In Search Of Excellence - Daymond John: Rise, Grind, and Accomplish Your Goals | E24

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

If there is someone who knows the power of hard work, it’s Daymond John. As a young man growing up in the neighborhood of Hollis, Queens, Daymond's entrepreneurial talent took off when he started a clothing line with a $40 budget. At the time, Daymond was hand-sewing hats between his shifts at Red Lobster. And today, Daymond's company, FUBU, has over $6 billion in sales.Daymond is not only one of the most successful fashion icons of his generation but is also a sought-after motivational speaker and branding expert. He is a beloved “Shark” on ABC’s hit show Shark Tank and a best-selling author. Daymond is an incredible example of how a combination of hard work, overcoming obstacles, passion, and creativity is a recipe for success. In this episode, Randall and Daymond talk about Daymond’s experience with dyslexia, starting FUBU and the struggles he overcame on his path to excellence, the importance of keeping an open mind and entertaining all opportunities, and Daymond shares the meaning behind his S.H.A.R.K. acronym.   Topics Include:- What Daymond learned from seeing his mother struggle - Why you need to have an entrepreneurial mindset no matter what - Hacking yourself and the importance of ownership - The reasons why people buy clothes- The name FUBU and what he was trying to create - Cold calling as a factor in success- The “Boom” moment of entrepreneurship - The growth of FUBU- The importance of work ethic - When to give up your day job - Why he decided to host Shark Tank - Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich - The importance of creativity and persistence - How Daymond defines success - Advice on finding the right work-life balance - Philanthropy and giving back - Fill in the blank to excellence- And other topics… Daymond John is an American businessman and investor, best known as the founder and CEO of the American apparel company FUBU. Daymond is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Broke. His most recent book is Rise and Grind.Daymond also stars as a "Shark" on ABC's hit show Shark Tank.  Daymond’s impressive accolades include Brandweek Marketer of the Year, the Advertising Age Marketing 1000 Award for Outstanding Ad Campaign, Crain's Business of New York Forty Under Forty Award, and Ernst & Young’s New York Entrepreneur of the Year Award.Resources Mentioned: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon HillSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

There's always going to be a way to succeed and there's going to be various different ways to accomplish your goals. If you have to pay the bills and the only thing you have is two hours extra a week, then put the two hours extra a week into it for six weeks, eight weeks, two years. I don't care, but you have to start with what you have at hand. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be. To learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly

hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the abilities to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings, and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. My guest today is Damon John. Damon is an incredible entrepreneur, best-selling author, motivational speaker, and branding expert, and is often considered the godfather of urban fashion. He is a co-founder and CEO of the clothing brand FUBU, which he started with a $40 budget and grew into a company with $6 billion in sales.

In 2009, Damon became one of the original investors on the incredible Emmy Award-winning TV show Shark Tank. Damon is also a generous philanthropist and is the author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Power of Broke and Rise and Grind, which profiles people who have succeeded against the odds, and which is one of the central themes of this podcast. Damon, it's an incredible pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thank you. It is an honor to be here. And it's always weird when I'm introing people to have them right there as I'm reading off some of their accomplishments. But maybe you saw me turning away. It's a weird when I'm introing people to have them right there as I'm reading off some of their accomplishments. But maybe you saw me turning away.

It's a little weird unless you're feeling yourself and really happy. And thank you. I think I summed it up. Thank you. You're welcome. I always start my podcast with our family because from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personality, our values, and the preparation for our future. You were born in Brooklyn and grew up lower middle class on Farmers Boulevard in the Hollis section of Queens. Your dad, Garfield, was born

and raised in Trinidad. He was one of seven children and moved to the United States when he was 18. Your parents divorced and your dad walked out of you when you were 10 years old. And after that, you never saw him again. After your dad left, your mom, Margo, worked two and three jobs at a time, but she could still barely cover expenses. And when you were growing up, there were months in the winter when you couldn't turn the heat on. Can you tell us what you learned from watching your mother struggle? The three-foot can opener on the wall that looked like a backscratcher. What it said, her trips to the library to read the Wall Street Journal, and the values that she instilled in you.

Oh, well, there's a lot to unpack there, but it's very evident that you have done your homework. So watching my mother struggle when you grow up and the internet was not around, it wasn't a struggle when you're poor. Lower middle class is not poor by far. I had a bed to sleep in and I had food to eat. So I want to be very clear that I understand there are people in worse conditions. I always share with anybody that lives in the United States, we're probably top three percentage of the world when 1.4 million people don't even have access to electricity. But seeing my mother work that hard was never really, it wasn't challenging to me because that's all I knew. My mother and my father, when they were together, worked extremely hard. So I only understood work and educating

myself because that's all she did was work and educating herself. So I only understood work and educating myself because that's all she did was work and educating herself. So it was a lesson that I learned just by seeing, you know, you guys, you kids don't do what you say, they do what they see. It was great. And I learned a lot of lessons from that. I learned that there is always an answer. There is always a solution to whatever issue. I learned that I, at the end of the day, was responsible for my actions and the outcome of what was going to happen. It was not up to anybody else. Mom was going to be around a little bit, but mom could only maybe open some doors and give me advice. Other than that, the world and my future

was up to myself. And that backscratcher, the big can opener, it said, think big on it. And I just didn't understand it for years until I finally got it. Well, mom always said a lot of things. And I always tell the story about we were driving, we grew up, I grew up, as you said, Farmers Boulevard. And Farmers Boulevard is right, it leads into JFK, John F. Kennedy Airport. Many of the people that grew up in Hollis, Queens worked at various different places, either Ideal Toy Factory, Aqueduct Racetrack, or Belmont Racetrack, or JFK, or LaGuardia. And then some people either lived or worked at Rikers Island.

I remember seeing the Concorde landing one day, and I asked my mother how do men and women build massive machines like that? And she said to me, everything in this world started with one person, one idea that took one action, and why can't it be you? And I had no answer for her. If I would have said, because I'm black, she would have said, what does that got to do with anything? If I would have said, because I'm poor, she would have probably said 65% of the 4,000 wealthiest people started as self-made men and women. So I had no answer for her. And plus, if I would have been sarcastic, she would have slapped

the shit out of me. I think mom is the one who influenced me. And those are the things I learned from her. You talked about the racetracks and the airport. Most people in your neighborhood shoveled bags at the airport or shoveled horse shit at the racetrack. Yeah. And as examples of some of the people in the neighborhood, one of your friends growing up was in the notorious Supreme Team drug gang, and four guys from your neighborhood were on America's most wanted list. But you had other plans. You were born with the entrepreneurial spirit and an incredible work ethic. When you were six years old in the first grade,

you started your first business. You painted pencils with the prettiest girls' names on them, thinking you could sell them to the boys who in turn would gift them to the girls. The guys did not go for it, but the girls did. And they were willing to pay twice as much for the same product, which was one of your first lessons in business. When you were 10, you swept the floors at a corner store to get candy. You were an apprentice electrician and used to wire PX cable in abandoned buildings in the Bronx. You handed out flyers for $2 each, the equivalent of $15.76 today. You shoveled snow in the winter. You raked leaves in the fall. When you were 12, you went door to door selling chocolates for your Catholic school and you would go to the beach and sell Nerf super soakers. As another business, you would go out into your neighborhood looking for

abandoned bike parts and you would assemble them and sell them. But let's go back to the entrepreneurial gene, which I was also born with. You said that entrepreneurship is in everybody's blood. And it's just that sometimes the people around us tell us that we can't do what we're dreaming about doing. In our search for excellence, can you learn to be entrepreneurial? And in order to succeed in your career with whatever you do, do you need to be entrepreneurial in And in order to succeed in your career with whatever you do, do you need to be entrepreneurial in some way, whether you start a company or not? I believe you need to be entrepreneurial in some way, whether you work at a company or start a company. And I want to just jump off the topic for one second. My team was telling me this guy

is absolutely incredible. But if you are talking about excellence, you and your team are showing excellence right now because of the detail that you have for asking me that when normally a lot of people just don't do that homework. So I'm pleasantly surprised and I understand now why you don't say strive for excellence and just say it, you do it. Thank you. Appreciate you. Absolutely. And so you need to be entrepreneurial no matter what, because the Damon Johns of the world, every Damon Johns need entrepreneurial way of people of thinking, because I can't scale any of my businesses or any of my ideas if all you're doing is sitting around waiting for me to give you the instruction. And also I'm one person and

I do not know everything. I probably know about 1% of what I should know. And if you aren't bringing your education and knowledge and we're learning collectively together, then I will never be able to scale or grow. And often, as you see founders, we see a lot of founders that start businesses, but sooner or later, the board kicks them out or various other people are coming in. Now, whether you got to get kicked out or whether you got to leave to say, you know what, I'm not at this level. Let me let another person run the business and I'm on the chair or whatever the case

is. So entrepreneurial thinking is absolutely a must. You are not born like that. But the question becomes, do you have a sense of worth and a sense of understanding that everything can be accomplished? So as I look at things out and when sense of understanding that everything can be accomplished. So as I look at things out and when people tell me it can't be accomplished, and I guess maybe because I just looked at this whole new thing where LinkedIn says that being a dyslexic is an asset and that you clear a lot of the clutter out of the way and you get right to things. I never

looked at it like that, but I think once you clear a lot of the clutter out of your life of thinking that things cannot be done and you look at all the people that did it, I think you realize there's always going to be a way to succeed and there's going to be various different ways to accomplish your goals. And that's the critical way about entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs don't look at what they don't have to accomplish the goal. They don't say, well, obviously I can't do that because I don't have money. Obviously I can't do that because I don't have an education in that space. Obviously I can't do that because I don't have money. Obviously I can't do that because I don't have an education in that space.

Obviously I can't do that because I don't know anybody. Obviously I can't do that because I don't have any time. Entrepreneurs look at what exactly do I have? If I don't have physical money, but I got an army of people ready to work for me, well, I would have to pay them anyway. That's money. If I don't have the time, well, let me look at my time. Well, you know what?

I should stop binging on Ozark. And the amount of time I spent on Ozark, I could have probably read two or three books on the topic. It's just really cutting through the clutter. By the way, I love Ozark. I finished it three nights ago. Don't tell me I got to finish the last bit. I'm not watching. I'm watching now Showtime with the Lakers. If you haven't seen that, that's spectacular. I got to see that as well. You know what I'm also watching?

I don't watch a lot. I'm watching F1. That F1 is amazing. That's drive to survive. Okay, I'm going to put that on my list. I love watching TV. I work crazy hours. And when my wife goes to bed, I try to relax and unwind watching TV.

It's my escape. Let's go back to your teenage years. When you were 14 years old, you participated in a unique co-op program and when my wife goes to bed, I try to relax and unwind watching TV. It's my escape. Let's go back to your teenage years. When you were 14 years old, you participated in a unique co-op program offered by Bayside High School where you worked full-time one week and went to school the next week. As part of the program,

you worked as a messenger for First Boston, which was a very prestigious investment bank at the time. And you credited that job with continuing to instill an entrepreneurial spirit in you. Can you tell us more about that program, how it influenced you, your interaction with Tony Randall on the street one day, and the importance of being kind to others? Yeah, so the job was, well, the program was you can work one week and then go to school the other week. And my cheat for not wanting to go to school because I was dyslexicic because I was a solid, solid D plus, C minus student. So my workaround was to go and get a job.

And plus, I wanted to make money and I wanted to also go to the city. You know, I worked at First Boston. So it was a venture investment banking firm. I think it's still maybe there today. And I worked in a room with messengers and there was probably about 20 of us messengers and we'd get boxes and packages to take different places. I would go upstairs on my Friday, my payday, and I would treat myself to one of those $6 cheeseburgers because that was me splurging. And I would see brokers or investment bankers or whoever they are, they would mainly be

stressed out and they'd complain about how many homes they have or where the market is. And I would listen to them and I didn't know necessarily all the details of what they were talking about, but they didn't seem to be happy people. But in that little messenger area where we had, like I said, maybe two dozen people, there were very happy people who made a little bit of money, but they enjoyed their quality of life. And I realized that happiness didn't come with money. Money was definitely nice to have, and we needed for important things in our lives, but it really wasn't the necessity of happiness. And I learned that at an early age. I was walking down the street one day, and the old show, The Odd Couple, Felix, I think the name was,

the actor's name was Tony Randall. And Felix was always known on the show being a little pompous, a little uptight, whatever the case may be. I don't know what you would call it today, but he's walking down the street and I yelled out, oh my God, Tony Randall. I remember him looking down at me and saying something to the effect of, yes, what is your name, young man? I said, Damon. He said, oh, what are you doing? I'm taking these packages. And he said, I hope that he's something effective. I hope those packages arrive safely, or I'm sure you're going to take them there safely. And he looked at me just for, I felt like it was two minutes, but probably 20 seconds. And he took that time. And I remember that for the rest of my life. And it also happened with a

woman who passed away named Phyllis Hyman. And those interactions that I had, I would always remember that for the rest of my life. And he made me feel special. There was nobody on Broadway and 53rd Street in Manhattan at that moment. It was just me and Tony Randall. And I look at that today as when I talk to other people and see other people that it just takes a second to make somebody feel special. That's what he taught me. I think education is one of the most important ingredients to our future success. I want to talk about one of your challenges in high school, which you've mentioned. You went to St. Gerard Elementary School until the seventh grade. You started off, as you said, as a good student,

then you became a bad student when your parents split. You excelled in math and science, but reading and spelling were another story. Before he left, your dad got frustrated and would yell at you for this and even yelled louder when you couldn't get certain words right, no matter how often the two of you would study them. As an example, you couldn't spell the word because for four or five years. You also wouldn't know how to spell your middle name, which is Garfield, and which was his first name. When you write a book, you'd get tired. As you mentioned, you were a C or D student in language and the arts, and even though you spent far more time working on these subjects, eventually you write a book, you'd get tired. As you mentioned, you were a C or D student in language and the arts, and even though you spent far more time working on these subjects, eventually you saw a professional and the doctor said you had a learning and behavioral issue, something that did not sit well with

your mom. In fact, she didn't believe it because she thought you were brilliant and thought that you just weren't applying yourself. It was much later in life that you learned the proper diagnosis for your learning disability, dyslexia. For our readers and viewers who don't know, dyslexia is a learning disability that makes it very difficult to read, write, and spell no matter how hard a person tries or intelligent he or she is. It's estimated that 5 to 15% of Americans have dyslexia, which equates to 14.5 to 43.5 million people. People who have it are often called dumb or lazy, which is very cruel

to young kids or whoever has it for that matter. Out of the regular sharks and the guest sharks on Shark Tank, there are 12 in total who have it. Eight of you are dyslexic. And as a fascinating statistic, it's estimated that 35 to 40% of all entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Can you tell us how you have overcome dyslexia and how it has contributed to your success as an entrepreneur and on our path to excellence? What's your advice to the more than 80 million Americans who have dyslexia, ADHD, which my son has,

and other learning disabilities who struggle to learn, struggle to pay attention, and who have to work harder than most people, and who still may not achieve their desired results. Yeah, so you have to, there is no way to overcome it. It's a way to work within what, the way that you process information. Reading is fairly new to the human species. We have been, most of our lives have worked off of hieroglyphics and many other things. So reading is fairly new. That does not mean that you're not able to absorb information. And whoever suffers from different challenges, ADD, ADHD,

dyslexia, dyslexia is a little bit different because the ADD and ADHD, at least there is a drug that hopefully can improve or help with that. And if there's money being processed through the system, then it's easier to advertise and advocate for it because people will be aware of it. Dyslexia is a little more challenging because to process information a different way, if a kid says, I'm dyslexic, they probably will never say that. It just means you have to learn harder or you have to spend more time reading. So that's the challenge. And like you said, a large amount of entrepreneurs are. However, I was just speaking to Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, didn't realize that he grew up a couple of blocks away from me, also went to Bayside High

and is also dyslexic. And he shared the stat that also 35 to 40 percent of incarcerated people are also dyslexic. And why is that fact? Because like you said, kids are cruel. And people are also dyslexic. And the why is that fact? Because like you said, kids are cruel. And if you're dyslexic, it's not something very obvious as well as ADD, ADHD. But you don't want to be in class going, huh? And what happens is often you shun away from society. And if you are around people that may not have the proper resources, they may say, I don't know what dyslexic is, but you seem brilliant. Stand on this corner and make some money with me. So those are the challenges with dyslexia. And it really is about being honest with yourself, you know, what your challenges are. And a lot of times we don't want to show our vulnerability, but I think it leads into whether you're dyslexic

or whatever's going on with you. Entrepreneurs, I found that I need to show my vulnerability so that people can tell me where they can help me and I can concentrate on what I do best. I stuttered as a kid and people made fun of me. It was super cruel and had a major impact on my life. I had a very tough childhood, a lot of other things besides that, but it definitely made me want to succeed more. I had to work hard, practice one hour a day to help overcome it. But it definitely had a big influence on my future as well. I would think that after you overcome that at such a young age, you would say to yourself, if I overcame that, there's nothing I can't do. I always felt right or wrong. I had a strong mom, single mom like you did, worked two

jobs when I was very, very young. And I saw her work very hard. But I always believed that I would work hard and that was going to be my ticket to success. We're going to talk about work ethic in a few minutes. But let's talk about after you graduated high school, you can't go to college because you didn't have the money. So you start a commuter van service called Queen's Van Plan that picked up people from bus stops and then took them to the subway and then back towards their homes. You liked it, but you were working 18 hours a day. And by the time you paid insurance, Department of Transportation fees, fines, maintenance, you were netting only $30,000 net at the end of the year. You did that for three years. And being in your van all day wasn't great

for your health. You were extremely heavy at the time from all the fast food you ate and you were sitting on the road and you were tired. So this wore on you and then you got a job at Red Lobster as a waiter and you were miserable there as well. You don't have a plan for your future. You're anxious and scared about what's ahead for you. We're going to talk about FUBU in a minute, but before we do, I'm going to play the second verse of one of my favorite songs of all time. So that was one of my favorite lyrics, one of my favorite rap groups of all time. Can you tell us about this song, Russell Simmons, Run DMC, and how the hip-hop craze spoke to and rung your bell? And Honor Path to Excellence, what's your advice to the tens of millions of people who hate what

they're doing, have tremendous anxiety, don't have a clear path forward, and are worried about their future and what they're going to do for the rest of their life? The first part to answer is very easy. Run DMC came from my neighborhood. And not only that, there were not many other rap acts and or bands out at the time. So not only that they were from the neighborhood and I resonated with that, but it's like that. And that's just the way it is. You got to work hard to compete. Pretty simple. And for all those who are lost and other things, I mean, it's really the, how do they clear their mind to understand they actually can do it? That's the problem. I think, I think I see a lot of people and they say they don't have the resources or assets or they make mistakes and they don't learn from it. At the end of the day,

the reality is if we really think about it and if we take ownership over something, we know why we are not the place we want to be. If you are not great at your job, you know why. And let's say it's all in the hands of the things you can control. And I always say there's only two things you can control in life, the lens that you look at something through and then the actions that you take. If you aren't happy at your job and you're saying, why am I not there? So first you have to hack yourself. Do I get up on time?

Am I a team player? Have I read everything the company wants to accomplish? Do I know exactly my role? Am I a good communicator? And if you have all that and you're doing really well and the boss is holding you back, well, then you have to look at yourself and say, do I really want this job? And am I of value enough to quit this job and get hired by somebody else? I have a lot of friends and or people who go like, you know, I'm not really doing well over here. So, you know, I don't think there's

any place for me. So I think I should probably leave. OK, well, what are you going to do after that? If you're not going to change careers, if you bring the same attitude to some other place, you're still going to have the same outcome. And a lot of us don't want to take ownership. And I know it's not easy to take ownership. Hacking yourself and knowing what's going on in your life is very difficult. I mean, listen, you want to lose weight? You eat less calories or burn more calories.

I'm not doing either one of those. But I know what I need to do. So if you really understand and you look at all the people, you know, when I was growing up, I didn't have the internet to see all these people who were successful and really successful. I'm not talking about the ones who are highlighting this, but now that you see people in all walks of life, I mean, if you just see me on Shark Tank, there was nothing that I did that is special, nothing. It's just that I would analyze what was going on, look at my assets and my liabilities, where can I apply myself and be a little vulnerable and start and maybe fail.

If people laugh at me, who cares? So we all really generally know what we should do. I meet people all over the world who are like, oh, I'm in this area. I can never get out of this area. Why? Why? And they just make excuses. And maybe that's because society has put that on them. Their parents started and it's a very deep rooted issue. But I just don't understand why people don't know where they can, you know, how they can strive in life. And don't get me wrong. You see people out there who go, I know I can do that, but you know what? I don't feel like it or I don't want, I just want to live my life. Like, and if you accept it, that's fine.

But at this point I'm rambling. It's just, I just never understand why if you really hack yourself to ask the questions of why you aren't where you want to be in your relationship, health wise, all this other things, you know, the answers, you just don't want to face them. All right. Now let's talk about FUBU. It will start by going back to a year before you started the company. You made t-shirts with slogans on them and would sell them on street corners. During the Rodney King riots in LA, you made shirts that said, what happened to poor

Rodney King? When Mike Tyson went to prison, you made shirts that said, free Mike Tyson. You'd buy the shirts for $4. You'd put a screen print on them. You'd sell them for $8. The t-shirts taught you something about the reason people buy clothes. Can you tell us what one of the reasons was and still is? And can you also tell us about the boot company Timberland, the company's comment in the Wall Street Journal, the name FUBU, and what you were trying to create? Right. So the initial shirts, it was like something to the effect of Rodney King.

What happened to them, what happened to him can happen to you. Something like that. And the Free Mike Tyson one. I realized that people, when they're, they want to be part of communities and to wear clothes creates a community feeling. And for whatever community it is, they might buy luxury stuff to say, I'm part of this luxury community. They might buy stuff from the Salvation Army to say that I'm a person of style and the man makes the clothes or the woman makes the clothes, not the clothes make the man or the woman. And some people just really dress down and go, I'm a simple everyday person. I don't need to spend all that money because I'm using my money elsewhere for whatever reason. But they always feel like they're part of a community. And almost everything you do and or buy is supposedly transitioning you from one place in your life to another. And somebody

who I really respect who shares that in detail is a guy named Ryan Dice. So that was what I first learned. And then I realized, at first I was thinking to myself, well, I heard this comment from Timbaland about they don't make things for African-Americans, for drug dealers, they said. But in my neighborhood and primarily in the Northeast, the kids were buying Timbaland. It was like the kids buy Yeezys and Jordans these days. But the real reason the kids were buying the Timbalands was not because of its technical ability, but its fashion sense, because the Timbaland, that nice, comfortable suede they have, it can hold a dye

very well. So you could buy one pair of Timberland and you dye them red six months from now and you dye them blue six months from now. So really, it was not only looking good, but it was also a way for kids to maximize something they were purchasing. But most of the clothing companies would either not admit that they had a large African-American following or they would actually say, we don't want people like that wearing our clothes for whatever reason. Not sure. I'm not going to assume. And that's when I came up with the word, the words FUBU, Forrest Bias. like a Rodney King or a Mike Tyson or whatever would happen to have that across, make you buy that because of your passion for the instance, and then have a FUBU somewhere on it. And at the same time, take a ride on that by growing the company. But I realized FUBU itself, when I started

saying For Us, Buy Us, people gravitated towards that and wanted that. So for two years, I would take 10 t-shirts, literally 10, and go to every video set I could because I grew up in Hollis, Queens. So as we saw Run DMC blow up, you would see their cousin, their brother, their uncle, their sister go on tour with them, whether bodyguards or sound check people. And a lot of people started to do that with LL, with Salt-N-Pepa as well. We're going to get to the rap and the marketing of it in just a minute. Yeah. A hundred percent. But as I did that, I started going to the video system and putting on the FUBU stuff. And they liked that more than the

politically driven stuff. I started my entrepreneurial career at University of Michigan selling t-shirts as well. I'd print them for $5. And back then you had to go in the phone book to find companies that printed 100% cotton shirts. The 50-50 shirts were not good quality. So I took $400 of my bar mitzvah money, made the shirts. I sold the short-sleeved shirts for $12. The long sleeves were $6. I sold them for $18. I'd go door-to-door in the dorms, get kicked out, go into another floor, go to another dorm and get kicked out. But the cold calling skill was invaluable to my future, as was the ability to get turned down and go to the next sale because you forgot about the

previous sale when you made money. How has cold calling been an important factor in your own success? You learn to accept rejection as an entrepreneur, as anybody. You're going to face a lot of rejection, but as an entrepreneur, you seek the rejection, right? You go and you call people. And as a regular person, often people try to kind of shun away and they're not vulnerable. But that's the point, right? That's being vulnerable, calling somebody and letting them not only say, I'm not interested, but say, your stuff is crap. I don't want this. I mean, you don't know what they're going to say because you don't know what moment you're going to catch them in. They may just insult you. So you have to have a strong rejection muscle. You also have to be able to, after that, you have to perfect your approach because every time you get a no, you learn what

you shouldn't say or what may not be appealing to people. And every time you get a yes, you learn what is appealing to people and what triggered the response. So I think it's critical. And you can only do that once you put yourself out there in real time and real action. If you sit there and just look at books and wait for the perfect time to happen, you're never going to get that interaction with somebody else. So you can never improve. You can only think in your head that you have everything. But sooner or later, you got to get out of the gate. And cold calling is, and knocking on doors and standing on corners is the ultimate way to see if you have something of value. And a lot of us, we're not going to have anything of value. We're going to have to close it up and then

restart over again a little more wisely. There's a stadium at Michigan holds 100, and now today it used to hold 100,000, holds 116,000. There's a stadium at Michigan that holds 100,000. Now today, it used to hold 100,000. It holds 116,000. It's the biggest stadium in the United States, but I would stand out there with boxes of shirts and sell them to 100,000 people going by, most of which went down one street. So that was placement, distribution, very important to success. Let's go back to you starting FUBU with three friends, Alexander Martin, Keith Perrin, and Carlton Brown. You had barely finished high school, didn't have any money, didn't have a career, didn't have any knowledge of the fashion industry,

and didn't have any connections. When you started, it was just a hobby and you didn't think it would be anything bigger than maybe a clothing store. You just wanted to dress people on the side because you love rap music and the culture and the fashion. You had seen people wearing a type of ski hat that was selling for about $20 in stores, and you thought you could make these for $3 to $4 each and sell them for $10 each. So you went to the fabric store, bought $40 worth of fabric, used a sewing machine in your mom's house to make them. Your first product was basically a wool beanie with a string knotted on the top. Then on March 24th, 1989, it was Good Friday, two days before Easter Sunday, you went out to Jamaica Avenue. You stood outside in 40-degree weather in front of the New York Coliseum and started

selling your hats to random strangers on the sidewalk. And then boom, you sold about $800 worth of hats. You were super stoked, so stoked that when you were driving home, you started counting your cash and rear-ended a driver. And you didn't have insurance, so you lost all of your profits, but it didn't matter. When you had success selling that first afternoon, the light bulb went off. And at this point, you're 20 years old, and you realized you did not have to wait for an incident to happen like Mike Tyson or Rodney King. People love the product and people love the idea behind FUBU. When you sold out that day, what was the emotion you were feeling in our path to excellence? Do we need that boom moment to

realize what we want to do and what should we do with our lives? And how long did it take you to get your first sale? Do you remember the exact person who bought that first hat? Do not remember that exact person who bought that hat hat? Do not remember that exact person who bought that hat. That was about three years ago. But the boom moment was that I made those sales. And I think the boom moment comes often. It keeps coming, right? Because the boom moment was I made that. Then the boom moment was I actually found a manufacturer. Then the boom moment was I found out stores and I found out about something called the Magic Trade Show. So it's always, you know, I think as an entrepreneur, it's almost like Christmas.

Every time you open up a box and you figure a better way to do something you're doing and you feel like, why didn't I know this before? And I think that that creates your thirst for education and thirst for information. So, but yeah, it was the greatest feeling ever because now I wasn't dependent on anybody else. It was purely my ability to make these hats, sell these hats and show value to the potential customer on why this hat was for them. Maybe the hat was for them because it was cold outside. Maybe it was because it matched their sneakers.

Maybe it was because they wanted to look fashionable and have the new type of hat that was on the videos. But whatever it was, I had to find ways to express to them and communicate to them where the value was to them. Let's talk about the growth of FUBU. You'd sell your cool hats, go back and make more. And shortly after that, you expanded into t-shirts and jerseys. You wanted to grow. You love rap music. So you went to the sets of music videos and asked rappers to wear them. It's easier. It was easier back then to get in the videos because rappers were not huge. They didn't have the big budgets they have today for the video.

So you would loan them a shirt for the shoot. Then you would take it right back. And at that time, there were only about 12 rappers in the world. It started with Brand Nubian in one of their videos, then Old Dirty Bastard wore it in a Mariah Carey video, then Busta Rhymes wore it in one of his videos, and LL Cool J, who was one of the top four rappers in the world back then, wore FUBU in the Hey Lover video he did with Boyz II Men. And after that, he wore FUBU in a Gap commercial that got the person that got fired for not catching the FUBU hat in the commercial. As you're getting all of these amazing rappers, you had your first big

break, which is something we all hope to get in our careers. When I was 27 years old, I had mine. Eli Broad at the time was only one of three people who'd created two Fortune 500 companies, and he hired me as assistant to the chairman. Even though I was completely unqualified, I just had a lot of heart and I had done my prep in the interview. For those who are still hoping for their big break, what's your advice for those thinking, it's just gonna fall on my lap and happen one day versus going after it and getting it? And as part of this, can you tell us about a friend

from your childhood named Hype Williams? Yeah, so the big breaks don't come as big breaks. They come as small little opportunities to do it. And there's this old saying, do you believe in luck? And the saying is, no, luck is really timing and preparation meets opportunity. So we can talk about those big breaks that have happened, but there was a lot of small little breaks that happened. It was, I used to take shirts and sell them to the 4X and 5X guys or 6X guys in my neighborhood because they had no other opportunities to buy

really fashionable clothes. They went to Rochester Big and Tall and got a white shirt or a black shirt, or they paid a lot of money for custom apparel. But if I sold it to them or gave it to them, they would wear it 10 times a month instead of a cool, super fashionable kid who wore it one time a month. And those big guys were in front of red ropes and in front of their bodyguards, and they were obviously respected or feared in the community because nobody can do anything to them. But that influenced a lot of the rappers, a lot of other people. So to wait for that perfect time, the perfect time is never going to happen. It is never going to happen. It is making these mistakes and these attempts as small as you can.

So for all those people who are thinking that you got to wait for the perfect time and entrepreneurship is all about making money and it's about bossing people around, they're just not doing their homework on it. And maybe they're not built for that. Some people don't need to be an entrepreneur. Some people may want to know that I just want a nine to five and I want to work at a company for a couple of good amount of years and retire. But if you are thinking about the big breaks, the big breaks happen when a lot of good amount of years and retire. But if you are thinking about the big breaks, the big breaks happen when a lot of small breaks culminate to one big break. At this point, FUBU is growing and has become a super cool brand. And like so many businesses

that grow quickly, you need money to fuel the beast. And from 1989 to 1992, you had to close down three times because you ran out of money. And even though you had all these famous rappers wearing your FUBU clothes and everybody wanted it and you were starting to get a lot of sales, you're still working at Red Lobster because you needed money to pay the bills. So you wake up at seven or eight in the morning, then you'd sew the hats yourself. You would tag them, answer a couple of purchase orders that came in overnight, take the hats, package them again, and begin to ship them out. That took you till about noon or 1 p.m. Then you would hit up the Red Lobster around 4, work there until midnight, come back home, make more hats, tally up any purchase orders until

about 1 or 2 in the morning. Then you'd start the routine all over again the next day. You did this for about two years straight. You finally quit Red Lobster in 1995 and went full-time with FUBU. I could be here all day talking about FUBU's growth and some of the amazingly cool things and smart things you did along the way. But 10 years after you started the company, it was doing $350 million a year in sales. There are a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs listening and watching this podcast who are thinking about starting their own business and are wondering when is the right time to do it or if they should do it. They don't have savings to live off or they are not starting a sexy technology company where they can raise venture capital financing and pay themselves a

salary, which means they're going to have to work 18, 7, 7 days a week like you did. Like you, there were long periods of my life where I worked 100-hour weeks, and it was brutal and exhausting. At what point should future entrepreneurs give up their day job, and how important is number one. I would say a passion and a feel that you are, you're solving a problem that other people can relate to. And the problem also can be just you're bringing people joy and then work ethic and education. Those are key, right? If you don't have any of those components, your health, the fact that you, your value, you are solving a problem in some form or another, work ethic or education. If you don't have all four of those in place, I don't personally believe you're going to succeed.

You may have short bursts of success, but I don't think you're going to succeed. So those are the critical things. Work ethic is it. I mean, because if it was that easy, everybody would do it. If your vision, if everybody understood it, then there would be no place for you. So all those things are critical to what you need to do. And if you're an entrepreneur right now, well, then you've got to take inventory. What do you have? Right in between the Rodney King shirts and FUBU,

I realized I had a phone available to me. And I said to myself, I'm going to make 50 calls a day, 50 calls a day. And that's it for six months. And 50 calls a day, whether to manufacturers, to stores, to distributors, to a place to educate myself, to get more on understanding the way this industry works, to potential mentors, to hope to mentor me, whatever it was. So if you want to do this, it really starts with an education before anything and everything. And normally, especially with, listen, you're watching us right now, you're educating yourself, you're putting time in on that. I think people think too literal that they need to have X amount

of dollars, X amount of time on hand. If you have to pay the bills and the only thing you have is two hours extra a week, then put the two hours extra a week into it for six weeks, eight weeks, two years. I don't care, but you have to start with what you have at hand. Let's switch gears and talk about Shark Tank, which is one of my favorite shows of all time and whose first season was in 2009. To do that, we're going to go back to the period between 2001 and 2007. At that time, you're 40 years old and you were working with the Kardashians on the show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, where your major role was product placement. Now it's 2008. We're in the middle of a major market meltdown and recession. And a guy named Mark Burnett calls

you up and says he would like you to be a host on a new show called Shark Tank, where contestants would sit in front of five judges and pitch their companies. And if the judges who were called sharks liked the companies, they could invest their own money And if the judges were called sharks like the companies, they could invest their own money in them. When Mark called you, you told him you couldn't do the show because you had a contract with the Kardashians. But fortunately for you, Khloe Kardashian learned about your conflict of interest and conveniently fired you. When that happened, you had the freedom to do it if you wanted to do it. But you hated the idea. You thought the show was garbage and thought, who in the hell wants to see five businessmen do that? You also hated the idea of investing your own money in these companies, which the show required. For those listeners and viewers who don't know,

Mark Burnett was and still is the king of reality TV before Shark Tank. He had created the incredibly successful reality shows The Apprentice and Survivor. So you hated the idea, but you wanted to go out to Los Angeles to hang out for a little while and see Survivor. So you hated the idea, but you wanted to go out to Los Angeles to hang out for a little while and see some friends. And you agreed to shoot what you thought was a crappy little pilot on one condition, that Mark Burnett would meet with you. Mark didn't know it at the time, but your plan was to pitch him what you thought were three smoking hot TV show ideas that you thought were going to change the world. So you go to breakfast with Mark, you pitch him on your three great ideas. And before the eggs came, he shoots them all down. You still weren't convinced you wanted

to do the show. And Mark Cuban then called you and told you he wanted you to do the show. Over the years in my career, I've seen so many people and mentees have the opportunity to take meetings or interviews with companies or in cities where they're 100% sure they don't want to work. And they turn down these meetings because they tell themselves they're a complete waste of time when in fact they're passing on opportunities that could and often do change their future forever. Why did you eventually do the show? And in our search for excellence, how important is it to keep an open mind and take these kinds of meetings because any one of them, it only takes one, could change your life forever. So I want to correct one aspect, or two aspects. I wasn't on

a contract with the Kardashians, but I'm a man of my word, and that was critical to me. Another aspect, I'm not sure, Mark Cuban never called me. I didn't know Mark at the time. Okay. But almost everything else is accurate. So in regards to, I think all opportunities should be entertained. People get insulted when people offer them what they don't believe is the value that they are worth, whether for your house or anything else. My house is worth $200,000. Oh, I'll give you $150,000.

And people get insulted. Don't ever get insulted if somebody's offering you a dollar. It's a dollar more than everybody else is offering you. And when people are offering you meetings, I believe that you should take the meetings as much as you can, even if you don't necessarily know what you want, because it's all about opportunity. How many times are you taking meetings or working with people that you don't even want to catch up to?

You're entertaining yourself there too. I think that it's all about looking at all the opportunities and just gathering them. What's the worst scenario that happens with a meeting you take with somebody that is interested in hiring you, you don't want the job. All right, you spent a half an hour, 45 minutes, but you don't know where that person is going in the future. And maybe that person has an offer, you know, that you would like. So I entertain any and all information. There's a saying that don't start building an umbrella when it's raining.

And I look at when people say, how do you run your businesses? About 10% to 20% of my time, I'm educating myself on other things I like, on other things that are happening in the world. So let's say I don't want to jump into crypto at the moment right now, but I don't mind putting that on my Instagram feed where the other 500 people or things I follow, they could be exercise, they could be stupid little videos. Why not just put crypto on there? I may jump into it a year from now, or two years or five years from now, but it's worth me just looking at it. And I feel the same with all opportunities when you see them. It's almost like being kind, right? When you walk down the street, it doesn't hurt when somebody says something to you and you say, hi, back. That's just the way I look at it. I think you don't know what you don't know. And

until that opportunity comes, you really don't know. I want to switch gears and talk about success again. We've already talked about some of the elements, work ethic, passion, but can you tell us about Napoleon Hill's awesome book, Think and Grow Rich, which I read when I was 18 years old, why you have read it three times when you first got it, why you still read it every other year, and what your five, 10, and 20-year goals are? Yeah, so I think Think and Grow Rich, and as many people will say, it is probably one of the top business books that have helped them in business. So obviously, there are millions of people in cahoots to help try to sell me a copy of Think and Grow Rich. When I looked at it,

I read the book, I realized that there were so many people that had zero, but they applied certain things and it worked out. So I started understanding goal setting. The reason I read it the first time, three separate times is because I'm dyslexic. I wasn't sure if I absorbed all the information properly. The reason I read it every other year is because sometimes we forget what got us here and ego comes into place, money comes into place, other people come into the play. So we just think we were doing it wrong. And it kind of brings me back to understanding what I need to do. And so we talked about five years, 10 years and 20 years. I also have six month goals. The more important ones are the six month goals that I read. So I read them every night before I go to

bed and every morning when I wake up and they're six month goals that expire in six months. And I never hit those goals because I set them so big. And often, listen, will I read them every night? No. Do I forget for two or three days? Yeah. Do I read six goals? And they vary from health to family to business. And maybe after three months, I scratch one off and I go, I'm not sure I'm not that passionate about this one the way I am about all the other ones. The ones that whether two years, five years, 10 years or 20 years, I have to see myself there. The 20 year one is obviously me looking over my family and being at 53, me being an average of around 75. Where do I want to be? And that probably helps me reduce some of the negative foods I'm eating and various other things to think about my health. Also sort out what I'm buying or things I'm doing that I know that I won't be entranced in the company itself. And I have a little more freedom with my life to see my beautiful kids.

So I look at myself, whether on a boat or in a home or someplace in 20 years, the 10-year ones are different and the five-year ones are different, but I have to see myself there. The ones that are five and 10 and 20 years, they don't normally have materialistic things around it. It has me being in a place of content and appreciating my life. Let's talk about failures, persistence, creativity, and the importance of all three of these are path to excellence. Like all of us, you've had a lot of challenges and failures. You have dyslexia. You started a bunch of businesses when you were younger that failed. You borrowed a lot of money for a cruise party and then lost it that we didn't talk about.

You had a used car business which closed. You had to shut down FUBU three times in your first three years after you started it because you ran out of money. Three years after you started the company, just as it was taking off, you didn't have any money to fill $300,000 of purchase orders you received at the Magic Clothing Show in Las Vegas. It was a huge break for the company and you needed a capital and fast. Can you tell us about the ad your mom took out in the New York Times, getting turned down from 26 banks? And as part of this in our search for excellence, how important is persistence and this in our search for excellence, how important is

persistence and creativity in our success? Creativity is extremely important because you want to find how you can reduce the barrier of entry and what's a different angle that you can either approach people, mainly people too, and how do you break out from the clutter. You're not going to be able to go against some of the big machines out there. So can you be agile if they move slow? Or do you have better customer service? Or when you're finding somebody that everybody's pitching and they're not realizing what's in it for the person on the other side of the table, do you do your homework and realize this is where the person may resonate, or maybe even the person doesn't even realize that

this is where they're falling short in business or in life, and that you can add some value. So I think creativity is extremely important. Persistence is important as well. But when we talk about persistence, persistence with homework is important because if I keep making the same attempt, when I did the little boat ride, I spent $10,000 on that and I was able to survive. I had to be responsible. I had about $10,000 that I had borrowed and I knew that I can pay that off, worst scenario, within maybe two years, but I can survive from it. The reality of me borrowing $100,000 on my mother's home because I had $300,000 in purchase orders, well, a lot of people don't know that I was going to be bankrupt and homeless because I spent the $100,000 not knowing the proper way to spend it, not on lavish things,

but on equipment, paying for raw goods ahead of time. And my accounts receivables were 30, 60, 90 days out. And I was about to lose my mother's home, lose my business, be homeless. And so that was a really big gamble that I do regret taking. But the level of comfortability was the fact that I had $300,000 in orders. It wasn't like I was like, mom, mortgage the whole home because I got an idea. And then listen, my mother also, again, being creative, and this is where I got it from, she said, well, the easiest thing to sell is the truth. And if you have a good product or a good idea, there's a lot of people out there where you basically can add value to what they're doing. And let's take an ad in the New York Times. And we took an ad in the New York Times,

$1 million in orders, need financing. And that's what the ad said. And 33 people call that ad. 30 of them were not the type of people that you wanted to call that ad, or we were smart enough to know that high-level interest with people like that was not safe and also not something you could dig yourself out of a hole with. We ended up doing a deal of manufacturing and distributing with Samsung's textile division. And that's when we really started to be able to apply all the things we had done for the first eight years to FUBU and now have a way to deliver on our promise. That leads us to one of my favorite topics, what it takes to be successful. And I want to talk about the importance of preparation in our search for excellence.

One of the main ingredients that got me to where I am today is I'm always the most prepared person in the room. How important has preparation been to your success and going a step further? How important is extreme preparation going way above and beyond what would generally be considered great preparation? I'm talking about the kind of preparation that you spend 30 or 40 hours on for a single event or meeting? Yeah, so I am not an expert at extreme preparation. I think because of the dyslexia, I have a hard time narrowing in and getting granular on concentrating on things. I have a massive amount of respect for those who do that. I feel that if I did that, I would suffer from a little bit of analysis paralysis. I would feel that I don't think I'm ever well prepared enough. Or if I over-educate myself on something, I may not see

outside of whatever else could be done because I'd be so laser focused on the route that I'm going to take and not be able to pivot. But on the flip side, I know that I need somebody who is an over-prep person around me to back me up because I also can't come in the room without information on the topic or the person or the industry. I also can't come out and say some ridiculous things that even if I had a great concept or an idea or value, the things that I said prior, they would say, this person doesn't know what he's talking about or doesn't know our industry or me. And even though this sounds great, I don't want to do it with that person. So preparation is key, but I know my weakness and I know that I need to have other people.

Now, that being said, when I did not have anything, taking these small little steps of standing on corners and selling hats or cold calls, that gave me the preparation to be able to talk and convey what I was doing because I had actual boots on the ground and can relay what I had experienced. So when I didn't have anything, the experience was really vital to try and to do it. And then now where I'm at in this part of my life, I have a little bit of both experience as well as bringing people in to back me up. But no matter what, preparation is key. You can't walk in there and just wing it. People will know you're winging it. Let's talk about success and making money. You touched on it for a second, but I want to go back to it. When we talk about or hear somebody talk about being successful, most people are talking about

if they're successful in their careers, and they're really talking about if they make money or if they made a lot of money or how much money. You said you don't equate money to success and that money provides you with more problems than limousines, that there are a lot of filthy rich people who are miserable, and that money just drives your problems in a Bugatti. How do you define success and being rich? And what's your advice to others about where making money should rank in choosing their careers and deciding what to do with their lives? Well, you don't have any money. You have to do certain things to keep the lights on. And I understand that. And that's how I worked at Red Lobster. And then I think after that, you should do something that is really, truly your

passion. That's a very personal question to everybody. What do they want out of life? If somebody told me what I had to do to get to this point in my life, and they would have showed me the entire path of what I had to do to get to this point in my life, I'd have said I'd pass on that. I'd rather just be a waiter and I don't take the job home with me. And maybe I would understand how to invest a little better in the market and have the market work for me and I enjoy my quality of life. What has driven me from that time has been passion. And every single thing I got into, it wasn't passion. I learned earlier when I tried to sell crash cars, I didn't like it. I didn't like working with my hands and I didn't like dealing with the dark side of the business of buying a crashed car and putting it together. You had to get pieces from people that were, I don't know, stealing.

I don't know where they were getting them from, but it definitely wasn't the dealership. So I learned that money is really not as important. And I guess that's because when I come into the room with other people who are way, way wealthier than I am, like I said about First Boston, I see people that are still miserable. And then I see other people that don't have two pennies to rub together, and they're the happiest people in the world. But I do understand you have to be able to pay your bills, and you want to be in a safe place for your children, your husband, your wife, and everybody's safe. And we have to take care of our parents. So I always say it's your day job and then work on your passion. But you got to be the best at your day job first in case that's the only thing you're ever going to make

money at. Let's talk about work-life balance. At some point, FUBU was cranking and you had everything. You had money, family, you love what you were doing. You were working for yourself. You were traveling, partying with rappers, living the good life. And then just as you achieved this amazing financial success, your personal life unraveled. You were rich and could afford all the fake friends you wanted. And you got caught up in the excess and became an absentee husband and dad. You were in China six months a year for work. And the other half of the year, you were partying with celebrities and rappers. Your wife at the time said she saw you on TV more than she saw you in person because you were in commercials. At the time, you were not there for your kids. After your youngest daughter fell off her bike and had to get stitches, which meant you weren't going to be around at Christmas to watch them open their presents.

But your wife relented and told you she wouldn't take your girls away completely if you would deal with your success by start to pay it forward and start giving back to other people. Something she said was non-negotiable. So fast forward a few years, you've done a tremendous amount to get back to your community and thousands of other people. You were remarried four years ago. And your wife, Heather, who you proposed to on the set of Shark Tank, is also an entrepreneur and media personality. And you're still crazy busy. You're remarried. You have a young daughter.

You do Shark Tank. You run an investment firm. And you're a motivational speaker, among other things. On our path to excellence, as we move forward with our careers and take on more personal and professional responsibilities. What's your advice on how to find the right work-life balance? Yeah. So I think there's work-life harmony. You can have a great life and not make any money and then be stressed. And then you can make a lot of money and not have a great life. I reevaluate it. I can't say that I do it every month or two months, but maybe every quarter.

And it naturally comes up when I say, how can I fix what's happening now? With the pandemic, I promised everybody that I could go and appear in whether press or speak or go to other businesses right afterwards. And as soon as we started opening back up, I was on the road three months straight. And I said, what the hell did I do to myself? And I had to reevaluate that. So I think it's about stealing away time. I think, again, the same way as we talk about entrepreneurship is not this wait till the perfect moment. Neither is your work-life balance.

If I can steal away an hour with my wife, I'm going to steal away an hour with my wife. That hour that I steal away, walking on the beach, talking, watching Ozark together, whatever the case is, the hour adds up to 70 or 100 different moments over the year. I've been in, I think, maybe eight cities in the last five days, and I'm going to be in another city tomorrow, tomorrow evening. But I'm going to drive my daughter to school in the morning, and we have people, we're fortunate enough that we have people who help us with that. But she's going to remember the times that I drove her to school. If I can, I'm going to try to seal away every moment. And that's critical. I think people keep saying, we'll get to it. Let's schedule a vacation. No, let's go to the movies next week. But if we don't get to go to the movies that week

past, I'm going to play with, you know, what's that song? Cats in the Cradle and Silver Spoon. Cats on the Moon. And he talks about how he blinks his eyes and his son has grown. That happened to me in the past, and I'm not going to allow that to happen anymore. So I try to steal away as much time as I can, whether for my health, my faith, my wife, my daughter, my friends. And I never regret stealing away those moments, but I do often regret having to travel someplace for a meeting and various other things. And we usually put those before we put the family things. So I just say the first thing to do

is start stealing away the moments. And then you turn around and you see how much joy you get out of them and they start to grow. And that's all I can really say, but that is gonna be everybody's biggest challenge in life is work-life balance. For those listening today who have young kids or younger and don't have families, but will have families, I want to share some advice I got from a very smart friend of mine

who had kids before I did. One of the best things I've done is take my kids on a one-on-one trip. I have five kids. So I have a two-year-old, she'll be two next week, a five-year-old from my current wife, and then three children from my first wife, high school senior, 18, and two 20-year-olds who are just finishing their sophomore years in college. And what I've done is we've gone on one-on-one trips every year. I turn my phones off. Now with the older kids, I bribe them by taking on nice vacations, places they want to go just so I get the time with them. But it's one of the best things I've ever done in my life. So for those out there who work crazy long hours and have all these responsibilities, I urge you all to do it. And the second thing I heard from my friends, I've heard

this now from a lot of people. When you're on your deathbed, you never ever say, I wish I had worked harder. It's always the opposite. I wish I had spent more time with my kids, my family. And that's something that helps guide me when I get caught up in my own moments. It is very, very true. I want to talk about philanthropy. You've said that you think community is a huge part of success because we become what we think about most of the time and that the people we see right in front of us are the ones that show us it can be done. And that these people are generally our community leaders who know they have an obligation to help their community. You have also said that we shouldn't focus on ourselves and instead should focus on what we can give to other people.

In our search for excellence, how important is it to give back to others and our community? I think it's critical, but it depends on what your community is, right? And everybody has their own tribe. And I think it is critical because you only existed or you've only been able to grow because somebody gave you. Somebody gave you a job. Somebody gave you a recommendation.

Somebody gave you knowledge or friendship. Somebody gave you, obviously, birth. Somebody gave you an education. If you are of service, I think that people recognize that. And I can't, it's not something that you're supposed to expect the reward from because not necessarily everybody will respect it. They may not follow it, but are you of service? That's just something I firmly believe. And I think I believe that more because not only in my community, but we see people every day, especially after what we've been through. We see people every day that have nothing and they are giving everything to people and they're going out. They're going to war zones and helping their doctors who went to school and paid all this money to go to school.

And they just want to go to third world countries and help those and not get paid anything and help people. We see teachers, we see veterans. I mean, they didn't, our amazing men and women, they didn't decide on if they want to start a war with somebody, but at the flick of a switch, they will go around the country and across seas and risk their lives and no longer be with their families and risk their lives for us. So I think we see people that are of greater service all the time. And you don't have to, again, you don't have to go all the way to this level. But if you start and just do this, and then do this and do this, at least you're doing something. And maybe I'm too optimistic. Most people I see do care about something and they do give or roll up their sleeves. And I just, I don't know any other way to live if you don't think like that.

You've given advice on five primary lessons before, and the acronym is SHARK. What is SHARK and what are the lessons? So SHARK is my acronym when I speak. It's very simple to understand. And I know that people love to learn in stories and soluble things that they can repeat. So SHARC is my rules that every single time that I've been successful, every one of them were in place. And every single time I failed, only one of them were missing. And number one is S, set your goals, right? As we've already touched on, because we allow other people set goals for us. And if you don't know what you want to accomplish and you can't hit a target, you can't see. We set goals all the time. Every day we set a goal to be on a plane, train, automobile. Listen,

I'm going to go to the store. How are you going to get there? Are you going to walk there? What are you going to buy? Are you going to drive a car, a bicycle? We set the goals all the time, but often we don't pay attention to setting goals for ourselves personally. The next one is homework. We've already talked about that. It's education. Every single thing that you're thinking about doing has been done one way or another, and there's a lot of people that have lost doing that, and you can learn from them.

You and I are talking about thinking grow rich, but there's hundreds, maybe thousands of books that have been written over the last 200 years that you'll find the same type of content in there or the same line of what success is or whatever you're into. You think all these people over 100, 200 years didn't know each other or have this master plan to just get together and sell you a bunch of crap? No. And listen, even if you don't follow what they say in there, at least you know that this doesn't work and don't try that. A is Amor, it's love. It's exactly what you touched on. I loved what I was doing, my job. I loved my career, but we often get caught up too much with what we're doing and we forget about who we're doing it for, our families, our loved ones, our health, our

faith, and we get caught up. I think there's two aspects to it. Love what you do, but love what is important to you more than ever before. R is, and we did not touch on that, is always remember that you personally are the brand. People are buying into you. On Shark Tank, we buy into people. We don't buy into the companies, and we're buying into you through your references or through, we know that we want to do business with you. And so I tell people, they got to be able to put themselves in two to five words. They're, Apple think different, Nike just do it,

FUBU for us, buy us. Because if you don't understand what you stand for, then you leave it up to other people to interpret. And we touched on the other one is, you got to keep swimming, rejection muscle. You, when that door gets slammed in your face, what else are you going to keep swimming, rejection muscle. When that door gets slammed in your face, what else are you going to do? You can quit your job. And if you are not doing well at your job, you can't quit yourself. You are still the same person that's going to take

those same things over to another position. Now, maybe that job wasn't where your passion was, and you will bring something else to wherever else you go. But if you're going to try to be in the same area, you can't quit yourself just because your boss said something you don't like or whatever the case, or maybe the boss is not a great person. You cannot quit yourself. So you got to keep swimming. You got to keep building your education, learning from your mistakes, learning the opportunities that are out there, and learning how to find other great people around you that are going to uplift you instead of say, yeah, you know, drink some beers with you and say, yeah, the boss was a hole. You should have never done that. You don't need those people. You want people who are going to challenge you. And that's how you keep swimming.

So that's Shark. Set your goals, homework, Amore, aka love. Remember, you're the brand personally. It always comes back to you personally and keep swimming. I love it. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, fill in the blank to excellence. Are you ready to play? Yeah, I'm ready. When I started my career, I wish I had known. How to use money. The biggest lesson I've learned in life is. Trust your gut. My number one professional goal is... To inspire millions of young men and women of color to know that they don't have to be somebody in sports or music or politics.

They can be bigger and better than Daymond John by applying themselves. Oh, man. My biggest regret is i guess my biggest regret would be not taking a trip with my partners to meet nelson mandela before he passed away the one thing i dreamed of doing for a long time but haven't done is be an extreme outdoors person mountain climbing like extreme extreme. Are you going to do it? I don't know. These bones are getting brittle, brother, so I'm not sure. Well, the mountains will be much smaller than I initially anticipated. If you can fix one thing in the world, what would it be?

Of course, it's either going to be racism or starvation or disease. I think racism would be the first because if we all got along, then we can agree on how to innovate and give to those who are starving or need medicine. Bigotry, prejudice, whatever you want to call it. My favorite hip-hop artist of all time is... Rakim. If you could meet one person in the world, who would it be? We'll start with one person who is dead and one person who is alive. Alive, I would want to meet Steven Spielberg, a great storyteller.

Dead, I don't want to go to hell, so I would say Jesus. But of course, that's the obvious one. I mean, being a person of faith, but Genghis Khan would be the one I would want to meet. The one question you wish I'd asked you today is? There is no question I feel you didn't ask, because now I have to rethink life. Do you have any last advice for those listening today? The reality is everybody has the opportunity to be successful, but we all get in each other's way in our own way.

And I think there's only three pillars to success. And the most important aspect of those three pillars are your why. You have to really know why you want to do it, why you don't want to do it. Once you know your why, you can set your goals on the path to how to accomplish it. And once you set those goals, you can acquire the education books, podcasts, or anything else to educate yourself how to accomplish those goals.

But if you are not honest with yourself about your why, you'll never set the right goals and you'll never get the right education to reinforce them. I want to give a huge shout out to my friend Brian Lee for introducing us today.

Brian's one of my closest friends, one of the greatest guys that you're ever going to meet in your lifetime. So shout out to Brian and Damon. Thank you for doing this. I just want to conclude by telling you, you've been someone I've admired for a really long time. You've been a phenomenal role model and have inspired millions of people with your success, your humility, and your philanthropy.

You've made a measurable contribution to changing our culture and the way we think about it today. I'm very grateful for your time today. Thank you very much for sharing your story with us. Randy, this has been a great experience. You knew everything and probably some things that I have forgotten about myself. So often we see a lot of people who talk about stuff, you don't even know where they got the information from. But I can say from now on that anybody who watches what you have can know that it's based off of a massive amount of education and it is accurate and it is in their best interest to listen and learn. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you.