The School of Greatness - 744 How to Find a Business You Love with Daymond John

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

RISE AND GRIND. You have to give yourself permission to follow your dreams. You might think, “People like me don’t don’t do that,” “I’m not ready,” or “There’s no way for e to succeed.” But no one is going to tell you that you can. You have to know that for yourself. It’s so important. Your belief in yourself is the difference between success and failure. That’s why, for this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with the creator of Fubu, Daymond John, where he shared how he realized that he could be a fashion designer. Daymond John is the star of one of my favorite shows, Shark Tank, and is a bestselling author with a new book called The Power of Broke. He’s a self-made multimillionaire with over $4 billion in global product sales. Daymond used to think that clothing was designed by old people in Italy who wore measuring tape around their neck. It wasn’t until he saw Karl Kani’s line that he realized that he could do it, too. Do you have self-limiting beliefs that are holding you back from pursuing your dreams? Learn how to make money doing something you’re passionate about (no matter where you come from) in Episode 744. In This Episode You Will Learn: Daymond’s age when he sold his first item of clothing (1:00) What gave Daymond his belief in himself (2:00) The story of the beginning of FUBU (3:00) About Daymond’s very first business (4:00)

This is 5-Minute Friday! We've got a great guest on today. His name is Mr. Damon John. He's the famed founder and CEO of the global fashion brand FUBU and star of ABC's Emmy Award winning TV show Shark Tank, one of my favorite shows to watch. He's got a new book out that's called The Power of Broke. I'm very excited to dive into Damon's story about this book. And some fun facts is that FUBU is a $6 billion business, and every morning he says,

Rise and grind. Rise and grind. I wouldn't know till, you know, I was about 12 years old. I wouldn't know till probably about another 10 years, 15 years that maybe we should all do something that we love. Right. I tried everything else. Yeah. But I never thought about fashion. It's kind of like you bust your butt to go and work and make a living,

and then you go out and on the weekends you kind of snowboard and do all sorts of things, but you never thought about busting your butt building snowboard or snowboarding and making money. Like Rob Dyrdek, your buddy Rob Dyrdek. Exactly. Rob's in the book as well, of course. Yeah, that's interesting. So how old were you when you sold your first article of clothing? How old was I? How old was I? I know the date.

I know exactly the date. It was 1989, good Friday, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 37 degrees outside. I stood outside the Coliseum Mall in 1989 so i was 20 years old wow okay yeah well 20 years old 20 years old when did you have uh how old were you when you said you had the passion for i had the passion at 10 11 12 i had a passion for fashion earlier on in my life prior to that as well but it was really my mother was dressing me because we didn't you know not really when i was four or five or six because we didn't have money, enough money to go buy clothes. So she would sew them.

Interesting. And sometimes the pocket would be hanging up in the back somewhere. But it was okay. So what gave you – when did you decide that you had the permission to go create your own things or sew them in the basement and then go sell them? What gave you that belief in yourself that you could create this? You know what? belief in yourself that you can create this i i you know what it again like like most of us start there was no belief that i could do it but i remember walking into a store and um i started to see cross colors everywhere and i walked in the store and i saw this picture of this guy who

like looked like a young mike tyson hanging off a pair of jeans and it was uh carl can i and then it just hit me i thought prior to that we always thought that you had to be from italy and france to design you had to be older and like a you know you know the guys with the with the tape around their neck you know the tailors right and so or whatever the fashion designer had looked like in those days and i thought i just i'm just supposed to buy from them when i saw that i was like wow that's amazing okay no problem uh then i'm watching a de la soul video i remember and seeing them wearing these hats it almost looked like a ski cap but it has like a tie on the top and i couldn't find that hat uh anywhere in queens i finally find one uptown manhattan i i pay for

the the hat i come home i show my my mother. I say, look, Ma. I always say a joke. I pay $6 in gas, $900 in tolls, and $20 for the hat. Check this out. And she goes, that's a piece of crap. But I can show you how to sew hats like that so you can sew as many as you want so you can wear them. You don't have to do that. So go get $40 worth of fabric.

I go to the store. Get $40 worth of fabric. I come home. I give my mother the stuff to sew the hats. And hats and she says i'm not sewing this you're sewing this i'm so crap now i gotta work at this i sew the hats and then all of a sudden i have all these hats in only one head because it's not like i was too stupid or i wasn't thinking thank god i didn't buy uh 48 hours worth of different fabric i bought $40 worth of the same fabric. You made one maybe every three years. Yeah.

So anyway, so that's when it happened. That's when I went out and sold those hats outside on that Good Friday, and I sold $800 worth of hats in one hour. And that's when it just snapped. I just said to myself, wait a minute. I made this with my own hands. I went and sold this to individuals and nobody was in my way. I didn't have to get a check from a boss. Nobody told me when or to come to

work or go to work. I can't get fired from this because of my color creed or whatever the case is. I'm responsible for what's happening here. And I will either fail because every decision I make, I'll succeed because every decision I make. Was that the first time that you made money on your own as an entrepreneur or were you? No, no, no, no. I made money on my own and lost money on my own as an entrepreneur. I started my first business. It took me a long time to really decide what I want to do and what was my first business.

It took me forever to decide my first business. My first business, I finally decided what I wanted to do when I was six years old. It took me forever. I was selling pencils in school. And then I would go ahead and sell candy. And then when it snowed, I would shovel snow in the winter, rake leaves in the fall. And then I remember when I used to shovel snow, I used to go and kids would want to help me because i started getting you know everybody in the blocks that i wanted to i would travel about three miles and take care of it kids want to help

me so i would tell them okay no problem here's what you're going to do if you're going to help me i'm going to let you work i'm going to give you a couple let's split the money with you but you got to do a spring cleanup for free so we can go back into spring and then i would go to the to the owners of the house and say, well, everybody else in the block, if they shovel your snow, they're charging you $3. If I shovel your snow three times during the winter, I'm going to give you a free spring cleanup. So I was leveraging all those little guys in the neighborhood. I love it.

Ah, man, that was a great business.