The Trillionaire Mindset - 87: Our Very First Shark ft. Daymond John

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Become an exclusive member to get ad-free and bonus episodes at https://tmgstudios.tv Buy our Merch HERE: https://tmgstudios.tv/collections/trillionaire-mindset Our first ever Shark stops by the show to give his wisdom and talk about his new project! Including a look into the AI bubble, Nvidia’s rise, and the DeSantis election announcement meltdown. Oh and see Jeff Bezos bring down the house, get to know the engaged bachelor.  Get the only digital wallets with real cash access, activated by MoneyGram. Learn more at https://moneygram.com/stellarwallets Check out our channel page on Apple Podcasts, go to: https://apple.co/trillionaire SUBSCRIBE to Trillionaire Mindset at https://www.youtube.com/trillionairemindset Want to subscribe to our newsletter? http://bit.ly/3k4Nfar   Trillionaire Highlights Channel: https://www.youtube.com/TrillionaireMindsetHighlights Trillionaire IG: https://www.instagram.com/trillionairepod Trillionaire Twitter: https://twitter.com/trillionairepod TMG Studios YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tinymeatgang BEN https://www.instagram.com/bencahn/ https://twitter.com/Buncahn EMIL https://www.instagram.com/emilderosa/ https://twitter.com/emilderosa   *DISCLOSURE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS VIDEO ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS INVOLVED. THESE OPINIONS DO NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF ANYONE ELSE. THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. THE VIEWER OF THE VIDEO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CONSIDERING ANY INFORMATION CAREFULLY AND MAKING THEIR OWN DECISIONS TO BUY OR SELL OR HOLD ANY INVESTMENT. SOME OF THE CONTENT OF THIS VIDEO IS CONSIDERED TO BE SATIRE AND MAY NOT BE CONSIDERED FACTUAL AND SHOULD BE TAKEN IN SUCH LIGHT. THE COMMENTS MADE IN THIS VIDEO ARE FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND ARE NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY.* Chapters: 0:00 HE’S IN THE BUILDING 1:00 Jeff Joins the Show 2:03 “I’m in love” 4:00 Yes, yes, yes! 5:03 Microdosing Shrooms 6:25 Transcendental Meditation 8:10 Suing, at Some Point 9:50 Ya’ll are nuts 10:40 AI Disruption Pitfall 13:23 Questioning EVERYTHING 14:35 Baseball in the 20’s 15:44 The AI Bubble 16:28 Thanks to Moneygram! 17:12 Nvidia’s AI Investment 18:20 Weak Breadth 20:00 Blockchain Iced Tea 21:25 Photoshop’s AI 23:58 Nvidia’s Revenue 26:40 Mega Cap Crowding! 28:20 More Stock Predictions 32:30 Trump & DeSantis 34:34 The Ultimate Twitter Space 36:40 The Election Mountain 38:28 Instagram’s New Twitter 42:08 The Daymond John Interview 45:45 Hope in Education 48:43 Background on FUBU 51:38 Easier Then, or Now? 55:13 Coolest Brand in the World 56:25 The Other Shoe Dropped 58:25 When Daymond Made It 1:01:00 Bombas’ Success 1:03:00 Investment Wish List 1:05:35 Stocks vs. Angel Investing 1:07:30 The AI Bubble 1:09:45 The City & Staying Healthy  1:11:30 How to Compete in the Market 1:13:40 Investing in Yourself 1:16:48 Selling the Goods 1:18:44 Thank you Daymond John! 1:20:35 This Week on After Hours

We do have to give the disclaimer again, you got to check it in the description box. You guys are going to have to calm yourselves. You're all going to have to calm yourselves because he's in the building. building. He's got a new boat called the Kuru that's been under wraps for quite some time and he's ready to make its first appearance and he's got a new love in his life. We want to talk to him all about ladies and gentlemen Jeff Bezos. Well thanks for coming, Jeff. Thank you for having me. It's so good to see you. Oh, it's so good to be here.

It's so good to be back. You have a glow about you, I must say. Wow, is it always like this on set here? I think everyone's just a little starstruck. Wow, this is crazy. This is chaotic. It's very it's it's it's so flattering to be here I feel so welcome. I can't believe it's like this every time. That's a trillionaire mind to welcome for you Yeah, truly and I think everyone's Extantic over the news me too. Can we tell them? I know you're a very private person, but can we can we can we tell the world Go ahead you've got a love in your life Jeff. Yes. Yes. Yes

Oh, my I've never Yes Yes, yes, oh, oh, yes, I've never seen you like this. Well, what can I say? I'm in love Meal Jeff so Oh, Emil. Jeff. So... Is it... can we announce you are now engaged to Laura Sanchez? Yes.

That's the answer. Are you happy about it? Extremely happy. You know, there are two times in my life where I can recall being this happy. The first was when we launched Amazon Prime. And the second was when Lauren, Lauren. Say, say, say yes.

When she made me the happiest man in the world, all over again, by saying yes when I asked her to be my wife. And I have to ask you about your your boat, Coran. Yeah. So we're looking at like a 500 foot sailing boat. That's correct. I also love that boat.

And at the very front of it, I put a likeness. I had the ship's builders. I had the ships builders. I had the ships builders put the likeness of my beautiful bride to be at the helm of at the stern of the boat. I saw that so I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be her or not, but it is. That's your reason. It is. It's her and her rocking boobs for the whole world to see.

Whenever we come into dock, people will know that's Jeff Bezos and his wife. And they're perfect. Yeah, inner, perfect. Sort of rocking boobs. Yes. That's beautiful. Yeah. Tits for it.

Don't what? It's a very tits for it, but. Yeah, it's a very tits for a vessel. Yeah. Well, that's what you get when you when you say with the Jeffy B So I know she's got a lot of great physical assets, but are there things you you like about her Her insides her yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Oh my god

I've never seen you like this. To me all, I've never felt this way before. Not even with Mackenzie. Not even with Mackenzie. Who gave you four children? Who gave me four children? I'm in love. This is beautiful, Jeff. This is beautiful Jeff. I'm going 100,000! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I'm MacroDose just rooms this morning.

Did you really? Why? Because I bought this, I bought it. Oh so you got to do it, right? I got to do it. It's like 50 milligrams. I took it in the car on the way here. I don't feel anything. You seem if anything sad.

Really? Oh. Well, that's for everyone else to decide. I'm MacroDestreams this last weekend. That's cool, man. It was cool. Yeah. Nothing like kicking it off with a little bit of drug use. And then you got Melissa et Etheridge stuck in my head. Sorry.

She stuck in my head. The whole right here. I'm at the only one who ever got to stop there because YouTube will get mad at us. G's Louise. Hey gang, we got these hats. If you want one, we're going to sign the remaining stock of them. Who knows what we're right on there.

It could be phone numbers. Our names? Yeah, it could be our phone numbers. Probably social security number. You want to put this on? My head's too big. Okay. Both our heads are too big.

DM, I wonder what that stands for. TM. trademark. Transcendental meditation. I could not, did I ever tell you about the time I tried to do tell me. I went to, it was suggested by me to shout out to my friend Kate who's gonna have the baby next week.

We actually don't normally do shout outs on the show, but yeah, we don't normally, I haven't done one in a long time. Also, check the disclaimer in the... Yeah, we don't normally. We haven't done one in a long time. Because they... Also, check the disclaimer in the description box while you're at it. But she recommended that I try transcendental meditation. And I went to the, you gotta go,

you gotta find like a place that does it and you gotta sit through... You gotta hear her recording of David Lynch going, now I need you to relax. It was Jerry Seinfeld, actually. No way. Well, he would, the video that they showed us had him talking about the benefits of it.

But I'm like an hour into this thing with all these people in this room in New York and they show like the human brain and they show like a, they just start talking physiological stuff and I can't stomach that and I got so dizzy and queasy I had to leave So I was like well, I guess I can't do transcendental meditation Ben once again proving he the fun hang I

Got so like meditation. It's sure. I mean, I could do that too. It's just that I couldn't sit through more physiological stuff because they're showing the brain and all sorts of stuff and I'm going, I got one of those and it's weird me out. That's how it always goes. Also I got my, I got hit in the head yesterday and I bonked it real bad and it's starting to bruise. So can you see it? Is it bruised?

Well, I can sure feel it. Jeez, I got so mad. I got so mad. I threw down the weight at the gym because I hit my head on the thing. Are you going to sue? No, I'm not going to sue. No. I would like to sue someone at some point in my life.

Wouldn't you? Hmm, thoughts? It's our nightmare, man. Yeah, but if you're in the right or something, like that woman who got the hot coffee, the McDonald's coffee. Famously, people think she was being a press, but she's like 30 degrees girl. Yeah, there was no reason for the coffee to be that hot.

Yeah, that's an awfully hot coffee pot. What's that? That's Eminem's devastating rhyme that he delivered a part of it on Donald Trump. You don't remember that where he's in the parking garage You know I'm talking about right yeah, yeah, one of the rhymes as he goes. That's it awfully hot coffee pot Huh anyway, he really stuck it to Trump. He really did And he said he said something about him being orange Oh, and he's a bad guy because he's orange.

Another classic. Yeah, you don't remember that. I kind of vaguely remember it, but I don't remember specific lines from the Trump desk. Oh man. Yeah, he's, I can't remember what he used to rhyme with orange, but yeah, there's that video of, well, it's some rapper who's like, I can rhyme with orange. And he starts going, I think it's him and him. It might be him. And him.

But he doesn't actually rhyme with orange. He just kind of he goes born. You know, like that sort of rhymes. It's near rhymes. Yeah, it's a near rhyme. Uh, what else have we got before we dive in? You got anything you want to say? Well, these all plugs.

Yeah, these are plugs. Yeah, I'd like to plug the fine people of West Texas. No, you know what I would like to say? What? You guys are nuts, I love you. We sold out the fucking bellhouse. Oh, that's right. Yeah, you guys are the fucking coolest.

Also, we kind of fucked up. We had said last time. I know, we don't even. Yeah. Who cares? Thank you for that. I also we kind of fucked up we had said last time. I know. I don't even care. But thank you for that. That's crazy. Yeah, all my friends were like, how the fuck are you doing this? And I go because of the sweet, sweet support of all of our beautiful people.

Yeah. We love you. Gonna give each and every one of you a kiss and a hug Don't hold me to that also We got a very special guest later on in the episode From Shark Tank So stay tuned for that then it that's the jaw's name. Yeah, yeah So let's get into it.

Let's get into it. We had our first instance of AI disrupting, it was a combination of the new Twitter, blue check mark, shit, and also AI and the potential perils and pitfalls of both combined. Someone created, there was an AI-generated photo of an explosion. And looking at this right away, I'm like, I know that's fake. I don't know. There's just something slightly uncanny valley about it. When you look at the road and the fence, there's a weird bend in the middle. It almost looks like a fish islands yet. But it is hard when you see it from so this is I believe it came originally from a

account that was titled Bloomberg feed with the blue check. Oh, so that's what really trip people up Bloomberg feed. Yeah. And I wondered if the people who did it were just kind of testing the waters and See right that's what people were to so like manipulating the market with yeah, yeah And so what actually happened? I think I think there was like a 25 Basis points dip there was a there was a there was a brief drop that In in stocks and of course, I just love that the image was zero hedge. Because you know zero hedge, just the permabare always. If you ever go, if you don't know who zero hedge is, go to their Twitter account. And it's just you would think by looking at

their account that it's all just doom and gloom. The world is about to end tomorrow. And they've been saying that for, Jesus, the last 10 years that I've been with, they've got me blocked now. I do love the other, so tech crunch kind of like pointed to some of the prominent accounts that shared it. And so, I think bloom,

it started with Bloomberg feed, which people got confused about. Then it was the Then it was several Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers like Delta one. Oh, yeah, they're you know, that's where I get all my Delta one is a is a news account. Yeah I mean, but is that where you're like oh this my so and this one's just OS I and T defender and Whale chart even shared it.

Even in Indian television network reported the fake Pentagon explosion. Whale Chart? Whale Chart. Okay. Well, either way, a bunch of people got tricked. Not me though, not your boy, because I didn't see it in time. And I probably wouldn't have believed it anyway, because I'm smarter than that. And I know, I know AI when I see it.

It does suck that we have to question every time. Every time something is reported, we gotta go, oh fuck is it real? Yeah, is it fucking real? Yeah. Is there any way to tell other than just your own human intuition? I feel like Tom getting told that my wife is pregnant. Oh, in succession? Yeah.

Oh, is this just a play? Is this a play? I by the way, I predict Tom's going to be the CEO. They're going to if you haven't watched. Succession. Just, you know, shut up. When Matt's and give Shiv the call that like a USC will play. Yeah. He doesn't say her.

I saw a tick talk that pointed out that his last name, Wombsgans, is an anagram for the next CEO of Waste, there was a baseball player in the 20s, whose last name was Wombsgans. And he is the only baseball player in the history of the world series to, to execute a triple play by himself. Wombs games for a play. I don't know.

He caught the ball and tagged the guy and then ran and tagged another guy. Who knows? But Tom. Baseball, when you hear about baseball in the 20s, you're like, this is a different game. Yeah, yeah, I could have done that. I could have hit a fastball. What are you guys a different game. Yeah, yeah, I could have done that. I could I could have hit a fastball. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I can't imagine that they were throwing the ball harder than like 80 miles an hour. They were all drunk and fat. Yeah, Babe Ruth would like smoke cigars at he wouldn't, but yeah, there's a picture of Babe Ruth and you yogi bearer and they both just it's like

These are baseball players. Thanks. Yeah, but have you like Tito Ortiz? He's huge I Think he he was a baseball player. I mean, he's not dead or anything, but he retired played on the red socks There's big David Ortiz David Ortiz Tito Ortiz Tito Ortiz Tito Ortiz is someone else, but David Ortiz. David Ortiz. Tito Ortiz. Tito Ortiz. Tito Ortiz is someone else. But David Ortiz was a DH. Yeah. So that's all he had to do. God, that'd be nice.

And then they'd like pinch run if it was a big... Anyway, getting off topic. But we do love the major league baseball. So that happened, but then it just as is this market, it just dipped up right back up. Speaking of the market, holy crap. Holy crap. The AI bubble is just,

I don't even know if you can, I would call it a considerate bubble. I considerate kind of bubble, yeah. Cause you went from all of a sudden, you went from hardly anybody talking about AI, especially companies in their quarterly reports and their conference calls to now everybody's talking about AI. It's just the hot new thing.

That's not to say it's not legitimate, and it's not real, as is evidenced by NVIDIA, who just reported their earnings and added a whopping, I don't know, $150 billion to their market cap. It's just absolutely... Oh man. Hey guys, we want to take a quick break to thank another sponsor of today's episode, MoneyGram.

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Years ago, like, I don't know, between years. How did he fucking know? He's just smart old guy, man. Fuck. Some people, that's the thing is, Nvidia has apparently been investing, they've been investing in AI since like 2008 or nine. They started making moves back then.

I know, but that's fucking 15 years ago. When I hear about grandparents being like, I bought you stock, they're like, I got you stockin' Coca-Cola. Yeah, or it's like eggs or like Microsoft. But then Microsoft also is fucking killing it. But so a couple of things, there's been,

it's been really frustrating watching this market just melt up as they call it because it's all just been, it's been, as you'll see on the interview, the generals, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Nvidia, they're the ones leading the charge. They're all, after taking a huge hit. Yeah, earlier this year, yeah.

But Microsoft is at all time highs, apples at or near all time highs, Google's been rallying back from the hit that it took. But so the thing is, with this market, what they call the breadth is weak. You know what the breadth is? No, that's a tough word to say, breadth. The breadth.

Basically, breadth is how many stocks are participating in the upside and the index is going up. So when I'm saying the breadth is weak, it means that the bulk of the moves are coming from these leaders, which is, at once it's concerning, but then on the other hand, you could just as easily argue that. Hasn't that been the case for kind of a long time,

though, the whole fang, and they were... It's been the case before for sure, but this time... And tech companies were such like a disproportionately large part of yes. Yes. So I got some stats here. Apple and Microsoft alone are 14.5% of the S&P. The top 10. Apple and Microsoft just those two are 14.5% of the S&P. I saw something like Apple's market cap recently became larger than the UK's GDP or something. Yeah, it's around like 2.7 to $8 trillion, Jesus Christ. The top 10 stocks in the S&P have accounted for 90% of the indexes return in 2023 with

over $1.4 trillion in market cap created mostly due to AI hype Which is so that when I'm talking about oh, it's a bubble. I'm putting it in quotes because it's I don't know It's different than the blockchain bubble that we definitely had in like 2017 where you had Just anyone who wanted to pump their stock and juice their Juice the stock all they had to do is mention like were either getting into blockchain or were pivoting to it There was famously this tea company called like Dave long long island tea or something Dave did I think was this is from 2017 a 24 million dollar iced tea company says it's pivoting to the blockchain and it's stock jumped 200 percent that was just one of many they were like ICT company says it's pivoting to the blockchain and it's stock jumped to 200%.

That was just one of many, they were like so many penny stocks. Everybody was freaking out over blockchain. Everybody, all sorts of companies were just starting to talk about like, oh yeah, we're looking into it, we're looking into blockchain. What was the other link that I got? Right, and it's like, you know,

you brought up those investor calls where it's like, AI was mentioned 600 times. Yeah. We played that. So back in 2018, overstock NASDAQ, AMD were three public companies that frequently brought up blockchain technology on earnings calls. And there were a bunch of others, FedEx.

And they were all just, because it was the newest hype thing, they were all saying essentially the same thing is we're looking into it and we're looking at ways to integrate blockchain technology to... Yeah, yeah. But it does seem like it's a bit different in the sense that there are people actually using,

yeah, and there's actual utility. Although I can't tell if I'm being duped and just I'm a rube and I'm going, oh, wow, for example, I don't know if we could pull it up, but Adobe just released a ad for their new Photoshop and stuff, but powered with AI. Yeah. And it's the one that uses Gidey. I don't know, but it's obviously it's in beta and

Yeah, that's gotta be it. If you could play the video. So if it so this is obviously an ad and it's still in beta But if it does work like this, that's pretty well to be like it means that Photoshop will be accessible to everyone Let's see But I can't imagine it working this well for the audio listener. I'm so sorry Let's see. But I can't imagine it working this well. For the audio listener, I'm so sorry. So you basically just circle something and you go, oh, I've wanted to look like this. Can you put in a yellow road lines? Wow.

Okay. Yeah, holy god. You know, I just want you to get... Generative fill is what this tool is called. Alright, let's see. But look, I mean, just select the thing. Now he's in a fucking street alley. Wet out.

Oh, okay. It's a, you know, can you clear that? Can you put a little sign there for me? It's basically showing, for the audio listener, it's, you just highlight something and then the little thing pops up and says, describe what you wanted to see. Frozen Lake.

Frozen Lake with reflections. Boom, there. There's the frozen lake with again This is a fucking in-rations. This isn't add. This is not someone actually yeah using it and I'm sure this is very I mean Geez Louise. I'm sure this is very aspirational. I can't imagine it working this well, but if they can If they can do it that's fucking I'd like to quote the villain from the Incredibles. The first one when he said, when everyone is super, no one will be. And it's a, yeah, syndrome, thank you, that's who he was.

By the way, I feel so bad for people with red hair in every Disney movie. They make the fucking, the red-haired person, the evil sinister one. Like, if you're a kid with red hair watching Disney movies, you gotta feel like shit. Another fucking red-haired, an evil villain, great, awesome. Is that true? Yeah, but then they made up for it

by making that brave movie about the Irish woman who can shoot arrows or something. Yeah, no one liked the brave though. Yeah, exactly, exactly. What's that? Is that a bad one? No, she had red hair. Honour from frozen.

Well, there goes my whole theory about red hair being villains. But that's not Pixar. Okay, thank you. What's not Pixar? Frozen. Frozen is dizzy, Disney. Pixar, isn't it? No.

No? Okay, well anyway, let's continue. So in video, you would think that they made insane amounts of money and they really didn't. It's they, they, uh, uh, their revenues came in at 7.2 billion versus 6.5 billion expected. Um, but I think that was the big ripping. Is that they beat? Well, no, it was that they, that their quarter two estimates, they, um, they projected about $11 billion, whereas Wall Street was expecting a 7.2.

So just like, all of a sudden, boom, a big thing, a big boost in that. And I mean, it's a couple of things. It's kind of like Tesla 2.0. Back when Tesla was just absolutely rocketing, and it just was the meme stock, the hot stock that everybody was chasing. It's a similar kind of thing that I think we're seeing. And you've got the narrative of AI, which is actually showing concrete numbers right now. But I wonder how sustainable it is for them in particular. Because you've got, I'm sure that a lot of this

is coming from like Google and Microsoft and the likes of like Amazon these big companies. We're all the AI race. Yeah, placing these big orders for these things but like is it gonna be sustainable? I don't know. What, like there could be another big shiny thing that all these companies.

No, but like how many times do they need to keep re-upping? True. You know? Yeah, I really don't know. But I can imagine they are gonna keep working on faster and more powerful. Yeah, machine. Well, and that's the other thing,

is all these companies have their own in-house AI initiatives that they're working on. So, but I know that Nvidia is like miles ahead of them all, and it's going to take everybody a long time to catch up. And they're all doing specific things that are specific to their business models. But either way, there's an interesting quote here from the CEO, Jensen Huang. He says, he said in the conference called, the computer industry is going through two simultaneous

transitions, accelerated computing and generative AI. But so yeah, Nvidia's jump is like single-handedly, I mean, this week it looked like the NASDAQ and the S&P were going to go firmly in the red this week. I mean, they are in the red this week, but it's been buoyed back up single-handedly by Nvidia because then it boosted AMD and it boosted SMCI and it boosted Broadcom. Everybody's now like, oh, AI is here to save the day

and the bubble continues. But like the breadth is still, there's this April 25th, I got this research note from JP Morgan, their global market strategies team pointed out on April 25th that the, this is the narrowest stock leadership in an up market since the 1990s, and they called it mega cap crowding,

and added that the current level of mega crap, mega crap. Mega crap. Really good. Mega crap crowding implies that the risk of recession is not priced in the markets. And there were four of the six periods where breadth was the weakest occurred near market peaks, including in December 99, July and September 2000 and October 2007. Well luckily looking back on those times, nothing bad happened.

Yeah, that's true. But also, there's the old adage that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. So, I would expect this kind of thing to just kind of continue in chug ever higher, because I think that it's going to be because there's been all these warnings from these banks and these researchers that like, oh, the earnings recession is going to catch up to us and all of this, all of these things are eventually going to catch up. But I think it's going to be like that the wagon's going to keep on chugging along until all

the wheels literally fall off. And that's the only thing that's going to stop it. It's just going to go until it finally just peaks. And by then, we'll probably be back at all time highs, I think. It's my prediction. Yeah. But, oh, God, there's more predictions here. Give them to me. Yeah. so this is off of what this guy from Nomura, Charlie McElegate said. He said the equity's market can continue to absolutely party until the end game arrives. And it can take much longer than you think,

despite things breaking along the way. Just ripping out hearts in the meantime as we continue to fend off worry after worry where pervasive skepticism and cynicism keep sentiment and positioning light, feeding up buyers or higher pain, trade melt meltup with risk assets in the meantime meaning what though Like so you guys can all sit around and worry about you know about economy Yes, the interests the interest rates being high, but you know

But investors are gonna look at what's going on with all you know innovative AI and are still gonna be Happy to pump those up. There's a lot of people that are on the sidelines. That's why he said positioning is light. There's a lot of skepticism and worry and cynicism, but that feeds into the other old adage of bull markets climb a wall of worry. That's what they do. It's not, it just goes up with eternal optimism and everything is real. You got all these sayings.. I'm a lot of saying.

I picked her new and just in a suit in a Wall Street office. You got suspenders on. So, and me and go away. A bull market climbs a wall of worry. They do. But I just kicked you out of my office. What the fuck up, old man? The question, I mean, we talked about AI and the comparison to blockchain. The question I think is how quickly and practically companies are actually going to be able to utilize it. I mean, Buzzfeed is an example that comes to mind where it could actually work straight

away where they can just start generating content pretty easily because that's been a thing. I mean AI generated content is nothing new. But in other cases where it's like customer service type shit, I don't think they might save some money. But like, having to be in cost. And haven't they been doing that forever with, you know, people fucking screaming at phones going, represent it. Represent it. You know, it's been so, I understand you'd like to talk to a representative. Yeah, you're not gonna,

it's not like you're gonna wipe out an entire workforce. It does make sense with, yeah, for, the Photoshop thing, for example, that actually could bring in a lot of new users where there was maybe a barrier to entry if it works. I'm still very skeptical about all of these things. But if it does work like that, you could have people who maybe were intimidated by Photoshop going, oh no, I could use it.

Too many tools in Photoshop. I still don't even know what the burn tool is. Some graphic designer out there screaming. Screaming at us. Let me know in the comments what the burn tool does. But I, yeah, I don't know. At this point, I don't buy the whole, I think there's this story that it's going to turn you into your own, you know, you don't need a graphic designer anymore, you're gonna, you're gonna be able to just type it into mid-journey. And have you seen those compilations of the logos it's asked? Yeah, the dogs, right. They're terrible logos.

But that could just be a matter of someone putting in a shitty prompt. True. If you're good at prompting, then you could turn out something amazing. I don't know. I still think people prefer people. I prefer a person. I think that this kind of thing will lead

to a kind of pushback. People prefer people. Yeah, I guess it depends though. I think younger people are gonna rely on it more and more. Yeah. What? It's just depressing. It's depressing to think about.

And I do wonder where this takes us if we're gonna start having the UBI conversation sooner than later. And if it's going to come up next year in the election cycle as a real thing, as more and more jobs taken in these companies just make Trump and Biden are going to talk about UBI. Oh god. You see, things are going to be Trump and not desantis. By the way, it's desantis apparently. That's how he pronounced it himself, his own name. By the way, it's desantist apparently that's how he pronounced it himself his own name The only way people are gonna

Pronounce it or the way fucking Trump says it the that is so true I think after yesterday his launch. I mean what a fucking disaster He couldn't get it going and then not only Not only could he not get it going on the for those of you don't know ronda santa's announced his Pres presidency via Twitter spaces yesterday, and with a whole host of technical difficulties, there was just periods of all you could hear, where people clearing their throats and going, sorry, we're trying to figure out what's going on here.

And by the time he finally announced, most of the people had left. And how many were in their total, like 800,000? I think at one point there was a bunch. But I think the majority had left because they were like, what the fuck am I doing? Elon Musk was trying to explain what was going on. But Trump was...

Oh, he was hot on it. He was trucing. Yeah. There was, if we can find his truth real quick, there was two specifically. One, okay, so here's one of his truths with Rob. My red button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working. Truth, yours does not,

per my conversation with Kim Jong-un of North Korea soon to become my friend. I don't know. I don't even know what that one means. But then can you pull up the rocket one? Why does he call him Rob dissent? So he, this was... So he, he truth, the image of a rocket, rocket trying to launch and he's got Ron 2024. No, but he's got it. He's he's mocking. Uh, Jeb, the Jeb with an exclamation point. He's got Ron with an exclamation point. Okay, okay. But this one was honestly my favorite.

This next one. He's got, he's got the Twitter spaces that he's saying is is is Ron DeSantis announcing and he's got Elon Musk in there, Ron DeSantis George Soros, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, the devil, the FBI and Klaus, whatever his name is from the world economic form. And let's just hear a little bit of it. Oh, this is real. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You, George.

Dick Cheney keeps coughing. Dick, could you try not to cough on the... Okay, so how are we going to take out Trump, you guys? Uh, guys from the FBI. This is not a private call. This is a public Twitter space. Everyone can listen in. Goddamn it.

It's obviously very corny, but you know, people are, people are in a way. Oh yeah, I mean, that is very funny. This Twitter space, so Governor Rhonda Santas could. Everyone just, so I can make my announcement, okay? You go, girl. Wait, it's gay? So what, everyone in this call is gay.

Truly, how is Dick Cheney still alive? You need like 80, so... Alright, that's enough of your home. But, well, and Trump, they have a Trump log on at the end. You can actually jump to the end to hear, it's so corny. Um, keep going, maybe a little bit. Oh, there he is. There he is.

Zealon, the real president is going to say a few words. The devil, I'm going to kick your ass very soon. Hitler, you're already dead. Dick Cheney sounds like you'll be joining Hitler very soon. Klaus Schwab and George Soros, I'm putting both your asses in jail and Rondi Sanktimonius can kiss my big beautiful 2024 presidential ass. Oh my god. Let's go.

It's the WWE. That's okay. From now until November, 2024 is going to be fucking nightmare. Endless or entertaining depending on your perspective. It's going to be a very entertaining nightmare. Oh man. I guess I can't... Guess I can't wait.

Guess what? I can't wait for it. It's gonna be entertaining. Strap me in. I don't think, I don't know. I can see the mountain and the plane is accelerating and the nose is pointed downward and I'm just, you know what?

Actually, I'm not strapped in. I'm unbuckling my seatbelt and just going, turn me into mush. The only entertaining nightmare I think I would like is, so I don't know if you saw, but there was a story circulating where Hillary Clinton was like thinking about it. No, she was basically saying, you know, I can understand why the Joe Biden age thing is a concern. Uh-huh.

And so people were like, wait, is she... Is that why we could do it? Go for it. But that's what I was like. Let's get a Clinton Trump remit. I think that would be very funny. That would be very funny and so entertaining. And if that happens, I think she would win.

I would do anything for Bernie to join the race. As her co-founder, as her vice president, no, what? Oh, like just to run. Yeah, like in 2016. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, fuck it. Let's just repeat 2016. Let's everybody collectively gets a big do over part two, the rematch.

I think that she would win because I think that everybody that didn't go out and vote because they thought that it was in the bag. I think Bernie might win. If Bernie ran against Hillary and Trump, well, he's running for the Democratic primary. And then would eventually you have to let's fucking ditch the primaries, man. Can we just go like, let's get, yeah, instead of one Democrat and one Republican, whoever wants to run, let him run, man. And then we win that way.

Whoever gets the most electoral votes wins. Not the first to 270. Anyway. Twitter's got its problems. But yeah, do I think Ron will be it? No. Yeah.

Do you think that Instagram's Twitter competitor can take on Twitter? I say absolutely. So do I, honestly, it's been awesome. I can't believe how long it's taken anyone to step up and just make a, it's, Twitter's pretty simple. It's a text-based app that like has video compatibility and yes, but every company, people are like, I'm going over to Mammoth.

It's like, okay, have fun, dude. Like, what do you mean I have the join different servers? Or like, can we pull up some of the screenshots of this? Of the Instagram Twitter competitor? Vara is, it looks visually pleasing. So this is from, the verge. Yeah, but they got it from,

fuck, Leah Haberman her Substack she reported on her in case you missed it substack newsletter And it's supposed to be a leaked Marketing slide with details about the potential Twitter killer. So it would be its own app. However, you would It would migrate all of your existing followers over to it. And anyone you have blocked words you have blocked all that stuff, it would basically have the same... Is there a timeline as to when I don't think there is? No, I mean, it's a code name project that I don't even think they've announced it.

I think it would absolutely but apparently they are Shipping out some kind of beta version for big creators and stuff to see if they like it and to get feedback I'm sure this I think Truly just make Twitter the way it was before and people will be so happy well And when you I think the big killer is the fact that it's an existing social media site that allows you to migrate all your followers over to a new place, because otherwise starting from zero at a new thing just feels forced and it feels it's cheesy, it's corny. With this, you kind of know what you're getting, and everybody's just been everybody on Twitter.

I feel like it's just been waiting for something like this. I've signed up for, I signed up for the, did you hear about that one, the post? No, it's too many. I know, it was a big guy. That one I felt was maybe, cause I used to like Twitter as a kind of roundup of news. And so the post was kind of for journalists,

but I was just like, I've just like lost interest. You guys, they couldn't roll out an app quick enough. Mammoth, I was just like, what fucking server am I supposed to be? Also, what shitty name. Yeah, and then Blue Sky, people were stoked about. No. I went on it once and was like, eh, it just looks like dead Twitter.

It just looks like a ghost town. Yeah, well, I think that's another like Instagram. Well, if they started when they would immediately have users and exactly. And people would probably be pretty stoked to be pumping shit out to this. Yes. Well, everybody, I think that just about doesn't we're going to, we're going to leave you with, um you with we're gonna leave you with the Damon John interview

We'll cut to it right now, so oh yeah, it's a super fun one. It's a super fun one So stick around he's very fun and very interesting and had a lot of cool shit to say and we asked such good questions We did a good job. We did a good job so Thank you as always for sticking around. We love you so much. And we'll see you in after hours. Why? Folks, we got a very special guest for you today. He is the people's shark from Shark Tank and myriad other things. Damon John, everybody. And we got around. We'll put that in the post. Thank you so much for taking

the time. We're here promoting your book, Little Damon, that learns to earn. Which is so much. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about it. Well, you know, it is a book that I did not think or was hoping that would do well, but I didn't know if it is it is a book that I did not think or while I was hoping that would do well But I didn't know if it would do that well and I put it out about about six weeks ago. It hit new Amazon number one book an entire country potentially an entire world You never know for about about an hour. No, about a day which was actually amazing of all books and And it is about financial intelligence as well as entrepreneurship for kids five to 10 years old.

It went on to New York Times best seller for, I think about three or four weeks. But I'm not saying that to brag that, oh, I'm disin that, but it's because America voted. America said that we want financial intelligence and these type of things to be taught to our children. And, you know, I guess hopefully I'm using my public platform for something bigger and better because I'm sure there are many, many, many other products and books and things like that made by educators and amazing people that don't have the resources and the public's attention to get it out there. So hopefully this has now caused this momentum. I know that Florida and Texas are trying to start putting

entrepreneurship and financial education in schools. But the bottom line is for the last, you know, 80 years or even further than that. We would never talk financial intelligence school because the school system is working off of the old system of us being in the actual age where they taught us how to build ships to go to war or be a good employee. But today if a child has no financial intelligence, they're not teaching us about taxes about credit, but at 18 years old, you can acquire five to probably 700,000 dollars worth of student debt for a career. You're not certain you want to have nothing against higher education. We're setting our children up to fail and we need to change that narrative,

whether it's me or anybody else. Wow, you really did your son opportunity and you struck it there. Because, yeah, that's actually a point that we wanted to get to is that the education system is woefully lacking in all of that kind of education, especially including and especially for like you said, ages five to 10, but yeah, through how- I don't know, speak for yourself. I kind of think maybe we should have all our kids learning how to make tanks and ships. I want to be ready. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's my partner here makes a good point. We do need children to be working as well. Because I, wait, where was it?

Was it Florida that they that they were busting kids for working in McDonald's? Yeah, I just said kids don't need to work, but I want them to see how the money works and so that they have better access of success. So they're going to build themselves a tank. They got all the money for the materials. No, I was mostly joking. I think it's a great idea. I think there's a clear, I mean, as someone who went through the American public schools,

you kind of, you realize you're 22, 23 years old and you're like, how does anything work? No one told me about basic shit. Do you have, do you have any hope in the American education system to kind of be reformed and to change in the next decade or do you think that that's up to entrepreneurs like yourself to kind of take charge and create things that the education system is lacking in. No, you know, so I think there's two things in education. So first of all, I'm a huge fan of this country and the people in this country. So I will always see the brighter side of things.

I think this is the greatest country on the planet. And I think there's two things that are in our system are lacking in our system that are not a conspiracy or not this in that. Now, I'm not, Mark people wants to take on big karma and he's right, right? They are killing people and there is a lot of people who need help and drugs and virus and other things.

And I do think there's a lot of people who are just trying to take as much as they can. I don't think in whether it's nutrition or I think in's a lot of people who are just trying to take as much as they can. I don't think in whether it's nutrition or I think in financial intelligence, I don't think there's anybody in our entire school system saying, let's feed our kids the worst things possible with no nutrition so we can make money off from 20 years later when they have cancer or diabetes. I do not believe that at all.

I do not believe anybody's saying, let's not teach them financial intelligence so we can, I don't know, bankrupt them years from now. That is not happening. And I think that education turns very slowly, but what I am seeing is these schools who are saying, we need to change this, but I think that books like this that I put out or that you may put out,

or anybody will pull out. When you start to see them working, you start to get a competitive or a competition going why are schools in Missouri doing better than schools here, here, here, and the good thing about educators is they will start scraping that data and saying this is why it's working. This is why it's working. And they need to make an adjustment. I think we're gonna see it within 10 years. I'm almost positive we will see it a significant change within 10 years. I sure hope you're right. Is this why you call yourself the people's shark? No, I think I was called the people's shark

for a couple of reasons. I think that when people come on shark tank and they have a, you know, they have a million dollars in the bank and they're asking for another million. I think that there are places to pitch those type of businesses, but every day American who is living paycheck to paycheck can't relate to that. And the platform of shark tank was created because you did not have any money. You had no place to go and you risked it all. And you basically said, let me come to the sharks

because I need this, I cannot go to a bank. And so I really ripped people a new one when they come on there because you're taking away the slot of another person who may need it. And I think that that's where it comes from as well as I love investing in people. I believe in people. You know a thing or two about getting rejected yourself

because the first company you started Fubu and for those of us, for those in the audience who don't know what Fubu is, it is, how would you characterize it? It's a real rare brand. I would characterize it as like the first breakthrough streetwear brand that really, I't know broke through the mainstream right? I think yeah, I think there's accurate way a hip hop a brand that was made for hip hop and people love it streetwear brand a first hashtag of clothing right for us by us

That broke through and went mainstream. There was two and three other people that influenced me that Caulcan eye and cross-colors and Dapper Dan They didn't at that point had made it to really mainstream globally and that's what food we did and yeah And that's who it is for us by us and it was all about hip-hop and empowering an entire generation of people who loved hip-hop Right, and I was reading that 27 banks turned you down for loans about hip hop and empowering an entire generation of people who love hip hop. Right. And I was reading that 27 banks turned you down for loans. Yeah. I mean, and you had already had sales at that point, right?

Like, what do you attribute that to? I should be to not have any financial intelligence in school because I got to tell you the way that I build out those loans. I wouldn't give myself the money either. I didn't know what I was talking about. You know, because then in the day, people think it's not the bank's job to give you money. You are, you need to go to the bank and show them

how will they make money off of the money they loan you? And, you know, a lot of people rather give away 50 or 20 or whatever percentage of their company, the bank doesn't want any of your company. They don't want to take your house. They don't want to take your house, they don't want to take anything else. They just want 3%, 5%, 8%, 9% off of their money. And I was not able to articulate whether on paper

or on person how I could actually return that capital. I kept thinking about my own needs. Man, I'm gonna make this hot. You know how many people wear my shirt? LL wear my shirt. It's a good statement on LL wearing my shirt, but how about LL, one of the top music artists are wearing my shirt, and if I, if you look at a video that's paid 300 times across the country with somebody who would normally have to pay, I don't know, 20,000 dollars for that commercial, well think about how much equity

we have in advertising and marketing. And now I take that over to a reputable manufacturer that can deliver those clothes, think about all the money we would make. That's a different conversation than, yo, it is, this hot out here. Everybody loves it. This is why I can't run a bank. I mean, you come in, you tell me, ladies love cool James is wearing your shirt. I'm, I'm, I'm investing.

Well, you know, open a bank thing. I got a lot of those type of things. And I'd be the banker going, well sir, LL Cool J certainly is, is interesting, but unfortunately I'm going to need to see some kind of business plan of the human brain to start. And then I was young, I will use to be business plan,

I plan to do some madness. That's exactly what was my business plan. Do you think that it was easier then to start a business or easier now? And I feel like I know what you're gonna say, but please go ahead. Absolutely now. Yeah.

There was no smartphones, there was no internet. I can open up a phone right now and open up a Shopify account. My, you know, the amount of people I can sell to standing on the corner was the amount of people that drove by the corner. I can open up a Shopify account. I can sell to standing on the corner was the amount of people that drove by the corner. I can open up a Shopify account, I can create a merchant account,

I can then take your money, whether it is Zell or Cash App, and I can hit you all around the world. Right. That's it. But do you think that makes it harder to maybe break through and shine, rise above the others? Because it seems like entrepreneurship is on the rise

heavily and now it's about how do you break through that? I mean, everyone's Instagram is probably full of ads for a company you've never heard of. How do you kind of build, I feel like I've been burned. We've talked about it on our show where you buy, they're really good at doing the branding and you get an ad where you're like man that shirt looks perfect. I'm gonna order it. It gets to your house. You put it on you like this is the

worst fitting shirt I've ever had. And so and then you I'm never gonna buy something from them again. But I mean how do you how do you now build a company where there's there's trust and you know a company you can rely on and that you really want to give your money to. It is easier now but you are absolutely correct. It's easier and guess what? Everybody can do it. So now you have the separate yourself But how do you build it is the same exact way that you always build it? You know what you're doing right now is all you're doing is putting this stuff on a different platform If you would have bought that shirt and they would have put it in a bag

Now you're most like you would have been to try try it on, but let's say there was other defects on the shirt for whatever reason. You wash it, falls apart. You take that shirt back to the store and they say, well, that's your problem, buddy. You never go back to that store again. The same thing with people when you buy it and you like, I want to send it back, you pick up the phone and be like, or excuse me, DM people or whatever. Hey, I don't like the shirt. If they don't answer you back, well, you never buy it again either. It's the same thing. You have to have customer service. You have to say, I'm sorry, how can we make this better for you? Because, you know, a customer that's is disgruntled with you. If you pay attention to them, they are four times more likely to

become a big ambassador for you than anything else. So it is always going to be the same fundamentals of business as just a different platform that we're on. So do you think if you were starting Fubu today, you would have done things differently or you probably would have. Oh, way different way different. So because I mean, think about Fubu today. Fubu today, it wouldn't be new to have

or African-American owners, right? It wouldn't be new that it was related to clothing. So what would fool me today? I probably would retail not knowing who they want to be when they grow up. Today, I probably have one representative, a male and one female in each college. And they would probably get,

you know, I'd probably have it, you know, work with some kind of financial institution where they would get three or four hundred dollars worth of fool, that is worth twelve hundred and allow them to sell it very much like a A-bon, you know, type of product, and the more they sell, the more kind of, you know, education we give them, how to be better on social media, how to be better in finance, and various other things from TikTok or whatever digital platforms, or digital curriculums, and then they would get rewarded from it. That's where it would be now.

I would have two million stores that literally are in college, tweeting and texting and doing all the type of stuff to sell it. Interesting approach. So you had the cool, like arguably the coolest brand in the 90s. Can you talk a bit about what that was like? Like did you just feel like you were on top of the damn world? Like you've got the coolest brand and all the coolest artists are wearing your clothes.

You gotta have some stories, right? Yes, I did. Yes. I also had a healthy paranoia that I felt like this thing was gonna be over soon. Like all the shoes gonna drop. Like you're gonna come after me and they did in Paris ways. I know you that I felt like this thing was gonna be over soon like all the shoes gonna drop like yeah You're gonna come after me and and and they did in Paris ways, but I also, you know was like

How can I be better tomorrow for people because now that I've gotten to this level? You know and I always would be very intimidated Mentally by going how does Nike do it right so what what was the other shoe that dropped for you? Just like did you see sales decline or anything? Of course, yeah things happen Plains crashing the buildings people start nesting and saying you know, I don't want to get out there or a kid has four years of Fubu in their closet and in high school and they go to college and they say, you know what, I want to change up the way that I'm dressing. Other competitors come into the market and they're very big, you know, puff and Jay and they're very notable names and they don't have to worry if somebody else

in a video is wearing and all they got to do is put in their own. So, you know, you get a lot of competition and competition is healthy. And, you know, so that happened, but that's the good part of business. If you are ready and you are like, you have this kind of healthy paranoia, well, then I got to take Fu Bu and I got to buy Fuji or I got to buy itonic or I got to buy other brands so that I can kind of build the bigger mode around me. And I'm going to buy other brands and, you know, you fail at a couple of some of them succeed and then all of some somebody called you and says hey we got a new show called Shark Tank I heard you're an angel investor you're buying brands you want to come on the show and you go yeah

why not? And 15 years later I'm one trillionaire you know talk to him. I mean I would say that this is the pinnacle right here you've reached the apex. This is where it is. People strive to be on the show we We are constantly turning down offers, left and right, money being thrown at us. It's really overwhelming. Ha, ha, 100%. I, you know, this has been a long time that I've been, I was thinking about trying to get on the show

back in the 90s. Yeah. When I was in, that was a far-mits football. I also feel the need to say, you know, we were working on a book called Little Ben and a Meal Learn to Earn before we knew about yours. So, and we were glad to hear that, you know, you're not super litigious or anything. So.

Well, also, we're going for the five to ten market. We're going, that's really incidentally, I mean, we're going for 11 to like, it 20. So there's room for both of us. There's room for all of us. All right. Yeah. That's the truth. So absolutely. I love it. I love it. So shark tank. Well, okay, a couple of things actually. I want to know, when did you feel like you really made it? And you felt like, okay, I'm safe now. I'm secure. Cause I mean, you grew up, you funded, you funded Fubu yourself. You worked part time at Red Lobster.

I got to, I worked at a seafood restaurant too. It didn't traumatize me at all, but yeah, do you still have dreams where you're working at Red Lobster, by the way? Do you still have those panic dreams of like, oh my God, my shift's starting, and I don't know where my pants are. No.

Oh, well, you've grown past it. Your dreams have evolved. And now it's like, oh my God, we don't have enough inventory to sell Fubu. I think I think I finally felt like I had made I had some level of success in my like around 35, 37. I had only 37, maybe, maybe, yeah, about 37, 38. I felt like I didn't need materialistic things anymore to try to keep, it wasn't keeping up with Jones, it was like, well, I just thought I'm supposed to buy expensive things to, to, and I loved them. But after you boarded the first or second time, you go, all right, that's a beautiful car.

And after a little while, about five years, you realize, you have all these cars, but your friends use them more than you did. And you really just narrowed down on what's really important to you. I realized I had I had a good amount of money in the bank, but I had more important. I have financial intelligence because I I had almost one bankrupt twice when I was broken once when I had 10 million in the bank. And I had way more than that after that period of time, I had been able to survive after that. I realized I didn't happen necessarily depend on either being famous or having a great idea. I can now invest in other ideas.

I don't need to be famous and I don't need all these big things around me because I don't care. And I think it was around 38, I'm 54 now. So right around that time, and I really started my career with food with 19, oh no, 20. So it took about 20 years. Wow. Yeah, there's a great quote, I'm gonna totally butcher it,

but George Harrison from The Beatles is talking about how, they had more money than they could have ever dreamed by the time they were in their late 20s And they realized very quickly that oh my god this thing that everybody Lusts after and spends their whole life chasing they realized early on that it's not everything and that there's more to life in that for him It was spirituality, but Yeah, so charus its revenge. Yeah for us. It's totally revenge. Yeah Thank you for reminding me for us

That's what that's what drives us at the end of the day That's right So with shark tank we know that you've got a few successful What would you say the bombas was their most successful investment the socks? Bombs the most successful in shark tank history out of all companies that have been invested in Shark Tank. No way. I thought it was sponge daddy.

No, scrub daddy is number two. Scrub daddy. Scrub, scrub, scrub daddy. Yeah, suck it, scrub daddy. You've done. Yeah, yeah. And that's, and a lot of people say that any investment or regret, that's the only one I regret trying to do a deal with because I actually went after that one.

Other ones, if I didn't go after that, I don't care. But I went after that one and Laurie beat me to it and Laurie did a great job with it. How is there not room for everybody? If you all after the cameras are off, can't you just go, all right, count me in. Like I'll give you an extra 500 grand, whatever. Yeah, there's always room, but what happens is we see so many people that you know,

somebody else is coming to the door next. If Laurie beat me on it, it's not like, it's like, okay, whatever, good for you. You don't see the results. Some of the things going to work that day or that year, you know, you see it four, five years later, and sometimes these things go to zero, come back, you know, you reconfigure the thing. So it's not an easy and clear answer to what success is or failure is with any of these companies, either real businesses. Right. Are you wearing bombers right now? Yeah, I am, of course. I would ask you to prove it, but I don't think you're interested in lifting up your feet. It's not a trick.

It'll be pretty hard, because I'm sitting in a tall desk and I wouldn't be able to do so, but absolutely. I don't think I have any other pair of socks. I think I have a pair of maybe stands or something that was given to me a long time ago and they're there because I never get to them, but I'm overloaded with bombers. Nice. a long time ago and they're there because I never get to them, but I'm overloaded with bombers. Nice. Do you have any outside of Shark Tank?

Do you have any companies that you wish you were currently invested in? Like Nvidia just posted, I don't know if you saw that they just posted their earnings, but it's up like 27% after hours. Are there any investments like that that you look back on and go, God, how did I miss that? You know, I get pitched a lot.

I did, but so I gotta just put it in context. I get pitched a lot, so I got pitched Uber. And I turned that down, but if I would have invested in that and I would have invested in all the other ones, I would have probably been negative several, I like maybe $20 million, right? So Uber is the only one that I actually passed on that I could think about being a massive success.

None of really the other ones that I wish I would have invested in. What kind of success rate are we looking at from your shark tank investments? Are you losing a lot? Are they pretty successful across the board? No, a shark tank, I think. I think you have out of 10, you have about four to go to zero. Right. Another three that are kind of on the fans. Here it goes. Maybe to work out or not and then another

Maybe one of the final three are doing decent and then two rock stars. Okay, scrub daddy and bombas. Sorry Bombas and then scrub daddy. Yeah, a distant number two Yeah, well, you know, I think he's doing pretty well, but you know, my my would be you know bomba socks It would be the tenacle. It would be the tentacle. tentacle is a little suction cup. Um, and, uh, you know, it has tentacles on it and you put your phone on it. And it can you have any tentacle right? It's in front of my bag, in the front of that black bag. And then you can put the suction cups anywhere you want to wrap it around things and it keeps your

phone in place. Oh, yeah, yeah I know those guy. I want to invest in those hats whatever those hats are you got them in it like triple XL for my J head Noggin boss. They just did a really great deal Noggin boss. They're really cool guys. So I you know I I think that that one is going to be big But it didn't get to that point just yet because again, these are real businesses. So here, here's the tentacle right here. Yeah. Yes.

Okay. Raps around and does all kind of stuff in suction cups. So it's really good. The Jillian ways to use a Jillian way. Oh, yeah. It's a car mount. I need to get one of those in my truck. Yeah.

Absolutely. So do you own, do you, do you invest in stocks at all? Or is it just, are you one of those who only goes for businesses like like that? Sorry like angel investing. I love stocks. So I always tell people that you know the reason I'm on Shark Tank and Is to work with people because if I need to make money a little money You know, I send it over to the market. They don't dust off Steve Jobs and ask. And he comes and asks me how to fix it down computer.

I just need to make money or not. You know, I mean, we look at Amazon over the last, I think, two or three weeks. I mean, as they call it, my buddy, you know, Wall Street made, who's my stock guy always says, listen, the generals are starting to wake up, you know, which are the big boys and girls. And Amazon is, I think, up 10% over the last three weeks.

I mean, that is a hundred billion dollars increase. And all the generals are starting to wake up now. And that's great, you know. But you just play stocks the long game on it. That's, I've been through the, I made a lot of money on a one day, a day trade on Apple apple maybe 15 years ago And I thought I was Gordon Gekko and I look at the money that I took out of that market that I had an apple and I want to kick myself

Oh, sure it would have been 30 million dollars. Oh my god. Was it an options play or just like a day trade just with common shares? You know, I know it was a day trade I had it in for about six months this thing spiked And then I was like, oh, I need to take it. I know. So of course, I didn't know any better. I knew I knew well enough to go into the market, but I it wasn't capital gains. It was standard tax, right? And I would have parlayed that and just kept it in. That had been worth way more. So the gift and the curse of the TD Ameritrade and Robinhood, you have

too much access. Just put it away. You know what they say? It's not about timing the market. It's about time in the market. Yeah. The market. Do you, what are your thoughts on this, this rapidly inflating AI bubble where you've got the market leaders being Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Google, just these like four or five behemoth mega cap names just single handedly lifting the market. Do you think that it's something that's kind of like blockchain version 2.0 or is it more real? I don't think it's blockchain. This is a new way.

I think this is a new Google, but the same, the same as I call them the generals, those that are generals that pulled us down to in the market because when they sought to suffer everything does. AI is the way that we're going. I am nowhere near a professional or maybe even not even a novice at this point with it. It's the new way of the world, Bitcoin is not necessarily the new way of the world. That's one form of a financial instrument. But AI will exist and does exist in almost every aspect of our lives. So I do think that they are dominating it and controlling a lot of it. And I don't know if there's a bubble on it because it's just the new way we're communicating. And that's kind of why we wanted to bring you here today. We have a pitch kind of related to AI. Me and Ben separately, you know, you get our personalities

onto AI and we're basically your AI boyfriends. How do you feel about that? Not your boyfriend, but someone's boyfriend. I, you know, the royal, you know what I mean. And so I'm sorry, you're gonna be people's boyfriend on AI? Uh-huh. Mmm. I, this is news to me, sir.

So... No, Ben came up with it with me. No, no. I do think there is some influencer girl who... She took her idea. She did take her idea. She's soliciting herself as an AI girlfriend where people pay, I think like a dollar a minute

or something like that. It's the one nine hundred days all over again. I think that I think that'll work though. I absolutely agree with you. Oh, with us specifically. What was it with you? You mean, it's like that movie, right? Where the guy fell in love with this AI.

Her. Her, yeah, but this is him. This is him. That company already exists. I shit. I think that's going to be, I think that, but this is him. This is him. That company already exists. I shit. I think that's going to be, I think that definitely is going to work. Do you, do you invest it all in the kind of, you said you're in your 50s, your 54, are you at all starting to look into the kind of longevity things, putting, putting things

in your body to extend your lifespan? You've got more access to it than us. Tell us what's going on there. No, you know what, I think I'm trying to take things out of my body to expand my life, meaning like a little bit of the metals, the heavy metals and everything. Oh, yeah.

The FAs. What, yeah, I'm into a lot of holistic things, red lights and there's a great e-boom machine that really just takes things things out of your blood a lot of the metals and all that type of stuff So yeah, I'm into a lot of that good stuff. I go to somebody named Gary Brekker who's an amazing Amazing he's very well-known. You should look him up huge shout out to Gary. Do you live in the city? By the way? I live in Miami. Oh, yeah, so a city we thought you so you live in a city. We thought you were a New Yorker till you die. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I'm in New York right now. I have

a place. So where do you go though? We live in LA. Yeah. LA. All right. Very good. Yeah. No, I'm an East Coast guy. Yeah. So you're, did you move to Florida for the taxes? No, I'm still a New York state resident. Oh, okay, you've got your domiciled in New York, very interesting. I'm still domiciled in New York, not New York City, though, New York State. Okay, where in New York State? Like your address. Yeah, what's your address?

Yeah, I'm upstate somewhere between New York and Buffalo, really close to that area, between New York and Buffalo. Got it, so like West. Yes, he lives in West. Yeah, we can narrow that down. Somewhere in the Hudson Valley. Let's see. What else did we have here?

Oh, what do you, what do you say? I frequently, I'm in my 30s and I, I still feel, or recently I've been feeling like, man, the barrier to entry to make any kind of meaningful lasting investment is just too high at this point. You've got things like RIVI and IPO-ing at $120 billion. Real estate prices are higher than they've ever been. It just feels like the time was 10, 20 years ago, and now it's just your feeding on the leftover scraps

from boomers. You know, do you think that that's all hogwash or am I am I nuts? I think there will all be places to to make money, you know, and opportunity, you know, because I believe the Bitcoin and Ethereum will still be decent investments, not knowing any better, but you know, when people stop talking about it, that's the time you invest. And so if you would have bought some of that stuff around six months ago, while everybody was like,

it's a fake, it's fraud, I think that you would have been good. But you got to invest in things that you're just excited about. Just period you are excited about and you like. I only invest in things that if it went away, you would disrupt my life. You know, I don't care what people want to say about Zuckerberg, but if, you know, if he has touch points of two billion people and he's an acquisition company that will buy, you know, a WhatsApp or all this type of stuff. I know that if he decided to turn off Instagram and Facebook and you lose 15 years of pictures, your life is ruined and it's over. And I know that I'm going to invest in that

or what have over went away. I mean, you know, the last time an African-American called a cab or a yellow cab in New York City, I think Elvis was alive. So, you know, I'm going to buy that, you know, if it's if it's Amazon, I mean, I mean, they're not building anymore stores or retail, so boxes are gonna come. And I'm gonna go and eat some, I'm gonna go to a whole pool and get some grocery or I'm gonna be a peeping Tom on ring. So I'm gonna invest in companies that they go away,

they would rule in my life. And I think that you can find a lot of upcoming stocks and or companies who've been acquired that I think you can, you can't get into. So, but just to go back to that question, so this book is aimed at people who are quite young. I'm wondering if you do get questions from maybe people in their early 20s who are getting out of college and you know, feel a bit lost in this economy because there are, it's probably one of our biggest questions from young viewers and listeners is about the fact that

they feel locked out of the economy. I mean, I mean, we're in our 30s. It's hard to imagine, may time when we will, when we will own a home. It's a, but we also live in LA with it though. Sure. But it's extremely difficult for young people to break into the economy. I guess you just got a persevere, right? I asked him. I know. I think you got to think outside the box.

I think the Warren Buffett said it best. He said, you know, if you're a good nurse and you become a great nurse, nobody can take that away from you and to invest in yourself and to skill that something that you can take for you for the rest of your life. If you happen to be a really smart individual and you know, social, I mean, let's get the example, you know, the workforce sucks today. Harb, kids coming out of college, they send out a couple of tweets and other social media experts.

It won $150,000 to $200,000 That's fine. You want to dance on videos or even what what's the site the young ladies are going on and Only fans. Yeah, so that's fine. That's fine, but If you know that there is a massive amount of people that have wealth they have distribution They have manufacturing, but they don't know social media and they're over here and they're ranging from 45 to 70 years old. You know, two years ago, they had stores that were closed, their customers right down the block, they do not know how to get to their customer. And if you know that you have access to being able to push things out across across the globe and you know,

you can say them, hey, I can move that. Just give me 10%, 20% of that. And these people, like, yeah, whatever, we're just sitting on all inventory. You know how much money you can make every single day by learning how to tap into that and bridge that. So you just have to find where the opportunities are and you can make millions upon millions and millions of dollars. I see kids do it all the time. Instead of doing dance videos, they were doing dance videos with shoes or glasses or a drink from somebody who was like, I don't know how to move this crap. And they're making millions and millions of dollars.

So I think there's a lot of opportunity out there. Where do those people live? What people? Those people selling all that stuff. I got to, uh, I got to ask them. Sort of, you know what, go down any main street in any town and you look at half those stores that are closed and the little ones that are open, go in there and see who's selling to those stores. Interesting. I knew I shouldn't have spent so much time dancing on TikTok. You could. I spent you could be dancing on TikTok. I know. Trust me. This is a company that said

just hold this while you dance on TikTok and we will give you 50% of which city. The reason why the burlington and the TJ Maxxes of the world exist is because that's all over goods that people can't sell. And the dollar stores think about that. All those dollar stores, I think there's a, if you add Dollar Tree and Dollar General, I think there's 36,000 of them. The reason they exist is because people can't move those goods and they give it to them. But those are an older generation probably buying them. When's the last time you seen any millennials go in,

I gotta go to JC Penney, the dollar store, Burlington Coat Fractor, they're using it open their phone. All you gotta do is find a different way to get that pipeline out to them. i remember when uh bill acumen tried to invest heavily in jc penny because i believe jc penny had just hired the guy who was responsible for designing apple stores and acumen thought this is a surefire thing we're going to revamp retail and bring people back to them all and it didn't uh uh, didn't pan out. Did it? Not going to work like that. It's all going to be about. You the only reason, the only way or the only reason a retail will exist or there's going to be a value

is if you are giving them something that they don't have at home. So if you have a little clothing store or even a JC Pen is a big store, why don't you put in runways in the store and then when people buy the goods, you know, they can be their own designer, they get up and they walk on the runway, they tap into their Instagram or TikTok and people already have a link that they can buy those clothes because now they go, you now have gotten my profile of clothes, watch me walk down this runway is very Instagramable. I'm boom, you got all this information coming in and now the store is making money, you're making 3% or 10% of all those people globally that just purchased. I know another way to get them into the store is free

candy. Boy, that'd get me in there. You have to get handful of skittles, not even in the bag. That didn't, you know, I had a guy in my neighborhood when I was growing up. He always had free candy, and for some reason it wasn't raining, but he always had a trench coat on. And didn't work out quite well for a lot of kids in the neighborhood. I'm glad you stayed away from them. Well, I think that just about wraps it up. We're being told we're running out of time. Yeah, yeah. The power is going to be shut off any minute. But Damon, we really want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today. We've got your book here and if people want to check it out, where can they find you? Anything else you want to plug?

No, they can find me anywhere. Damon, I'm on Instagram or all the platform, the Shark Damon. And of course, you find me Friday nights on ABC Shark Tank, arguing with five morons and trying to teach them business who I call Kevin and Barbara and Robert. I'm just always trying to help these people. Barbara doesn't take her meds.

And yeah, and that's it. Before we go, do you want to talk some more shit on your co-hosts? Or... Yeah, who's the biggest asshole? And why is it Mr. Wonderful? Oh, I wasn't talking shit. I was just being honest.

You were in touch. Oh, yeah. So do you want to be honest about your co-hosts some more? Yeah, what do you want me to say? I mean, Cuban things, he knows it all. Robert is going repiled. Barbara doesn't take her meds. I don't know.

You know, Kevin O'Lary is the kiss of death. And yeah, I don't love it. Have you seen, have you seen what's his name? Mr. Wonderful playing guitar on TikTok? I don't because he's my Uber driver. He's sitting outside. He takes some time. You know, he can't put the big guitar in the front seat with the with the drivers Oh my god, oh

Beautiful on that note. Thank you so much again We really really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. It's been very informative very educational very fun We love it. Thank you guys. Thank you. what you're doing. I appreciate you, man. When your book comes out, if you're doing it for kids, let me know, let me sling it out too, and get some people to know that it's not just me out here. It's many of us who want to know. Oh, hell yeah.

Okay. Okay. So long. I got it. Thanks. Bye. This week on After Hours. Why are you saying it like I don't know where it'll buzz you?

God, dammit. What's going on in my brain? I'm gonna have to check your dating profiles. after hours. Why are you saying it like I don't know where it busses? God damn it! What's going on in my brain! I'm gonna have to check your dating profiles. Can you? You don't. I can show you right now. I'd like to see it. You wanna see it?

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