, they'll do a custom shoe for one person. You'll say a $30 billion company doing a custom shoe for one person. What they're doing is they're putting that algorithm together of all those people that order these type of custom shoes with the same color, the size, the fit, and you're actually creating the line for them for the following year. I think Under Armory gets it right. They were able to successfully convert from shoes and now hunting apparel and barriers

other things. I mean, I like the hokers because, you know, I'm five for seven and a half. And when I wear hokers, I'm five foot nine, I could finally look at my wife in the face. You know what I'm saying? Don't talk to me like that, baby. You know, Louis Vuitton and the largest company in the world, they get it, they get it right. They get it right for the right reasons. I don't want to go into how there's so many ways that they get it right.

Hermes, you know, I was watching the founder of Hermes speak one day on a 60-minute interview. And he said, and I don't know if I want to say the right way, but he said, expensive is something you regret. But luxury is something that you never, you don't regret. Now, I'm bastardizing the way he said it, but he basically said. said, expensive is like, yeah, look at this watch and it's cool, but it's not that role. It's a you invested in. And in a Mermez bag, he showed the process it took for one bag. Now, my wife has a bunch of Birkins, and she always says to me, honey, these are like investments.

You know how much they appreciate. So I usually go to her and say, well, when are we going to sell all these investments? They have appreciated a lot. And then I'm sleeping on the couch that night. It doesn't work out. But I think she's selling it for when I'm in the dirt. Exactly. And then, you know, she's cool.

That's her 401k female version. Getting pretty depressed. The richest people in the world didn't just build a boss. They didn't come from riches. They used other people's money and a ridiculous amount of sweat. People will tell you you can't. Yet didn't you know there isn't a multi-billion dollar business out there that didn't do some type of acquisition?

Amazon, 110 companies bought. Facebook, 96. The sage of Omaha himself started. buying a gumball route. They didn't listen to those who said they couldn't. They found aging owners, made connections, took risk, repeated. Today, the hardest thing to do isn't by a company. It's start and keep a profitable business. Around here, we don't hope and pray for profits. We buy them. Real businesses, 56,000 of them, real profits, custom deal box so you can swipe left and write at your pleasure, maps, find businesses close to you, off-market deals where no one else is

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reverse it. Well, I was curious because, like, it seems like there are some legacy brands that are researching. Like Abercrombie and Fitch, I never thought I'd see a day where that was cool again. And now one of the most successful clothing brands by Market Cap, huge growth numbers. Like, let's say you got your hands on a legacy brand, like Tommy Hill figure, Calvin Klein, something like that. What would you do to turn around an old school company? Well, I have one. It's called Fubu.

That's true. and you have a good point. It's all about the execution, right? So every brand will get rediscovered, fashion pretty simple every 10 years. There are one that will stand the test of time, Tom Ford, Chanel, you know, Louis Vuitton, Hermes. But even my brand Fubel, I think it was a good question.

Like I got another brand Kouji that I put out too, but I personally don't have the time to run Fuba the way it should be. It's an execution. And my partners and I, we never sold a brand because we love what it stands for, but we still do a good amount of business. But could we make, could I make it a probably a billion-dollar brand again? Yes, I could. It would be a whole different model.

It would be right now I would have to go away the world is. Fulbo when I first started, it was a surprise, see an African-American-owned brand that was kind of like the first hashtag of clothing that people of all colors loved. So for a store to carry it showed we believe in this culture. Today, if I would to, and we have suits and we're good in Philippines and other stuff,

but today if I were to relaunch it today, what is Fubel? For us, bias. What do people want to do now? They want independence. So I'd probably have one male, one female in every college, and one male, one female in every high school. They would get, on credit, they would get a $1,000 worth of football

for $500 worth of credit. I'd bank it by one of the banks, JPMorgan Jays or whatever. And they would sell the clothing and they would make $500 each allotment and when they get to a certain point, they would get digital assets, maybe your podcast, maybe social media,

maybe AI, maybe whatnot, whatever the case is. And then when they time out of that school, they would bring somebody else very much like the Avon model. And that's what I would do because it would be then Fubu would be empowering us here while we sell to our community. That's what I would do with that brand. That's so interesting.

Yeah, you would basically make it a streetwear brand again. It's not going to be you on the street knocking on doors, but you're just going to proliferate yourself. Right. And instead of the Fubu guys being the Fulbo guys, I would have contests on who's the new Fubu guys and Fubu Girls. And you would be the Fubu guy and Fubu Girl in your community in Detroit, Colorado, or this school or that school for that year. And you would create your own user-generated content and we would sanction and put it on the site of saying,

if you're in this city, this is who you can go to get the product, whether online or here. But again, all this stuff is really easy to talk about. Execution is where it's at, because I have my own ideas. And you see, I don't have time to execute them. What? Do any other clothing companies do that? Like, I've never heard of somebody having, like,

a Avon sort of style model. I'm sure they do. I'm sure that like I know, I know my boy who's young or reckless, but he owns something called I've got the gene company. What he would do is put in a box a guy would pay $50 for it,

five for a denim, I think, and a man would get $100 worth of clothing for $50 a month in this box. And why was that a good model? Well, in the clothing business, the way the retail works, if I made it for 25, I sell it to Macy's for 50, and they sell it for 100. The clothing company is still making the $25 it was in, put it in

the box. However, here's the thing about especially guys, but anybody, if I know now that I got a, I got a 100,000 guys, well, I know how many 34 is I need, how many 36 is I need, how many 38th, all the sizes. I got a lower form of return. Women's is a little different because the woman when she first buys a brand, if you sell her something, she's going to buy two sizes because she doesn't know if she's a 10 and she doesn't know she's a 12. She doesn't know what and the genes fit a little different.

But I'm going to have a lower amount of returns. I'm going to know who the customer is. And you know what they started doing out of that? They started saying, hey, Gillette, you want to put your new razor in all the boxes, you give me a million dollars. So there's different ways to have these subscription, these subscription slash tiered models. So I know in our businesses, so right now,

We have a bunch of boring businesses. A bunch of what? Boring businesses, like an HVAC, roofing, painting, window cleaning. And I know, for instance, in the painting business, we want to, like, get a toe in by you saying, we'll paint some walls inside of the house. But what we really want to do is, like, paint the exterior of your house. We want to paint the whole thing. That's where we really make the money are the big projects.

And then we get, like, one house on a block. And if we get one house on the block, we know we do a door-knocking strategy. so like we'll at least get one to two others on that block. So we're like maybe even lose money on the first house to get on the second or third. I was curious in clothing like what items sell and they just make the most money? Oh, you're talking about the bread butter, the margin builders as we call it. Clothing makes almost zero money off of anything else besides jeans and t-shirts. Why?

Well, because jeans and t-shirts are easy to make and people go. through the t-shirts and stuff like that. I mean, Louis Vuitton, if you look at Louis Vuitton, I mean, when people leave, what do they really leave? With a belt, a wallet, or some kind of keychain, right? Those are margin builders, as we call them in the business.

In the business, for the most part, almost 60% of all sales and clothing is black. 20% is white. The rest is just sprinkled in between. Interesting. This is a very dumb question, but I always wonder why. So if you go to like,

Chanel or Louie or whatever. You can buy a pair of shoes for like, I don't know, 600 to 800 bucks. But then if you want to buy a shirt, like at Chanel, it's like $4,000. Why, are they that much harder to make? The shoes seem like they would be more expensive to make. Well, that's, it depends on what they're, what they're making in the Chanel shirt, right? What product they're making? And what is, I mean, it could be cashmere, it could be a lot of other stuff.

But the margin builder is going to be the simple black dress. Interesting. Right? But the shoe itself is once you make the shoe in the mold, you can replicate that mold varies different ways. A shoe is actually hard to build. It's almost like building a car because what happens is in the shirt and stuff like that, it fits, it doesn't fit. But on a shoe, there's 130 pounds on that shoe. And the ER every single night in every single city is there with a woman who split her toes or her broke her ankles due to those shoes.

So there's a lot of balance, a lot of stuff going on it. But once you replicate that mold, you're going to put that same mold together with a different upper different ways. Yeah, interesting. I never thought about that. It's always bothered me. I'm like, how come I could buy that for $600? So that's $5,000. Yeah, because that $5,000, they're only making, you know, $20,000 or they're making $5,000 units to that or $2,000 globally, Chanel.

And that shoe, they're making, you know, $40,000, 50,000 units. So they're buying by bulk. You're right. Okay, that explains it. I wanted to talk obvious a little bit about Shark Tank. You've seen a ton of pitches. And I've had friends actually pitch you. I've had friends get money.

Ooh, I don't know if I've had friends get money from you. But I've definitely had friends pitch you and pitch all the sharks. If you had to break it down formulaically, what are you like, this is a pitch that works and this is one that doesn't? What is a good way to pitch to you mind? The picture doesn't work for sure is the people that immediately come in and they just, everything is hypothetical and they assume they don't have a history of things and they go. The number one thing that you can say that I immediately check out or I give you some kind of royalty offer like a Kevin O'Leary like, oh, this person's almost out of business. is this is a $50 billion market, and if I only get 1%,

I guarantee you every one of the charts are almost out. Or Kevin Leary will give you a finance offer because he doesn't care if you do well or not. He just wants his money back, and he's taking a flyer, and if he gets a percentage of the company down the road. The greatest pitches that I have seen,

they're always a story. They're always very infomercial feeling because what they're doing is they're introducing that a problem either exists that you know or exists that you don't know. They're talking about why who they are and why they're qualifying that they're the person to solve the problem. They're giving you some kind of proof of concept and essence on why. So it's like, hey, hey, Cody, I'm Damon John.

And you know what? For years, the hip-hop community has had to buy their clothing from other designers that didn't care about them that said, give me your money. I don't like you. But I've been a fan of hip-hop for 10, 20 years. and I know everything about hip-hop, and I'm going to create a clothing line called Fubu. There's no such thing called the Internet,

but if you're across the street and you see me, you know what I'm into because I'm Fubu. I am going to connect people through a community. And people in the past have had to, if they want to buy African-American type of clothing, they had to do Kintay cloth clothing. Who wants to wear orange and green and red? I'm going to create blue jeans like a blue gene.

This is the cowboy, the Levi's of Cowboys. we are the Levi's of the urban kid. And it's going to be about 20% more, but it's going to be quality in it. And if you invest right now, I got supercellular, like L.L. Kouge, ready to wear it. Amen.

So you're qualifying yourself, you know, and telling the story. Yeah. Now, what about, you know, on Shark Tank, obviously it's a TV production. How much of it is actually, like, produced? Are there takes and they get to go again?

And, like, is there a fake? There's only one component of it that in case I'm talking and I'm saying I'm out and Barbara's just doing her normal rambling because she didn't take her medicine and the mics don't pick it up. We do a day where nobody's there and we say and for that reason I'm out, so you catch the audio of the actual clean I'm out. But there is nothing produced. Remember, this is our own money. and ABC and Mark Bennett and them, they don't want to get in the way of us spending, losing, or profiting off of money.

So an average pitch is one hour long, we half an hour to an hour long, 16 cameras shooting it. So an hour pitch is 16 hours of footage for you to see eight minutes. It takes us six to nine months to close the deals. We close about 60% of the deals. The guy who's with me in the room today pitched on Shark Tank 13 years ago,

some little company called Hanukkah Tree Topper. We ended up licensing a lot of the company out and doing well with it and been my head of my sales for 13 years after that. So it's real, real people, real businesses. Fascinating. What percentage of deals like actually made you money? Make what? Made you money. I don't even count what's made me money because if you really think about it, and Barbara's really good with her P&L.

When you look at my staff, when you look at me traveling, when you look at the hours and time in it, I don't know. look at them, but, you know, I'm, I'm positive because of certain exits and shares that we've sold. I am positive, but, you know, it's, it's almost like the venture community. You know, I think two out of ten is winners. I think we have three out of ten because we have a baked in commercial. Yeah, 100%. I mean, you have the hardest part, which is distribution. Yeah. I, the hardest part wasn't creating T-shirts, those existed before. It was getting somebody to actually say yes and give you the cash. Correct. And so, I mean, we see this all day. You know, I have this brilliant AI strategy

and we're going to change the world. And I go, awesome, who have you sold it to? And they go, well, nobody. But the second I get the money, what's going to happen is I'm going to sell it. And you guys get to sell immediately. I mean, I had a few friends that came on Shark Tank and I'm sure you guys saw that.

Did you see a lot of people come on Shark Tank that were like actually didn't want your money? They just wanted your distribution. So they gave you crazy fake offers. They wanted the commercial. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Plenty of people.

There was a certain time when a lot of people did that. So what I do is pretty simple. After we do the deal, you know, in a handshake, I walk over to them and I send, I give them a piece of paper, very short one and say, take it to your attorney. And it says on there something like, you know, you're not going to publicly shop this deal for another year after you air. Totally up to them to sign. But if I see them hesitating, I know that they're looking for a commercial. I don't mind you looking for a commercial.

I get it. However, there's a serious matter. The show was founded in 0708 when we went through a very hard time in this country. You're only going to have about 96 people that air. A thousand people will see the producers and 40,000 people applied. If you have $2 million in the bank and you have your hat and your hand asking for money and you have no, no, you don't plan on closing a shark. You took that slot away from a family who risked everything, who their kids are not going to college.

They're about to lose their house and they want a shark to desperately help. And I think you're a selfish bastard for that. I think there's a lot of other places to pitch those ideas and nothing wrong with founders who have money. But that show is for the American public. And people don't understand you got a million dollars in a bank, not today when people can't pay their mortgages.

So that's why I do it. I have a problem with people. who try to abuse the platform. Yeah, I never thought about it that way, actually. I think a lot of people think about Shark Tank, not from that sort of like, that deep heartfelt portion of it. It's just like, cool company.

Give them cash. We love, we love these people. These people are our partners. These people are people who are allowing us to invest in their dream. They're holding a space, and there's a fiduciary duty of investing in another person's dream.

I agree with that. You know, let's go to the other side of that, which is I've certainly lost a lot of money doing deals. And I, like, to now, knock on wood, I don't know if I'll always be able to do that, but I have never lost money for other people, which is always like kind of the line that freaks me out, you know? And that's probably a bad thing in some ways. I should probably get more comfortable with losing. No. I can't sleep at night if I lose some money. And I lost money for probably about two guys.

Yeah. And I still, till today, I want to do it the right way. I have another business that they can get in, where they're going to make their money back? I'm going to make sure they're first up. Yeah, yeah. The place where I regret investing the most was I invested some in the cannabis industry early on. Okay. And it's not that I regret cannabis itself.

I think I regret the way that it's happened. And now I think the THC levels are like too high. And I think the way we're doing it could actually be bad for people's health. But I'm not a doctor. But I invested in the industry that really needed regulation to happen. And if deregulation didn't happen, it wasn't going to really change. And so I remember like one deal, we almost lost $12 million and then it got down to one. You know, and we did a workout of the deal.

But that was fucking awful, you know, terrible six-month period. But thank God, we only lost a million bucks. It sounds like a lot. I was wondering, what do you think is the most amount of money you've ever lost on a deal? Probably about $6 million. And did that hurt? Like, do you remember what happened? I'm about to try.

Yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot. I don't want to actually remember it. Yes, it hurts. Losing that kind of money hurts. It hurts the wallet, but it hurts knowing that you put people to work, knowing that you didn't make maybe the right decisions. You could have done better. It's your job. What did I do wrong? Why didn't I see it? I let my ego get in the way. Did I pick the wrong people? Man, how are these people going to look at me now? They trusted me. I don't. I don't. don't know what they were going to do with that money. Yeah, they may be wealthy, but it doesn't matter. That's not my problem. I can't count their money. I think most entrepreneurs have something like that, like a moment where you kind of stood in the dark alone, maybe didn't tell your wife, didn't tell your kids, everything was kind of going sideways.

I've certainly had them. My dad calls it the head in the hands moment. The head in the hands moment. And I was curious, have you had one of those? plenty of time to have had that i have it now i have it now you know i was speaking in some place and they said to me what are your hobbies i said oh you know snowboarding going to ufc fights and fishing and i said wait a minute i really haven't done none of that in the last year they said why i said because my head is in my hand why is your head in your hand damon because ai is going to turn this country into a civil

war because when they have-nots don't have anything they're coming after us so what am i doing right now with this a i that's clear that's going to put me my company and my people in the right place to be that small percentage that's going to be able to thrive because if i don't think and see where that puck is going right now we're all in trouble in my company and in every company we're all in trouble. And then I started thinking about it. Wait a minute. What is AI going to lose and not have? Never going to have community. People are going to need to piss shit and eat. People are going to need medicine. If we are going into some kind of war or problem because 80% of the people are going to be replaced by autonomous vehicles who are truck drivers. Retail is gone. And then all of a sudden you got

Amazon just bought 750,000 robots, so nothing there. If all those people are going to need to feed their families and they're going to come after some of us, well, then I should invest in security companies and barriers of the ways to make the place a safer place. So my mind is right there. Where is it going? Interesting. So what is your answer to that?

What industries are you investing in today? And what are you telling your employees to do? Well, I think that if robots, are going to be $30,000 apiece from what you call it, Tesla in two years? They're going to be 5,000 to five years.

If people moving further out and they don't have enough income, well, then you can create better glamping in various areas. Imagine having 20 robots on 400 acres of land, just cleaning and doing everything it needs to be so that you can create better communities for people. If biohacking

and health is coming around, imagine if you're getting people cleaner ways to take care of their body and their health that doesn't cost a lot because technology is showing people how to improve their lifespan. You know, if you don't know if you're talking on a screen to a robot or whatever the case is, community is going to be bigger and better. So how do you create better communities so they can educate and they can protect themselves? So we have to find the beautiful things that work in AI. Do I think we're going to be good? Yes, I think we're going to be great, but you have to be the one thinking about it now. You don't want to be the person who's

working at the library saying, why are you looking at Google, come over here and look through an encyclopedia. You want to be that person looking at Google saying, how are we using it the best? I like your idea. I love buying boring businesses. Because as fast as AI is, it's not going to change the entire world. Like my buddy Matt Lieber, who has, who teaches trade, crash champions. You know, you can go to college now, and let's say you're a doctor. Doctor used to have to need 20 years of education and look at a scan. AI, look at your scan quicker than a doctor ever will. Do you really need that?

Now, trust me, do me a favor. If you're going to cut open people, go to college. But a kid graduating college today is going to barely make $70,000 to $70,000, a kid who does a trade, like in my buddy, Crash Champions, or HVAC or these things that people don't want to do anymore, they're making $70,000 coming out of high school. They're not borrowing $500 to $700,000 with a student debt and they're not going to pay up until their 50s. And they can take college courses at the same time

as being an HVAC person or owning a car wash. I think the world is getting really simple and you've got to go back to the basics and then add AI to it. Yeah, it's smart. Well, it kind of goes back to your book, which I loved, the Power of Broke, about, you know, AI's not going to hustle for you like a human.

Like the creative will become so much more important because the everyday will be way too easy. Like it will be too easy to mass spam, mass email people. So you're going to have to fit. Like it actually might full circle revert back to the door knocking, back to the neighborhood science. You know, that's the point. You know, Rick Rubin said some other day was fascinating to me. He said, you know, AI couldn't have told the right brothers the dream. Oof, what a line.

Right. The thing that makes us imperfect makes us. perfect. The ability to say, I'm a knock on all these doors. And I'm going to tell them something a computer can tell them, but not with the emotion, because I'm a pack animal. I'm going to look them in the eye and say, see the house down the block, we painted. Look how beautiful that house is. Yeah, you can get, you can get painted from anyplace else. I'm going to bust my ass and make sure this fucking house is perfect. One of my favorite lines from Damon is the easiest thing to sell is the truth. And if you listen to Damon talk, you'll hear him say again and again and again,

that the most important part of building a business is to do it your way with your unique angle. And there's an angle every single time. We obsess about this in the SMB boardroom, where we teach people what we call finding your avatar, which is finding the angle on your customer. Most people do not spend enough time thinking about brand, customer, avatar, and angle. So we obsess on it for you. For one year, We work together with the best entrepreneurs who are focused on growth sustainably and want to use our operating system in order to do it. If you are running a business that is on a path to do hundreds of thousands of dollars a year

or millions of dollars a year, you're going to want to check out the boardroom and see if you're a fit. We will help you find your angle and your avatar. I'd love your take on brand because I think that's one of your zones of genius, obviously. but you know we have this window washing company called pinks and pinks yeah it's super cute i should have brought a hat for you but anyway it's these two young dudes and good looking guys dress real sharp in uniforms kind of like throwback 50s era uniforms cursive like hands stitched little pink towels they throw over their shoulders they're good looking dudes all of them now they're now there are 100 locations all over the country

But when it started, it was just two guys in Austin. And they do these, what do they call it, comp cleans where they go to local businesses like prominent institutions in Austin. And they clean them and make them look nice for free. And their whole thing is like bringing dignity back to window washing. Like bring dignity back. So when they go and pitch the commercial building, sure, there's some big, huge company that they're pitching against.

It's probably cheaper. that probably has better systems, but these two guys show up and they look the guy in the eye and they say, not only do I want to do your first one for free, but like it's me and my buddy here and we started this company

and we're going to be out front with like our cool designed thing and we want to put you on Instagram and they win. And so I do think this brand is going to be so important in an era when like a lot of executions cheaper. You're 100% on because you got to remember

and I'm a very simple guy. There's nothing new in this world. I always say, The voice is not new. It's just American Idol. They just turn the chairs. And American Idol is Showtime with Apollo, and Showtime of the Apollo is the Gong show.

It's not new. Young kid in college stood up and said, Mr. John, I'll tell you what's new. Your old generation doesn't have. Emosos are new. No, they're not. They will call hieroglyphics, you moron, go sit down. Now, there's nothing new in this world.

It's a new way to present it. The top companies in Shark Tank History, socks and a sponge. Instacart knows that some people go bananas about getting the perfect, well, banana. Some want them green, some want them ripe, some want them ready right when they hit their doorstep. But with Instacart's preference picker, available at most retailers, you can choose to get your groceries just the way you like. That means perfectly ripe bananas, deli meat sliced just the way you want,

and avocados that aren't still hard as a puck in the third period. So don't cross your fingers and hope for the best. Download the app and get groceries just how you like with Instacart. Damn scrub daddy. Lori ate my lunch on it. That was a great fucking company. So I see that damn sponge smiling at me. $1.3 billion dollars worth

a sponger. She's slinging plastic like happy males. She's killing our oceans. But you know my buddy Ryan Dice out of Austin? You know Ryan? I do. Not like personally, but I know. Ryan is a genius. He says, listen, let me show you. You know how you can market? He said he remembered

marketing and Roland. He remembered marketing a lawn company. He says, I'm, he said, I remember I got a brand new lawnmower. Oh, I'm going to do it. He said, and I remember I got out there and I got that thing ready and I forgot, I needed gas. And I went to the gas station. He says, I live in Austin. I left. I was 180 pounds. I got back. I was 160 pounds. I'm sweating. The day's gone. I got grass and bugs flying all over me. He says, so I hired a lawnmower company. They came over and it was Saturday after a hard week of work. I had this damn lawn more.

I was like, these guys are running around the yard. My wife's naked trying to get dressed and she's like, who the hell is in the yard? He said, but another company came back and said, you know what, we mow lawns during these hours when you're at work, you tell us one because we want to give you your Saturdays and your Sundays back. Come ahead, lion.

You tell us when you're at work, we'll tell you when we're going to be there and we will be there. Everything has an angle. There's nothing new in this world. So whether it is, we're bringing this. dignity back. Some people want to feel good. Come to our business.

You see the people clean windows? We're perfectionists in everything we do. From who we hire to who we work with, how these windows are going to look. Great idea. And that's what you sell people that separate people. You know, people think, you know, everything is new. You know what's the most powerful thing you can do now?

Billboards. You can't swipe a billboard when you're on a highway. Oh, retail is dead. Yeah, open a retail in an airport. They can't get Amazon. in there, it's a high traffic place, and it's a person who knows how to pay a lot of money because they're not taking a train or a car, and they're paying 30% more. You know, it's so true because I think what you've had 10,000 reps 10,000 times from all of

these companies that you've not only run, but invested in. And so one of the cool things I think you're doing now that I don't hear you talk about as much is the CEO access program and how you're kind of like sharing these pieces back to the next generation, not keeping it all to yourself. Can you talk a little bit about that? CEO access is me. It's a network of people like Cody. Right? It's yesterday's CEO used to be making and they

will come. Today's CEO is a person that they need to know who their brand is. The most successful CEOs I know, they're doing millions and billions in a dollar, but nobody knows who they are. But yet the kid in the mail room gets pissed off over a decision you made and put something on social

media and now you got to fire 400 hardworking people in your company because you didn't have the time to go get a spin doctor handle PR because nobody knows who you are. You know, everybody is a brand today. You remember like we were talking about, information is easy to get the new currency of today is attention. And so there's a million real estate brokers. There's only one Barbara Corcoran. There's a million, well, not a million, but there's a lot of basketball owners, only one more Cuban. And by the way, there's a, I'm not even a great designer. I got to tell you, Tom Ford.

and Carl Legafel rolling over saying, how dare he call himself a designer? You put an 05 and a fubo on a bunch of sweatshirts. That's it. But I'm on Shark Tank, and the world knows who I am. And I've advised every single living president till today. They haven't asked me for money. I can walk into any room, and they know who I am.

And my name, I can open any company I want to, and I can walk into any room I want to because my name goes in the room before I do. There's a million real estate developers with the most powerful man in this world today knew how to brand himself is not only a real estate, and I'm not getting into politics, he's the president of the country. So when you look at CEOs, they don't know who to talk to, because they're running big companies, but once they were doing $5 million, they could talk to these people here, great, $50 million, these people here. Once they start to get the $2 million, $200 million, who are they going to talk to? Mark Cuban is not picking up the

phone, and this person, even though they're doing great, can't help them. So that's what it is. is because when I go on to a show like with Cody, I go, hey, Cody, I got two or three great, I can't be on the show tomorrow. The episode's all going to be about me. Hey, you're looking with people like Maddie Breda Crash Champions. I'm my buddy who's doing several billion changing the way hearing is being done. You would say, I'm interested. When I take a stage like a spire, I can't, I can't take number, slide at one o'clock and four o'clock. When I go on the cover of ink, I start bringing these people through. When I walk ringside at a USC fight

and I say to somebody, you don't know this person? If I go to Vanity Fair and I introduce my buddy Brandon to Tim Cook, that's what CEO access is, walking CEOs in the room and walking them in the right CEOs for the right reason.

People who don't want to be famous, they want to be respected for the right reason as a voice of authority in their space. but you can go to CEO access.com. I don't even know it half the time. It's just we qualify people.

We'll drop it in the show notes too. Go click the link. I do appreciate it. I love that. Why did you do that? Why not just keep it all for yourself? Because first of all, I can't use it all myself. Second of all, it really happened

because one of my buddies, who was a CEO, a very successful company, said, why don't you help me? And I said, I'm the people shock. I'm helping the people. I know you're helping the people, but I know this man. And I know this person is one of the purest people on the planet.

And he said, I understand you helping everyday entrepreneurs. I think you should. But if you help me, you got more people like me thinking like you and I'm going to help millions of people. And I said, holy shit, I'm becoming the thing I was fighting against. And I decided to help him. And he decided to help so many more people. So if I can build an army of a couple of people like that,

you know, it's just great. It's why you help people. That's why we help people. You know, the people in our industry who they come, they go, they show jets, they show cars, they try to sell you this thing. Nothing against them.

But the people who are lasting a long time, they get on, they keep talking, they put out more and more books, they help more. They just want to help because we've been rewarded for the people who helped us. Yeah, I mean, one, it's fun. There's like, I don't know that there's a better, it is selfish in some ways.

Very selfish. Because you learn how other people are doing things that you didn't even think about. Totally. And then when you actually say like, oh, I mean, how about this? How many people do you think DM you and email you per day asking for advice? DM and email me per day? I would say 100. And then of those, how many if you gave them the advice they asked for would actually take action on it?

None. One. Yeah. One maybe. But when they do. Yeah, but when they do, it's incredible. And so I think the other part that's really cool is when you find best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, right? So like when you find somebody who's just done the right thing keeps moving, takes action.

And then they take your, you know they're going to take your advice and run. When somebody, and you go, you know what? Your book or what you said that day, I've been doing it and I have this type of business. You go, really? Yeah. And then you feel like, you know what? honestly, that information was out there. You were going to do it regardless.

But thank God you got it for me. Yeah, it's a service. Because in the community, there is people who, obviously, we don't know and we're training, but then it is me calling my fellow shots, because that's what we do. We say, hey, where are you doing an interview at?

One of my COI's people, we've been trying to get there, do Nelly, of course, but, oh, she's on an apprentice. Katrina camp, and so we always say, I told Katrina, I said, Katrina, here's we're going to do in the CO Access crew. We're all going to get LaBern and Shirley Jackets.

We're going to have a secret, a secret, you know, a secret handshake. She liked it? Was she in for that? You're like, I'm cool with the jacket. That's stuff. Not so much. All right. Let's talk.

I want to go high and then I want to go low. So when you, let's talk about holding company structure really quickly. I think people think it's really sexy to own a bunch of businesses and invest in them. And then they probably don't realize a lot of the difference. difficulties. Like, I mean, how much do you think you pay people just to oversee your companies that you have interests in? Really good question. So I first, I first did a lot of the deals, Shark Tank and Off Shark Tanked. I did a lot of the deals where I had an attorney looked through them and this and that. And for the first year in Sharpton, the sharks are learning too. And that's like you said, like being a little selfish.

The first year in the deal, the deal flow wasn't that good. The show you, nobody can understand. I spend about $750,000 an attorney fees alone just to look at the deal. Now I put it through a VC software. It costs me $10,000 to do everything. But brand managers looking over it, I could be at a quarter million dollars just looking at brand manager. When I'm not talking about CFOs, we're not talking about another thing like that. Also, you know, I look at a lot of the deals I do. I do options on the deals because, you know, I'm not trying to fill out all this corporate filing and stuff like that.

And especially if you're late on your K-1s and I'm late. and all kind of stuff like that. So I try to do, if we hit certain numbers, then I can activate my options and my shares in a certain period of time. Yeah, I love that. Then you basically don't have to deal with the tax consequences of it. And then you know what, in three years,

if it doesn't work out, well, the IRS says you're allowed to write that off. Yeah. And then also, you know, the company can keep your equity. Hey, it didn't work out the way I wanted it to, so I'm not being selfish. Yeah, so, yeah, so what did I do? You know what?

I went out and I was a spokesperson for a long period of time, it didn't pop, don't worry about it. Take whatever I did, it's yours. That's super smart. How many bank accounts do you think you have to manage all this? I probably have about 35, probably, maybe 40. And what about when it comes for organizational structure? So like, how do you think about the holding company that is Dame and John?

Is that how you think about it? Is it a holding company? You know, I wish, you know, I wish I was as organized that you may think I am. You know, I'm Willie Wonka, but the Chalka factory got a lot of shit going on in it. But yes, I do have that. I work with, there's a lot of different things. I work with a guy named Halel Presser, who was a really amazing attorney for asset protection. Yeah.

For holding companies and various other things like that. He's one of 12 people out there that this is all they focus on because it's important. One thing about it's very hard to make money super. hard to keep it. I'll give me an example. I have an RV. And he was telling me, and I was like, okay, well, we got the RV. He said, put it on the RV LLC. No problem. He said, who's the satellite radio? My wife, because, you know, we have a satellite radio account. He said, you just pierced your corporate veil. I said, because if you get in an accident, they can just say, the judge will say, you didn't respect your LLC because your wife, it should have been under the RV's LLC. A lot of people

don't realize this and they can come after everything you own if god forbid you had an accident that can happen with it it's a taxi cab model the apartment model you get one holding company but each taxi cab has it's medallion it's this it's that a lot of people don't know about how to protect themselves against a lot of these things because unfortunately the people listening to us they're probably good people the people that wake up every day to wonder how to screw you when you're running a real business, other people going, I don't have anything to run. I want to scam you. I want to buy the fake shark tank ads. All the sharks invested in this pill. I want to put out the if you only loan. I want. So there's a lot of, I hate to say,

there's a lot of bad people that they're looking every day on how to hurt you. Yeah. You know, one of my favorite mentors, he had this line. He has a breakfast. He does. And it's once a month with a group of other big-time entrepreneurs, much bigger than me. And he goes, there's a price of entry, though, for it. And he goes, the only people that get invited to this breakfast are people that make, and it was a certain amount of money, so a certain amount of money, people that have been entrepreneurs and divorced before. And then finally, people have been sued. He goes, you got to be sued, you got to be divorced, and you got to have made this much money, and then you've lost this much money. He goes, and then I know that

you will know what it's been like to be an entrepreneur. That's hardcore. It's hardcore. And, you know, whether I believe all of that or not, there's a truth to it. Like, I have never, have you ever met a successful entrepreneur that hasn't had to go through some type of lawsuit? Absolutely. You know, you have to. When you, you know, because because the reason why I think as an entrepreneur you go through a lot of lawsuits is, number one, you're taking a lot of swings. Number two, you're really trying to attach to other people because you're this hopeless romantic that everybody, wants to strive for better things in life. And then you do get some place, you start to move up here,

and these people start to resent you or not understand. You know, you never hear the story of, you always hear, you know, I help start the company. No, you weren't shit. You didn't help start the company. You came along after we kind of started the company. You won a free ride. We had to move on, and now you're the one complaining.

There's a big old five on all the Fubu jerseys. You ever seen this O'Five? It's a Mnucho the 5. Why? Because I always wanted to be five partners. It's only four of us. There's 10 people with that, with that fifth partner that never stuck around. So there's 10 people out there going, you know, I'm the fifth member of Fubu.

There's 10 of the fifth Beatles running around. I don't think people talk about that enough because it seems to me like one of the most important deals you ever do is the people you partner with. I've never had a pitch going. Let me tell you something. I'm not going to do anything I say I'm going to do. And I'm going to make excuses about every single other person around me. And no matter what, it's going to be your goddamn problem.

I wish somebody would. If we could read their mind, then we'd know that a lot of people think that way. Yeah. Nobody. Summary, nobody ever said that to me. Yeah. But a lot of people do. But then I, you know, then I remember that that's the reason why it's easy for people

who don't do that to win, not easy, but easier. Like, thank God. If every single one of them knew what you and I were going to do, there's no place for you and I. Exactly. So you got to appreciate the haters and the flakers, I think. Okay, I want to end on one last question for you. You got a mic and every entrepreneur you want to speak to standing in front of you, what do you leave them with?

What do you tell them? What is your why? Are you doing it because you want to do it? or are you doing it because your parents told you this is what success looks like? Are you doing it because you don't want to take that out, you don't want to put up that out of business sign because you're embarrassing what the community is going to say to you. Are you doing it because you think that somehow you're going to arrive at one moment and the work is going to stop?

Why are you doing it? Because once you know why you're doing it, then you're going to know the goals that you need to set and the homework you need to do to enforce those goals. If you don't know why you're doing it, you need to go to a place to understand that why. I'm not a billionaire. I'm not a billionaire by choice. I'm offered often, you know, huge venture deals.

A bank, very famous. The one most powerful bank said to me, Damme, you know what? I'll give you a $1.3 billion credit line. I'll put a merger and acquisition person over there with you. We bank the top thousand companies in the world. We know they have these initiatives for minority vending. Everybody will respect the fact that you're a minority vendor because of your history and you're on TV. We will give you the money.

We want you to acquire, like in a hotel, we want you acquire a rug company, a lighting company, a furniture company, we want to then put you into bid for this stuff and you will most likely get the contract because of who you. you are, the funding we have for you and your history. And I guarantee you, Damon, you probably will make an average of whatever, whatever. Hmm, I'm 56 years old. That's a 20 year run with 20,000 people working for me. I will be 76 at that time. The worst time in my life is when I had 7,8 homes and all my friends enjoyed the homes.

I can only sleep in one bed. I have a little nine-year-old girl. She will never see me again if I go back to doing that. I already missed my 31 and my 26-year-old growing up because I was so busy working. Why would I do that? No. So what is your, why? Why would I do that so somebody could see me on a yacht?

I can rent that yacht and get it right back to the owner to let that be their damn problem. No more pets. Why are you doing it? Why do you not know your? wife and your husband. Are you going out making sure that a lot of people see you that can't stand you? But why are you doing it? No, you why. But if you're waking up every day because you're solving a problem for a person, you're bringing them joy, and you love it, and you do that. Damon John, this was amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me.

Dave and John is the man. If you guys liked this episode, wait until you see what's next. You're going to want to subscribe and you are going to want to follow along because our next guest is just as good as this one was. And I thought this one was incredible. Also, if you guys want to hear more about Damon's new program, it's CEOaccess.com, I thought it was pretty incredible and I'm excited that he came and talked to us about it today. Lastly, I want to hear what you guys think about this episode. Drop in the comments for me. What question should I have asked that I didn't. What was your favorite question? And what did you think was not a very good question? I'll hear all of them from you. I'll read all of them. And I'll make sure that we do better every single time.

Thank you for being here. You are a very big deal to me and to us.