Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Daymond John, CEO and Founder of FUBU

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

This week's conversation is with entrepreneur Daymond John on the power of clarity, vision, and imagery.From street hustle -- to Shark Tank to being a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, he has become globally recognized for his relentless commitment to promoting and supporting entrepreneurs. Daymond initially made his mark as the entrepreneur and branding expert behind the groundbreaking lifestyle brand, FUBU (which eclipsed more than $6 billion in global retail sales).He started a global brand from the basement of his mother’s house.Today, the streetwear market that FUBU pioneered is a $20 billion dollar industry.In this conversation we discuss what has been the driving force behind Daymond’s success, his process for setting goals, and why having clarity is so important to him.In every single of these conversations I ask the guest if they have a guiding philosophy that shapes their life. Daymond likes to ask people if they can describe themselves in 2-5 words. When you’re able to be that concise, it leads to some serious clarity.In Daymond’s words: “If you don’t know what you stand for, when you walk into a room, you leave it up to us to interpret who you are.”_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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When I say that in speaking engagement, I say, what are your two to five words that you stand for? What is your Nike? Just do it. FUBU for us, buy us. White cast is what you crave. Many people have to wonder what their two to five words are. And I would say to them,

well, if you don't know what you stand for, when you walk into a room, leave it up to us to interpret who you are. And many people really don't know who they are because they've been living so much to be somebody else for somebody else. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. By trade and training, I'm a high performance psychologist, which means that I spend time understanding the science and the art of helping people train their minds to become their very best. And the idea behind these podcasts, these conversations, is to extend that learning, to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they're searching for, and to understand their psychological framework, how they understand themselves, the world, events,

and then how they see themselves playing a role in becoming their very best. And part of that process is understanding the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time.

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David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Damon John. And literally from the street hustle to Shark Tank, the TV show, to being on the Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, he is globally recognized for being just this relentless voice and this wonderful commitment to promoting and supporting entrepreneurship. He understands it. He understands the process of having an idea, what it takes to execute on that idea on the global stage. It's awesome. So Damon initially made his mark as the entrepreneur and branding expert behind the lifestyle brand FUBU, for us, by us, is what that stands for. And that has eclipsed, that company has eclipsed more than $6 billion in global retail sales. Well done. He started this brand from the basement of his mother's house. And again, he had an idea.

He had just that right way about himself to figure out how to execute against the idea, which as part of entrepreneurship, that is essential. And today, the streetwear market that FUBU pioneered is estimated somewhere around $20 billion industry. And in this conversation, we discuss what has been the driving force behind David's success and what are his process for setting goals to get that clarity and why having clarity is so important for him. And in all the conversations I have with folks, I do ask people about their guiding principles, their guiding philosophy that shapes their life. And Damon likes to ask people the same question and he asked them to describe it in two to five words.

So it's really crisp and really sharp. When you're able to be that concise, it becomes a forcing function that has to lead to clarity. And so it is a process to get that clear. And it's just a takeaway that I'm very clear after doing so many of these conversations and studying the art of how people have become their very best and made a dent in their universe or possibly the entire universe, that that clarity is really important for them. And in Damon's words, if you don't know what you stand for when you walk into a room, you leave it up to the rest of the people in the room to interpret who you are.

Isn't that cool? Yeah, that's what's up. Okay. And with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Damon John. Damon, how are you? I'm great. How are you doing? Yeah, thanks for taking the time to unpack how you've become the man that you are today and spending the time to do that.

So I'm super appreciative to get to know you better and what's underneath your story because your story is very public, but underneath and all the nuances that are not yet said often enough maybe. So thank you in advance. No, well, thank you. Thanks for having me. And yeah, I'm excited about it. You've been very accommodating as well when I've been trying to actually get us together.

And so thank you for being so flexible. Yeah, it's good. Okay, good. So this is a question I don't ask often, but I wanted to start in reverse order. Usually I start with, okay, let's go back and understand like what it was like early growing up for context, for the insights that you're going to share later. But I'd like to start in reverse order for me, which is like starting now.

And this is a big question now. What is it like to be you? That's a big question. And so I just have a sense that you can manage that question. I don't know if I can manage that question. I know you have a history in psychology and I don't want to start crying. We're not going to do that, I promise. I don't think I've ever been asked that question before. So what is it like to be me today? Well, first of all, it's a blessing and it's an honor to be me today. I've

been able to look back at my career and know that I've come from places where majority of the people don't make it out of, yet the ones that are successful in the world have come from places like mine and or worse to get to certain levels of notoriety and or success, whatever you deem success is. It's an honor that I am a father of three daughters and everybody in my life that I've had, I really have never had major conflict with, meaning my ex as siblings and as children and parents always are going to wonder over the course of time, did they do the right thing as their responsibility as that person in somebody else's life? And as a parent, you always want to know, did you raise your children to be the people that would contribute to the world? I would hope. And you'll always second guess yourself. Should you have been around more? Should you have been around less? Should you had not babied them as much or what did you do right

or did wrong? So that aspect of my life is absolutely amazing. The people that I have worked for me, I've worked for me anywhere from 10 to 25 years. And some people I know as long as 40 something years, and I'm only 48, meaning that I met many of my friends when I was six years old, seven years old. And when I founded the company FUBU, I brought as many friends as I could from my neighborhood, from working with me and Red Lobster from high school and things of that nature. So I have the joy of working around a beautiful amount of people that have known me from a long period of time. And even the new people in my life are still new, you know, new is seven, eight, nine, 10 years. So I get up and go to work and see amazing people every single day that I value and trust. And I

love seeing how they've grown over the last 10, 20, 30 years. And they've seen me grow and I've seen their kids grow and I've seen them go through ups and downs. And I've been able to challenge them and they've been able to challenge me. And if I go away tomorrow, I can leave my business and most of my stuff to many of the people that I trust. And they would probably actually do a better job than me. The only thing I couldn't do is actually physically be me to show up someplace. But a lot of people say a lot of black people look the same, so they're just fine to look alike. You've said that before. That was well-timed. So, no, I haven't really said that before. I tell you the truth. I said it in different ways. So what's the other side of me? The other side of being me is the person that everybody looks at and says, he can change my life with waving a wand and or these couple of magic words and putting

sprinkling pixie dust on me because I see them on TV every single week changing people's lives. And you generally only hear about the success stories I have when my failures have superseded my success stories in regards to numbers. That's why, you know, we have Shark Tank. There used to be a show, Beyond the Tank, where I love the fact that we showed the ups and downs and the reality of working with businesses. And, you know, one Shark Tank, three out of the 10 of them are going to explode and be great, and the other seven are going to either tread water or maybe even fail. But people only love the big stories about that, so they think I can change the world. And I can't necessarily buy and invest in every single thing that I see, and it is hard because you want to help everybody. Also, being somebody who may be deemed as a father African-American, a male or whatever the case may be, when there are problems that come around in the world, such as the Me Too movement and or Black Lives Matter or anything that I'm passionate about, they think that I can just come to the rescue and change everything. And if I don't say anything about it, then in some fashion or form, I don't

care about the community and or the world. I have to be careful about the people that are around, you know, that are trying to exploit my family and other people. Because when you see me on TV with all that type of money, then people sit there and say, well, there could be extortion, there could be danger to my family, or there could just be people who want to be around my family and my loved ones for the wrong reasons altogether. So, you know, I'm always on. And then on the flip side of that is a very appreciative part of it, because I know that I'm an image of inspiration to people and I can show you that you know being an entrepreneur is the ultimate equalizer that doesn't discriminate against color gender creed and it empowers people and if my dumb ass can make it then anybody can make it and I try to be very transparent about that

and I try to show people that with all your flaws it makes you even more beautiful as long as you're willing to have drive. And then the last part about my life is, you know, how do I stay ahead of the curve? How do I progress? And it's the same thing that most people are going to think about in their life. And they think that entrepreneurs on a larger level don't have the same problem. We all have the same problems. Cash flow. How am I going to keep cash flow ahead? I already have enough money to put back in the company, but

that's not the right business model if you go home every single day and bring money that you made 20 years ago to then put into the business again and again and again. That's a negative aspect of business. How do I move forward in business but yet pay attention to the people that have gotten me here? Meaning, how do I take care of my clients, customers, or the people that supported me, on other outlets and networks and or employers, investors to take care of my intellectual property? How do I spend enough time with my family? I have a two-year-old. But yet how do I also apply work? What is work-life balance? How to stay dedicated to my faith?

Who are the right people around me? And all the other things that come with it. And last but not least, I beat stage two cancer last year, thyroid cancer, so it wasn't one of the more deadlier cancers, but how do I continue to improve my health as I get older? So I think all those things are just actually a smidgen of the things that I worry about every single day, being myself and many people in my position worry about. Okay. So I asked you one little question. You've thought about all that a lot. Did, did that, did you just work from, um, a model in your head? Like, let me hit relationships. Let me hear it hit cultural issues. Let me hit business issues. Let me hit health issues, you know, or did,

was that just organic, the way that you expressed who you are and how you organize yourself on a regular basis? That was organic, you know, because I think that as somebody who is a person who's in charge of giving direction, I can categorize things. And, you know, I don't want to, I don't want it to come across as I'm what's keeping me up at night because few things are really keeping me up at night. I know in all reality, all the things I just talked about have to be changed or addressed very slowly and nothing will ever just be perfect. It will be a constant change in it. But these are always the things that are on the top of my head. Like in coming into anything, I look at entrepreneurship and life as a sport. And speaking to you, who obviously understands that, when you look at the field and look at

the plays and look at all the players on the field and the ones you're against, there are the challenges that you have internally that you have to face. And then you have to go out and chase and face the challenges that are per that situation, per that game, per that time. And that's just basically the way I take a snapshot of my life and look at it on a daily or weekly or monthly basis. Oftentimes in sport, the internal challenge, and I'll do two vectors on that, but the internal challenge is usually greater than the external challenge. And there's two components to the internal. One is the, my inner civil war sometimes, you know, and I'm, when I say I, I'm speaking about an athlete or performer, like my inner experience. And then, then the multitude of inner experiences that are layered and dimensioned and across each other, which is

the many people inside of the organization that is preparing to go do something to compete with other people outside of the organization. So oftentimes the internal, both within the person and within the organization is far greater of an intense challenge than the external. And I'm not trying to diminish the external by any means, but getting people's noses to line up in the same direction or their beaks to fly in the same, you know, true north, like it's really hard to do. And so I'm wondering, that's my experience working with tip of the arrow performers. What is your, would you nod your head to that or would you say, no, no, in the business world, it's the external? 100%. It's the internal first that is stronger because, you know, how can I give good direction if I'm questioning myself and I don't have clarity with myself with what I really want? Why am I doing this? At the end of the day, am I doing this for fame? Am I doing it for

fortune? Am I doing it for ego? Am I making the right move? And am I taking in enough information externally from that group of people that I trust and externally from the people that I don't even know or trust to make the right decisions to move forward? Am I leading the ship in the proper way? And often we don't really ask ourselves, well, what are we going to, what do we expect if we get what we want? You know, some of those become the bigger challenges. So a hundred percent, it is the internal force that is, that is, that is the, the, the, the challenge, because when I go out to the external team, I can adjust the team a little bit. I can not depend on one because I'm picking up the strengths of another. I can replace them. I could tell one to sit out

if I can. And I have to look at how I performed in the moves that I made on the chessboard to allow us to win. But if internally I'm confused on what I really want to accomplish and the route that I think that I should go that will make me happy and or supply the team with the best ammunition, then I'm walking into it disheveled. Yeah, spot on. And so how have you developed clarity? And it doesn't sound like you come from an anxious model, like I'm worried about, I'm worried about, I'm worried about, but I don't know that. I don't want to assume anything. But because there is enough, I don't know, at the tip of the arrow, there is a healthy neurotic way of dealing with life for many people. Sometimes it's not healthy at all, but there's just enough kind of internal crazy to go to the extra distances that most people don't really want to go. They say they want to go, but they don't really want to be uncomfortable at that level.

So what are you driven by is maybe a more succinct way of asking that question? Well, I'm, I'm driven by the journeys that I take on that I think about for a good amount of time, if I want to go in this direction and I've been blessed enough to be able to have the resources and have the people and have some great opportunities that, that don't come along to other people. I mean, I'm going on to a show that's going to be on a network for a decade. You know, and you think about it now, I'm 48 years old. I turned an adult at 21.

I mean, technically, 30% of my 35 or 33% of my life, whatever it is, has been spent on a major network, right? So, you know, I look at the opportunity there and say, okay, you know, I've obviously been very, very fortunate. Now, how do I maximize this opportunity? I have the luxury of being able to say, all right, I've been on this thing for 10 years, but what if I was on there one year, one season, two season, and then my change in direction of my drive would go a little bit different, right? You start to form a poise and a confidence as I start to know who my brand is today. And with all social media and stuff like that, my analytics get a little bit tighter

and sharper and I get the younger people around me that can give me the information of what converts best in regards to me as an intellectual property. And when I take all that and I look at my goals, which are the most important thing that I've ever done, and I have said this many times, that my goal setting is by far the thing that keep me on track. That's my autopilot. And when I compare the analysis

of who I am as an intellectual property, where I like to go along with my goals on what I want to achieve in six months, five years, 10 years, and 20, then I start to try along with my goals on what I want to achieve in six months, five years, 10 years, and 20. Then I start to try to pull it all together and put the plan together on a calendar going forward. Knowing that calendar can be obviously disrupted due to sickness or due to opportunity or due

to change in political and climate change and a lot of other things. I know it's going to go off course here and there, but at the end of the day, I still keep this target that I visualize that I want to accomplish. And I read these goals every single morning and every single evening, every single night before I go to bed, every single morning I wake up. And somehow it keeps bringing me back to that end goal that I want to accomplish. Those goals all range from health to faith, to business, to relationships with my kids and my family, to the public's perception of me

and what I want to get out of it and philanthropy and everything else. Okay. And are those goals set that they're in your control or those goals, um, are there confounding variables that they're in your control or those goals, are there confounding variables that they're not in your control? And the reason I'm asking that sensitive kind of specific question is because the literature is not clear about that. The research around it's not clear. And what I found to be a really important kind of pragmatic way of setting goals is to focus on the things that are a hundred percent under your control. And I'm wondering if that's naturally part of what you're doing or are your goals more outcome based where there's lots of variables that go into play to those things taking place? The goals are mostly in my control. Obviously, the goals when it comes to spirituality and comes to

my relationships with my daughters and my family, they are in my control. And weight loss and things of that nature. So, you know, if my goal for weight loss is very simple, that I will get down to 175 pounds by April 15th by drinking 10 glasses of water a day, eating one or two fruits, not eating after 6 or 7 p.m., no fried foods, no meats, and walking over 10,000 steps, doing calisthenics in the morning and working out at night. And I will do that five days a week, the calisthenics and whatever the case is, and I will lose approximately, you know, three pounds a month. Those are in my control because if I decide to eat fried foods and or drink alcohol or do the things that are not in that list, I can expect the outcome to be whatever. Now, naturally, my diet or wherever I would be would get me down to 185. But if I want to be 175, I have to do that.

And then when six months expires and April 15th comes and all the goals expire at that time, I reset the goal, even if I'm only down to 185. Right. Yeah. So the external, but the external ones could be challenging. If it could say that I'm going to take advantage of this amazing platform and empower others, but yet convert over to social media and have a direct relationship with my consumer by putting in an extra eight hours a week. I could be putting in eight hours a week on Snapchat when Snapchat, for whatever reason, is not working. So it's a little bit of things out of my control, but I will still also alter them to try to get them in my control. But I know I put in the best effort to try to get the best results that I want. Which platforms are you more bullish on for social for, for your,

um, community? Um, I, you know, I have a team that handles some of my platforms, but most of the stuff you see is from me. So I really love Facebook and I love Facebook, uh, LinkedIn. I love Instagram, Insta story and Twitter. I generally don't use Snapchat as much as, um, I used to. Those are the current platforms because every one of them have a different, they have a different, you know, they have a different, a different consumer on there and somebody who sees me a different way. A lot of times the biggest challenge with my personal brand is you'll go to a book signing or speaking engagement and I will have literally kids there, five all the way up to six at 80 years old.

And some of them say that's good, but it's not because how do I share the same message? A kid at five or eight years old doesn't want to hear what a person at 80 years old want to hear. So those platforms help me break those segments out and are able to let me communicate in the ways that they would more appreciate depending on who they are. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous.

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momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com, and use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep,

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Plus they look great, clean, clear, no funky color distortion, just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. What is your brand? I mean, you've talked about it a few times but like are you do you have four or

five words that describe your brand or is it something private that you don't want to share like no absolutely my brand right now i mean my brand is again it's in different ways right but my brand is i'm the people shark and that represents somebody who has come from nothing and is very transparent and can show you that if I can do it, you can do it. My personal brand and model over the last eight years, because I always say, can you describe yourself in two to five words? I always say you must be able to do that. That gives you clarity on who you are and what are you doing it for. Over the last eight years, it's probably been I'm on a quest.

And that was because I had to start learning all these other industries due to Shark Tank. Even though I knew the fundamentals of business, I had to start trying to understand various different industries so I can be better for my partners. Lately, because I have a lot of different projects, and I had technically, when I thought about it the other day, I told one of my friends, I said, hey, you know what? I've been retired for six or seven years, even though I'm working 10 times harder than I ever did when I was working. But I don't have the office of three, four, 500 people where I have to come and I have to make payroll because I have to set and send out these clothes. And I have this huge infrastructure. But doing the I'm on a quest thing has taught me so much that I decided to go back to work. And now I'm building different projects. So my newest two to five words over the last two years have changed from I'm on a quest to I'm building something big. And those are my three basic ways to describe

myself. The people shark when it's externally and I'm talking to people outside and I always know that I am the person who I want to bring hope to them because somebody had meant many people have mentored me and brought hope to me and the past has been I'm on a quest due to the fact that I was learning so much and today it's building something big. Mine for the last seven years has been roots and reach and yeah so be grounded as a man and do all the practices to be grounded and connected in that way and then um you know have great reach and so that's that's strategically is the work uh no then i do the work to strategically have a clarity of like what is the platform to have reach

i find most people that's successful like you just said it you you know you have clarity when i say that and speaking engagement say what are your two to five words that you stand for what is your night you just do it fubu for us buy us white castles what you crave many people have to wonder what their two to five words are and i would say to say to them well if you don't know what you stand for when you walk into a room leave it up to us to interpret who you are and many people really don't know who they are because they've been living so much to be somebody else for somebody else. That's exactly right. And so we, we do that work. We, we don't do it. Um, we say 25 words or less, and we talk, we walk people through like a process to develop their philosophy. And then I sharpen it and say, listen, if you can have all the words of your

native tongue, if you can get it down to 25 words or less, that's great. But can you get it out in a dark alley at knife point with a deranged man behind you, you know, and create that scene. And they're like, ah, I can't get that out. Well then you better sharpen it up a little bit because like, that's the litmus test. Can you get it down to one word, maybe five words? Cause I don't think we can get much more out, um, after that. So I think we probably, I don't think we can get much more out after that. So I think we probably, I don't know where you learned that, but I learned that people that just from science perspective, but also very practically, is that people that are very clear, it leads to better conviction.

And thank you, because again, I didn't have this, I didn't have the opportunity to obviously learn it in different forms. But I learned that initially from the branding of my products and brands over the course of time. And then as I started to go into other worlds and meet great professionals in other worlds, I would meet people who would say it all in various different ways. They would say, you know, I met a great movie producer. He did all the movies like Smokey and the Bandit and all those. He was like, you know what? If I can't understand the pitch of a movie and or a story on one page, I don't want to look at it. You need to be so precise with it. Then I would meet a person who was an excellent CEO and they said, if you can't write down the entire pitch of your company on a back of a business card, that's small, then I don't want to know it because it's too complicated.

So it looks like, you know, what you have to be able to condense everything from your personal brand to any form of communication of things you want to describe in a very concise and very short manner and right on the target, you know? That's what's up. And then you're practicing them every night, like to be more familiar with them. That's not for memory. What is that for for you? Like, obviously, you're smart enough to memorize those. But why do you read them every morning, every night? What is what is that function? Well, it is it is really for memory, I guess. And I guess you can tell me clinically, you know, why I'm doing it. But I, I, I, I first understood the power of it when I read, uh, think and grow rich when I was

16. And I remember reading think and grow rich and think and grow rich would say to put those goals on a mirror. And when you're brushing your teeth, you know, look into the mirror and read them. Right. And, and, and I would read them all the time, and I became all the people that I wanted to be, you know, do the Think and Grow Rich and looking at that. But as I grew older, I started to just practice myself with various different things, you know, like, at night, I used to play music, and then I started saying, let me play audiobooks, because I know that, you know, my subconscious mind won't filter out the information and I'll listen to it as I sleep. And then I said to myself, when I'm waking up in the morning,

I'm having these dreams about all kinds of crazy things because there's an audiobook playing in the background. Let me read my goals because I want to dream about those things when I'm sleeping. So that's what made me start doing it at night. I always knew to do it in the morning time because then all of a sudden I remembered that if I have 10 or 15 of them, I would start taking 10 or 15 actions, uh, toward, you know, doing one action per one or whatever the case may be. And it preempted me, but I needed to be reminded of it, believe it or not, because you know, with all those goals is great, but I got so many other things going on in my life that I can't remember them with goals. to be very honest. You know, doing the intellectual work is very different than practicing the art of getting closer to the goals. And there's lots of fancy ways that people can go

about setting up strategies and objectives and markers and KPIs and all that stuff. But going from the intellectual exercise of what is important to me, that's important now, but then practicing them is also important. So that's what I hear that you're doing. You're almost practicing and you're probably doing a little bit of imagery around it as well. Oh, I have to envision it. I have, you know, and I remember I forgot what book it was, but it was like, listen, if you want to see yourself in that big brand new house, you want to, you know, envision yourself touching that brass knob that's nice and warm and opening the door and seeing that four-way and smelling the bread baking and your beautiful child or your dog running towards you. And I have to envision it.

So part of the goals when I read them, I don't just read them through. I have to pause and meditate and think about them and visualize them. Yeah. Do you have a spiritual framework that you work from? Listen, I'm a Catholic, and I believe, obviously, in God. And I went to Catholic school for seven years until I got left back and kicked out. God didn't kick me out. It was nuts.

Let's be clear about that. Yeah, I'm about Catholic, and those those are the things the standards of my life but I'm not you know overall a person who goes and practice every Sunday I believe that you know God and faith are right in your body and you can pray to him or her every single day and every single minute if you want what is most complicated to you like what are the things that really are very confusing to you as a 48 year old man that's trying to do good in the world? Like what is confusing for you? What is confusing to me? Yeah, let me see what is confusing. I'm not really, I don't, I don't really have, I think, I think maybe the biggest confusion or challenge, I would call it, I have is how do I, because I've been so lucky and have been veterans or teachers or people who go out and,

and, and, and, and fight diseases in third world countries. I'll do so much for so many people. And I'll go, I'm a hypocrite. I'm getting too much credit for when these, the real people, the people on the ground, they're doing so much, you know, this is confusing to me and how can I, how can I do more? But yet, even if I wanted to give up everything and walk away and start saving the turtles, wasn't I more effective with my staff and maybe having conversations with people like you that will then move this conversation where somebody else will listen and they'll empower themselves and go educate other people. So I'm confused, which position is better to help change the world? That's beautiful. Yeah. You know, I think that that's like this big question for many of us is what is my purpose, you know, and how do I leverage my, I only get 1,440 minutes a day.

Like how am I going to leverage those for my needs, the world's needs, others' needs? Like what, what am I, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a deep question. And then with, with that, like said in that context and okay, so on paper, super successful, right? Like you've done a lot and there's recognition for what you've done and you're working to give back and like you check a lot of boxes. And I wanted to get to this earlier. Like, what are you driven by? Is it more internal and external?

And I want to get to that question now, I think a little bit like, what is success? How do you articulate or define or think about success as a human? Well, you know, success has changed over the course of my life in many, many ways. And, you know, today I look at success as it's always going to, first of all, go back to, you know, can I sleep at night and am I the best person that my mother and my daughters and the people that care about me, can they look at me and be proud to talk about me? And so that obviously is there and I'm there and, um, I don't have any skeletons in my closet. Thank God. You know, if you look at the Damon who was

maybe 25 year old and I would think about the crazy stuff I did at 18 and 17 and 16, maybe there were, you know, some stupid things that I did, but I can live with myself and I'm fine with that. So what is success today? And, you know, success today, I think is kind of what I said before, like, how can I help change the world and be effective and use my platform to change the world? I've been talking now about early detection because the stage two cancer, I had my body, I was unaware that I had it. And I had often seen people like my friend, Big Ang, you know, after it's too late, you know, and I would often, you know, like many of us, we would look at people when they're sick and go, Oh, my God, how did the why did their number come up? Let me stick my head in the sand and, and hide and hide the, you know, you know,

hide the fear and just, you know, hopefully the bus won't hit me, it'll go by me. But instead, I've learned now that early detection is important to share with people the purpose of mammograms and pap smear, endoscopies and colonoscopies. And I've been getting so many letters in that people have been sharing with me saying, you know, I saw you speaking to Gabe when I saw you on TV. And you were saying, hey, I'm cancer free and I'm running around here partying and hanging out. And look at me. And you could be like me if you get early detection, but entrepreneurs don't generally take care of themselves. They take care of everybody else. I've gotten so many letters of people saying, I think you saved my life or my father. I nudge my father to do this and this

and that. Bottom line is I'm starting to see another form of success by seeing a direct correlation with something I've said or, or an action I've asked somebody to take that have saved or made somebody aware of something that could have taken them out of their family's lives. And I think that is, that is my, uh, that is what has been driving me lately. And it's only been a year since I've been doing it. And I think that I can't see me turning away from this and fighting more and more and more to make people aware of this. So I think that that is going to be my greatest legacy hopefully to change lives and save lives if I can.

Do you have a place people can go to that you've done some of the deep leg work to vet out different organizations? I don't. I'm just now getting it up and going I just went public about my uh you know my my health care maybe about six months ago and now I'm starting to talk to the organizations and the people who have who I hope have the best interest of other people in mind and I'm trying to just seed that all out and uh you know you know I'm betting them because you know the last thing you want to do is turn somebody to some place that's not – that doesn't have their best interests at hand.

Where were you when you got the news? Well, I was home. You know, what happened is a friend of mine had said to me, with all the money you have, why don't you get executive physicals? And I was like, what the hell is an executive physical? I'm sure you know what it is. And I was like, I always get a physical. You know, doctor grabs me and tells me to cough and then tells me you know go about my way right and uh and and so I went

and got an executive physical I found out what it was and they were looking for you know to see if I had any clogged uh what's those veins right next carterate carter veins next to your your neck and they were checking that out they said hey you got a little nodule on your thyroid maybe you should go get that checked out I go get it out. They said it's the size of a marble. They said, let's take a biopsy. And they're 90% we're going to be able to tell what it is. 10%, we can't tell what it is. So of course the 10% came back. And the doctor said to me, listen, I can take out half your thyroid and you got, you know, you're only about 50 years old. So the bad news is you'll be taking out potentially a perfectly good thyroid. The good news is you may be taking out something that is not so good.

You go on the operation table, it's supposed to take an hour, it takes three and a half hours. They find a mass in my throat about the size of a marble and they check out what it is and two and a half weeks later they tell me it was stage two cancer. So I got the news. I was already, I already had it removed from me. And they told me later on what it was. And later on, my lymph nodes would swell and a couple of things would happen. And they would think that potentially it had traveled. But thank God it didn't.

So that was the journey I had with it. And now, you know, obviously I have to monitor it and I have to take, you know, a good amount of drugs to make sure it stays in check. But, you know, it's part of the process. So you, okay, you're pretty matter of fact, right? And that's probably part of your personality because you're a clear thinker and a high executor. And it's pretty matter of fact. Like I was here, I was here, this happened, this happened. I made this decision, this decision, and then I got the news that it was stage two.

And okay, now I'm managing it in a different way. Like, are you very mad? And you are on the TV shows. You're like, I'm out, you know, like, and you're pretty aggressive with people as well. Right. That's kind of, I don't think with all people, but you have an aggressive way about you as well. Are you matter of fact? I'm very matter of fact.

Things are generally black and white. I know in relationships they can go into gray areas, but I have to make decisions of a matter of fact type of things. And I think that that has been a gift of mine. What's the cost? I think it's phenomenal. Like, okay, I get enough information. Bang, I'm done. Or yes, I'm moving forward.

So with that conviction,, what is the cost? And I'm thinking emotional sensitivities or whatever, but maybe that's not the real cost to you. The cost? Yeah, the cost of being matter of fact. Not a lot of people are matter of fact. Really? I thought a lot of people are, but they may not have a good amount of resources to get. I think the cost is that you can't get away from the results.

So even if it hurts, are you going to make the decision today? Because you're not going to get away from it. Putting your head in the sand, no matter what it is, you're not going to get away from it. And if you look at – I don't gamble. I don't go to Vegas. I go to Vegas. I'm there literally 25 times a year for shows and whatever, speaking things. But I don't stop by the table because the odds are the odds on the house. Right. So I've just always been like that. And, you know, it probably is one of

my defining things. You know, I as a young kid, I I remember my friends were, you know, they were drug dealers. They you know, we grew up in a neighborhood where the town was ripped apart. Half became drug dealers, half became music artists that came from Hollis Queens. And I remember just, I remember I was about 14 years old and I went home and I looked at some of my friends or their, their older brothers. And I realized how, how much they made selling drugs on an average. And when they went to jail and came out and they were pending, you know, they were, they were little weed dealers or crack deal they go to jail six months a year but i remember looking and putting down the numbers on how much i would make working in mcdonald's and then how much i would make in profiting selling drugs and i remember the working in

mcdonald's if you had a consistent three years with health insurance and everything else you would make this but if you would sell in drug after paying attorneys and being off of work eight months out of the year, cause you were in jail and everything else, you'd make nothing. And I said, well, what the hell are they selling drugs for?

You know? So I just always was like that. And, um, I don't, I don't know, you know, people,

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So, okay. Why you? Why did you get out of your neighborhood? Like in the way that you did. And I'm not saying that you left. And by the way, like this just hit me yesterday in a conversation I had with someone super high level in the entertainment world. And they were very clear with me. They're like, Mike, when you're black and you are public, you have two medias. You have the black media and then you have the rest of the media.

And I thought I never I and I'm around athletes all the time, but all genders, all races. And like I'd never heard that before. And so I'm asking it like, is that is that a real deal? That is very, very, very real. Okay. Now, I'm sensitive to that because I think there's a real deal with when you become more successful than your peers from a young age, that's independent of race. That's a real deal.

Like, oh, you're a sellout now. Oh, I see you in your fancy car. Oh, you can't come around anymore. That's not just for people that grew up in poverty that's that's that's for everybody now that's right yeah okay so like how do you manage that piece and i heard early in our conversation that you hired a lot of them so yeah um i i think so so i think that comes from, two different aspects that changed my life. It was number one, my mother was a very worldly person and she made sure that I was a worldly person.

You know, my father left at 10 years old. My mother decided to date somebody who I call my stepfather, who happens to be of the Jewish faith. And I started to realize at that time that love doesn't come in a color or a gender and that white people are just as crazy as everybody else. Right. So I started to realize that that that I didn't have these blinders on that. You only need to be a certain way to be black and this and that. And then my mother would send me away every single summer to any place she could. So we didn't have money. So I would go to, let's say, Hawaii to spend the summer on and I would live on a naval base with her good friend. My mother would buy the ticket three years early. It was a 17 connecting flight.

By the time I got to Hawaii, it was two months after I started. I would get there. So it gave me a worldview that there was something bigger than the neighborhood I was from. Now, on the flip side of that, the neighborhood I'm from is amazing. They say there's something in the water. You see, because crack devastated my neighborhood and many of my friends went to jail or died. But on the flip side, the people from my neighborhood we would see would be Run DMC, LL Cool J, Tribe Called Quest, 50 Cents, Ja Rule, Onyx, Lost Boys, LL Cool J, James Brown, D from What's Happening. There was something in the water in Hollis, Queens where entrepreneurship was happening from this new disruptive technology called rap music. And we would see these people. So I would be able to have somebody I could pin on my wall and see them driving by in a car and say, wait a minute, I want to be like them. And that allowed me to have this global vision that I can do something,

but I didn't know how, but I knew I can do it. That's really cool. Yeah, that is really cool. Because you're familiar with the ecological awareness of, um, the ecological, um, awareness of hotbeds, right? Like there are places in the world, you know, like, like, um, uh, what's, what's it called? Um, in Baltimore and blanking on the name board, the hotbed for, for basketball and in Russia that, you know, there's four, um, yeah, for, uh, for ballet and Southern California for volleyball and surfing and Hawaii. And I didn't know that. I really didn't.

But you were in it. Yeah, so you're right. You're in the hotbed. Okay, and then so related to that, how do you manage the two worlds that you live in? And the easy question is like black media and other media. I don't even know if there's a black and white media. I don't know the right phrase for that.

But how do you manage your two worlds that you straddle and are public about? You know, I don't have a, I don't have any long, I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a need to keep it real. I'm not a, I'm not, I don't, I don't have an ego in regards to, I do have an ego, but I don't have an ego in regards to acceptance I do have an ego, but I don't have an ego in regards to acceptance. I've already, if anybody ever asks me questions, I've already had, let me put it the best way. A lot of people are going on if their ego is, hey, I want people to know that I'm a baller, I'm rich. Well, people pretty much know me, that I have a couple of dollars, right? So I don't need to fly in the big private jet and spend $60,000 to get to California where I can spend $5,000 and lay in a bed on JetBlue and have a vodka and mint get to

me every hour on the hour and not have to talk to anybody else, right? Wait, wait, wait. You don't fly private? I fly private only when I need to. And I don't fly private for various different reasons. Number one, I'm a tree hugger a little bit, so why be on a jet just myself and burning all that fuel? Number two, if I'm going out to a round trip to California, it's $60,000, and I'm going myself, and it's only $5,000, and I'm taking 10 or 20 of those trips a year. Think about how much money I save that I

can invest in other things. And number three, flying private, unless you have a bed on the plane, it's irritating. It's just like sitting in a goddamn seat. It just rotates. Yes. So there's flat beds on JetBlue and on American Airlines and Delta. I love those things. Got it. Okay. So anyway, I don't have all these egos. Nobody can say that I didn't create a global brand. Nobody can say that I haven't been honest and great to try to give back to my community and acknowledgement of that. So I don't have the black and white issue. I have an issue of just being the best person.

I have the same fear many have. I don't want to be judged unfairly. I don't want to put in effort and then people tell me that I didn't do what I tried to do the best for people. And I surround myself with people that I truly love and they'll tell me the honest truth. So I don't necessarily have a problem. Now, if you look at black and white press, many black press – the black press has supported me a lot of times, The, the village voice and, uh, source magazine and vibe magazine. But, you know, I haven't been on, I haven't been on, um, Oh, essence gave me their first essence award, but I haven't been on black enterprise at all. Wow. I've been on the cover

of, uh, ink several times. Uh, I haven't been in Ebony magazine and essence magazine. They haven't done, you know, write-ups on me and it's fine you know maybe they are servicing a different demo market and i can't tell them what their brand is just because of the color of my skin it doesn't mean that i can necessarily translate to their brand maybe maybe uh ebony is only selling to african-american females and they want to talk about beauty and things of that nature i'm not here to talk about beauty so i don't look at why they don't service it and there's plenty of white press that hasn't written me up as well. If I sit there and start thinking about everybody in the world or why they haven't done anything, then I got bigger issues.

I look to value the people that have done things with me. And by the way, I got acknowledged by NAACP. So I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus. I'm just saying I value the ones who value me. And the ones who don't value me, it doesn't mean they don't value me. Maybe I'm just not a right fit for them. Okay. When did that switch? Maybe there was never a switch. Maybe you were always internally driven. You know, like I want to, I want to do something that feels right, that looks right, that is organic and, um, you know, I can build on,

maybe you're always internally driven, but I'm imagining knowing, I mean, you I mean you've got a world-famous hustle that you you know pulled over the wool and on your first couple business opportunities that you like really had this vapor marketing like I'm bigger than I am like it's world class what you did and like like did you go from an externally driven I want to make money I want to be recognized I want this that and the other I want a big house I want or or be recognized. I want this, that, and the other. I want a big house. I want, or, or whatever. And if you, if you did, was there a switch? Yeah. I, um, I went from the, I had the external drive. I had the, you know, you gotta be cool. And then, so I had many external drives. So at first it was, you gotta be cool. And I was hanging out with some

kids who are really amazing kids. And then I grew up with, and then they were dead or in jail. So I said, maybe that external drive is not something I want to do because I'm not built to sell drugs. I'm not going to do that. Then my external drive was, well, you need to be rich. Okay. Well, I had this idea to buy crash cars and sell them and do this and that. Then I had a band service and all these things. And I realized I didn't like what I was doing and I wasn't rich. And I thought I was going to be rich in two or four or five years. I had these great plans. Two, four or five years went away and I was netting nothing, taking the problems home with me and making a lot of mistakes. And I gave up. I thought I was so smart not going to college because I was a little smarter than everybody else. And then I turned around and did the same analytics like I told, when I was the one at 22 years old serving shrimp to all the kids in Red Lobster that were coming back from

college that I used to think they were idiots. And now I turn around and say, Damon, maybe you're the idiot. And then I started to do something that was a passion of mine, just dress people for this music that I love that was emerging. And I knew that I couldn't rap, sing, or dance, so let me not even try that. And when I was doing it, people were laughing at me. You know, when you were, when I, when I was a kid growing up, when I said I was going to be a fashion designer, most designers were gay and they thought I was gay, which I have no problem with anybody's sexuality, but a sexual preference, excuse me. Um, but I wasn't, and they laughed at me and I pretty much got shunned in my community. But on the flip side, I started getting accepted in other communities, meaning, hey, come on over to this video set.

Come hang out with us over here. Hey, this is great business. And I started getting accepted and found a different group of people that valued what I was doing, and I was doing it for free. I would dress people free for the rest of my life. But fast forward, a blink of an eye went, and I was doing it for eight years, and I already started to get some notoriety. I never thought that I would get to any level bigger than maybe the blindfold came off and I started to see that I can become much bigger and I can also help other people and, you know, make money. And then when did it switch to be a more internally driven drive? Was, is it once you got the castle and you know, the, the, the big, the big bank account or?

No, it was way after the count, the bank account and the, and the big house, um, because it was way after the count the bank account and and the big house um because it was okay let's look at the stats again over 65 percent of people with the lotto and or athletes are bankrupt three years after everything goes okay damien your stat is a little different maybe you won't get hit on sunday with a bad you know a bad play and you you'll be uh seasoned or out of the game but fashion is fickle and a hot brand lasts anywhere from five to seven years so you will slow down so and damian you may have just got struck by lightning and you better save as much money as you can now when the business is going down you're gonna put money back in it so what are you gonna do now if you put all your

money back in it and then boom you hit a brick wall you're gonna be done the house is gone everything is gone so how are you gonna now start putting other anchors in the ground? And there was a moment of fear for about two or three years as I didn't know what I was doing. I was floundering around even though I was still making money from my brand. And I started to second guess myself. And that's when I started to just really dig deep and look at what were my assets. And that was, I understood distribution. I had a lot of contacts and I had to just really dig deep and look at what were my assets. And that was I understood distribution. I had a lot of contacts and I had to use these assets to now acquire other brands. I started acquiring other brands.

I may have acquired eight brands, six of them I failed at. But the one or two that started to hit again, that's when I started to get this reassurance on, okay, I'm in control of this a little bit, you know, but I still had that healthy paranoia that we talked about a little earlier, I think you mentioned. Yeah. If you were to pick one, would you be more clinically anxious or more clinically depressed? Like if one of them, you know, was, say, oh, yeah, of course that was it. Clinically anxious. More anxious on the anxious side. I think being depressed and anything blurs your vision and makes you just – you either start getting analysis paralysis or starting to blame all these other things for your demise.

And I think that I would rather be clinically anxious. Okay. Do you have a mechanism to deal with loss? Because like part of the entrepreneur game is there's some wins and some losses, right? And I'm wondering if you've got any insights about loss. Lose fast. Lose as fast as you can. So if you lose as fast as you can, knowing that you put the best effort into it,

then hopefully your losses you can minimize and get, you know, back from them. Because, you know, really entrepreneurs, a real entrepreneur acts, learns, and they repeat. They take a very, they take a very calculated step. You know, the perception of entrepreneurs being these fly by the seat of your pants gamblers is crap, right? I look at, I look at corporations who say ROI, ROI, ROI. Well, ROI is a guess, right? Return on investment or return on whatever it may be. I look at entrepreneurs who say, and I've always been this way, I have five hours a week to put in on this project. I have $2,000 to put in on this project.

I have 1,500 shirts that I better sell. And those are very clear targets that I must move and or use. So if I can take affordable steps and, uh, with my losses, then I can recover from them. Uh, and, or I learned from them and then I doubled down on them, but they, they have to, they have to be very, uh, the losses have to be projected early on what we're willing to gamble. How do you get in your own way? Personally, you're talking about personally or people? Yeah.

I mean your model is phenomenal like externally and internally. It sounds like there's a great alignment about how you're doing what you're doing and that's that clarity to conviction model we talked about. I'm glad you think so because me you know, me being the person, I'm like, holy shit, I'm a mess. Wait, hold on, hold on. Is that right? Because you called yourself a dumbass earlier. What does that mean?

There's more room to grow? It's always more room to grow. It's always more clarity. It's always, Damien, you can't say yes to everything. Did you think about it enough? Because even though you may see me as being logistically a numbers person or very black and white, I'm not a detailed person. I can't sit there and look at something and go through the granular details. So I have to have people around me that can give me the granular details about it

and then give me enough information for me to make a guess, a guesstimate or whatever the case may be. But going back to your other question, you asked me another question. What, how do you get in your way? That was it. How do you get in your way? How do I get in my way? Balance of the decisions and the things, the journeys I want to do. And how do I, how do I, I can do this myself. No problem. If I if i want like right now i'm practicing you know for you know the zone out i want to do three things i want to scuba dive i want to practice board surf board uh sailing and learn to shoot my recurve bow a little bit better now i should be able to shoot the recurve bow much better if i what that? It's archery. It's not a crossbow.

Okay. Got it. So they shoot in the Olympics. Okay. If I don't learn it this year and I keep putting in some time and hours, I'll learn it eventually and that's fine. I have the liberty of doing that. But on the flip side, if I have a great team and I come in and even though the ideas I have aren't brand new, I'm trying to build on the things that we have. It's so easy to walk in and say, hey, everybody, let's be YouTube stars tomorrow and move as well as what we're doing on Twitter. And now that puts a massive amount of people into working, and there's a lot of things that come with that. And I have to be very careful on if I have a great team and they're productive and they're already working 24 hours a day and giving me everything, I have to be very, very careful on the decisions I make to want to move us further because they have their own agenda that they think is in the best interest. I have

my own agenda and then we have ours, right? So I can get in my own way by giving too many things for them to do. And if you have a great team, you give them one thing, they're going to overdo it in a really good way. If you give them five things, they're not going to be able to pay the attention to it. And maybe you should have just given them the one thing. So that's the way, that's where I can get in my own way because I'm so ambitious. And even though my team has an entrepreneur spirit, there's still people with their own dreams and their own children and their own things that they need to do. So I got to be very careful about that. That's always a balance on how do I get the things I need out of my team without spreading them too thin because they're already doing an amazing job.

Do you have any relationship to this phrase, imposter syndrome? No. I've heard the phrase before, but I really don't know in what context it is. Yeah. Okay. Good. That was awesome. Meaning like, I'm afraid one day that someone's going to find out that I don't know what I'm doing. That's what the, you know, it's a God. Yeah. No, no, I don't have that phrase at all. Cause I walk in there and I have heard that. And I'm sorry. I walk in the room. I walk in the room as the dumbest person. I don't, you say that, you say that. I say that because, well, first of all, it comes from a certain couple of places. When I go and speak in colleges and various places i'm speaking sometimes in front of you know people who've won

you know global awards or economists you know i mean i'm speaking someone in front of some of the biggest brains i remember i was in um i was in san fran and i was speaking one day and i looked out in the crowd and there was robert kiyosaki tim draper and um whatper, and what's the other guy who started Apple? No, with Microsoft. Who started Microsoft? Bill Gates, Paul Allen. Paul Allen or one of them. No.

Anyway, some people who have changed the world. And I've always said to myself, Damon, you can't go out there and overspeak some of these intellects. You have to go out there and tell your story because nobody can object to your story and the beauty of my story when i'm not going to go out there if i'm talking to somebody who whatever it was paul allen right if i go out there and i talk in front of them what am i going to tell them about how to you know my clothing company did 350 million dollars uh you know per year this guy's doing 350 million dollars a minute or something like that right yeah how do i yeah how do i tell this guy how to improve a computer but if i can tell this person the fundamentals of uh being an entrepreneur which he and i and anybody

in the world can agree upon and i can tell you how i got there due to my experience you can't object with me but hey you weren't there in the seventh grade when I pooped on myself. Don't tell me what I'm talking about. So if I do that, nobody can ever tell me. That's why I'm very transparent. That's why I'm saying, man, I'm dyslexic. I'm this, I'm that. Because then when you do that, people don't have a different, you humble yourself and they don't feel like you're trying to put them down. Yeah, authenticity is the great anecdote for anxiety and fear of other people's opinions. It's hard to earn, and it's a road definitely worth traveling. Damon, thank you for your time. I just got one more question for you, which is how do you articulate or define mastery?

Articulate or define mastery. I would say that mastery is the process of learning a specific skill or, or, or a way to think about a specific theory or objective. And to master it is to understand that you'll never master it, is to learn because when you get to the, I think, the master point, when you think you've learned everything, you probably at that point will get to such a higher level that you'll have to dispel a lot of these things because you're starting to embrace it on a level that other people haven't been able to

embrace it or they haven't been able to share it with you. But even if they shared it with you, you have to experience it to then truly understand what they were saying. So to master it is, I think, to get to a certain point where you realize it'll always change and there'll be so many more aspects of it. It's almost like, you know, you go and look at our couple of planets we have rotating here and then you find that, holy shit, there's a whole universe. If somebody had to ask me that, I guess, and you just did. I mean, I've never been asked that question before, but when you think of masters, I think of masters. I'm old school, right? You think of Kung Fu

masters or something like that. Do they ever learn every single move? I wouldn't think so. I think that if a Kung Fu master got to the point where he learned all these moves, well, all those moves are great when you were 30 years old, but how do you learn to articulate and or execute those moves at 80? You're not going to have the same response level. You're not going to have the same muscle, memory muscle or anything else like that. So now you have to master a whole different aspect of mastery to execute them. What a great insight. So what's next? I know you've recently written a book. Um, yeah. And, and where can folks find the book? Yeah. So what's next is, um, my, listen, my, uh, I, and I'm glad you just asked me about

mastery because this is, you know, I write these books. I write them because I'm the number one student trying to learn. And I'm asking all these questions that, first of all, people ask me, but also things that I need to know. And my next book is called Rise and Grind. My last book was called Power Broke is you need to use your Slack resources and don't let people tell you you need money to make money because most of the people that are successful didn't start with any money. And that was a mindset. Now Rise and Grind is, okay, thank you, Damon. You taught me the mindset.

But what exactly do I do? How do I execute on a daily basis the things I need to do to get me closer to where I want to get? So what I did was I put together about 16 subjects, people ranging from Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk, to Kyle Maynard, who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with no arms, no legs, to Carlos Santana. And I asked them all, what's the first things you do the first 90 minutes of your day? What's the last 90 minutes of your day like? What did you do when you were 20 that you still do when you are at this age and it has made you a better person? What did you do when you were 20 what you stopped doing and then all of a sudden it hurt you and or you revisited it? What is your

offense? What is your defense on a daily basis? How do you master or try to address work-life balance and what are tricks that people can use? And to get places. And what I've learned is, number one, I've been executing a lot of the rise and grind techniques that I've learned in the book. And it's been making me more productive. But also that everybody has correlated in one way or another in things that they do. You may look at it as Santana doing meditation and somebody else may call it something else or they may call it goal setting. My goal setting is very similar to

Santana's meditation, but that's different than Catherine Zeta-Jones where she's zoning out doing something else. And they all do it a very specific time of a day and they all have very, very different ways that you can relate. And my, and my hope is that when people take this book, they'll go away and they'll say, I'm going to try a couple of these things. And if one of them work, I'm going to be a better person or I'm already doing this and holy crap, I'm on the right track. And that's, and that's a rise and rise. I'm extremely excited about that. And then I have another program called, uh, uh, a digital curriculum called Damon on demand. And it's Damon, like my name is spelled like Raymond, but Damon, uh, D D A Y M O N D on demand where, uh, entrepreneurs who need to just know about, uh, you know, a curriculum,

it's an eight hour curriculum on $20 million of my mistakes and solutions on how they can become more efficient entrepreneurs and what they need to do to be entrepreneurs. And those are my two programs. So Rise and Grind is my book and Damon on Demand is something on my website, or you can go on Damon on demand.com and you can pick that up. Yeah. I think a lot of people that are part of this community that we're building on finding mastery are definitely going to be interested in rise and grind because it's essentially in many ways, the same conversations we're having, like, how do you do what you do and what is the orientation? We call it your psychological framework. Like how do you make sense of the world and people and events in your life?

And what are the strategies? So cool. I love it. And I hope people go support it and, and check that out with you. And then, um, I want to introduce you to somebody named Mark Healy. Mark Healy is, um, a true Waterman and it might be somebody that you would want to, um, to get to know. He's like one of the best in the world and he create, he curates experiences for people. Um, Whatever you want to do, like a week-long experience at the highest level, at the most incredible things in the ocean that you want to do.

So that might be something because I know you talked about two events. That's great. Yeah. I mean, you name it and he's connected to it all over the globe. I love it. Yeah.

So offline, I'll connect you guys. I think it'd be a good connection. Okay, so where can people find you on on social like what are the handles on social you can find me on uh twitter instagram and facebook and i'm at the shark damon my name is spelled like damon but raymond with a d and uh you can find me uh fighting with uh those other characters every sunday night at 9 and 10 p.m on abc on shark tank and uh and you can uh and that's about it i'm around damon you're a legend thanks for your time brother i really appreciate it thank you so much okay bye All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.

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